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Browns media group and fans make Benedict Arnold look loyal
Opinion by Tim Shirer
As we approach the final third of the NFL season, the Cleveland Browns once again have had an unsuccessful season (in terms of being over .500) their 22nd losing season in the 26 since they returned in 1999. The Browns being a pathetic organization is just slightly better the Cleveland Indians of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s in terms of being terrible. The only difference is when the Indians were terrible, they only got media coverage because they existed. The Browns, for some unknown reason get a lot more media attention than they deserve. But let’s get to the topic of this commentary. The fact that Browns fans and the media that cover them are not only hypocrites, but about as loyal as Benedict Arnold.
Let’s start back in 2018 when the team drafted Baker Mayfield and the media 100% told the fans that Mayfield was “The franchise QB the team had been looking for since they returned in 1999.” They pretty much portrayed the Mayfield pick as the greatest draft pick in the history of the NFL. He was going to get the job done, they told their readers, listeners, and viewers before he even touched a football as a Brown. The bought and paid for Cleveland Browns press corps were 100% Baker Bros.
The legend of Baker grew even larger on September 20, 2018, when the then Golden boy Mayfield came into the game against the New York Jets and led the team to their first win after 19 consecutive games where they didn’t notch a victory. The Cleveland media and fan base had begun to search for the perfect sculpture to create the Baker Mayfield Statue that would be larger than Jim Brown’s outside of the Stadium on the lakefront.
Due to no fault of Mayfield the Browns made possibly the worst coaching decision in the history of the franchise when they hired Freddie Kitchen’s to be the new permanent head coach after they fired Hue Jackson midway through the 2018 and decided not to hire interim head coach Greg Williams. They decided to hire the guy who started 2018 as the running backs coach, yes, the running backs coach as the new head coach. As usual, the Browns media didn’t only report on the hire, they 100% endorsed the hire of Kitchens. About 9 games into the 2019 season the Browns media troop turned on Kitchen, they realized they were duped by their bosses Jimmy and Susan Haslam. Don’t worry, it didn’t take the press (writers, TV sports anchors, radio talk show hosts, podcasters) long to fall right back in line with what the Browns brass wanted them to portray, Mayfield was still their franchise QB, and the new coach Kevin Stefanski was the next Paul Brown.
In 2020, the Covid-19 year the Browns got back to relevance in the NFL and made the playoffs going 11-5. They even beat the hated Steelers in the playoffs. Their still golden boy Baker Mayfield had a passer rating of 115.2, in case you don’t know, that’s pretty good. Mayfield, was a hero in Cleveland, deciding where the statue was going to go now was the only thing left to be decided, would it be on the East end of the stadium or the south end? The Browns lost the next week in the divisional round to the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. The media still didn’t blame Mayfield, predictably they blamed the game officials.
Trouble wasn’t far off for the media and fans golden boy Mayfield as the 2021 season. Things started to go bad when prima donna wide receiver Odell Beckham started to complain. He was traded midway through the season. He ended up with the Los Angeles Rams and won a Super Bowl. The Cleveland media needed a scapegoat because they couldn’t blame Beckham because that would look bad. So, Mayfield became the guy that took the full blunt of the Browns media wrath. He was blamed for everything that went bad in Cleveland that season, including the fact that he played through a shoulder injury that required surgery, even though Browns GM Andrew Berry and Head Coach Kevin Stefanski should have made that call, not Mayfield the player.
By March of 2022, the Cleveland Browns media group led by an unnamed reporter who will remain nameless had successfully trashed Mayfield and turned him into the worst human being in Cleveland since the 1930’s Torso Murderer. She wrote articles that he was not liked in the locker room and continually trashed him in her articles, on TV and on the radio any chance she got. She was doing what the Browns wanted her to do. Her click-bait form of media was working. The fans believed every word she said and turned on Mayfield quickly and embraced the March 18, 2022, trade for possible one of the worst human beings ever to wear an NFL uniform in Deshaun Watson. What people from the outside have to understand is in Cleveland, when it comes to the Browns, when a player is no longer useful, calling him a bad player isn’t enough. They feel they must destroy his character.
Mayfield was not happy about the trade and let it be known on social media, was that a mistake? Maybe, but the Cleveland media loved it and pounced even harder on Mayfield. The media badgered their former golden boy for most of the summer until he was finally traded by the Browns to the Carolina Panthers. Browns fans were overjoyed because their former golden boy who they now despised on the level of Jeffery Dahmer was now gone and the Browns were scheduled to play the Panthers opening week and they didn’t have to wait long to root against their former hero Mayfield, the only Browns QB to win a playoff game since Vinny Testaverde in 1994.
The Browns media group was foaming at the mouth over the matchup the first week. The Panthers were going through a rebuild so there was a good chance the Browns would win, they did, barely courtesy of a Cade York (another hyped up golden boy who has since been banished and buried by the Cleveland media) field goal with time running out. It couldn’t have worked out any better for the media crew and fans because now not only was Mayfield gone, but he had lost to their beloved Browns.
On December 4, the much loved (by the media and fans) Watson finally made his Browns debut after serving his 11-game suspension due to sexual misconduct with at least 24 women. This stuff cannot be fabricated, the Cleveland media sold the Browns fan base that this guy was a better option than Mayfield. Four days later on December 8th is when the whole narrative began to collapse on the Browns media and their brainwashed fan base.
Just two days after the Panthers who were in disarray traded Mayfield to the Los Angeles Rams, 48 hours later Mayfield was starting on Thursday night against the Las Vegas Raiders. Mayfield, who Browns fans and media had soundly and forcefully (some still do to this day) portrayed as a guy who could not get the job done under pressure led the Rams to a 17-16 win over the Raiders by throwing the game winning touchdown pass to Van Jefferson with :09 left on the fourth quarter clock. This was the beginning of the end of quite possibly the worst and falsely constructed narrative in the history of Cleveland media.
We now fast forward two years. The Watson era, predictably in everyone’s mind who wasn’t a member of the Browns media group, or the fan base has been a complete and total disaster. Also, predictably the Browns media group and their brainwashed fan base has turned on Watson. To bad, can’t go back both the media group and the fan base sold their sole for Watson back in March of 2022 and there is no going back credibility wise. To make it worse for them is that Baker Mayfield led the Buccaneers to a playoff win after the 2023 season. The Bucs then gave Mayfield a three-year deal and as of week 12 of the 2024 season he is in the top five of many offensive categories and is second in the NFL in TD passes with 24 and a passer rating of 104.1 which is fourth among qualifying QB’s.
There are still some Browns fans holdouts who still think calling a Mayfield fan a “Baker Bro” is cool, nothing anyone can do about that type of middle school mentality. Maybe the most hypocritical thing about the whole pathetic scenario is that many fans now say, “I never thought they should have let him go.” These people are about as believable as the million people who claim to have been at Len Barker’s perfect game in 1981, when in reality there were only 7,290 in attendance that cold, rainy night at Municipal Stadium in May of 1981.
There will be a day of reckoning in the 2026 season at some point as the Browns will play the Buccaneers in Tampa. If Baker Mayfield is still the Bucs QB, it will be pretty interesting. I have been a Buccaneers fan since they came into the NFL in 1976 and am looking forward to the matchup and hope to be in attendance at Raymond James Stadium. Not that they like me anyway, but on that day Browns fans are going to hear what I think of them for the entirety of the 60:00 minute game.
So now you know the story of the Cleveland “Benedict Arnold” Browns media and fans.
POSTED 11/29/2024 16:35
