00:00Not only did you pull off a win against a tough Tampa Bay team, and it was a tough Tampa
00:05Bay team,
00:06whether or not they end up winning the NFC South or make the playoffs at all this year,
00:11it is a situation where Todd Bowles has been there for a long time as the head coach,
00:17where Baker Mayfield, and we're going to certainly get to him today,
00:20but it's not like you went up against Chris Oledukin or some random backup quarterback,
00:25like you went up against an established NFL guy, a team with a ton of offensive weapons,
00:31young defensive rookies, like this was supposed to be a really difficult game.
00:36There was a reason why heading into tonight, you were eight and a half point favorites,
00:41especially after that debacle that we saw last week against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
00:46Everything was setting up for this to be a horrific game, and at the end of the day,
00:51you got into the second half and you were close, you got down to the fourth quarter
00:55and you tied things up with a really good drive from the offense and Deshaun Watson,
00:59and you're able to do just enough to stop them and maybe help out a little bit by the rain
01:05and two and a half hours sitting in the locker rooms and maybe taking a bunch of guys
01:10out of the situation that they're in.
01:12At the end of the day, you improved to one and one.
01:15It wasn't clean. It wasn't nice. It wasn't an offensive explosion.
01:22Deshaun Watson didn't throw for 400 yards and five touchdowns, but a win is a win in the NFL.
01:27And your Cleveland Browns did win today.
01:31I have to at least take that much away from these things.
01:34There's a lot that we are going to break down tonight, throughout the rest of the night,
01:39throughout the rest of the week into next Sunday's home opener against the Carolina Panthers.
01:45Rightfully so. The first half was left a lot to be desired.
01:50I guess we're just going to put it that way because it kind of looked like the old offense
01:56that we had been used to under Deshaun Watson, an offense that looked a lot like last week
02:01that didn't look like it was making meaningful strides toward being competent
02:05and then to a point where you could play winning football with the offense.
02:09But in the second half, whatever changed in the second half, whatever adjustments that
02:14they were able to make, holy cow, they came out and had the most productive, well-run
02:20offense, turnover-free offense that we have seen in I don't know how long.
02:25Like even Shador Sanders in the wins last year wasn't able to pull off wins like that
02:29where you were moving the ball down the field consistently, get a really difficult time
02:35getting the run game going. But again, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a tremendous front line
02:40with a ton of talent. So I didn't expect them to be running up and down the field, get a
02:45tough
02:46time getting the run game going. But you leaned on Deshaun Watson more and more and more as the
02:52game went on. Now, if I were to tell you guys at any point over the last seven days that
02:57the Browns
02:58plan to win and the roadmap in order to get out of Tampa Bay with a victory is to rely
03:05on Deshaun
03:06Watson's legs and his arm, I think you would have thought and you would have probably said that we
03:12would have lost by an even greater margin than we did against the Jacksonville Jaguars. But what I
03:18saw was the most confident form of Deshaun Watson that we have seen in Cleveland. He did not commit a
03:25turnover. He got sacked a few times, but it wasn't an egregious and an egregious level to where it
03:31totally took you out of great drives or did something like there were offensive penalties
03:37and operational mistakes. Yes, but it wasn't to the point where it massively hindered you. This was
03:44the best offense possible for a week to under Deshaun Watson. Now, the question is, I, in the back of
03:52everybody's mind, does Deshaun Watson improve from this point or is the product that he put out today,
04:00especially in that second half this afternoon, is that sort of the best of what we can get at this
04:06point from Deshaun Watson? And is that enough? Is that enough that what we saw today to continue to
04:13win, continue to lean on the building blocks of this roster and get you to a point where you're a
04:18seven, eight, nine win team. And in that wildcard hunt that we've talked about at nauseam, uh, since
04:23the, since training camp started today was a day where you felt like if they continue to play like
04:30that, especially in the second half, that's a team that can exceed expectations and a team that as the
04:37season goes on is not going to win every game and is probably going to lose, uh, plenty of games
04:43against teams that they're better than and more well better coach then, but they're going to win
04:49a lot more than we initially thought. I, I, you know, I'm trying to like juxtapose juxtapose where
04:55my brain set, where my mindset was at last week coming in here, post game against Jacksonville,
05:02where it was just yelling and screaming. And this is the worst thing ever. And I don't even see two
05:07wins on this schedule to where I am now, where I'm not confident in any stretch of the imagination
05:14with any part of this team. I think confident is probably taking my feelings about today a little
05:22bit too far to the extreme, but I'm at least a little bit more understanding as to why they decided
05:28to go with this approach and why Todd Munkin has continued to trot out that he is confident
05:35in Deshaun Watson as your starting quarterback. We'll eventually get to Shador Sanders and whether
05:41or not it's next Sunday or in five Sundays from now, we'll see whether or not Todd Munkin and his
05:46coaching staff made the right decision, but at least for right now, I have not seen that level
05:52of improvement from one from week one to week two in quite a long time. And that signaled to me
05:59that
05:59not only do you, do you might have the right guy or the right formula in place for this thing
06:06to
06:06eventually work out, but you might also have the right guy under center. I don't think that you have
06:14a forever answer in Deshaun Watson. And I think if for some reason they were able to trick themselves
06:21into it, that, that would, that would be a whole different argument and a whole different,
06:24you know, screaming match that we could all have with each other down the line. But for a roster
06:30like ours right now, that is young, that has a smattering of veterans that you feel like they
06:36have a lot more talent than they have had in the past couple of years, all you need in order
06:42to get
06:42to an eight to nine win team is a competent league average quarterback that can make enough plays to
06:50win you the game, move the ball down the field and doesn't and plays turnover free football guys.
