Browns Diary, Week 4: Bad Vibes

Las Vegas 20, Cleveland 16

Three quick things before getting to another depressing Browns Diary and a quick glance around the NFL.

First, if you happen to be in the Charlotte area, I’ll be doing a super-fun WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL event at Park Road Books with my friend Gavin Edwards on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. The folks at Park Road want me to pass along that even though they’re currently without phone or internet after Hurricane Helene and aren’t sure when those will be restored, the event will definitely go on, and we’d all love to see you there. We’ll have some laughs.

Second, and I’m sure you’ve seen some of the haunting video, the devastation of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina, particularly in the Asheville area, is really something. You might be getting pinged on your phone by various fundraising pitches. Well, here are some on-the-ground ways to really help.

And, finally, RIP Kris Kristofferson. His was truly a life beyond imagination. He was a boxer of note; he appeared in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” section. He was a Rhodes Scholar who attended Oxford. He was a Captain and a helicopter pilot in the army. He was hired to teach English at West Point when he shocked his family by leaving the army and moving to Nashville to become a songwriter. “Kris Kristofferson believed to his core that creativity is God-given,” Country Music Hall of Fame CEO Kyle Young said, “and that those who ignore or deflect such a holy gift are doomed to failure and unhappiness.”

He started as a janitor at Columbia Studios—Kristofferson would talk about cleaning up after Bob Dylan when he was recording “Blonde on Blonde”—and he went on to write some of the most iconic American songs, perform for countless fans despite a raspy voice that he himself often denigrated, and win a Golden Globe as an actor. I like what Twitterex’s John Frankensteiner wrote: He was the gold standard of just being a dude.

OK, before getting into this week’s Browns fiasco… let me share two super-fun exchanges from quarterbacks: