Uncharted Water for a Browns Fan

I'm scared

I have been a sports fan for most of my entire life. I started playing hockey when I was 6, played baseball and lacrosse for four-year spans and had brief, brief stints playing basketball and football.

But, many of the teams I cared about changed over the years. My parents did not care much about basketball, so I did not care much about the Cavs really until LeBron James came back in 2014. I picked Tottenham because a YouTuber I liked had liked them and I thought it was a fun name (terrible call, me). My dad always loved hockey, but it took until 2007 when, two days before my 10th birthday, I was in attendance for Patrick Kane going to the Chicago Blackhawks in Columbus.

None of that inconsistency existed for the Cleveland Browns. Sure, I liked other teams as well in the NFL, but that was only because I always knew that I also had to suffer through watching the Browns. I have watched the Browns for almost all of my life, and it has almost all been insufferable pain. I do not remember the first time the Browns made the playoffs – I was 5 – but hearing about it hurts all the same.

The Cleveland Browns have existed for me all this time as something that seemed like an obligation. For 16 weeks out of the year, I would watch this team play some despicable football, I’d get maybe five moments of glory, and then they would be gone and spring would be around the corner.

I had accepted this, and truly, it made some moments that should mean nothing mean absolutely everything.

The Hue Jackson era is one of the stupidest things to happen to any professional sports team, and my miniature brain actually thought this fool needed to go 1-31 to help start the rebuild. Bozo.

But I won’t forget the Browns sneaking away with that one single win thanks to two missed field goals by the Chargers late in the fourth quarter.

I also won’t forget that the Browns went 0-16 thanks to one of the worst dropped passes I have ever seen.

All of this changed when 2018 happened. Jackson got fired because he is terrible at his job, and lo and behold the Browns started winning football games. Baker Mayfield was a jolt of life the team needed, and despite still finishing with a losing record at 7-8-1, that team brought me more joy than any I had ever watched.

Cleveland followed up that fun 2018 campaign by making two decisions that, at the time, gave me higher expectations than ever before with this team. The first was trading for Odell Beckham Jr., something that felt impossible for the Browns to do prior because, well, they were the Browns. The next was hiring Freddie Kitchens, the large, fun man that Mayfield loved and I was desperate to root for. It felt like the Browns believed in themselves.

Well, then what happened, idiot? The Browns won just one less game than in 2018, but truly looked like garbage doing it, losing all the life from the team that got me so on board in the first place.

That 2019 season sticks in my mind as I head into 2021. Yes, there are plenty of different circumstances: The Browns went 11-5 last year, won a playoff game against the Pittsburgh damn Steelers and have the reigning Coach of the Year in Kevin Stefanski back for a second season.

But the expectations are in a relatively similar place. And, while non-Browns fans may only remember 2020 and have only the heightened expectations in their mind, I remember what the Browns have been for so, so long.

Since returning in 1999, Cleveland has three winning seasons and has made the playoffs twice. It has finished in last place in the division 15 times and has only finished with a positive point differential two times. Yes, even in that beautiful 2020 season, the Browns finished with a minus-11 differential, troubling.

Well, hopefully the Browns can at least ease into the season with a good win to get my hopes to a solid place, and then I can endure a few losses down the road.

Shit.

Both of the past two seasons – even the 11-win one – have started with the Browns getting completely cooked, and now they have to face the back-to-back AFC champions right out the gates.

I realize I have said all of this without saying how truly, deeply excited I am for this season. All of this negative talk is only to try and cancel out my true feelings, which are the most horrifying of them all: I really think the Browns can be one of the best teams in the NFL this year.

And this is the point I am trying to make in this newsletter. The Browns only can hurt you because they so often put on a facade to make you think they can, or should, be good. That is when they put a banana peel out in front of you to slip on or have you run into a brick wall that was painted to look like a continuation of the road.

So, here’s hoping the Browns have truly changed under Stefanski. Here is hoping that Odell Beckham Jr. returns to the lineup and can be the WR1 that I deeply believe he can be. Let’s hope that Jadeveon Clowney can return to his old form, that John Johnson can immediately help bolster the secondary and that Grant Delpit, Greg Newsome and Greedy Williams can show off all the potential I think they have.

But 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 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.