This time, the Cleveland Browns left Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger beaten and in tears. Who would have believed it? The personal whipping boys of the Steelers since their National Football League resurrection, the Browns rose up Sunday night in their wild-card opportunity in the very place that has haunted them, Heinz Field, and made believers of those who had dispatched them for years and still dismissed them.
First, though, the Browns had to believe in themselves. Not just mouth the words, which players are good at. It is part of their credo, the cliché that uplifts them when all others would put them down. Before Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield recited this credo, a person could almost hear a Gregorian chant, deep and low, in the background:
“No one believed in us but us. No one believed in us but us. No one believed in us but us.”
It is a foundational chip-on-the-shoulder for the little quarterback who could and his little team that never had. I mean, the Browns had only been to the playoffs once—2002—never had won. They had lost 17 games in a row in Heinz Field; Browns blood or something akin to it (catsup?) seemed to a permanent stain on the turf and their soul.
For a team to truly believe in itself, I believe it must have a believer—the right believer—to make the possible believable to players who turn it into reality. The Browns had found that very person, it seemed, after wandering in the NFL coaching desert year after year. Since before Kevin Stefanski walked through the door to take charge of this team, Paul DePodesta, chief strategy officer, believed in him. He believed Stefanski could change the way the Browns think, the way they play, the way they seize opportunity and do not falter when seemingly surrounded by adversity. DePodesta wanted to hire Stefanski before in 2019 when the Browns instead promoted Freddie Kitchens, who had showed some right stuff during a try at offensive coordinator.
When that decision resulted in bad coaching déjà vu, which the Browns had been experiencing since 1999, DePodesta, the first believer and one who encountered much skepticism since he was a “baseball guy” tried again. Guess what? DePodesta seems to have been right. Stefanski turned the Browns into believers.
Of course, it could not be that easy. When the team would seem to have needed its truest of believers, its changer of a defeatist culture into a can-do one, he was— pfft—banished to the basement of his house following a positive COVID-19 test, the only type of test on which Cleveland players and coaches ever seemed to score “positive”.
The Browns not only were without Stefanski but also other coaches, four in all, including offensive line guru Bill Callahan. And just when his Pro Bowl-guard Joel Bitonio had been sidelined by the coronavirus, and a makeshift O-Line had to be stitched together to protect Mayfield from a supposedly fearsome Steelers front that seemed to have few cracks through which Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt could prance and dance.
Bitonio’s replacement was Michael Dunn, from the practice squad, and when he, too, suffered an injury in the fourth quarter, Blake Hance, whom Mayfield had only just met, had to play. General Manager Andrew Berry had pulled Hance off the New York Jets practice squad as insurance before the Browns beat the Steelers in the final regular-season game to get into the playoffs. Hance was the only available O-lineman left. Kendall Lamm was busy filling in for Pro Bowl tackle Jack Conklin whose hamstring had been injured. (If you want a behind-the-scenes chronology of the week that was, check out Peter King’s Football Morning in America on NBC Sports Pro Football Talk.)
The Believer Browns had spent the week preparing for the most important game in years by not practicing—well, once, on Friday—and having the NFL order their facility shut three times because of the virus. “Soon as the COVID news hit,” Mayfield said, “we knew everybody would count us out.” Couldn’t blame them. But Mayfield did.
Mike Priefer took Stefanski’s place. Priefer is usually the special teams coordinator.
Offensive coordinator Brad Van Pelt called the plays that Stefanski usually calls.
And, coaches and players even went to Pittsburgh separately, the team flying the players there, and the coaches driving themselves or being chauffeured.
JuJu Smith-Schuster, Steeler receiver, could not help but notice the Browns’ goings-on and, being a football history buff, added disrespectful insult to COVID injury. Mayfield extracted the ungrammatical gist—“The Browns is the Browns”—from JuJu’s longer rant about Cleveland’s recent history of ineptitude and put it out there for all to see and marinate in. “I’m just happy to be playing them again,” JuJu said confidently.
JuJu’s happiness lasted until the first snap. Pittsburgh star center Maurkice Pouncey sailed the ball over Roethlisberger’s head with such velocity that it wound up in the end zone where there were so many Browns around the ball it looked as if they were having a picnic. When Karl Joseph recovered the ball, the rout was on—and in only 14 seconds.
Before the first quarter ended, Roethlisberger had thrown three interceptions, the Browns were on their way to 28 points to which they added 7 more for an NFL-record 35 in the first half of a post-season game. When the Browns’ offense stalled during the third quarter, Priefer, who was a Browns fan growing up in Cleveland, had the same response even Believers had: “I could understand why people were a little bit nervous,” he told the media “. . . I was a little nervous.” Big Ben was on his way to throwing for 501 yards and four touchdowns but four interceptions proved too much an off-set.
Mayfield (21 of 34, 263 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, and a 115.2 rating) was all but perfect and, more important, timely and clutch in his response to Big Ben, who picked on a defense as badly weakened as the offense by COVID and injury.
There was much joy in Believeland, including messages from LeBron James, progenitor of that term, at the conclusion of the 48-37 Browns’ ticket to Kansas City for playoff Round Two. Though it is unlikely that it will be quite as easy in Arrowhead Stadium against the NFL champion Chiefs, Baker Mayfield has history with former MVP Patrick Mahomes from their collegiate days, Mayfield at Oklahoma and Magician Mahomes at Texas Tech. Their aerial wars were legendary, and Mayfield, with the better team, aced the test. Now, based on past accomplishment, it is Mahomes who has the better team.
Of course, that’s what everyone said about Pittsburgh until the Browns turned doubters into believers and, as a bonus, were so good it made Ben Roethlisberger weep.
