MORE 2020 LUNACY? BROWNS, BILLS WINNING
Snake-bitten teams have competent QBs and playoff hopes
Had you asked, at pretty much any time over the past two decades, what it would take for the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns to make the playoffs in the same NFL season, the answer would have been easy: an apocalypse.
And, well, here we are.
It is only fitting that in a year in which an unimaginable global pandemic has upended life in ways no one was considering 12 months ago, the Bills and Browns are both, concurrently, inescapably, good.
The two franchises are more similar than either of their fan bases would probably like to admit. Each plays in a blue-collar town on Lake Erie that has seen better days, much like the teams themselves. They have a proud history, but the salary cap era has been, charitably, unkind.
This version of the Browns, the one born out of expansion in 1999, has been almost impossibly bad, with a 95-240-1 record prior to this year, a record that includes a one-win season and a zero-win season. The Browns made the playoffs once in that long stretch.
The Bills made the playoffs in the first year of Browns 2.0, then missed them for the next 17 seasons. They were certainly better than Cleveland over those decades, with a 148-188 record, but both franchises went through comically inept rebuilds and front office hires and draft busts, and each was forever starting over with a new head coach or a new quarterback or both. Here's a fun game that will delight you and your friends: Browns or Bills? Rob Chudzinski, E.J. Manuel, Cody Kessler, Mike Mularkey. Honestly, you could do this for hours. Until recently, each team had an opposing quarterback that
had more wins in their home stadium than any one of their own quarterbacks had over that same period. Think about that: Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger and New England's Tom Brady, simply by repeatedly winning an annual game in Cleveland and Buffalo, respectively, racked up more victories there than any of the dozens of QBs wearing actual Browns and Bills jerseys.
Baker Mayfield finally edged past Roethlisberger's 11 wins in Cleveland with a victory there last month, while Josh Allen, with 13 wins in Buffalo, still needs two more to catch Brady. At least Brady now plays in Tampa, making it harder to pad his Buffalo total.
That both teams are seemingly good now — more on that adverb in a bit — is directly related to Mayfield and Allen both having been drafted in 2018. This is a trite observation, but also true: building a good football team simply has to start with acquiring
a strong quarterback. Neither Mayfield nor Allen became instant stars, but each showed flashes enough over their first two seasons to make their fans believe that if they weren't quite the Messiah, they were at least on speaking terms with him.
But 2020 also felt like it would be a turning point for both. Mayfield and the Browns had regressed significantly in his second season, and while Allen had proven himself to be a spectacular athletic talent, he was still not that great at the actual passing of the football. Which seemed like a problem.
Now, three-quarters into the season, the Browns and Bills are each 9-3, almost certain to make the playoffs barring a calamitous collapse (which cannot entirely be ruled out given the participants) and coming off victories that even a good number of their own fans would have found to be a little shocking.
The Browns had a nice record
before Sunday, but they had played a kitten-soft schedule and many of their wins were of the ugly variety. They ran the ball a lot, kept games close, and pulled them out more often than not. On the weekend, they went up against a Tennessee Titans team that would provide a much sterner test. And they blew them off the field. Mayfield went off for 334 yards and four touchdowns, in his first 300-yard game of the season, as the Browns rolled to a 38-7 halftime lead. The Titans scored a bunch late to make the final a respectable 41-35, but this was no fluke.
On Monday night, playing San Francisco in Arizona in this dumbest of years, the Bills needed to show their early season success when Allen was throwing the ball all over the place was not a mirage. Then, boom: 32 of 40 for 375 yards and four touchdowns, against a Niners defence that was theoretically stout. Allen had never gone over 300
yards passing before this season — the Bills hadn't done it since I think the Clinton administration — and in 2020 he has done it seven times. What sorcery is this?
There remain, ahem, questions. Mayfield's two biggest clunkers this season came against tough opponents, Pittsburgh and Baltimore, which suggests a challenge in the playoffs. As for Allen, against good teams, as was the case in the playoffs last season, there can be a newborn-foal vibe to his play. As much as both teams look to be in what can legitimately be called dangerous December form, the face-plant possibilities cannot be ignored.
Or maybe the most natural thing would be for Buffalo and Cleveland to get the 4 and 5 seeds in the AFC, and meet each other in the first round.
It would be bound to be a heartbreaking loss for one of them. And so, a sense of normalcy restored.