00:00It's easier to feel good because Lamar Jackson has officially been ruled out for this game.
00:06And it's interesting. Wednesday, I was on with Rob Long, who's going to be on with us at four
00:10o'clock. And he was he was giving me the understanding that in Baltimore, they were
00:15very optimistic about Lamar playing. And then no Lamar practice Wednesday, no Lamar practice
00:21yesterday and no Lamar practice today. This definitely does change things from the Brown
00:27side of things. I still don't look at this as an absolute easy win. They do a lot of things
00:34really well that you don't do a good job of stopping. Yeah, this is not just now a gimme.
00:39I mean, the Queen's off the chessboard. That's great. But you can still get checkmated. Like
00:42Lamar is obviously the engine. He's everything that they have from a quarterback standpoint
00:47that makes the whole thing go. But Derek Henry's got like seven touchdowns this year.
00:51Zay Flowers is awesome. Mark Andrews is still good. Like there's there's still a lot to this
00:55team. And we didn't even get to the defensive side of the ball, which is usually
00:58their calling card. Yeah. Last week, you made Braylon Allen, the backup for the Jets
01:04look like Derek Henry. Well, now you get to see the real thing. Yeah. And I thought
01:08it was interesting people throwing out the missed tackle rates for the Browns versus a
01:12guy who has more yards after contact in his career than I think anybody in history.
01:16That's only slight hyperbole. That's now. Now, does it make it a little easier to focus
01:21in on Derek Henry? Yeah, you can focus in on Derek Henry all you want, though. That is
01:25still a bad man at 32, 33 years old. Yeah, he's playing great. And so I this is far from
01:32a way up. I know what a lot of Browns fans are thinking right now. And listen, if they
01:37had won last week, you know, we'd be talking about it. Could there be a team that has ever
01:41had more breaks and things go their way than this Browns team? I mean, it's it would have
01:46been on a ridiculous run if they pulled off last week somehow. And then you get to face
01:50a Lamar Jackson less less Ravens team. But this is Huntley's playing good football. He's
01:56only played two games and you can make an argument. It's the Titans and the Falcons. Those aren't
01:59good teams. Passer rating 110 looking very proficient like this. Just it's not a it's
02:05not a walk in the park guys. Yeah. And here's the other thing. I emphasize the Derek Henry part
02:09of this. Zay Flowers is the style of wide receiver that has killed you most, which is
02:15the quick slants, the kind of under kind of routes there. Think back to like Parker Washington
02:21week one. Well, Zay Flowers is that times 10. Yeah. I mean, I think what Grant Delpit called
02:26him, he's a little Tasmanian. Yeah. Like, I mean, that's his perfect description. He just
02:31just pops up out of everywhere. So like, I guess I guess my thing is, I, I do feel like
02:36some of the juice has been ripped out of this game and I don't think it's just Lamar thing.
02:41I think you're coming off a, a, a game that I feel like a fair amount of us thought, well,
02:46did that just expose you or, you know, like, so I think, I think doubt is creeping in for
02:51Browns fans. Then you have the ALCS going on and that is action pack almost every night of the
02:58week. So you've got that going on. And then it's just the injuries a part of this make it feel
03:03really fluky too. Even if that's a Cleveland win, listen, all that being said, there might not be
03:09the juice in this game that there would have been a week ago. If we knew for a fact, or
03:12three days
03:13ago, if we knew for a fact, Lamar was playing, you win this game, it's still a huge win for
03:17the
03:17Cleveland Browns because you're four and a half point dogs at home. And I think five games in,
03:23you still have most of the NFL saying, we don't believe in you. We don't think this is real.
03:27Yeah. But these aren't the type of games that get everyone on your side either, you know,
03:31because they're just going to point to, well, it was a Lamar Jackson, Liz Ravens team. And so I
03:35give you, if we were in this, it seems like this never ending battle to try to prove to the
03:38rest
03:39of the NFL, that this is a more than just a capable team and can sometimes border on the line
03:43of good
03:44potentially. This isn't going to be the game either. Yeah, you're right. But it's, I, I think
03:48I've given up on that because if I think if you just look across the schedule, there's just so few
03:53games that are actually going to impress anyone outside of Cleveland. And so like, I, I can only speak for
03:59myself, if they win on Sunday, this is a big win. It's not as huge a win as it would
04:03be if Lamar was
04:04there. This is still a significant win because the Ravens should win on Sunday. That's the way we
04:09should be going into this thinking. This is a, if you can win this, especially if Deshaun has about a
04:14big bounce back, which is the other part of this side of things. How do you do on offense? If
04:19Deshaun
04:19can bounce back and make some plays like he was during your three game win streak and you win this
04:23game,
04:24I'm not going to be adding an asterisk on Sunday, even if I think a fair amount of people outside
04:29of
04:29Cleveland will. Well, after the jets game, I just don't think we can look around and say anything
04:32is a layup or anything is just given to us or any like, no. And I don't know, maybe, maybe
04:38if we
04:38take care of the Ravens without Lamar, we could just kind of sweep that jets game under the rug and
04:42call it a bad weather game. Is that the, is that going to be what we do? Oh yeah. I
04:46mean, I listen,
04:46I wanted to move on by that, but from that jets game, like Monday at seven, like I was,
04:51I think a lot of people did. There wasn't a lot of meat on the bone because it was so
04:55evident. Like, well, you fumbled a bunch. You had a couple of silly mistakes. Like you can make the
05:00case. They should have won. You can also make the case. They deserve to lose. And you throw in the
05:05weather and it's like, well, that seemed like a pretty fluky game for both teams all around this
05:10one. Not so much. I mean, even if there is some, some rain this weekend, like you win this one
05:16in,
05:17or, or even the old close loss. And there's some positive ground here to be gained for this Browns
05:22team. Oh, and a close loss to a no Lamar Jackson led team. There's, there's positive ground here.
