Berea, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – Sports can be a funny thing.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is 3-0 against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. He’s already appeared in a Super Bowl. But he hasn’t beaten the Browns.
Burrow is 0-4 against Cleveland in his young career but no one in Berea is willing to say – or believe – that they, the Browns, are in Burrow’s head.
“No. Again, he is a really, really good football player,” head coach Kevin Stefanski said. “I have a ton of respect for him, for Coach Taylor and for that team. They are coming off of the Super Bowl.”
No one was willing to go there.
“I don't think so,” safety John Johnson III said. “I think he's been a winner from what I know like his whole life, so I mean I don't think so. I think he's a poised guy but when it comes on Sunday we gotta go out there and get the best of him.”
While the Bengals are rarely shy about expressing themselves, the Browns remain experts at sidestepping any questions that have the potential to produce bulletin board material for the opposition.
“He's up there,” Johnson said. “I mean we just saw last week he had a match up against Mahomes and he came out with a win. So I don't know a specific rank, but he's definitely in a conversation with the best in the league right now.”
Burrow earned AFC Offensive Player of the Week honors after throwing for 286 yards and a pair of touchdowns in the win over Kansas City.
It’s not like Burrow has been terrible against Cleveland either.
In those four losses to the Browns, Burrow has completed 68.3% of his passes for 1,236 yards with eight touchdowns, four interceptions and a rating of 92.6.
“He's a special quarterback,” cornerback Denzel Ward said. “He has the arm strength, obviously, the accuracy.
He gets his guys the ball. He can make every throw on the field and he knows how to run the offense and analyze defenses as well. He's a great quarterback.
Great quarterback.”
While the Browns’ success against Burrow and the Bengals might be a mystery, what Cleveland’s defense can expect to face Sunday isn’t.
“They like throwing the ball. They don't hide it,” Johnson said. “They don't do a lot of motions. They just line up and say we're gonna beat you. So I think that's when we're at our best when we can just line up one on one, win your match up and like we said in the past, we've done a good job, so we gotta keep it up.”
The Bengals seem to be getting hot again at the right time.
They haven’t lost since Halloween, a 32-13 at FirstEnergy Stadium, to pull into a first place tie with the Ravens at 8-4 while the Browns are coming off back-to-back wins for the first time this season and are in a can’t lose situation the rest of the season.
“If we win out, we’ve kind of got a good shot, but it's just one week at a time,” Johnson said. “We want to go 1-0, like you said. They've been hot and you wanna play your best football in December and January. So we got two games under our belt and we’ve just got to win this one.”
Since returning to the NFL in 1999, divisional opponents have feasted on the Browns, except for Cincinnati in recent years. The Browns have won five straight games and eight of the last nine against their in-state rivals.
Adding to the intrigue this week, receiver Ja’Marr Chase is healthy and will be on the field after missing the first meeting this season between the teams.
“I like matchups like those and enjoy those matchups, so definitely looking forward to him being back and going against those guys,” Ward said. “They’ve got great receiving group, great quarterback obviously. I think it will just be a great matchup – offense and defense.”
Chase ripped the Browns on a podcast this summer and said cornerback Greg Newsome wasn’t elite. The Browns defense hasn’t forgotten.
“It’s kind of floating around the building, guys joking around saying it, but at the end of the day we just gotta go out there and compete,” Johnson said.
Trash talk is part of sports. The Browns are willing to let the Bengals do as much of it as they want.
“I feel like on the field it’s not that bad, especially when it’s in these games we have been getting the better of them,” Ward said. “But I would say just the aura of this game is kind of like a ticky-tacky, chitter-chattery game. But on the field it’s just all about competing.”