00:00I would love to have one of these games where Northeast Ohio can sit back in the second half
00:05and open up another drink, not because they're nervous and they need to quell their nerves,
00:10but because they're getting the champagne celebration started early.
00:15Maybe that's just not the way things are meant to be this season.
00:18You know, today for a long stretch, like many of these games thus far this year,
00:24was just so aggravating, so frustrating, so mind-numbingly weird
00:29because you had the most healthy team that you had in a couple of weeks going into this thing,
00:34and it somehow resulted in the most mistake-riddled game that they have played all year.
00:41Remember, Quinshawn Junkins out last week.
00:45Dylan Sampson hasn't played over the last four weeks.
00:48Casey Concepcion maybe was still trying to get out of the fog of a concussion
00:52when he was playing up against the Jets,
00:56and then on the defensive side, I know that Denzel Ward got banged up,
01:02but he still got you an interception today.
01:03Grant Delpit was back for you.
01:06Like, you had everybody back in place,
01:09and yet still, you're screwing around with a 1-5 Titans team that looks terrible,
01:15that has looked awful all season,
01:17and you're just throwing your hands up like, why are we doing this again?
01:20We saw them do this against the Jets, who, by the way, just lost to the Miami Dolphins
01:25to give the Dolphins their first win of the year,
01:29but now we're doing it against another team.
01:32I don't want to watch us win a game that I feel like heading into things that we should have
01:39won,
01:39but as Deshaun Watson mentioned, it's a young program.
01:43It's a first-year head coach.
01:45It's everybody's new to the situation that they're currently in.
01:50That's not going to give you a ton of blowout wins or commanding wins
01:55where everything from wire to wire feels like it's firmly in your control.
01:59Enjoying the wave of a Brown season that you didn't know where it was going to go.
02:05I think a lot of people, if you were to say that in week seven,
02:08like if you were to talk to them at the beginning of the season and say,
02:10hey, in week seven, Deshaun Watson is still your starting quarterback,
02:14you're going to be like, wait, did Shador Sanders get traded?
02:16Did Dylan Gabriel, well, I guess Dylan Gabriel got hurt,
02:19but did Taylor Green get caught, not make the final roster?
02:22Like how in the hell did this happen that we're seven weeks in going into,
02:26you know, the heart of the schedule and Deshaun Watson is still playing?
02:30It's like, well, because he's performing better than any of us thought that he would have.
02:35We also, I think, should take this,
02:37the approach that we do a lot of the times with the Guardians to the Browns.
02:43A lot of Cleveland fans have the Guardians at an arm's length
02:48because they know at the end of the day,
02:49maybe they're not going to win the whole thing.
02:51They're going to lose in the playoffs.
02:53We obviously saw it last week with the loss to the Tampa Bay Rays,
02:56but they're able to win above,
02:59they're able to play above their skillset
03:02and above organizationally what they set themselves up to do.
03:05The Browns were not set up to be a winning football team this year.
03:09They were not set up to be five and two in first place in the AFC North heading into week
03:12eight.
03:13Yet somehow they are.
03:15And we love the term guards ball in town.
03:17It's ugly.
03:18It's disgusting.
03:20It's not traditional.
03:21And at the end of the day,
03:22they win the game with quote unquote guards ball.
03:25Maybe we should try doing the whole Browns ball thing
03:28because we've seen a disgusting, horrible, no good, very bad approach
03:33from both the offense and the defense
03:35and even players that we feel really, really confident in on this team.
03:40Like Harold Fannin fumbled the ball today.
03:42Jared first had some pretty bad plays today.
03:44Even Denzel Ward got beat.
03:46Miles Harden got beat consistently.
03:48And yet still at the end of the day,
03:50when it mattered the most,
03:51they were able to win.
03:53Matt, you looked like you were going to say something there.
03:55I'm just curious about what you would have to say
03:58about this kind of perspective on the whole
04:00guards ball, Browns ball, conundrum, whatever.
