By: Kris Mead
This week’s installment of the 2018 Browns’ Chronicles is difficult for me to write because I
can’t use my usual trusty lens for dissecting another Browns’ debacle. Instead, I get to examine a healthy Browns
team. One that played solidly and decisively
won against a “decent” team in the Carolina Panthers. Now, that’s not to say there weren’t moments
in which the Browns almost “Browned” themselves. Most notably was when kicker,
Greg Joseph, missed a redone extra point, after the first attempt from the fifteen-yard
line was waved off as the Panthers were called for encroachment. So logically
it was assumed that an extra point from the ten yard line would be easier to
make, but alas, Joseph squarely hit the left upright and the Browns came away
with no extra point. Typically, this miscue would come back to haunt the Browns
and Joseph would be out of a job, but the Browns defense held tall at their own
goal line, late in the fourth quarter. The Panthers went for it on fourth and
goal and failed. The rest was history. Browns went on to win 26-20 and improved
by 500% compared to last year’s record.
Fittingly, many of the beat writers, mainly at ESPN,
are now discussing the “unlikely” yet still mathematically possible chance that
the Browns make the playoffs. However, I am not in the mood to discuss
hypotheticals that are just there to patronize the Browns fans and remind them
that they “still aren’t there yet, but to keep trying and maybe one day they
will be!” I am in the mood to discuss what is vividly evident, that being the
Browns are in an ascent when the rest of the AFC North appears to be either in
a descent or plateauing.
I think what is most notably obvious is the fact that the
Browns have “hit” on a quarterback.
There is a very strong chance that Mayfield will be determined to be the
best quarterback the Browns have drafted since ’99, when they drafted Tim Couch
with the first overall draft pick. In
Couch’s rookie year he played in 15 games. His passer rating averaged out to be
73.2. However, Baker, who has played in eleven games, and started ten, has a
quarterback passer rating of 93.2. So let that sink in. It has been nearly 20
years for the Browns to have a quarterback who, in his rookie year and has
played in ten or more games, to have a passer rating greater than 74. In those
twenty years the Browns have drafted ten other quarterbacks and none of them in
their rookie years could obtain a quarterback passer rating greater than 73.2.
That’s amazing. Furthermore, no Browns fan has seen a quarterback like Mayfield
to throw such beautiful passes since 2007 when Derek Anderson had his pro bowl
year, which would later go down as a “one hit wonder” year.
It wouldn’t be fair to give credit to just Mayfield, as the
Browns have “hit” on both free agents and other 2018 rookies. Rookie running
back, Nick Chubb, has been a machine since Carlos Hyde was dealt to
Jacksonville earlier in the year. It appears that Chubb is a running back who
gets stronger as the game goes on and can use his agility to hit a hole
quickly, but at the same time uses his strength to lower his shoulder against a
linebacker. In turn, it is no surprise that Chubb is ranked the number
one running back against his positional peers or that Denzel Ward, who has
been injured, is ranked the 11th best cornerback in the NFL. Combine
the two rookies with the likes of young players like former number one draft
pick, Myles Garrett, or wide received Rashad Higgins. Then add in the 2018
veteran pickups, who are all contributing, in the forms of Damarius Randall,
Terrence Mitchell, and Jarvis Landry and the idea of playoffs isn’t all that
farfetched.
So as I was sitting in the lower bowl taking in all the
great sites and sounds the NFL has to offer - fumes of copious amounts of
alcohol, the sound of dip being spat into an empty Bud Lite can (I guess that
is “technically” recycling), and the smell of puke that was deployed within
minutes of the first quarter (I believe that’s an NFL record in of itself), a
tear came to my eye.
For once in my nearly
two decades of watching the Browns I felt a sense of hope. Not in the typical
“hope for next year’s draft,” which I will refer to as “irrational hope,” but
rather a sense of what I’ll
call “secure hope.” Irrational hope is simply hope
that the Browns will draft right and things will turn around next year; whereas
“secure hope” is, well, secure in that I can see the building blocks of the
team being molded, improving, developing. In turn my hope in the future isn’t
so much on the hope that next year’s team will somehow turn it around, without
any rational basis for being able to turn it around. Instead it is the fact that I know we can
improve because we have consistently improved throughout the current year. With
secure hope, I have not been Googling “2019 Mock Drafts” as I haven’t given up
on the season, and neither has the team.
Let the beat writers and ESPN talking heads hypothesize how
the “Browns have a 0.2 percent chance of making the playoffs” because they are
missing the bigger picture. The Browns, an extremely young team with a rookie
quarterback and an interim head coach, are improving. Come next year those
talking fools won’t be telling us the unlikelihood the Browns have in making
the playoffs, but will be talking about what seed they will have in the playoffs.
On to Denver!
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