05:27Cause that's still, I mean, Derek Henry and Zay flowers on their own are part of why I think the
05:33Browns are four and a half point dogs at home. I think I got to see how it looks. I
05:36don't know
05:36that there's a close loss that exists for me where I'm satisfied because even if you, if you let
05:41Tyler Huntley dice you up for 35 and it's a 35 31 game, then I have issues with how the
05:46defense
05:47went. And then if it's a close low scoring game, I'm probably still going to turn around and be
05:50like, so Deshaun in this offense, we're just never, we just can't score 20 points. So it's
05:54interesting. I thought it was, I thought last night, I can't believe the amount of crap that
05:59Bo Nix has taken. I know he didn't have a first down past the sticks last night. I know they
06:03had
06:03a single one, three or 14 for on third down. He was not good last night, 170 yards passing on
06:1027
06:10attempts, like 168 total yards of offense. A net yards is the lowest yardage total in
06:15overtime victory in NFL history, but you won and the defending Superbowl champion, their
06:19quarterback through the decisive interception. I, to me, the reason why I point that game
06:25out is I think Bo Nix should begin a big old fat pass right now. Cause they're four and
06:29two. And it doesn't really matter at this time. If they're not playing their best football,
06:33you're four and two that your record is, uh, what you say you are until you get to like
06:38December. That's kind of how I feel about this Browns game is it's like, if you win this
06:43game, even if it's sloppy, even if it's some mix of the last four games before it, you get
06:49to really stave off a lot of questions where if you do lose that Deshaun clock is ticking,
06:56right? That the questions about, well, how good are you defensive? Really? Like there are
06:59things that are going to pop up in this. So the safe thing is just find some ugly ass way
07:05to win and let's just move on. Ah, you know, I just don't subscribe to that. Like even like
07:09last night, like, yeah, Bo Nix, Bo Nix got the win, but Bo Nix got the win because somebody had
07:13to win that game. Like Sam Darnold was objectively awful in that game. And so I, it kind of reminds
07:18me of the Jets game in some respects, style points. Somebody had to, yeah, I don't just,
07:21I don't just subscribe to the just win baby Al Davis line of thinking. I think that's for nine
07:25girls. I just think it's for, I think that's how we analyze games if we're like 10, not how we
07:30do
07:30it as adults. Well, thank you for that insult, but most, most years, most years or most teams,
07:35you might be right. There's a five win, five and a half win team from Vegas, but we were trying,
07:39we're not, we weren't talking about them. We were using the playoffs word last week.
07:42No, we were not. We, I was shooting that down. I thought that was insane that somebody flip
07:46flop. I mean, if we're, if we're trying to figure out if they're really, if they, if they're good
07:50to really good or anything in between, like, you know, the style points do matter. It's not just a
07:54get out of there with the wind. Now I think we've kind of made this whole season about make the
07:57young guys look as good as you possibly can. And that's a part of it. But if the other team's
08:01vomiting all over their shoes and then we just, I don't know, vomit less on our shoes, that's,
08:06I don't walk away feeling good about that. That's like half of the NFL games. That's like,
08:10I think that's football in general. I think, I think, I think sports talk has created this
08:14environment that we think, ah, the perfect win. We're all chasing the perfect win and teams like
08:19the chief, they, they only win in perfect ways. Not the perfect win. We can only have ugly,
08:24ugly wins exists though. And they're not the playoffs all the year, all year, every year
08:29that just all they do is win ugly. Sure. Sure. And, but then they also think it's slapped in
08:33the face when the post season hits, that's fine. We shouldn't expect this team to win in the post
08:37season. Should we? No, I don't think they're going to make it to the post season necessarily,
08:40but I do like to figure out where they are relative to the rest of the NFL. I just, I
08:44don't think this
08:45is the year for that. I think this is the year for, Hey, if the vibes, if you're winning,
08:49the vibe should be good. And the reality is you've got at best a bridge quarterback starting right now
08:55with a complicated history with Cleveland. You've got a team that is in transition. Even if I think
09:01we're, we're closer to the end of that transition than not. And you're still probably a player too
09:05short from being a legitimate every year playoff team. The problem is that none of this stuff even
09:10helped you last week in that ugly win. None of it, none of it all did was expose that the
09:13offensive line
09:14isn't as good as anybody thinks. Our run game is absolute trash. Deshaun Watson was not particularly
09:18good. Like when you, even in that ugly win, like there was a lot of reasons to then turn around
09:23and be like, wait, that's, that's not, that's not good. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's just the most
09:26recent week. I think people are feeling completely different about that a week before, after you're
09:31coming off back-to-back wins off of Carolina and Pittsburgh. But if you continue that though,
09:35and you have another ugly win, because let's say the Ravens play an ugly game, and this is what
09:39we're talking about and describing, then aren't you going to turn around? And like, at some point
09:42you got to face the man in the mirror. Like you can't just say everything is awesome when you're just
09:46being exposed left and right. If that, if that is how you eventually go through with it, if you're
09:50winning, no, go ahead. If you're winning, that's what matters. Who cares about style points? I'd
09:55rather be 10 and seven with ugly wins left and right than seven and 10 with a lot of hard
10:00for a hard
10:01fought, pretty losses. Yeah, no, that's fine. I, I, but you have to at least be honest about how it
10:07looks at the end of it.
