The Cleveland Browns Want Me Dead
The season is already on the line in early November.
“November is for contenders,” former Ohio State coach Jim “El Chaleco” Tressel used to say, and we’re about to find this weekend if the Browns have a championship mindset or we’ll once again be exposed as charlatans masquerading as a professional football team.
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It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but here we are in Week 9 and all my Browns-themed group chats are awash in enough gossip, rants and conspiracy theories to think Earth was currently under attack by an alien race. Such is the psychic damage done to our forsaken tribe in the middle of what was supposed to be our most-serious championship challenge since that blood-soaked freak George H.W. Bush was importing cocaine to finance Nicaraguan death squads.
Our No. 1 QB and No. 1 WR are currently feuding through the QB’s wife and the WR’s dad and Instagram. Odell Beckham, for all his talent, is much more expendable than Baker Mayfield, so Beckham is reportedly done for the season as the Browns weigh keeping him on the roster or cutting him and risking him land somewhere like Baltimore, who has yet to play Cleveland twice this year.
I fully expect Beckham Jr. to land in some place like New Orleans and have a renaissance back to All-Pro levels. Even in the best of cases, he was never going to put up those kinds of numbers in our handsome coach’s tight-end and screen offense.
That of course gets harder now without a dynamic threat like Beckham while our offensive line is falling apart like they’re senior citizens attempting to play in the NFL. (Not that every one of linemen couldn’t whip my ass while injured, but man I’m starting to wonder if our strength and conditioning program isn’t from an era when doctors considered smoking tobacco to be good for an athlete’s constitution.)
Now we’ve got to go to Cincinnati to face a team with a quarterback and wide receiver that have a Zen-like connection in a fun offense despite losing to the hapless New York Jets last week.
Their quarterback, Joe Burrow, is on the right side of arrogance without having an ego the size of the stadium in which he plays like our quarterback. Their wide receiver, Jamarr Chase, is the most electrifying wide receiver prospect since Randy Moss and no videos have yet to surface of him acting like he’s walking to the electric chair after his teammate just scored a go-ahead touchdown against a hated division rival.
The crumbling walls around this team are starting to feel too familiar, like a hermit who blew a lottery jackpot and only finds a sense of normalcy that comes with returning to the gutter broke and homeless.
This game is going to be a crucible, and it can go one of two ways. Maybe Baker Mayfield and the offense can put their dicks on the table and silence OBJ’s defenders in the locker room. Not that we should draw the Super Bowl parade route if we win, but winning is a magical elixir. It would be a much-needed boost as we enter a crucial stretch in which we must win at least four of the next five games to have a shot at the playoffs.
Or we can fold like a drunken, STD-ridden cowboy caught in a bluff on the poker table. Yes, we will live to play another hand but those cards won’t be dealt until Fall 2022. If we lose Sunday, you can bet your mortgage on the wheels coming off to the point that we may lose to the Lions four days before Thanksgiving.
I know which way I think this game will go, which is why I’ve bought a small one-bedroom cabin in the hinterlands of Montana. I won’t have wifi so instead The Rooster will be switching to writing The Rooster on a typewriter and sending them through the mail to your house once a month.
Just please don’t tell the FBI.
THOSE WMDs. The Spam factory’s dirty secret… The bicycle thief… Family of man dissected at autopsy event says they didn’t give consent… 20-year-old becomes first prisoner to escape Franklin County Jail in 24 years… “Watchdog” finds no misconduct in mistaken Afghan airstrike that killed innocent civilians and children… 21 weird uses for WD-40.