Browns Diary, Week 7: Bad Blood
Browns 39, Colts 38
Everything about Sunday’s game between Cleveland and Indianapolis confused me. I remain utterly confused.
Look: Miles Garrett had perhaps the greatest defensive game for any Cleveland player since Galen Fiss’ so-called perfect game in the 1964 NFL Championship.* And yet the Browns’ defense in total was a sieve, full of holes, they gave up big play after big play against an offense that had not looked too good beforehand.
*In that game — which the Colts were favored to win by 17, by the way, basically the same point spread as the famous Joe Namath Super Bowl upset — Galen Fiss tipped one pass for an interception, sacked John Unitas, made a whole bunch of tackles and, most of all, did the impossible: He tackled the Colts’ great Lenny Moore in the open field and with blockers in front. “It was a touchdown,” Fiss’ teammate John Wooten would say. “No doubt about it.” Only Fiss pierced through, brought Moore down, and changed the entire temperature of the game. “When Galen made that tackle,” another teammate, Paul Wiggin said, “we all thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to win this game.’”
Look: Quarterback Deshaun Watson started Sunday’s game but didn’t finish it — didn’t even play after the first quarter — even though doctors cleared him to play. Now, our guy Kevin Stefanski says Watson will start on Sunday in Seattle, and Watson says he’s praying that his shoulder will be up to the task, and like William Goldman said, nobody knows anything.
Look: For the second consecutive week, the Browns got super-helpful and super-questionable referee calls, and this is just not something that happens for Cleveland teams.
Look: For the second consecutive week, quarterback P.J. Walker was abysmal — his quarterback rating for the season is 25.2, which is actually a touch better than it was last year in five starts for Carolina — but the Browns won both games and now some people are attributing that to Walker’s magical leadership skills that allow him and the team to overcome his 50% completion rate and 0-to-3 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
Look: My hero as a teenager, the one and only Bernie Kosar — I mimicked his throwing style, I wore his 19 jersey, I had a photograph of him back in Miami on my wall — twiXted out this photo:
There’s a scene in the movie “Moonstruck” where Cher professes her love for Nicholas Cage, and the old man starts to cry.
“What’s the matter, Pop?” Danny Aiello asks.
“I’m confused,” the old man says.
He me. Me him. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to feel, what to think, what to say. Kevin Stefanski: Please make me understand what’s happening.
“The game itself,” KevStef said, “you know, this is a team that fights, we knew that this was going to be a game that could come down to the wire and it did, you know, a ton of big plays individually… really proud of those guys, we knew it was going to be hard, they’re a good football team, a good AFC football team, so it was good times, you and I, ’cause baby, now we got bad blood, you know it used to be mad love, so take a look at what you’ve done, ’cause baby now we got bad blood (hey)!”
Oops. Sorry. Lost the thread there and went back to the photo of my hero Bernie Kosar mugging it up with Taylor. Worlds collide, man.
I guess if we’re going to try to break this down, we should start with Myles Garrett because he has become a full-fledged absurdity.