It’s one thing for the local fans to have high hopes for a Cleveland sports team. They always do, even as they are expecting the worst. But when the expectations extend beyond state borders, the team is entering truly rarified air.
On the strength, I suppose, of a 10-win season that could have either been better or worse, depending on the prism through which you tend to view life, the Cleveland Browns will be entering into a season where, frankly, the only thing they can do is disappoint. Win and make the playoffs, that’s expected. Lose and/or miss the playoffs again, fans will be looking for some throats to choke.
Certainly, the NFL and its various broadcast partners expect this team to be a contender. On Monday night, the Browns face the New York Giants in a nationally broadcast preseason game on ESPN. Meaningless preseason games in which the starters play but a series or two is apparently what passes as counter-programming to the Olympics for the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports. Still, ESPN could have opted for, say, the Detroit-Cincinnati yawnfest, so it’s something.
But beyond preseason, the Browns are nationally featured in each of their first three games covering each of the three major networks. That’s some serious credibility for a franchise that’s been down a few quarts for most of the last 10 years. Having lived through a mostly impotent resurrection of a once proud franchise, Browns fans can be excused for being highly skeptical of late-coming outsiders with an endless supply of irrational exuberance even as they engage in their own brand of exuberance.
If the Browns are to prove at all worthy of their national darling status, they’ll have to avoid injuries first and foremost. In the NFL, as in pretty much any sport, injuries more than anything else tend to determine the outcome of the season. The NFL is by far the most violent domestic sport, though it may not have much on Australian rules football or Irish hurling. Still, world class athletes playing at high speeds in bodies not particularly designed to bend they way they are often bent causes a whole variety of problems, the best efforts of the medical staff notwithstanding. If you need proof, Gary Baxter blew out two knees on a play that was noteworthy only because of its ordinariness. He’ll probably never play again.
There is no question that general manager Phil Savage has upgraded the talent on the Browns in several areas, particularly over the last two years. Still, despite his best efforts, it is a team not nearly deep enough overall to sustain a spate of injuries. Arguably, no team in the league really can. The way that teams manage the cap causes them to fill out the bottom thirds of their rosters with young and/or fringe players who aren’t usually in a position to step right in without a drop off in production. When everything shakes out, close to a third of the Browns’ active roster will be made up of players with three or less years of experience.
Article comments