The Cleveland Browns Whirlpool
It is the hope that kills you
Before the season, I wrote about how this year was uncharted water as a fan of the Cleveland Browns after an 11-5 season followed by a playoff win and near run to the AFC Championship game.
The roster stayed in tact, the Browns seemed to have a great draft, Odell Beckham Jr. was healthy. It seemed like there was real reason for hope, for the Browns to truly compete for the Super Bowl.
Here’s how I ended that story:
What makes the Browns feel different this time around is that most of these ifs are not absolute backbreakers like they had been all my life. If Jadeveon Clowney is strictly OK, if Beckham is good but not elite, if those members of the secondary are fine but don’t have Pro Bowl seasons, I think Cleveland can still make the playoffs.
Maybe that’s naive, and maybe all of that could go wrong and so much more, it is the Browns after all. But this feels like the year to prove that Cleveland is no longer the Browns of the old. My fingers are crossed, I’m knocking on wood, but holy shit am I excited to see how it plays out.
Buddy, if only you could have known.
I walked into uncharted water not paying attention to where I was swimming, and the 2021 Browns were the whirlpool that sucked me under. After that great season, after making what seemed like improvements to the roster, after all the hype in the world…
8 Wins, 9 Losses
There have been so many worse seasons by record — we are not far removed from 1 win in 32 games across two seasons — but this year hurt more than any before it. The Freddie Kitchens season is close, but even that came after a 7-8-1 year. This was an 11-win team with a playoff victory from a first-year head coach that couldn’t even finish above .500.
Not everything went wrong, but what did hurt so, so much. To start, Beckham absolutely stunk, then his dad openly insulted Baker Mayfield, then he was cut and signed with the Rams where he has certainly been better. Beckham played six games with the Browns this season:
9 targets, 5 catches, 77 yards, 0 TD
7 targets, 2 catches, 27 yards, 0 TD
3 targets, 2 catches, 20 yards, 0 TD
8 targets, 5 catches, 79 yards, 0 TD
6 targets, 2 catches, 23 yards, 0 TD
1 target, 1 catch, 6 yards, 0 TD
That adds up to 17 catches for 234 yards and no touchdowns on 34 targets. Not good. Of course, he had Mayfield throwing to him, and not the 2020 Mayfield that impressed mightily in the back half of the season.
No, instead we got the dumpster fire version of Mayfield, who was playing through a brutal shoulder injury that may or may not have limited him from being any sorts of good this year. If so, he should have gotten surgery and this should have been a Case Keenum season, who the Browns were 2-0 under as a starter. If injury wasn’t a major factor, then this guy is horrendous and I am out on him.
Tucker Boynton created a neat quarterback comparison analytic, and I decided to plug Baker Mayfield’s 2020 and 2021 seasons into it. Here are his comparisons:
Troubling! With the injury, I am willing to roll the Baker dice for one more season, but the Browns need to draft a quarterback (I would love Carson Strong in Round 2 or Kaleb Eleby in Round 4-5, personally), and just having to talk about this garbage again hurts my soul so deeply.
I wanted to be talking about the Browns’ route to the Super Bowl, or at least to a damn postseason win. Instead, I’m searching for Garrett Wilson jersey swaps and hoping he falls to Cleveland at 13. It’s a terrible place to be, and never has it felt worse than after I swam out to the middle of the ocean in good faith that a franchise that has only ever hurt me until 2020 would not immediately hurt me again.
It did hurt me, more than ever before. Obviously hope is not lost for a rebound, and there were good things from this season. Nick Chubb, Myles Garrett and Denzel Ward (please extend the last guy) are all the same Dudes that I thought they were. The draft was as good as I thought too, at least with Greg Newsome and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah as the top two picks, who were both excellent this year.
By the way, Newsome is now a confirmed fan of the newsletter, so thank you Greg.
The defense, generally speaking, was great in the second half of the year, but was let down by a lackluster pass game. The hope is that Mayfield was truly hindered and will be back to his 2020 form next season. He did start the year slinging it prior to the injury, but the lack of strong, or fast, decision-making at the end of the season was agonizing to watch.
I’m sure I will be excited about this team again by Week 1, it’s what us Browns fans do every year, and there are things to be excited about. But this season felt like drowning out at sea by the end. I’m not sure if I can have that same faith again, it just hurt too much.
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