This past weekend was a marvelous football weekend not only
for myself, but for the majority of people in the great state of Ohio. The Ohio
State Buckeyes not only defeated their arch nemesis, the Michigan Wolverines,
but utterly routed them in what will become one of the best upsets in the
historic rivalry. Then on Sunday the Cleveland Browns won their first away game
since the 2015 season, by dominating their divisional rival, the Cincinnati
Bengals. Both games were marvelous because they were overwhelming victories,
they were upsets, and they absolutely silenced the critics.
Nothing has caused me more anguish this football season than
watching Michigan roll past opponent after opponent and ascending the heights
of college football excellence. The Wolverines named this season the “Revenge
Tour” because throughout the year they were defeating each team who beat them
the previous season – Michigan State, Penn State, and Wisconsin. Each of these
wins were won handily by Michigan, and as Michigan’s talented defensive end,
Chase Winovich, said, “The final stop on the Revenge Tour is Ohio State.” To go one step further, Jim Harbaugh,
Michigan’s head coach and who coming into the game was 0-3 coaching against
Ohio State, guaranteed a Michigan victory.
On the other hand, Ohio State seemed like the most overrated
team in college football after having difficulty defeating mediocre teams such
as: TCU, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Maryland and then complete collapse in a
blowout loss to Purdue. Ohio State also had to deal with the blow of its best
player, not only on the team but in the entire country, in Nick Bosa having a
season ending injury, causing him to recuse himself from school to prepare for
the NFL Draft. Finally, the Buckeyes also had to deal with what became false
allegations, that Urban Meyer’s former assistant coach, Zach Smith, who is no
longer on the team, used racial slurs towards a former player. Those
allegations were refuted but, suffice to say, it caused a distraction for the
team.
Now take all the turmoil going on with Ohio State and
juxtapose that against Michigan’s defense being ranked number one in the
country, its offense humming with the likes of an efficient quarterback in Shea
Patterson, and ESPN’s talking heads already writing them in as a College
Football Playoff contender. So it is no
surprise that all of the College Gameday
hosts picked Michigan to defeat Ohio State. However, they and the entire
country, outside of Ohio, couldn’t have been more wrong. Ohio State played like
the team that everyone knew they could be and Michigan was completely confused.
Both talent wise and schematically Ohio State was the much better team
throughout the entire game. In short, the “Revenge Tour” was cut short.
The Browns were similar in terms of knowing that they were a
very young, but talented team. It just took a change in coaching, well really
two changes as both Haley and Hue were let go, to fully release the talent on
the field. At the end of the first half, the Browns were winning 28-7, holding
the Bengals to less than twenty yards rushing. The Browns most likely could
have egged on even more points if they did not go into protect mode on offense by
just running the ball to preserve the lead. The final score was Cleveland
topping Cincinnati 35-20 (the score makes the game look closer than it really
was).
This game could be considered the Browns’ very own “Revenge
Tour” as they were competing against their former head coach – Hue “Clueless” Jackson.
That’s right after Hue got done doing his cross-country TV tour, in which he
threw every Browns player and coach under the bus for his failure to win
games, Hue was hired as a “special assistant” to Marvin Lewis, the Bengal’s
head coach, whose only apparent talent is receiving contract extensions while
not improving year after year. What Hue actually does lies somewhere between
massaging Marvin Lewis’ feet to picking up Marvin’s Mercedes to making sure
Marvin has a reservation at the local Chili’s after each game – win or lose.
Needless to say, no matter what Hue’s actual duties consist of, the Browns
wanted to beat their treasonous former head coach badly in the Bengal’s house.
The Browns accomplished this goal with flying colors.
What has me very fired up, and this is most likely because I
am a Browns fan, but live in Cincinnati, is the fact that the Bengals’ fans are
shocked to have not only been beaten by the Browns, but utterly annihilated. Before
the game started, one local radio announcer asked for prayers that the Bengals
wouldn’t lose to the “helpless” Browns. Then once the Browns finished putting
their final touches on an absolute beat down, another local radio show host
stated, “that it is unbelievable that the Bengals lost to the Browns.” If
anything both these comments reflect how naïve Cincinnati football fans are.
They not only don’t realize that their team has absolutely no defense, but also
the very fact that the Browns aren’t a bad team. They played surprisingly well
against a much more talented Chiefs team, albeit still a loss, and then
completely dominated the Atlanta Falcons the following week. So, like Ohio
State, the only people who believed that the Browns were capable of completing
such a feat were the Browns’ players, coaches, and of course, their steadfast fans.
So, I hope I stop receiving text messages from
ex-girlfriends who are “congratulating” me on the Browns winning “a game.” As
much as their congratulatory texts may appear to be thoughtful, they are
nothing more than concealed pettiness. These
texts are an expression of “surprise” that the Browns could actually win a
game. In reality I knew this team could win games. I predicted they’d win six.
This Browns team is young, angry, and wants to do nothing more than beat every
team on their schedule. They are a team that when they win, can no longer be
patronizingly patted on the head and told, “good job winning a game.” Instead
opposing teams’ fans must now be willing to accept that when they get beat by
the Browns, it wasn’t a “fluke.” Their team was simply out maneuvered, out
hustled, out played, and out manned in every facet of the game. So the next
time a radio show hosts prays that his team beats the Browns to avoid the “embarrassment”
of losing to the “Clowns,” he needs to start praying that his team doesn’t get
“embarrassed” by the Browns.
On to Houston. Go Browns!
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