As we struggle to survive another season with the new-era Browns, one way we can try to get through it (besides alcohol or heavy medication) is to look back at the best individual weeks of the Browns’ new era to remember times in recent memory when this particular week didn’t suck.
The general rule is that the longer you wait for something, the more satisfying it is when you finally get it.
But as we know from experience, in many cases, that simply isn’t what happens. There’s satisfaction, to be sure, but often not enough to warrant the long wait.
The Browns’ first win of the new era was not one of these cases.
Going into Halloween Sunday in 1999, Browns fans had waited nearly four full years for a victory. And the last two months - through which they’d watched their team wallow through the expansion process by losing their first seven games - might have been worse than the previous three years when there was no Cleveland football at all.
As with any football team, it’s about the quarterback. Most head coaches from the history of the Cleveland Browns are thought of in that context. If you bring up the name of Sam Rutigliano, Brian Sipe comes to mind. 1980 NFL MVP. Marty Schottenheimer? All-time local favorite, Bernie Kosar. Could have been a Hall of Famer, but that is a story for another day.
More than 24 hours later and many in Brownstown are still scratching their heads over the decision by Cleveland Browns coach Pat Shumur to punt on fourth-and-one with a little more than six minutes remaining in the Browns loss to Indianapolis.
Meet the new Boss. Same as the old Boss.
Useless nuggets of information from Sunday’s Browns game that you can certainly live without…