Browns Go Out Like Stan Chera
And what was the point of having the highest-paid backup quarterback in the league?
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There is a paragraph from Jamie Lauren Keiles of nytimes.com that will rattle around my rotted brain for the rest of my life:
Shortly after his Covid diagnosis — fever spiking, hooked up to an oxygen tank — Donald Trump reportedly wondered aloud to an aide, “Am I going out like Stan Chera?” Like so many things the president has said, the line felt instantly like a catchphrase: the slick choice of “going out” instead of “dying,” the zeroing in on one old New York friend as the face of a massive global pandemic.
Dying of the preventable pandemic he helped unleash on America would have been the funniest possible outcome of President Business Deals’ life, but the phrase “going out like Stan Chera” almost makes up for him escaping death’s clutches.
It’s not as funny, though, when your team goes out like Stan Chera as the Cleveland Browns did last night for Big Ben’s final game in Pittsburgh. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that sex criminal waddle away from pressure and into the sunset one final time, because it’s always naive to expect any sort of cosmic justice in the land of the free and the home of the brave, especially as a Browns fan.
You want to know a little secret? I’m writing this with 11 minutes in the third quarter with the score at 10-0, Steelers leading.
Maybe this ends as a “Dewey Beats Truman” moment for The Rooster. I don’t care. I’m not yet as famous as the New York Times. We can all throw this article in the trash and try again tomorrow.
But for once, I’m trusting my gut about this franchise of busters. I’m not staying up late on a work night to watch a fourth quarter of what is already the most boring game since the Browns 13-10 victory over the Detroit Lions back in November. Remember that gem? No, you don’t. Because we all blocked that tape from our minds as soon as the game ended.
Where to begin with these bums? Baker Mayfield could have been any name off the list on the back of that jersey, which we all know which jersey I’m talking about. He had more batted passes than completions in the first quarter. He has the accuracy of any stiff we could have signed off the street on a COVID contract.
What’s the point of paying Case Keenum to be the highest-paid cliboard-holder in the league if we’re going to replace the guy who, in the best scenario, is too injured to be effective in the first place.
And what the Hell is Coach Kevin—he has been demoted from Coach Ski—doing with Nick Chubb? At halftime, I was convinced the Browns had shelved their workhorse running back against injury in a game with no playoff implications for his team. I’d have been supportive of that.
But then Stefanski runs Chubb twice to start the second half almost to say to us that haha no I didn’t forget we had a monster in our backfield and were playing the worst rushing defensive in the league.
What have any of these guys won? Our owner should be in federal prison and the same ownership group that owns the Columbus Crew just took a steaming dump on every tradition the franchise had with a recent rebrand. (Sound familiar, Browns fans?)
Show me a franchise that gets treated like NBC putting us in jester costumes or ESPN comparing our coach to a comedically dumb accountant from a longbegone comedy?
Our general manager’s two biggest free agent signings should be indicted for embezzlement. The third threw a Steeler player’s shoe for the most bone-headed 15-yard-penalty I’ve seen this season, which is saying a lot.
Our coach would not nearly be as shielded from criticism if not for him being the handsomest man that has ever willingly associated himself with Cleveland Browns football. The fourth-down execution remains abominable, as do the number of dipshit penalties we take per game.
I’d be embarrassed for myself for thinking Cleveland was a playoff team if being a Browns fan weren’t a disease, like cancer.
I know I’ll be back in July, talking about how nobody is going to want to play my Brownies in the fall. And I’ll be talking shit like a fucking idiot who never learns his lessons, except in the hardest way possible—and sometimes not even then.
I will not be watching next week’s game against the Bengals unless somebody cuts me a $1,000 check. I have seen enough of the 2021 Browns, and I never want to see them again.
The fact this mediocre team is one of the best we’ve had in recent years shows just how lost in the desert this franchise remains.
THOSE WMDs. Justin Bibb’s campaign manager on how Bibb went from 2% name recognition to 60% of the vote… Stop cooking with coconut oil… Treasure hunter finds world’s richest ship wreck, or at least that’s what he told investors… About half Ohio’s Army National Guard is unvaccinated, can’t be deployed to hospitals for COVID relief.
God bless us, every one, for the much anticipated return of non-Browns Rooster programming.