00:00Deshaun referenced at postgame that part of what helped him settle down
00:06and part of what helped him have such a successful second half
00:09was during that halftime break, he went up to Todd Munkin and said,
00:13I need you to trust me.
00:15I need you to put the ball in my hands so that I can work a little bit more,
00:20and we're going to live or die with that.
00:24And credit to Todd Munkin, who trusted a guy that has not played more than one game
00:30in the last 700 days, and he said, okay, we're going to open up the playbook
00:35a little bit more one week after just an absolute debacle top to bottom on offense
00:41and from Deshaun Watson.
00:43We're going to let him throw the ball downfield more, and it worked out somehow.
00:47I was really impressed.
00:51I think it started out as a joke for a lot of people where they saw a couple
00:55of good throws from Deshaun Watson, and they saw the offense matriculate the ball
00:59down the field successfully, and you're kind of like tongue-in-cheek being like,
01:03wow, he's kind of found it, Deshaun Watson.
01:05Look at that throw.
01:07And then as the game went on, those jokes kind of turned into serious comments.
01:13There was one throw over the middle to Denzel Boston, who we are going to get to later.
01:18They're absolute standout, flowers to him, game ball 100% to the second-round rookie
01:24wide receiver.
01:24By the way, only in his second-ever NFL game.
01:27There was a throw over the middle to Denzel Boston 15 yards down the field that is not
01:34a type of throw that we have seen as Browns fans from Shador, from Dylan, from Deshaun,
01:39from anybody that's been on this roster over these last couple of years, and he hit him
01:43in stride.
01:44Yeah, he had to jump a little bit for it, but the second that I saw that pass, I was
01:48like, that is an NFL-level pass.
01:50That is a good quarterback hitting a guy in space with a little bit of coverage around
01:56him over the middle.
01:57Deshaun Watson was too scared to make that type of play last week.
02:01So I don't know what the hell happened in practice this week.
02:04Maybe arguing with each other and bitching and doing whatever they were doing in Berea.
02:10That somehow clicked something.
02:13And again, Deshaun Watson wasn't lighting the world on fire, but he was doing a lot of things
02:18that we have never seen from him in a Browns uniform.
02:21The pocket would collapse, and his pocket presence is still completely shot and nowhere close to
02:27what it was when he was traded here back in 2022.
02:30But he got out of bad situations and took off with his legs.
02:35I think that Deshaun Watson maybe needed to see in real live game action what he still
02:42had left in the tank.
02:43It's like an old car.
02:45You got to start up before you take it on a road trip or take it down to the dealership.
02:49Maybe you drive it around the cul-de-sac a couple of times to see what it can actually
02:53do before you send it out for the rest of the, you know, on the open road.
02:58Maybe Deshaun Watson last week needed to run a few times to get hit, to try and get those
03:04throws over the middle, and he just failed so spectacularly because we haven't seen it
03:08in two seasons.
03:09Now he got all that out of the way.
03:11He can actually go play football.
03:12And it's not like at this point in his career, Deshaun Watson is a good quarterback.
03:17He is at best the 15th, 16th best quarterback in this league.
03:21But that's just enough for you to win enough games to feel like you are moving this team
03:27in the right direction.
03:29All right.
03:302-1-6-4-7-4-0092.
03:32Mo is in Texas, been on hold for a long time.
03:34What's going on, Mo?
03:36Not much.
03:37Thank you for letting me come on.
03:39I wanted to say, first of all, I'm 50-some years old.
03:44So I've been a Browns fan since like 1977 as a kid.
03:49I remember when they used to come on WHK 1420, and Art Modell used to black out the games
03:56because we would sell 76,000 tickets and 4,000 short of a sellout.
04:01Let me say this.
04:05Deshaun definitely impressed me today.
04:08The one thing I'm not going to do is dance on Kevin's grave or nobody else's.
04:13I don't care.
04:14I just was impressed to see the resiliency of those guys, the fight back.
04:20Because I got so tired of hearing week to week last year or the last five years about
04:27this whole, oh, we got to coach them better.
04:28We got to do better.
04:29We got to play better.
