When the Lights Go Out

I'm sorry; I'm writing about the Browns again because our Super Bowl dreams were likely dashed in excruciating fashion yesterday.

A friend I’ve known since middle school recently said to me, “I don’t know how you follow politics and the Browns without going insane.”

My secret is obviously that I was insane before I made such poor life decisions, though I do confess that they might have exacerbated the chemical imbalance in my warped brain.

Somehow the Browns have become even more depressing than politics in a pandemic that continues to ravage our country while leaders pin the carnage on the unvaccinated to shift the blame from their failed policies.

Back during the dark era, the Browns at least had the courtesy to never make you think they were anything other than a hapless basement-dwelling franchise of stumblebums. This current rendition has the audacity to give us that hope while also being a basement-dwelling franchise of stumblebums.

This Browns team, rather than snuff our dreams in the second week in September, would rather drag us through a .500 season in which they kill us with 10,000 paper cuts in December against a dysfunctional franchise that fired their coach last month for being exposed as an incorrigible racist and sexist.

The saddest thing is despite all the nonsense, the Browns could be in first place of the AFC North today if our idiot kicker could do the one job he is paid to do. (Urban Meyer is now a sympathetic figure in my mind after telling his kicker, “Make your fucking kicks, dipshit” before kicking him in warmups.) Instead the Browns are in last place, which again is where we belong in a season in which we’ve blown every close game we have played in except two weeks ago against the Ravens when we came within two points of blowing an 18-point halftime lead.

Had we won at least one game against the likes of the Chiefs, Chargers, Steelers — not to mention the winnable game we lost in the first matchup with the Ravens — we wouldn’t have been in a must-win game with a third-string quarterback as half our starters battled injuries and COVID.

It’s also embarrassing having Special Teams coach Mike “Nuke the Gays”Priefer lead the team when our handsome head coach is sidelined with COVID for the second time in 2021.

I don’t care if he’s the most winningest playoff coach the Browns have had since 1999. It’s not like he’s some savant whose work hides the fact he’s a Neanderthal. Our special teams have sucked the entire time we have employed him!

Now we have to go to Lambeau Field—a decrepit truck stop on a tundra—on a short week to face the mighty Green Bay Packers and the best unvaccinated quarterback in the league. And you know what? I’m going to spend my Christmas Day, alone on Bellows Avenue, entirely sober and cussing at my TV after Baker Mayfield’s second crippling interception while my cats look on in bewilderment.

The season is over. We do not deserve to go to the playoffs, and we would get smacked in the first round if we did.

All that is left to play for is beating Ben Roethlisberger, the No. 2 winningest quarterback in Browns Stadium, in his final home game Pittsburgh hosts Cleveland on Jan. 3rd.

That’s it because at the end of the day, we’re a .500 team in a league designed for every team to go .500. Nothing more. Nothing less.

At least there’s always next year.

THOSE WMDs. How Family Dollar kept worker lawsuits from the public… Why some people are always running away… Jason Isabell is tired of Country’s love of white nostalgia… What happens to your body when you stretch every day.