FMIA Week 5: Awaken the Sleeping Giant? Browns—Yup—Feeling Frisky

The thing that’s surprised me the most about the first month of the season—even more than the fact that Philadelphia is 2-3 and hasn’t scored 24 points in any game, more than Atlanta being 1-4, more than Ryan Fitzpatrick being 18 points higher than Tom Brady in passer rating—is the Cleveland Browns. They’re fun. They’re competitive. They’ve got a quarterback out to prove the world wrong, and playing like it. They’re 2-2-1, they easily could be 4-1, and conceivably could be 5-0.

Scoring margins in the first five Browns games: 0, 3, 4, 3, 3. In the three games they lost or tied, they had the ball in opposing territory in the last minute of the fourth quarter with a chance to win. The whole year: crazytown.

You might remember back in April, when I covered the Browns draft in Cleveland and met a two-decade season-ticket-holder named Dan Adams. So mad at the Browns’ ineptitude was this middle-aged operations manager at a hydraulics company that when his ticket invoice came in the mail last spring he photocopied his hand with the middle finger sticking up and folded up the image and sent it to the Browns with these words: 1-31 and I’m done. This one’s for you. At the last moment, he relented and bought the tickets again, for one last time he said. He just couldn’t quit his Browns.

I called Dan Adams on Sunday night.

“The energy in this city is incredible right now,” he said, a few hours after the Browns’ ugly but beautiful 12-9 overtime beatdown of Baltimore, their first AFC North home win in four seasons. (Think how incredible that is.) “The Indians are great. The Cavs are great, and God bless LeBron. But there is nothing like this place when the Browns are winning—70,000 people just going nuts for their team. We’ve really missed that.”

When the draft was over, I met Cleveland GM John Dorsey near the Browns’ practice facility in Berea. He showed up in one of those funky gray sweatshirts with the block orange CLEVELAND BROWNS on the front. (Dorsey: those sweatshirts. Jim Harbaugh: the khakis.) We had a couple of beers, from Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing, and Dorsey dissected the draft.

Here’s what I remember about that day: Dorsey knew the draft cognoscenti wasn’t crazy about quarterback Baker Mayfield at No. 1 overall and cornerback Denzel Ward at 4. Mike Mayock, for instance, had Mayfield as his fourth-rated passer, and thought pass-rusher Bradley Chubb was a surer choice than Ward. USA Today gave the Browns’ draft the 25th-best grade out 32 teams. But Dorsey was almost fierce in his regard for both picks. And he made this declaration:

“We will awaken the sleeping giant. I have no doubt.”

Five games is too early to say anything about the Browns other than this: They’re one of the most compelling and competitive teams in the NFL. Their feisty new leader, wideout Jarvis Landry, told me Sunday he thinks they shouldn’t have lost a game yet, and when players say things like that, you just nod and laugh a little bit on the inside. But they tied Pittsburgh when their kicker had a field goal blocked with 13 seconds left in overtime, they lost to the Saints when their kicker missed two field goals and a PAT in the fourth quarter, and they lost to Oakland when a dubious replay reversal gave the Raiders life in the final minute.

Most Sundays, I watch games in some combination on my laptop and the TV, on the RedZone Channel and whatever is the game of the day. In the last two weeks, the 45-42 loss at Oakland and the 12-9 win over Baltimore, I spent most of the second half and overtimes lasered on the Browns. The Cleveland Browns, the Browns Gonna Brown Browns. Dorsey talked about awakening the sleeping giant? He’s awake all right, now, and Baker Mayfield is the alarm clock.

The Lead: Browns

“C’mere Baker!” coach Hue Jackson said in the Browns’ post-game locker room Sunday.

“Bake Money!” Jabrill Peppers shouted as Mayfield made his way to the middle of the room, next to Jackson, who wanted to give Mayfield a game ball.

“I ain’t been around you a long time, but I know this: You don’t flinch,” Jackson said. “You keep playing. You gotta keep doing that for this football team.”

With 2:12 left in overtime, the Dan Adamses of the world had to be thinking, We’ll take a tie. Browns had second-and-21 at their 5, and their four previous plays had gone for zero, zero, zero and minus-11. Mayfield, in the shotgun, took the snap at the goal line, and pressure forced him back to four yards deep in the end zone. Here came Terrell Suggs of the Ravens, rushing from the right and making a strategic error: Instead of penning in Mayfield, Suggs tried to get to him from the middle, forcing the quarterback out to the offensive left side. No Raven was there. So Mayfield took 13 easy yards. “As I continue to get reps with [the linemen], they will realize I’m going to try to extend plays,” Mayfield said. Really?

Two-minute warning. Third-and-eight. Three Baltimore rushers surrounded Mayfield in the pocket, but he leaked out to the right, and a total unknown, undrafted wideout Derrick Willies, playing only because of an injury, had a step on his man on a crossing route. Mayfield put it right in Willies’ gut. Gain of 39. Three clock-bleeding plays put the Browns in range for a field-goal try, but if you know the Browns’ tradition of field-goal follies, you knew something would go wrong.

“I couldn’t look,” Jarvis Landry told me Sunday night. “I couldn’t look.”

Greg Joseph, whose wounded duck from 55 yards fell short and way off to the left at the end of the fourth quarter, would find a way to miss this, wouldn’t he? His low kick found a Raven’s hand going over the line of scrimmage, but instead of dying at the line, the 37-yard kick knuckled downfield and made it over the crossbar with a couple of centimeters to spare.

Mayfield led the charge, and he got some defensive help from Ward. Without Ward’s pick at the Browns’ three and then his block of a Justin Tucker field goal on the last play of the half, the Browns would never have forced overtime. This would have just been another dispiriting loss. With three interceptions now, Ward has been just the clinging, physical corner defensive coordinator Gregg Williams wanted. It was Williams, among others, who urged the selection of Ward over Chubb—and they’re pretty happy about it now.

There’s something else I like about this team. It’s something Jarvis Landry brought from Miami. When the Browns did “Hard Knocks” this summer, the most memorable scene was Landry, new to the team this year, lighting up the receivers room. He was ticked off (putting it mildly) at the effort and practice habits of the team’s young receivers, and he stood in front of the room and said:

“If your hamstring ain’t fallin’ off the bone, if your leg ain’t broke, you should be practicing! Straight up. It’s weakness. It’s contagious as f—! … It’s over with here, bro! If you’re not hurt, you gotta f—ing practice! That ain’t happenin’ here! That don’t exist! … It’s contagious. It’s contagious.”

Coming from one of the highest-paid receivers in the league, that tirade got noticed.

“My heart was full,” Landry said. “I had no idea it would be as big as it turned out to be. But I was just trying to state the truth and wake some guys up.”

Landry thought for a minute. “With me,” he said, “what it comes down is I hate losing more than I love winning. I love football, and I just hate to lose.”

When the Browns tied Pittsburgh on opening day, Landry thought some players were a little happy to not lose. “There’s nothing to celebrate!” he yelled. “We work too hard to tie!”

On the first drive of overtime, Landry stuck his head in the offensive huddle and said, “It’s just us. Calls ain’t gonna go our way. Can’t worry about that. Just play.”

After the game, in the raucous Cleveland locker room, Dorsey found Landry. The GM loves this firebrand wideout because of the example he sets and the ethos he brings to practice and games. Dorsey smiled at Landry. “Hey!” Dorsey said. “It ain’t always gonna be easy.”

But with these Browns, it’s always going to be interesting.