We are turning the corner to the New York Jets game today, and I’m looking for things to be hopeful about.
) Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans! We are turning the corner to the New York Jets game today, and I’m looking for things to be hopeful about.The Cleveland Browns situation seems daunting as we sit here amidst the rubble of Year Four of the Watson Disaster.
The team is undeniably awful at 2-6, which even a victory against the toothless New York Jets won’t resolve, although it may make things appear more hopeful for a week. There are a lot of holes to fill, as the team will make every effort to. There’s an offensive line to rebuild, a wide receiver group needing reinforcements, and the seemingly eternal riddle at quarterback to answer. But these are not my personal problems to resolve. They belong to Andrew Berry, Paul DePodesta, Kevin Stefanski, and the Haslam family. That’s not to say that I don’t face challenges created by the team’s unique combination of yearly uncompetitiveness and off-season inaction. After years of roiling change, the ownership now appears to prize stability over the short-lived adrenaline bursts of rebooting the franchise by rotating through head coaches and front office personnel. This has resulted in a long slog through the past few years, turning off fans and fostering rising apathy. My editorial alignment, and that of the site in general, can’t be impacted by the challenges that the team’s problems create. We’re not going to start doing things like ripping head coach Kevin Stefanski as inept just because it’s the popular thing to do, or because it might sell us some subscriptions. My approach is much simpler: bring together the best Browns analysts we can manage to put on the team, and let them tell the truth as they see it. We owe that much to the people who have supported us year after year. It turns out that the analysis and film reviewers of the OBR don’t seem to identify simple, singular issues with this team and its offense, e.g., blaming everything on the play calls. Multiple things need to be fixed here, which don’t lend themselves to quixotic campaigns against singular targets of blame. It’s true in many walks of life. Everyone’s life is so complex and challenging that it’s a relief to believe that there are simple answers to complex problems. I’ve always felt that there are simple answers to all kinds of complex problems, the main issue with them being that they’re typically wrong and create new problems of their own. For example, swapping out “immobile and old” Joe Flacco for “mobile, dynamic and young” Dillon Gabriel didn’t resolve everything and, in fact, created new problems of its own. Likewise, I don’t believe that swapping play callers from Kevin Stefanski to Tommy Rees is going to transform the Browns’ offense instantly. Perhaps there will be some spark, but changing the play calls won’t make the offensive line block better, receivers get open to a greater degree, or make Dillon Gabriel the prototypical NFL physical specimen. Rees has been heavily involved in the offense from the jump, so upping the degree of his involvement in some measure doesn’t seem like a panacea. More likely, the Browns are better blessed with the advantage of playing the New York Jets, who have given up on the season and made a low-rated defense worse by dumping their two best defensive players mid-week before the Browns play them. I give the Browns good odds to look decent this week, as the Jets seem more focused on the 2026 draft than the 2025 season. However, please don’t interpret the OBR’s disinterest in oversimplifying the Browns’ issues as tacit approval of the way the organization has been run. The team is in Year Six of a group of people running the franchise, and it hasn’t shown much other than the provably unrepeatable late run in 2023 behind Joe Flacco. Like many different things in this world, the record over those six years is mixed , but there’s no denying that the result is unacceptable. Speaking as someone on the brink of Senior Citizenhood, I’d like to say that we old people serve a purpose. We have a lot of accumulated knowledge, we make great subjects of “funny” TV commercials about the potential of older people having sex, and, without us, the leaf blower industry would go under in a fortnight. Having us around for, say, 150 years, rather than 75 years apiece, would open the door for many new industries built around things like the soothing repetitiveness of old people on TV solving fictional crimes and outdoor cameras so you can keep track of what those loud neighbor kids are doing. Selfishly, I want more life because I’m largely enjoying mine, so I’m all for doubling life spans. They simply need to hurry up and do it because, like the wait for a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl, a lot of us are tapping our feet and waiting for our turn before we go to that big Browns Backer bar in the sky. If you’re going to double life spans, stop talking about it and freaking do it. I’m waiting, impatiently, with an artificially flavored Jell-O cup in hand, for another 40 years so I can really develop a system for cheating at Bingo and get better at yelling at things. Hurry up—chop, chop.When not rapidly aging, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter18-year-old killed at Walmart after allegedly kicking a man’s shopping cart, police say
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