04:04So guards ball works mainly because in my opinion,
04:07I think it's the fact that you have 162 games to go.
04:10You have a whole season.
04:11You can mess up.
04:12You can guards ball your way to a loss five, 10 times a year.
04:16Sure.
04:16Nothing really would matter.
04:18This is a sport where it's kind of like life or death
04:21every single game, right?
04:23And it's, you only get 18 chances or 17 for that matter
04:27with a buy.
04:29Can you really do?
04:30I think it is a logical question, but, and again,
04:33I'm not complaining that we're winning.
04:36Absolutely not.
04:37But I do think it is kind of a logical question.
04:39And I wonder also if there is a teeny tiny part of you
04:43that just kind of wishes they're like, man, I,
04:47especially against a team like the Titans,
04:48that's one in five.
04:50Can we just have a blowout?
04:52Can we just dominate from start to finish?
04:54That's all we want.
04:54Yeah.
04:55And can we, I'm sorry to do this on the fly.
04:57Can you get Watson 09 ready to go?
04:58Cause I think he'll touch on that real quick.
05:00Uh, I guess my counterpoint would be,
05:02I saw it two weeks ago against the New York jets,
05:04the Browns quote unquote Browns balled themselves into a loss there
05:09because they put themselves too far behind the eight ball early on in the
05:12game and Deshaun Watson didn't look good down the stretch.
05:18There were still some issues.
05:19And again, that's an example of, you know, like Jack, like I did it again.
05:25Like Matt said, uh, you don't have 162 games like the guardians do to kind of
05:31work out the kinks a little bit here.
05:33You got 17 games.
05:34And if you stack the losses, like in that jets game,
05:37instead of stacking the winds, like you're doing now,
05:39your season could change to Sean Watson touched on that a little bit after
05:42the game today.
05:43You just got to ride the wave and you gotta be in,
05:45you gotta be present in the moment.
05:46Honestly, you know, it can switch.
05:48You know, I was on a team where we started 0 and 4 and we won nine straight
05:51headed to the playoffs.
05:52And then, you know,
05:53you see teams also where they win six straight and be six and one.
05:56And then obviously the season turns upside down.
05:59You just take it one week at a time, one game at a time.
06:01Um, you can try to build off this,
06:03build off this, this energy and this chemistry,
06:05but also understand that, you know, after Mondays,
06:08you got that 24 hour rule.
06:10It's on to the next opponent.
06:11We're going to enjoy it tonight.
06:12Watch the film in the morning.
06:13And tomorrow afternoon,
06:14it's on the Pittsburgh and we have a big divisional rival on the road.
06:18So why I've been so like taking these wins to the 18th degree of excitement
06:24weekend and week out is because even if it is fool's gold,
06:29I'm going to try to have fun along the ride because in week one against the
06:33Jaguars, when I sat down to watch the game,
06:34it felt like I was clocking into work and a job that I hated.
06:38It was like, okay, we're going to watch this thing.
06:40We're going to watch the Sean Watson struggle.
06:42I'm going to go complain about it after the game on the fan final call.
06:45And then we'll move on with our day.
06:49They're providing excitement in a world that I didn't think was going to be
06:53exciting.
06:54I thought that this football season was going to be more focused on what was
06:57going on on Friday and Saturday nights,
06:59as opposed to on Sunday afternoons.
07:01And now we're in a situation where they might flex the game into prime time next
07:07week against the Steelers.
07:09We're having articles written left and right about whether or not the Browns
07:12would actually re-sign to Sean Watson and bring him back for a couple more years
07:16after how bad this entire tenure has been.
07:19We're talking about how successful a potential career of Casey Concepcion and
07:23Denzel Boston could be.
07:25That's the things that we're talking about here.
07:27And I think that's where the excitement comes from.
07:29And then, yeah, in the back of my head, when we're later on down the line,
07:33or maybe in a bi-week, we can talk about how have they not learned from this
07:36week in and week out.
07:37But for the time being, I'm just riding the wave, like Deshaun said.
