Who Is The South Beach Drug Dealer With The Head Set?

 

The only guy that needed a win more than Stefanski was Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel.  These were two bad teams that met on a collision course, and whoever lost this game was going to get placed on the good old "coaching hot seat".  Miami has the worst rushing defense in the league, so this matchup definitely favored the Browns.  A crappy windy day is not what you are looking for when you are Miami, #32 versus the run and #29 trying to run the ball.  The only question was if Stefanski was going to take this obvious edge and toss that out the window to have little weak armed Dillon Gabriel chuck it around in the rain.  Every Browns fan knows how Stefanski loves to outsmart himself.  "Hmmm, we can run it and they can't stop the run.  But if we run it, that's what they'd be expecting us to do.  Maybe what we need to do is pass the ball 60 times!  They'd never see that coming!  Why... that would be GENIUS!".  

Thankfully that didn't happen.  Judkins got 25 carries and they ground out an ugly win, the kind of game old beat writers like Dennis Maniloff get boners about because it's "Old School Browns Football" (which is largely a myth because on the rare occasions when they have been good, they have had good QB/receiver play).  This is exactly the kind of game that the team is built to win, which again demonstrates how the idea of building a dome out by the airport is all about the Haslems pocketing money from overpriced concessions as opposed to creating advantages with the region's geography.  Looking at the half full stands, the Haslems must have been thinking "this would be full if it wasn't raining", when a more accurate description would be "this would be full if the organization wasn't run so poorly".  Whatever.  That Grift Palace is coming. 

I don't know who has a worse QB situation.  Gabriel is obviously a backup level NFL quarterback that has a role as a "game manager you can roll with for a couple weeks if you have no other choice".  The Browns are trying to figure out if they can somehow adjust him into a "guy we can win with" type player as even they must have known when they drafted him that he was not a "guy that can win games for us" player.  If you look over at that Miami sideline, they are on the hook with Tua for $50M for the next three years and he looks a hell of a lot like Dillon Gabriel.  Does that mean the Browns can have enough success with Gabriel to have everyone debating "should they use that much cap space on the little QB with the weak arm"?  The answer to that question might be "Yes" if your roster has peak Tyreek Hill on it and "No" if it has whoever the Dolphins skipped into Cleveland with on Sunday.  The Browns defense made Tua look terrible.  Kudos to the defense.  

McDaniel must have had an inkling that this was a bad matchup.  I say that because he looks like a dance club owner that has been on a three day coke bender and can't remember his kid's names.  That's the thing in the NFL.  When you are this little squirrely guy with designer sunglasses, an afro and capris while winning games you are "quirky".  When you are losing, you are "a clown all hopped up on goo-goo juice that needs a good assbeating from the fans".  It showed how desperate the Dolphins were when they decided to bring Quinn Ewers in for the fourth quarter.  Ewers looks BAD and got lucky he didn't get picked off twice.  If the Browns have a two score lead on you, that defense is friggen nasty.  I like that Schwartz keeps up the pressure to try and force mistakes, because it seemed to me that as soon as the game hit 24-6, Stefanski was trying to run the clock out even though it was about 2:30p.  Of course, the Browns will lose a game later in the year with some high risk/high reward defensive call that will blow up in their faces, but the team stinks so who cares?

The Browns are out of their rough patch of the schedule, and now have arguably three winnable games coming up over the next month.  At New England next week is a tough spot unless the Patriots acknowledge that Drake Maye's brain is leaking out of his ears after that hit that knocked him out of this week's Titans game.  However, the Jets/hobbled Lamar Ravens/Raiders are three games the Browns should be able to compete in.  I will admit a heavy case of Browns Super Fan Schadenfreude in hoping to see the team win just enough of those for the team to be at the bottom of the inevitable "In The Hunt" playoff graphics that start up around Thanksgiving.  There is something about seeing those delusional people's dreams crushed that makes the Holiday Season extra cheery.  

Make no mistake, even though a win is a win, Miami is terrible.  The Browns have a few games circled on their calendars as "shit, we can win this week" games and that was one of them.  They have maybe four of those left this year.  If your happiness is slightly impacted on Browns wins/losses, you'd better soak it up this week.  You'll be back in the dumps this time next Monday after the Patriots manhandle them.  There's a bunch of crappy teams this year, and the Browns masterplan of losing for future greatness" is going to be tested by other franchises looking for their re-set.  The Miami game has put public perception on the Browns straight onto "they totally suck, but they're better than Tennessee and the Jets".  This is the measuring stick of victory right now.

Go Browns.