I see tons of silliness in the NFL. Mostly, in Cleveland.
I see people arguing about improvement. Did we get the best deal? You don’t even need to know the players or the particulars.
In the NFL there are those that dominate and those that get dominated and nothing has changed in 18 years.
You have to assess your goals as a team owner. Making money is a lay up.
How much do you want to win? Al Davis would win with anyone. Al Davis would have been outside of Michael Vick’s prison the day he was released. Other owners wouldn’t have taken him if he had begged.
I think that fans need to assess their own goals and root for the team that expresses their values, and it usually has nothing to do with the name of the town on their jerseys anymore.
It’s not like the Cleveland Browns are a populist movement that were enacted by the people to represent their values. They weren’t established at a city council meeting. They were a business that used their location as a brand and perhaps marketed themselves to the people who were there customers.
So what exactly are you rooting for when you root for the Browns now?
Sadly, nothing. They fail on all levels of assessment.
Winning
How is this an argument? They never win.
The Indians and Cavaliers have limitations due to their locations. The Indians don’t spend the most money. The Cavaliers have plenty of money, but no real leadership or ability to get people to play here other than a once in a lifetime star, who had somewhat local ties.
The Browns just clearly fail on every level.
Their stupidity is absurd. You almost wonder if they are a fighter on the take.
They spent all of their preseason sure that Charlie Frye was their starting quarterback and gave him about four minutes to let them know he wasn’t even good enough to be in the NFL. That only happens to morons. You can say that happened a long time ago under different people, but nothing has changed. There are winners and losers.
Every time a Super Bowl winner is decided, their coaches are picked clean and their strategies are imitated. Bill Belichick still keeps winning.
My biggest issue with him wasn’t whether he was a winner or not. It was how he went about winning. I don’t want to root for a guy that cuts Bernie Kosar in a hopeless season without a thank you for nothing. I don’t want to win that way, but at least I see it as a tough decision.
Now, the Browns are just flailing losers and their fans are mired in silliness.
They lose one game and people are so obsessed with winning one game that it becomes madness. Bill Belichick does not care about one game. He may have cared about going undefeated a couple of times, but he just wants to win and not just a free beer. That’s what is so inspiring to me about Manny Ramirez supposedly swinging and missing pitches in meaningless at bats so pitchers would throw him the same pitch in big games. Yet, Manny was the stupid guy.
It’s fine to think or hope that your team will be better, but it’s silly by now to make any judgement on preseason games. That’s all the evidence Cleveland Browns fans have and they are impatient so both they and their teams make moronic judgements on them.
Preseason means nothing to Bill Belichick. He is assessing his team, assessing yours, and not letting you assess his. He’s not trying to win that day. He’s trying to win the Super Bowl. The Browns are trying to win any day.
Will Baker Mayfield make them better next week? I have no idea and don’t care.
Will Baker Mayfield playing next week make Baker Mayfield better able to lead them to a winning season next year? Belichick is asking question two, and the Browns are always asking question one. Winners and losers. Why root for stupidity?
Both the winners and losers talk about practice. The winners both care and don’t care about it. The losers only care about it.
Look at this famous clip.
Alan Iverson is Alan Iverson. He’s going to go to battle for you, and he is correct. That’s 90% of it. Alan Iverson can survive because of who he is, but the second he is not dominating he is gone.
Probably none of Iverson’s teammates were resentful, because they saw the punishment Iverson took in games.
Back in Pete Reiser’s time with the Dodger’s hurt players were seen as maladies, but no one ever criticized him for taking a day off because they saw how he was hurt and how willing he was to die in every at bat if he could.
Pretty good players who skate, grow resentment from those who need to practice. They are instantly gone from winning teams. Bill Belichick will take a malady and assess whether he can change it. If he can they stay, if they can’t their gone.
The Browns? They blame their stupidity on their player’s flaws. They got Josh Gordon cheap for his flaws and did nothing, but dwell on them. They didn’t make him a better person or player and had no clue as to how to do either. Losers.
Watch. Gordon will be Gordon again or will be gone in six weeks.
If Gordon is Gordon again, produces and gets suspended again? Belichick won’t care he bought a depressed item really cheap and will have gotten as much out of it as he could.
The Browns? Years of utter confusion as to their goals. No winning.
Gordon may be a winner or loser. Browns? Definitely losers.
Morality
I can get behind a hometown team that shows the character of its hometown. Some home towns don’t even have character, but their teams still embody who they are. I can root for that.
Who have the Browns been since they came back? What have they tried to be? I have no idea other than they are losers. None of that seems worth supporting.
Were they entertaining losing every week? Sign me up. Painful? No thanks.
One Brown’s fan I know is a great guy and the hardest worker, but getting hurt meant no work. So many people mocking and blaming a guy for getting hurt after he took all the blame and ignoring whether or not he could heal? Madness.
“It’s on me 100 percent,” Gonzalez said after the game. “I can’t be too mad at myself because I’m the one that did it, you know what I mean? I can’t blame it on [anybody] else. It sucks because we were so close to that win, and it’s been so long. I just let everybody down.”
I can support that guy. He was hurt. He was asked to kick. He was in a no win situation and took all of the blame. Honorable.
Did he miss because he was hurt or because he couldn’t kick? No idea, but apparently he will be gone before we find out. Madness.
Suddenly, fans are saying. If we had Phil Dawson we would have won that game. Phil Dawson won games for us. Do you really want an MVP kicker. Teams with kickers as their franchise players lose. Actually, that seems to only ever happen with one team.
In the NBA, you root for players. In the NFL, you root for managements. The Browns management changes often and never improves. Nothing to root for or obsess about.
You used to say, I root because I am loyal. Now you say, You lost,” and they say, “Everything will be different next year, maybe it will be different.”
It’s never different with this team. They lose and they do so with zero dignity. Why root?
