Chelsey Raucher Photo on Unsplash
Do you know what every Game Day is for the Cleveland Browns in 2020, this The Year That Will Not End, the year that a pandemic has killed so many and tortured all?
Here’s a hint: If Browns Coach Kevin Stefanski were to be played by someone who has been where Stefanski finds himself, it would be inspiring Bill Murray, comic genius.
In a 1993 film Murray played Phil Connors, a weatherman who finds himself trapped living the same day, the same assignment, the same event, the same outcome over and over again: “Groundhog Day.”
It is a film, a day, a stroke of genius that even the late great critic Roger Ebert admitted to having underrated in his original review. “When you find yourself needing the phrase This is like ‘Groundhog Day’ to explain how you feel, a movie has accomplished something,” Ebert wrote in his reappraisal.
That is how I have felt after every Browns’ victory in this heady yet headachy 8-3 season, particularly their last four, including three in a row. To explain what it all means and not keep repeating myself I need that shorthand phrase: This is like “Groundhog Day.” If the winning were to end right now, the season would still be a relative success yet feel less so because we cannot help but want more. More. More. More.
Nothing is enough. Followers and observers do not want to merely win but to shine like teams that are radiant stars in the National Football League firmament. They want blow-outs. They want annihilations. They want perfection.
That is what can happen following consecutive 3-13, 1-15, 0-16, 7-8-1, and 6-10 seasons. It isn’t enough that with a 27-25 victory over the Jaguars Sunday in Jacksonville, Cleveland assured itself of its first non-losing season in 13 years and inched higher (top wild card) and closer to ending the NFL’s longest playoff drought.
It is not enough that an injured team, without players who have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus or have been in close contact with someone who has, can go on the road and escape with a win. The Browns, populated by “Yes . . . But” players, have turned themselves and all who follow them into demanding “Yes . . . But” consumers.
The fact Baker Mayfield, the man who is supposed to be a franchise quarterback and not just the team’s most prominent and pretty face, but instead is the leading candidate for the league’s “Yes . . . But” Player of the Yea, is neither comforting nor reassuring.
This is the Heisman Trophy winner and the 2018 NFL No. 1 draft choice. He should at least play as well on offense as Myles Garrett 2017 No. 1 pick does on defense, shouldn’t he? I mean, Mayfield beat Patrick Mahomes, already NFL MVP and Super Bowl champion, when they were the cover boys for the Big 12 Conference.
While Mahomes prances through the league as if he has magical arms and legs, Mayfield only sometimes fires bullets through keyholes, as he did in connecting on 8-of-11 throws he made to Jarvis Landry for 143 yards and a touchdown. Those were firsts, 100 yards-plus and a TD, this season. When Mayfield and Landry were as warm as the Florida temperature, it seemed as if the Browns offense had two working parts—the run and the pass. Nick Chubb pushed beyond the 100-yard mark—144 on 19 carries—for the third game in a row and scored while Hunt contributed 62 yards on 10 carries.
Yes … but there were other Mayfield moments that have become part of his inconsistent pattern of excellence. Yes, he can throw a low ball to Landry in the end zone that screens the defender away from it . . . but also wing one so high and out of reach that Landry, more open and single-covered, has no chance. He sailed a ball a mile high over the head of Rashard Higgins, who looked like a lonely ship in the Atlantic; not even a net raised high behind the end zone would have been able to corral it.
It was the second week in a row that Mayfield missed with two simple, too-much-time-to-think-about-them-end-zone throws, one under and the other over, throws that would have made his and his team’s lives easier. Yes . . . but the Browns won and that should be appreciated. And yes it was sweet . . . but larger margins of victory against lesser times would be reassuring. Five of the Browns’ eight victories have come by from two to five points. Yes, it makes for excitement . . . but the team is living on a dicey edge.
This is like “Groundhog Day.” Bill Murray has been replaced by Kevin Stefanski and his righthand man Baker Mayfield. Together, they make the Browns’ “Yes . . . But” performances both intriguing and harbingers of Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow and forcing everyone to endure six more weeks of cold torture, if legend is right.
In the case of the Browns, the playoff winter has lasted for all but one of the years since they were reconstituted in 1999. Yes . . . but Cleveland got football back after having it taken from a place that loves it. Shouldn’t that be valued? Yes, it is . . . but not enough.
Yes, Mayfield had a nice statistical line—19-of-29, 258 yards, 2 TDs, 0 INTs, 116.7 passer rating—and his eighth victory . . . but as he admitted, “There were a ton of missed opportunities; just, from my perspective, a lot of missed throws.” That cannot be made light of and will not be against playoff-caliber teams. Having watched Ron Swanson, Mayfield borrowed from the Parks and Rec comedic star and announced: “There are two things I hate more than missing throws, and that’s lying and skim milk. … Skim milk is just water lying about being milk. I have to make those throws.”
That would not be like “Groundhog Day” or milk. It would be like cream rising to the top.
