Winless Browns hope to turn it around
LB Christian Kirksey fuels optimism that his team “will be in the playoffs”
BEREA, Ohio — Browns linebacker Christian Kirksey sent the tweet on a random Tuesday morning in June, months after his team wrapped up one of the worst seasons in NFL history.
“Woke up this morning letting yal (sic) know Browns will be in the playoffs this year!” he wrote. “Remember this tweet.”
A lot of Browns fans thought it was admirable. A lot of NFL fans found it laughable. Six weeks later, as he sinks into a couch overlooking the team’s practice fields, Kirksey couldn’t care less.
“We’re going to change it around this year,” Kirksey told USA TODAY last week. “I know people are talking about, ‘Well, we didn’t win no games last year.’ That was last year. This is a new year. We’re different people, a new team.”
Optimism at an NFL training camp is nothing unusual. But this is Cleveland, where the Browns have won one of their past 35 games. Where 11 players have started at quarterback over the past five seasons. Where the team hasn’t sniffed the playoffs since 2002, the longest active drought in the NFL, nor won a playoff game since 1994, when Bill Belichick was the head coach.
This is not a place where you’d expect team captains such as Kirksey to make offseason playoff proclamations or star wide receivers to float the possibility of a Super Bowl run. (”If we get everyone playing to their potential,” Jarvis Landry told “Sports Illustrated” in late July, “we can win the Super Bowl this year.”)
Yet there is actually, strangely, optimism here — and, as far as the team and many of its fans are concerned, legitimate reasons for it.
The Browns opened training camp with notable new faces at quarterback (rookie Baker Mayfield and veteran Tyrod Taylor), running back (Nick Chubb and Carlos Hyde), wide receiver (Landry) and cornerback (E.J. Gaines and
Denzel Ward). They have a new front office, led by general manager John Dorsey and former Packers executives Eliot Wolf and Alonzo Highsmith. And the Browns are, on paper anyway, a vastly different team — 52 players on the expanded roster entering camp were not on the team in 2017.
“Just bringing the guys that we brought in. The team chemistry. Our whole mind-set,” Kirksey said. “You can just feel a different swag about the team.”
Kirksey pointed to the additions of Landry, who made three Pro Bowls in four seasons with the Dolphins, and Taylor, whom the Browns hope will provide stability under center — he did in Buffalo for three years — while No. 1 draft pick Mayfield develops.
Though coach Hue Jackson has gushed about Mayfield in camp, he reiterated as recently as Monday that Taylor would be the starter in 2018. And while Jackson stressed that talking about winning won’t make it happen, he’s also been pleased to see his players excited about 2018.
“You have got to believe something first before it ever happens,” he said last week. “But at the same time (we) have got to back it up, have got to work.”
Cornerback T.J. Carrie, who started
15 games for the Raiders last year, thinks the influx of newcomers can add a level of competitiveness and help reshape the franchise’s mentality. He’s on board with players such as Kirksey and Landry speaking out and trying to raise the team’s expectations.
“Every year, the expectation is to win a championship,” Carrie said. “If you don’t have that mentality, then you’re in the wrong business.”
Fans, too, generally remain optimistic, even after years of futility. Anthony Barnes of Parma, Ohio, thinks the Browns can win six or seven games and maybe compete for a playoff spot. Longtime fan Eric Salas is confident that the Browns will win “at least nine games,” citing their new offensive weapons and the continued growth of second-year defensive end Myles Garrett.
“We should be the second-best team in the (AFC) North,” Salas said.
History, however, reveals a more realistic bench mark. Twenty-three teams since 2000 have finished with two or fewer wins in a season — they went on to win an average of 5.7 games the following year. Only three of them turned around and made the playoffs. The only other NFL team to go 0-16, the
2008 Lions, won twice in 2009. That won’t stop the Browns from being confident.
“As a competitor, you always want to believe in your team. You’re going to believe it’s going to be different,” Kirksey said. “And that’s the way I am. I’m believing.”