04:30This week, at least, I saw that they actually put in the work in Berea and that they actually
04:37fought.
04:37All I want to be able to do is to be able to watch a team that's going to sit
04:41there and
04:42that's going to fight.
04:44If they got some fight, I'm with them.
04:47You know what I'm saying?
04:48And I will say this.
04:50Monk has definitely impressed me.
04:52Deshaun has impressed me.
04:53The defense stood up.
04:55Way to go.
04:56Way to go.
04:57And I got to say this.
04:58Mike Rudenberg, salute to you because earlier this week, a lot of us were saying a lot of
05:05bad things about you, but I'm so damn proud of this team.
05:09I'm so damn proud of them.
05:11Let's just try to go 1-0 next week.
05:15And I'm hopeful for the future.
05:17Very hopeful.
05:18I ain't talking about two years from now.
05:19I'm talking about next week.
05:21All right, Mo.
05:21I appreciate the phone call, man.
05:23Yeah, yeah.
05:24Enjoy Texas.
05:25Appreciate you listening.
05:26Great, great thoughts from him there.
05:28We'll get to that in a second.
05:30Just quick news.
05:30Obviously, Jaden Daniels went down at some point in their game against the Cowboys.
05:37Dan Quinn said that he dislocated his left elbow.
05:41So I don't know if that's the same one that he injured and was out for a long time with.
05:45So just something to keep an eye on.
05:47Obviously, also in Chicago, Caleb Williams got carted off the field.
05:51They're saying it's a hamstring injury.
05:53I don't know.
05:54It just kind of looked like he slipped.
05:56So one of those non-contact injuries, and we have that.
05:58It's not great.
05:59So a couple of big injuries to update you around the NFL.
06:03But going back to the reason why you're all here.
06:06I think what Mo said is very much so where a lot of you guys are right now.
06:11Last week was so bad that it turned us off to the idea of this team is even a competent
06:17level football program.
06:18We were starting to question everything down from Todd Munkin all the way down to I was seeing certain breakdowns
06:27as to whether or not Spencer Feneau and Parker Brailsford and Austin Barber were good offensive linemen in the game
06:33in Jacksonville.
06:34Nobody had any trust whatsoever after last week's game, and we weren't asking much from this team.
06:42I think that's where the frustration and the disconnect between where the fans are right now and where those in
06:49the locker room and people like Deshaun Watson are right now.
06:53We do not demand at this point in time with this team a Super Bowl caliber team.
07:00That's what that's what was so frustrating about the Deshaun Watson comments this week.
07:05Nobody at any point over these last three years has said that Deshaun Watson needs to be throwing for 400
07:11yards and five touchdowns.
07:13And to be totally transparent, guys, I wrote down that comment before the game.
07:17I was circling it as something to where if they were to lose, that it was going to be all
07:22bets were off.
07:23We are going to attack him full bore for comments like that because no one has ever asked for that.
07:29We have simply wanted competent football to where when we watch the other games and when we turn on the
07:35Sunday night football game and the Monday night game, we don't feel like they're playing an entirely different sport.
07:40That was the case last week.
07:42It felt today like not everything was fixed, but we were competing with what we feel like is a good
07:49football team.
07:50We were making chunk plays.
07:53Deshaun was getting out of, you know, bad situations.
07:56The defense took a massive step forward and took advantage of the over eagerness from Baker Mayfield and locked down
08:03really, really good players like Amika Ibuka and a Bucky Irving.
08:08And like all across the board, guys that have torched other NFL defenses, our defense locked them down today.
08:15And you saw yet another sack from Mason Graham.
08:18Carson Swessinger had so many tackles today, including a key one in the fourth quarter on that final drive on
08:25Baker Mayfield.
08:26Denzel Ward was everywhere.
08:28Even Tyson Campbell, who's had an up and down last couple of games, was tremendous this afternoon.
08:32We played good football at many, many points today, and that's what allowed us to be in a point at
08:40a spot at the end of the game to where even after the monsoon came through, all we needed to
08:45do was get one stop and they won.
08:48And that's what they ended up doing.
08:49I think about how bad, how down, how dire everybody in this town was going into this game.
08:56Think about how you felt.
