The Cleveland Browns don’t exactly have a storied history, particularly in their current form. Since returning to the league in 1999, they’ve made the postseason only twice and last year’s Wild Card Round win over the Steelers was their first playoff victory since 1994.
They do, however, have a long list of quarterbacks that have come and gone with varying stints in Cleveland.
Andy Baskin and Daryl Ruiter of Audacy’s “It’s Always Gameday in Cleveland” podcast are on a mission this season to spot all 33 of those quarterbacks – well, their jerseys at least. Sunday’s preseason home opener gave a glimpse of that.
“I saw DeShone Kizer jersey,” Baskin said (1:29 in player above) “I saw Baker Mayfield. I saw Bernie Kosar. I saw Colt McCoy. I know I saw a couple other ones, too. Nick Chubb took the win, though. There were more Chubb jerseys than any other jersey that I saw… I thought I saw a couple more quarterback jerseys.”
Ruiter was counting off the Browns quarterbacks as Baskin named them. And that gave him an idea.
“You need to channel your inner Zack Meisel and you need to do random jersey sightings, because welcome back to the press box. This is what we do in the press box,” Ruiter replied. “We’re right behind the fans, so every week it’s entertaining to see what obscure jersey is going to be worn amongst the fans in front of us.”
For the uninitiated, Meisel covers the Cleveland Guardians for “The Athletic” and started a random jersey sightings hashtag for tweets such as this one.
Ruiter keeps a spreadsheet of all of the Browns quarterbacks since 1999 and he has a mission for Baskin.
“I was actually going to pull up the spreadsheet and start checking them off and tell you which ones you still needed to look for,” Ruiter said. “We should play a game. Can Andy Baskin spot every quarterback’s jersey to play for the Browns since 1999 in the crowd throughout the duration of the Browns season?”
Baskin is up for the challenge.
“I will tweet out that picture. I’ll put it on my Instagram,” he said. “And GamedayCLE Instagram as well.”
It may be hard for Baskin and Ruiter to find some of these jerseys, however. You have to be a diehard fan to have a Nick Mullens, Kevin Hogan, or Connor Shaw jersey. Yes, those are real quarterbacks that played for the Browns in the last eight seasons.
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