06:57That's exactly what Deshaun Watson played to today. Like whether you like it or not, Deshaun Watson
07:02played the type of complimentary football, the type of move the ball down the field. Don't give it away
07:08to the other team. Don't put yourself behind the sticks further and further consistently drive in and
07:14drive out and just let the operations run for themselves. And at the end of the day,
07:19you're going to be ahead of the other team, which is where they ended up being and let the defense
07:24take care of things as much as they possibly can. Because we know that there's so much talent on
07:29the defensive side of the ball. That's what we have been looking for, for the past couple of seasons,
07:36whether it was Shador or Dylan or Joe Flacco, the quarterbacks of yesteryear of these last couple of
07:42seasons, we have been looking for that Carson Wentz, Gardner Minshew, Mac Jones style quarterback.
07:48And if eventually you meander around to it being your $230 million man, yeah, it's not going to heal
07:56every single wound and it's not going to suddenly make fans endeared to Deshaun Watson at the end of
08:02this thing. And it doesn't even mean that he's now been gifted the starting quarterback job for all
08:0817 games. It just means that you can allow the rest of the team to grow and move in the
08:14right
08:14direction. Whereas last week when we were coming in here, I didn't see enough from Denzel Boston.
08:19I didn't see enough from Casey Concepcion. I didn't see enough from the defense. I didn't see
08:24enough from anybody on the team. And I thought that Todd Munkin was going to be a one and done
08:29after last week. This at least calms down your fears, your doomsday level fears. And I think that's
08:36probably how we need to look at a game like this, that we're not going to be buying our Superbowl
08:41tickets yet. I hope that y'all call in tomorrow morning and throughout the day and yell Superbowl,
08:45Super Browns, have some fun with it for a franchise like ours. That's won five games and three games.
08:51So eight games now, nine games in the last three seasons, you should enjoy the wins.
08:57How ever often they come and whoever they come against, but we're not going to be saying that
09:04this is like some incredible team all of a sudden, and that we were wrong to pick them to win
09:10four and
09:10five games, but you needed to quell some of the doomsday fears that the organization had and that
09:17we had as fans. I mean, there was actual hard news reporting this past week that people in the
09:25building were upset by how bad things went in Jacksonville. And if you were able to at least
09:32put something on tape for those in Berea that were so upset that they felt the need to talk to
09:38somebody
09:38in the media about it so that the Browns fans knew that we were feeling the same way that some
09:44of the
09:44building were, that's at least a win enough outside of the fact that yeah, at the end of the day,
09:50you
09:50gave some of these guys the opportunity to feel what it is like to win. You gave these guys the
09:56euphoria of a big time plane ride back from Tampa Bay and that telling them, Hey, you never have to
10:02go
10:03down to Florida again this season. Jacksonville was way too hot and you got your doors blown off
10:07you. And then today you had that two and a half hour rain delay and you played the last two
10:12minutes
10:12in an absolute mud bowl. You never have to go back down there. And guess what? You got out of
10:17a really
10:17tough stretch to begin the season with a one-on-one record. And your gift is that you return home
10:23with,
10:24I think what we could say without being too crazy about it are two winnable games against the
10:29Carolina Panthers and then the Pittsburgh Steelers and Thursday night football. I don't know if
10:33anybody watched the, uh, Steelers game today, but it's not like they looked that good and the
10:39Panthers won, but they blew out the Kevin Stefanski's, uh, down in Atlanta who were starting Cooper
10:44rush that I don't know if you've been on social media, but Cooper rush is not exactly the, uh, hottest
10:48name, uh, around town right now.
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