08:58Nobody thought that they were going to win today.
09:01No, everybody was making jokes, myself included, that the Guardians were going to end up scoring more on Saturday night
09:07than the Browns were this afternoon and that they were going to go 0-2, that Baker Mayfield was going
09:13to torch us for 500 yards.
09:15Guys, none of that happened.
09:17We thought this was going to be as bad as humanly possible.
09:22And then you factor in the fact that all of these reports about Deshaun Watson's time in Houston, why it
09:28ended so poorly, how Deshaun Watson has been in Cleveland, and how short he has left as the starting quarterback
09:34of this franchise, it was all going to come to a head this afternoon at 1 o'clock down at
09:39Raymond James Stadium as one of the worst losses that we could possibly imagine for the Browns.
09:46And instead, they proved us all wrong.
09:48And at the very least, I can be okay with that.
09:50I can be okay with the fact that Todd Munkin and Deshaun Watson and this talented team of rookies that
09:57isn't Super Bowl contending yet, but is getting there ever so slightly, took in stride what happened last week in
10:05Jacksonville and greatly improved to the fact where I could actually be proud watching this team throughout the game.
10:12This is probably the most positive that I've been on these airwaves.
10:16I've been doing this for two years now.
10:17Now, this is probably the most positive I've ever been since I started here at The Fan, and no part
10:22of me thought that at any point this season, I would feel this positive and have this positive of a
10:27post-game show.
10:28But it's not so much that I'm telling you that Deshaun Watson is back or this team is Super Bowl
10:34bound.
10:34I don't want to get it twisted that I took away that this team is leaps and bounds better than
10:39what we thought they were last week or even before the start of the season.
10:43Deshaun Watson was lumbering.
10:44Like Jeff said, absolutely.
10:46There were so many missed passes that we can nitpick apart throughout the game.
10:50Absolutely.
10:51There were drops.
10:52There were missed assignments.
10:53All of Jerry Judy sucks.
10:55There were so many things that we can harp on, but I don't want to just continue to just say
11:03all of the negative things because they won.
11:05Think about it.
11:06I know you don't like the quarterback.
11:08I'm not asking you to all of a sudden do a 180 on him and not even boo him next
11:14week or not still call in throughout the week or stump on social media for Shador Sanders.
11:20I'm sure that plenty of you guys will still be doing that.
11:23That's totally cool.
11:25It's not like Deshaun Watson played lights out with his hair on fire today, but you know what he did
11:30do?
11:30He outplayed the other guy, the guy that we were really scared about facing the guy that Browns fans who
11:37went to the stadium were getting caught on social media and and throughout the game in Browns Baker Mayfield jerseys
11:45or even in Tampa Bay Baker Mayfield jerseys.
11:47They were rooting for Tampa Bay and Baker Mayfield because he's the more likable quarterback than the guy that you
11:54ran him out of town for it.
11:55I get that.
11:56But at the end of the day you still won and at the end of the day Deshaun Watson played
12:01better than Baker Mayfield that there is no argument whatsoever that I'm going to make and that anybody should make
12:09that Baker Mayfield had a better game than Deshaun Watson.
12:12Yeah, it was marginal.
12:13Yeah, I'm not talking about Tom Brady versus I don't know Deshaun Kaiser.
12:18Sorry for the sideswipe Deshaun Kaiser, but like it's not like it was night and day, but the Browns quarterback
12:25did better than Baker Mayfield today.
12:28Baker Mayfield turned the ball over Baker Mayfield ran into sacks overthrew wide receivers.
12:34I you know Jackson Tyvus and Jeff and I are sitting here watching the end of the game.
12:39He overthrew two players in that final drive.
12:43He had at least three opportunities to win that game and didn't so you have to at least feel good
12:50in that sense that this, you know, fan favorite this guy that I've been hearing about all week that all
12:56Baker Mayfield's going to torch them this week should or Deshaun Watson has no idea what's coming.
13:01This is going to be as embarrassing. Guess what guys, you have to look at it honestly with yourselves and
13:07say that Deshaun Watson did play better than Baker Mayfield.
13:10That's what helped you win today against Tampa Bay.
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