BEREA, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – No team in football is a bigger flop in Week 1 than the Browns are.
It’s a remarkable, inexplicable, unexplainable trend that has defined the post-1999 expansion era.
The Browns are a staggering and embarrassing 1-21-1 in Week 1.
The ineptitude is quite impressive.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski doesn’t even want to think, let alone talk, about it.
“I really don’t worry about that. I don’t,” Stefanski said. “I worry about trying to go 1-0 versus a good football team on the road. I can promise you there are a lot of guys in here who are brand new to this organization and new players. They do not really concern themselves about the past.”
Stefanski hadn’t even begun his football coaching career the last time the Browns won an opener. He joined Penn’s staff in 2005 as the assistant director of football operations.
It all started with a soul crushing 43-0 welcome back to the NFL from the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1999 and the franchise has never fully recovered since.
Three years later they lost to the Chiefs, 40-39, in 2002 because linebacker Dwayne Rudd was flagged for tossing his helmet in celebration of what he thought was a game-ending sack, but Kansas City got to kick a winning field goal with no time on the clock.
The last time the Browns started a season 1-0 George W. Bush was president, Goodies by Ciara featuring Petey Pablo was the top pop song on the charts, a gallon of gas cost less than $2 and Jeff Garcia completed 15 of 24 passes for 180 yards and a touchdown and ran for another score in a 20-3 win over the Ravens on September 12, 2004.
During the current 17-game winless streak to kick off a season, the Browns have debuted eight new head coaches and 13 different starting quarterbacks with losses.
The Browns have lost just seven of their openers since 2005 by less than a touchdown. Four losses have been by more than 20 points and nine of them by double digits.
The average margin of defeat in openers since 2005: 13 points.
They’ll always have that 2018 21-21 tie against the Steelers at home to celebrate.
But it’s just one game, right?
Since 2005, eight times the Browns have bounced back with victories in Week 2, including the last three seasons. Last year they won three in a row after losing at Kansas City 33-29 and in 2020 they ripped off four straight victories following a 38-6 drubbing in Baltimore, Stefanski’s Browns debut.
“It is a long season, so at the end of the day I guess one loss doesn't matter, but it can be a tone setter sometimes,” running back Nick Chubb said.
Just twice – in 2007 and 2020 – have the Browns finished the season with a winning record.
All-Pro left guard Joel Bitonio, the longest tenured member of the team along with long snapper Charley Hughlett, smiled Thursday when asked where winning a season opener ranks on his bucket list.
“Right now, it's huge,” Bitonio said. “It's our next game. So it would be great to win this game I know I haven't won one since I've been here. So it would be huge.”
Bitonio has pretty much seen and suffered through it all with the Browns, yet even he can’t explain the consistency of epic Week 1 failures.
“I mean, there was a few years when we were really bad. So that's part of it,” Bitonio said.
Bitonio and the Browns look at Sunday’s game in Carolina as another fresh start.
“We've been in some ones and then we've laid some eggs too,” Bitonio said. “So it's part of it, but I don't think any of that really matters anymore. It's a new team, it's new players and we're exited for the challenge this week.”
It’s probably a bad time to mention the last time the Browns won an opener on the road was 1994 – a 28-20 victory at Cincinnati led by Bill Belichick.
“Didn’t know that, so thank you,” linebacker Anthony Walker quipped.
“Every game is important. Week 1 is important because it’s the next game, the first game, so we’ll take that, this is our first opportunity to go 1-0.”
For the players, 1-0 is the goal.
For fans, it would be a once in a generation miracle.
