LONG TIME COMING
Fans rejoice aftft aftftftafter afterer undermanned Browns’ stunning win over Steelers over Steelers
My hometown team, the Hartford Whalers, moved to the hockey hotbed of Raleigh, North Carolina, and were renamed for a natural disaster in 1997. I and my family moved to Columbus in 1999. One of the first things we did was visit City Center Mall Downtown, where I bought a Browns hat.
As a sportswriter, I'm trained to root for nothing other than quick resolution, and I don't wear any paraphernalia unless it is from Sunnyvale Trailer Park. Yet, as someone whose hometown was looted by an affluent, heartless and apparently fatherless man, I felt a thread of connection with Cleveland.
Browns fans sued to maintain the rights to the team's name, colors and history. That was a revelation at the end of the 20th century. The hat I bought at City Center was cream colored with the orange helmet and “1999” stitched on it. It was the year of their rebirth and the beginning of a string of meddlesome owners, a succession of general managers, a thousand quarterbacks and a million losses.
That hat went with my oldest son to college in Cleveland in 2010 and there it has remained, by and large for more than a decade. For many years, the hat has been parked in the back window of my son's old Volkswagen Jetta.
He and his buddies from the Warehouse District walk down to the Municipal lots to tailgate on game days. Sunday night, they gathered in small groups in apartments and bars. They had their minds blown, along with the rest of Cleveland and, really, all of Ohio.
The Browns beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh.
“To defer to the second half and then to get seven points on the board without even having to step foot on the field is great,” Mayfield said.
Needless to say, it represented a perfect start to a game, and Mayfield and the Browns knew it.
“That kick-starts it, and everybody on the sideline was like, ‘Let's keep it going. Let's just go out and do our job,' ” Mayfield said. “Being up 28-0 in the first quarter is obviously an incredible start.
“At that point, it is tricky whether you play not to lose or you continue to play aggressive, and we did an OK job. We kind of stalled out for a little while there, but picked it back up in the second half.”
Special teams coordinator Mike Priefer, acting as head coach with Kevin Stefanski out with COVID-19, appreciated what Mayfield accomplished throughout the game.
“That guy has an amazing amount of self-confidence in a good way, and I know he has some swagger to him, but I love the way he handles adversity,” he said.
And despite that seemingly insurmountable first-quarter lead the Browns held, adversity arrived.
“We did not always go down and score on the next drive in the second half,” Priefer said, “but taking advantage of those turnovers and turning them into seven points instead of three, those were huge early on in the game.”
The Browns got stuck in neutral on their first two possessions of the second half as they watched a 35-10 halftime lead turn to 35-23 with 2:57 left in third quarter. Everyone was wondering if the team would revert to what had been form in recent years and find a way to lose.
“When Pittsburgh started coming back — we all knew they would because they are a great football team,” Priefer said. “They are a well-coached football team and they have a hall of fame quarterback, and we knew they were going to do whatever they could to get back in that game.”
These Browns, however, aren't the team Steelers receiver Juju SmithSchuster dismissed prior to the game with a simple “the Browns is the Browns,” nor is this the quarterback that suffered the sophomore slump last year.
“Every time they scored, got a good drive or whatever the case may be, Bake is on the sideline talking to the offensive line and talking to all of those offensive players, and he had them ready for the next drive,” Priefer said. “The way he responded when Pittsburgh was coming back in the second half, it was extremely impressive.”
He had help.
Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt dialed up the perfect play for the stalled offense with 12:32 left in the game and facing a second-and-9. Mayfield found running back Nick Chubb on a screen pass and he chugged 40 yards for a touchdown and breathing room, one of two plays that effectively sealed the Steelers fate, the other being an interception by linebacker Sione Takitaki in the later stages.
“It was a great call. They blitzed into it and the linebacker to the side was on Baker,” Chubb said of the play.
Mayfield gave Van Pelt credit for making the right call at the perfect time on more than one occasion.
“Unbelievable. AVP was talking about calling a screen on a second down and long in particular, and it just aligned like that,” Mayfield said. “We scored on two very critical third downs early in the game. Obviously, Jarvis' (Landry) first and then the run play with Kareem (Hunt). That is huge. Third downs, not only to convert but to turn them into touchdowns and big plays and that, that is big for us.”
The Browns have shown they can win in different ways throughout the season, but more than any other this one may represent the game that kills the misery associated with the franchise that hadn't won a playoff game since 1995 because of who it came against — Roethlisberger and the Steelers — and where it happened, Heinz Field, where they'd not won since Oct. 5, 2003. Call it the team's new normal.
“It is exactly that. We are here for a reason. There is a new standard, and I keep talking about it,” Mayfield said. “I know I was not here for the things that have happened in the past, some of which I was too young to even remember. There is a new standard, and we are going to try and keep it that way.”