00:00So Jake Murren, off the air, he asked if the Browns are underrated, right?
00:04And he was trying to have this, I mean, it's just, you know,
00:06we're just throwing topics around and we're just trying to pitch it
00:08and we're just trying to make sure that, you know,
00:10we put on a nice show for you guys, right?
00:12And he goes, are the Browns underrated?
00:14And I go, all right, well, what's the basis of this?
00:16Where are you going with this, right?
00:18And he goes, well, John Breach of CBS Sports says,
00:20I never thought I would say this about the Browns,
00:22but they might be the most underrated team in the NFL.
00:25And I'm like, all right, so John Breach says it.
00:26That doesn't really do much for me.
00:27Well, all right, Frank Schwab's power rankings.
00:29They have them as the 20th best team in the sport.
00:32ESPN's power rankings has them at 24th and Pete Prisco's has them at 25th.
00:36I would make the argument that they're not underrated then.
00:38I'd make the argument that the league is paying attention.
00:40Like, I don't know that I need the Browns right now to be better than the 20th team in the
00:44NFL
00:44because what I do know is they started out all these rankings and listings
00:48being in the same category as the Jets, the Cardinals, and the winless Dolphins.
00:53And so in any order you had it, the Browns were either 32nd, 31st, 30th, or 29th.
00:59After three weeks, they're 20th, 24th, and 25th.
01:03I'd say that the NFL is waking up to what the Browns are.
01:06There is a little bit of a waking up to that.
01:08I just, it's more so me looking ahead at the schedule and just going, okay, this is,
01:13it's going to dramatically change unless the Browns fall flat on their face.
01:16Like, the teams that they play basically leading up to the bye week in week 10,
01:21it's like you can chalk up easily two, three, potentially four-plus wins that the Browns
01:26are going to rake in by the time that they get to week 10 when you just look at the
01:29opponents.
01:29And are we still going to be sitting here and Pete Prisco is going to say, yeah, 25th best
01:34team in the NFL.
01:34Like, I mean, if they win three of the next, even if they go three and three down the stretch,
01:39if you're looking at a team that's, what, six and four or, you know, whatever it is,
01:44five and four, six and three down that stretch, you're going to be looking at it and going,
01:48that team's probably better than the 20th best team in the NFL right now.
01:51Yeah, and I think it'll come.
01:52It just can't come in three weeks.
01:53I think it's really hard for not only national media, but just basically anybody,
01:58to after three weeks say, we confidently were just flat out wrong about this team,
02:02and this team has shown us a million reasons why.
02:03Like, the first week of the NFL season's a lie to begin with anyway, and that's good
02:07for the Browns.
02:08We want to throw that one out.
02:09But the last couple weeks, like, I mean, you can make an argument, as many have already
02:14to this point, Baker Mayfield should have hit the wide open wide receiver to end that game.
02:18We would have lost that one.
02:19And you can also make an argument that if you don't get the quarterback play from Deshaun
02:23or even just a play here and there, that game was a, that was a, that was a play-by
02:27-play
02:27type game against, against the last weekend.
02:31I mean, like, against the Panthers.
02:33Like, it's, we're, we're winning by the, really, the skin of our teeth.
02:38And so, like, there's an acknowledgement there that even though, yes, they are two
02:41and one, they could just as easily be 0 and three.
02:43And so, why I don't put them at 15th in the power rankings, or why I think it'd be insane
02:47to put them at 15th in the power rankings, is it has, in fact, only been three weeks,
02:50even if they're trending upward.
02:52But there is a little bit of respect there.
02:54Sometimes power rankings are odd to me because, hey, some people just do it by, oh, well,
02:58this team's winning games are going to go up in the power rankings and not actually paying
03:01attention to the discourse.
03:02Yeah, I mean, sometimes it is as simple as that, though, too.
03:03Yeah.
03:04But yeah.
03:05I do kind of look at this, and we always talk about there's at least usually a surprise,
03:08a team that you expect it to be bad that ends up being good across an NFL season.
03:12Well, if you look out of the gates right now, your competition is probably...
03:17Well, the Raiders are a surprise at 3-0.
03:19Yeah, 100%.
03:20That's 100%, and it's also a surprise that a couple teams are 0-3, like the Chargers,
03:23for instance.
03:24What's going on with the Patriots?
03:26Massive surprise to a lot of people.
03:27I would say you usually get one bad to good, right?
03:29Like, there's also probably a good or bad to two in there that, you know, you don't
03:33positively go.
03:34So, if I go from bad to good, it's pretty much the Raiders.
03:37I don't even know that you'd put the Vikings into that conversation.
03:40They also probably don't deserve to be 3-0, but they are 3-0.
03:44The 49ers?
03:46And some of the conversation probably stops immediately after that of teams.
03:49Like, you're in a combination of three or four teams competing to be the surprise team
03:54of the year.
03:55And I would say with the way the defense has performed over the last two weeks, Deshaun
03:59Watson giving you semi-competent football, and the emergence of guys like Denzel Boston,
04:04like, you're on a pretty good track to be one of the teams that's actually the surprise.
04:07Well, and you asked last segment, or a couple segments ago, whether or not Vegas was starting
04:12to pay attention to this, and if they had maybe fixed some of their odds.
