HYPED BROWNS LOOK LIKE SAME OL’ DAWGS
Fans’ pre-game excitement quickly wiped out by Titans’ 43-13 rout
Before one of the loudest figurative balloon pops in NFL history on Sunday, how pumped up with giddy excitement were Cleveland Browns fans? And how sure were they that their suddenly respected NFL team would crush the Tennessee Titans to open the 2019 season?
You couldn’t possibly capture all the excitement from Cleveland fans before reality set in with the Titans blowing out the Browns 43-13.
Here is some of that glee. Locals were saying they’d never before seen or heard such game-week excitement. Even the grandpas.
Two hours after dawn on Sunday, traffic to enter the downtown municipal parking lot stretched more than a mile, which prompted a local radio reporter to observe: “I’ve never seen anything like it. This is like Woodstock. Just abandon your car and start walking.”
More than four hours before kickoff, two Sunday morning sports-talk radio hosts were so jacked that one just suddenly screamed at full volume, then started barking like a Dawg Pound fan, as the other host tried shouting over him, “Here we go, Brownies, here we go!!”
Off the top of a pre-game radio show, a football analyst said of the Browns’ anointed franchise saviour and beloved second-year quarterback Baker Mayfield, in all seriousness: “How can he fail?”
Three hours before kickoff inside FirstEnergy Stadium, an usher appeared so anxious he kept walking up and down his section’s stairs, drying off perfectly dry hand rails time and again.
The hometown team viewed by many as the best team on paper in the AFC North even wore its all-brown Colour Rush uniforms, normally reserved for Thursday nights or other forced special occasions.
Finally, amped-up Browns fan/ anthem singer Angelina Fiorini so oversang The Star-Spangled Banner as to sound like a terrified Whitney Houston on her first parachute jump.
Cue the fireworks!
Then cue the heartbreaks. One after another, after another. All of that pre-game delirium proved for naught. Every last drop of it.
Within an hour of play, FirstEnergy Stadium already was quieting. Then, as the game progressed and Tennessee pulled ahead, restless. Then bothered as the game started getting away from the Browns. Then livid.
Finally, after Mayfield forced a throw on his second of three fourth-quarter interceptions with 11:17 still to play, the stairs in all sections began filling up. With exiting fans who’d seen enough. While they’d seen scoreboard losses of this magnitude way too many times before, they had never been gut-punched by 1988-era Mike Tyson like this before.
Indeed, it’s not just that these Browns ultimately got blown right off their field by what probably will prove to be an average team in its opener. It’s more that these Cleveland Browns of new looked little, if any, better than the Cleveland Browns of every other year this century — or of nearly every year since the old Browns (now Baltimore Ravens) last won an NFL playoff game on New Year’s Day in 1995 or last won an NFL championship in December 1964.
Hapless and heartless.
The first-half proof alone: Rookie kicker Austin Seibert missed his first career extra point less than five minutes in.
The offensive line allowed three sacks, one for a safety.
The defence allowed a couple of big passing plays, once while stacking the box with nine defenders and expecting a running play.
Overall, the Browns committed 10 first-half penalties for
107 yards, which included an unsportsmanlike conduct call and ejection of starting left tackle Greg Robinson after he kicked a Titans player in the face.
Cleveland trailed only 12-6 at the break, but unravelled further as the second half progressed. The Browns were flagged eight more times for another 75 yards (18 for 182 total).
“We lost our discipline and we lost our composure,” said Cleveland’s Freddie Kitchens, whose career record as an NFL head coach dropped to 0-1. “But it is one game and we are going to be tested. You either take adversity and run together and run toward each other or you run away. I think we have a bunch of guys who are going to run toward each other and we are going to be fine.
“The world is not falling right now.”
Sure seemed like it in the fourth quarter, when even Mayfield — Cleveland’s glue through the first three quarters — fell apart, tossing three fourth-quarter interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown.
Did frustration contribute to Mayfield’s late gaffes?
“I am sure it did,” Kitchens said. “Once they start pinning their ears back, it becomes tough sledding … Baker will be fine.”
In the end, Tennessee outscored Cleveland 31-7 in the second half. Sound familiar to fans of a team that a year ago this week had failed to win 41 of its previous 44 games? You bet.
Tweeted one fan, Adam Jolley: “I’m binge-drinking and smoking a cigar … Welcome back, #Browns.”
Most fans on hand were long gone with nine minutes left to play. Nearly all but a smattering remained at 0:00, when the few dozen cheering Titans fans on hand drowned out anyone with the energy to boo.
“We don’t want to see them leaving with nine minutes left,” said wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who in his Cleveland debut had seven catches for 71 yards. “We want to be able to stick there and fight through it.
“I know (they’re used to) losing around here, but that’s not what we’re here to do. So we just have to have everybody stick with us … the fans, the team, together.”
For sure, Browns fans will be back, many again wearing jerseys of players who’d let them down in the past — if not as guttingly as this.
It will be a long, long time before this loss-hardened fan base forgets this game, played unfittingly for them on a beautiful, overcast, late-summer Sunday afternoon on the south shore of Lake Erie.
Just before kickoff, a huge banner was unfurled on the field, warning the NFL world, “Beware of Dawgs.”
I know what you’re thinking. That’s not what it meant.