Berea, OH (92.3 The Fan) – During training camp country music star Brad Paisley, a longtime Browns fan, visited.
On Wednesday it was rapper Snoop Dogg – a well-known Steelers fan – who dropped by unannounced, and if the Browns keep winning the celebrities will be coming out of the woodwork to hang out with their new favorite team.
“It’s always fun to root for the underdog,” guard Joel Bitonio said. “We haven’t been very good for these past few years.”
That’s an understatement.
The Browns have spent the better part of 19 years establishing themselves as the laughing stock of professional sports providing layups for late night comedians’ monologues, but the jokes have subsided, and no one is laughing any more.
Head coach Hue Jackson, who has already tripled his win total from his first two seasons, cautioned his team not to get too far ahead of themselves despite an impressive 2-2-1 start to the season in which they could easily be 4-1 or even 5-0.
“We have not done anything. We have not qualified for anything. We have won two football games. We have played five last time I checked. We have done nothing,” Jackson said Thursday. “Even when we do something, we will have done nothing. We have a lot of work to do here.
“We are going to keep this team grounded and work in how we go about our business. That is what Cleveland is about – people that work hard earn what they get and get what they earn and keep finding ways to do it every day. That is just who we are going to be. I just think that is the only way to do this. We can’t get caught up in anything else.”
Veteran receiver Jarvis Landry, acquired in March to be a cornerstone of general manager John Dorsey’s roster overhaul, cut off a question Thursday in which he was asked if the Browns have finally arrived.
“We have not arrived,” Landry said. “We have not arrived. We got a lot of things to work on. We’ve got a lot of things to get better on – special teams, defense offense – we got a lot of things to get better on.”
Landry’s grounded approach was echoed by Bitonio.
“As a whole, we have not played well enough to be like ‘Man, we are unstoppable,’” Bitonio said. “It is not like we are 5-0 right now or something like that. We have had a lot of mistakes on offense where if we can clean this up, we can be a lot better.
“You look back, and we scored 12 points. That usually does not win you games in the NFL. Then the week before, we have three or four turnovers where it is like, ‘Man, we could have really blew these guys out,’ but we had some turnovers and lost. Coach Jackson is not going to let us take anything for granted. He is really pushing us at practice, making sure we are focused on the next opponent.”
There’s no question that the Browns are improved significantly, on both sides of the ball.
Offensively, they are averaging 22.8 points per game, up from just 14.6 a year ago, and 376.0 yards per game, a significant bump from the 308.9 per game in 2017. The Browns are also currently ranked second in rushing per game, averaging 144.6 per contest after finishing with a 107.125 average last season.
Defensively the story is turnovers.
Cleveland has already forced 15 takeaways – tops in the league – and have a plus-eight turnover ratio – also No. 1 in the NFL through five games after finishing dead last in both categories last year with 13 takeaways and a minus-28 ratio.
“We are not emphasizing any more than we did last year or the year before,” Jackson said of the big turnover swing by the defense. “It has always been something that we truly believe in as a staff and as a football team. We just have more guys who are capable making plays to get to the ball.
“A healthy Myles Garrett has something to do with that. An emerging Larry Ogunjobi has something to do with that. Those guys have done a good job Year 2 in Coach Williams’ system. I think all of those things are factored in, but at the end of the day I am going to give all of the credit to the players because I think we have some fine players who are making really good football plays, getting the ball out and taking the ball away.”
Gregg Williams’ defense is also giving up three fewer points per game while the Browns are scoring 8.2 more points per game – that’s an 11.2 scoring swing through the first five weeks compared to last season.
As exciting as the first five weeks have been, linebacker Christian Kirksey joined his teammates in keeping their start in perspective with 11 games remaining on the schedule, including eight of them against teams that are at or above .500.
“We do not get too high. This is Week 6. We have a lot of football to be played,” Kirksey said. “We are sitting here at 2-2-1. We do not want to get a big head and say, ‘This is the time. This is the year.’ We want to keep chopping wood every day, keep working hard and preparing like we are right now. We just want to stay focused on the next game.
“Right now, that is L.A. coming in here. They are trying to win a ball game, too. We have to make sure that we do not allow them to win. We just have to stay focused. We do not want to get too far ahead or too far back. We just want to control it right now and keep moving forward.”