04:14I did get an email in between the break from our guys at betonline.ag.
04:18The playoff percentage change for the Browns after week three, relative to where it was
04:23before the season got underway, is just a plus 3.3% change.
04:28To give some proper context, the Packers have lost almost 30% of a playoff change.
04:34The Texans have lost 31% of a playoff change.
04:37The Raiders are up 22%.
04:39The Chargers down 51%.
04:41The Vikings are up 38%.
04:43The Bucs down 47%.
04:45So there's big swings of action that's being taken place here in the Vegas world with some
04:50of these teams.
04:50The Browns, 3.3% means Vegas has not changed their opinion of the Browns really at all.
04:57Which is interesting to me.
04:58I don't know how you watch the first three games.
05:00And again, also pay attention when we talk playoff chances to the remainder of the schedule,
05:05which we know, second easiest schedule in the NFL, best travel, easiest schedule in the
05:09NFL, second best travel, inverse of that, one or the other.
05:11They're in the bottom two either way.
05:14But you take a look at it, and for them to walk out of this, like I pretty much looked
05:18at the beginning of the year and went, yeah, chalk it up 0-2.
05:20Right?
05:21Bare minimum, chalk it up 0-2.
05:22Maybe they can beat Carolina.
05:23That was a winnable game out of the gate because...
05:25I started them 0-4.
05:26Yeah.
05:27I mean, I got to six wins, but I started them 0-4.
05:29They're 2-1 right now.
05:31Yeah, with a chance to be 3-1 on Thursday.
05:33And so there's a lot of props and credit that's being given.
05:36But I look at it and say, if you're 20th in power rankings from Frank Schwab, and you're
05:40hitting the 20 to 24 to 25 rankings, I get Vegas isn't on board yet, but that to me is
05:45a sign of respect from the national media.
05:47That to me is a sign of respect, and they are paying attention.
05:49They're not going to do it all in one day.
05:51And this is part of this.
05:52I think the whole Browns journey that we're going on here, and this goes beyond just
05:552026, is you got to crawl to walk to run sometimes.
06:00I think everyone wants to all of a sudden just snap your fingers and instantly be great.
06:04I'd love that too.
06:05I think that'd be awesome.
06:06It's a lot more fun.
06:06But the reality is in the NFL, a lot of times you got to crawl to walk to run.
06:11You got to build this thing up gradually.
06:12It can't happen in three games, certainly.
06:15And the expectation we should have is it takes multiple years before we start getting some
06:20actual respect, because where we were the last two years with eight combined wins tells
06:25us that we got to dig our way out.
06:28I think it's just fun to take a look at the, sure, you move them in the power rankings, but
06:33every single week, like the panels on every pregame show and everything do their selections
06:37for the week, right?
06:37Yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:38Last week, everyone on ESPN and the pregame show picked, not us, the Panthers.
06:43I, there was another one where I know there was like nine selections and eight of them
06:46were the Panthers.
06:47Like nobody gave the Browns the respect of it.
06:49Hell, I sat here and didn't say I thought the Browns were going to win.
06:51Thought it was going to be close.
06:52Thought they had a chance.
06:53Not the way I talked about it against Tampa Bay.
06:54What's your season record?
06:56Of predictions?
06:57Yeah.
06:58One and two.
06:59Because I gave them losses the last two weeks and I gave them a loss in week one.
07:03I just want to start circling with the people that are hat tricks right now that
07:06are 0 for 3 and I just want to, I want to see what they do every single week.
07:08I want to see if they can ride the, ride the, the wave of suck that's happening.
07:12No, no, I had the, I had week one, right?
07:14I tell people there was almost no chance they were winning that game.
07:16And there was indeed almost no chance they were winning that game.
07:19But yeah, like I think that you take a look at those, like going into Thursday night football,
07:23how many people are picking the Browns to beat the Steelers?
07:25Even being in Cleveland, even with the fact Steelers haven't won here since it was, you
07:28know, 2021, I think was their last win in Cleveland.
07:31I still think the majority of teams or majority of people picking are going to side with the
07:35Steelers in that game.
07:37Vegas is siding with the Steelers in that game.
07:38They're gonna.
07:39Well, Aaron Rodgers woke up on Sunday too, I think is a big factor in that.
07:43And yeah, I think, I think you're right.
07:44I think a lot of them are going to side with the Steelers.
07:46And so maybe that, maybe that's where the question really needs to stem from.
07:48Are the Browns underrated?
07:50Because even though they're two and one, you're not even getting respect against a team in
07:53the Steelers that I think big picture, nobody thinks is even going to go to the postseason.
07:57I mean, JP, they played the Falcons with Cooper Rush at quarterback who never found the red zone.
08:02And they won that game, what, 20 to 13?
08:04Yeah.
08:04And they did a defensive touchdown to do it?
08:07Yeah, that was a bad, that was, again, they were awful.
08:10There's no other way to put it.
08:10They were awful.
08:11Aaron Rodgers was awful.
08:12But, and last week, was it just Cincinnati's defense being bad?
08:16Or is this just the turning of the page for Aaron Rodgers?
08:19Or did they just get a run game going as the other side of this?
08:21And maybe that's it.
08:21Maybe that's all McCarthy needs to have the light go on.
08:23But their story is different than our story right now.
