Ex-Lions root for Browns to get one win
Members of only NFL team to go 0-16 hope Cleveland doesn’t tie record for futility
Misery doesn’t always love company.
Shaun Cody, who was a young defensive lineman on the 0-16 Detroit Lions in 2008, does not want to see the winless Cleveland Browns suffer the same fate. “I know what they ’re going through,” said Cody, who retired from the NFL after the 2012 season. “I don’t want us to be the only ones to go down as the 0-16 team, but I feel for those guys.”
Drew Stanton has the same sympathy for the Browns, who dropped to 0-11 with Sunday’s 24-9 loss to Pittsburgh. Stanton, now backup quarterback in Arizona, was a second-year player on that Lions team.
“It’s something I don’t wish on my worst enemy,” he said. “When that final second ticked off the clock in Green Bay, we realized we were 0-16 and the worst team to ever suit up.”
Former Lions linebacker Ryan Nece recalled how he could feel that season slipping away.
“It really began to snowball for us,” Nece said. “You could feel the tension and pressure as the season went along. I know right about now it has to feel thick in that Cleveland locker room. Everybody is trying to figure out, ‘Who’s the jinx? How do we break this curse?’ ”
The Browns have five games remaining and are unlikely to be favoured in any of them — facing the New York Giants and Cincinnati at home, Buffalo on the road, San Diego at home and Pittsburgh on the road.
“Trust me, this is tough,” Hue Jack- son, in his first year as coach of the Browns, said on Monday. “I am not going to sit here and tell you that it is not. I could not tell you that it is not. I have never encountered this, but at the same time, I know what I signed up for. I truly believe I am just the man for the job.”
Browns quarterbacks Cody Kessler and Josh McCown were sacked a combined eight times Sunday by a Steelers defence that had 13 coming into the game. Kessler suffered his second concussion in five games.
Receiver Terrelle Pryor was fuming that the team allowed its quarter- backs to be hit so much.
“It’s bullcrap,” he told reporters. “We can’t keep doing this, and we can’t keep getting our guys hit. It’s as simple as that.”
Of the Browns’ final five opponents, the 3-6-1 Bengals have the worst record. But Cincinnati is also 9-3 in its past dozen games against Cleveland, and the Bengals have scored 31, 37, 31 and 30 points in their past four Battles of Ohio.
The best chance for the Browns to stave off 0-16 could be the Christmas Eve game against the Chargers, who are 4-6 overall and 1-4 on the road. The Lions players who lived through that miserable season praised the way then-coach Rod Marinelli kept the team focused.
“It probably wasn’t until the last month of the season that we really started addressing the elephant in the room," Stanton said. "We were like, ‘OK, we need to find a way to win a football game so we don’t go 0-16.’ To Rod’s testament, he stood by that. Each week, he was preparing to try to win that football game.”
Marinelli landed on his feet. He’s the defensive co-ordinator of the Dallas Cowboys, currently riding a nine-game winning streak.
After his Detroit experience, Cody moved on to Houston and spent his final four seasons with the Texans.
“Unless you go through something like I went through with the Lions, you don’t really know what it means to enjoy winning in the NFL,” he said.
And there’s another reason he’d like to see the Browns win a game.
“I wouldn’t pull for them to lose,” he said. “Because then, what am I going to talk about? There wouldn’t be something special about us anymore.”