07:40And do you remember two years ago when we had all these expectations and we're
07:45like, oh, Nick Chubb's going to come back and Deshaun's going to come back and
07:48we won't have to deal with the injury bug.
07:50And we just came back from 11 wins.
07:52And it was just such a disappointment.
07:55And now we're like, two years later, the whole narrative literally flipped on
08:02its head.
08:02Yeah.
08:04And I couldn't agree with you more, Matt.
08:07And I think we've had a little bit of conversation, too, about, you know, the
08:12last time that they had started four and two, or like the last time they were in
08:15first place in the AFC North this late into the season was that 2019 team.
08:20And what happened?
08:21Freddie Kitchens and the rest of the team had no idea how to be a first place team.
08:27They had no idea how to stack wins and continue that.
08:29Well, I haven't seen the same characterization this year from Todd Munkin, from this team.
08:38And obviously, your team's a reflection of your head coach.
08:41But, you know, I think when Todd Munkin was hired, and obviously Todd Munkin had the experience
08:45of being on that 2019 team.
08:47You go, you start four and two, and then the bottom completely falls out.
08:50And then Freddie Kitchens is a one and done.
08:52And, you know, we set sail with Kevin Stefanski.
08:54When Todd Munkin was hired here, a lot of the conversation was about what he had done in
08:59Baltimore, what he had done with Lamar Jackson.
09:02And could he turn Deshaun Watson or Shador Sanders into a Lamar Jackson light?
09:07What I was thinking of on the drive-in today was this is also the same coach that is a
09:12national
09:13champion at Georgia and a head coach at Southern Miss at a group of five school.
09:18He is very familiar with what do we know about college teams and even high school teams?
09:24They're not the same week one to week seven to week 10 to week 12.
09:29They grow.
09:30And if it's a good team with good coaching, they're going to get better as the season progresses.
09:34I think that maybe Todd Munkin's leaning a little bit more on his college experience sometimes,
09:38looking at this almost like a college team.
09:41There's so many young players all over the place.
09:44And we're basically going to treat Deshaun Watson like he's a rookie player or somebody that
09:48hasn't had all that much experience in the NFL because he had a two-year hiatus.
09:51But I watched it happen in Georgia.
09:54I watched me have success in Southern Miss all over the college football.
09:58Maybe we can do that same thing here.
10:00I don't think that there's this fool's gold that's going on.
10:04And I don't think that this is something that's going to completely fall off because I feel like
10:09the right guy is in charge.
10:11It seems to me like just like Todd Munkin was the home run hire that Andrew Barry and Jimmy
10:16Haslam had been looking for, which is wild to say, because after that Jacksonville game,
10:21I thought that he was going to get fired before the end of the season.
10:24When I say that he played poorly, like at certain points today, he played poorly.
10:29At certain points today, he played awesome.
10:32And then overall, you take it all into account.
10:35One big Deshaun Watson pie, it was fine.
10:40There was some left to be desired.
10:43And I appreciate you calling me a sports writer.
10:45I am not a sports writer.
10:46I'm barely a radio host.
10:48Okay.
10:50But we have more to talk about than just crapping on Deshaun Watson.
10:54I watch the game.
10:55I do my best to evaluate.
10:56I do my best to talk to people in the know that know what the hell they're talking about.
11:02I'm not going to come on here if he doesn't play that well and be like, well, you know, he's
11:07resilient.
11:08Yeah.
11:08You could still be resilient.
11:09You'd still be the cardiac Browns.
11:11He can still be the most clutch quarterback in the NFL right now, while also not putting together the greatest
11:18game of all time.
11:19And me, you know, bowing, like praising him for the next hour and a half about, wow, Deshaun Watson, you
11:25had that fourth quarter comeback.
11:26Hell yeah, that was awesome.
11:28But I'm still going to look at it as it is.
11:30It's also a much different evaluation with Deshaun because I don't believe that he's going to be here next year.
11:35He's not your long-term answer.
