Sweet Fancy Moses (Cleaveland)!

Now that was some kind of football game. It’s five days later and I’m still not 100% sure it actually happened. (After 10 months in COVID lockdown, my sense of time, and reality, fluctuates.) When Maurkice Pouncey snapped the ball 10 feet over Roethlisberger’s head and the Browns recovered it for a touchdown, it was as if the planet had a moment of vertigo and when the fog cleared, the Browns lead 7-0 fourteen seconds into the game. Moments later, Big Ben was picked off, and Landry went for a 40 yard score a few plays later. But the life of a Cleveland Browns fan is never easy, and even at 28-0 I told the staff here at 4338 that somehow this was going to be a close game in the second half. That’s the unfortunate price of being a Cleveland fan, we can’t even take a minute to relish the fact that we were up 4 scores, on the road, against a QB that has treated us like a middle school JV football team. Even with some angsty moments in the second half, the game proceeded basically as you would expect when a team has an enormous lead. Cleveland played basically a prevent defense, and Pittsburgh was forced to throw the ball all over the yard (to a tune of 500 yards) No need to recount all of the details, but a few hours later, the Browns were headed back to Cleveland with a 48-37 playoff on the road, something they hadn’t done since 1969. 

The Monday morning chatter on ESPN was exactly what I expected. The tone was very much about the Pittsburgh collapse, and not so much about Cleveland overcoming all kinds of adversity to grind out a win against a hated rival. Despite the head coach watching from his basement, a fourth string lineman who had to drive in from New Jersey, players missing on both sides of the ball, and injuries the Browns maintained their composure and notched a historic win. Across the board, everybody had picked against the Browns going into the game, and it’s pretty lame on Monday morning to make the claim that “I’m not surprised the Browns won.” These are the same people who listed 10 reasons that the Browns couldn’t win, just own it, tip your cap to the Browns and admit you were wrong.

You know who wasn’t surprised? The editor-in-chief here at 4338, yours truly. I will admit that 28-0 at the end of the first was unexpected, but I truly believed that we were going to show up, play like our hair was on fire, and eke out a win. I wrote about the lack of pressure last week, and I think that Baker and the rest of the offense played like there was nothing to lose. (And I think we’ll see that again in KC this weekend.) It helped that Mike Tomlin made some very questionable decisions, and I wish I could have heard those yinzer Stiller fans complaining about him this past week. He’s a great coach, who had a really bad day in a huge spotlight. That organization will get back on track, but starting 11-0 and finishing 1-5 is a real gut punch. Plus they’ve got all sorts of salary cap issues and a quarterback with an adjusted age of 61.2 years. But as the game went on, it was clear that Cleveland came to play, and that Pittsburgh couldn’t get out of their own way. Talk about shaking off decades of playoff futility, and now the Browns find themselves in a position to make some more history. They’re playing with house money, and will have a full complement of players and coaches when they head to either Kansas City weekend. (Which weirdly is in two states?) So for the second week in a row, Cleveland can play with reckless abandon against an opponent that everybody in sports will say win comfortably. Look for a game preview Sunday morning, and probably you can guess where I am going to fall on prognostication.