The 2023 season for the Cleveland Browns has been an unpredictable, wild ride.
It’s been one of the most Browns-like seasons in memory. Almost any time something could go wrong it did. Deshaun Watson was injured, then back, then lost for the season, Nick Chubb was lost for the season with a gruesome knee injury in Week 2, Denzel Ward, Juan Thornhill, Grant Delpit and more members of the NFL’s best defense have missed time with injuries, the punter and kicker both getting injured in the middle of a pivotal game. Joe Flacco was signed off his couch to become the fourth starting quarterback for the team.
All that and more has happened to the Browns this season. Hell, on Thursday night, leading wide receiver Amari Cooper was a late scratch due to a heel injury.
It’s been that story, almost exactly, since 1999.
But this ending couldn’t be more different than nearly every other to come before it. Thursday night was the team’s 11th win of the season. Before the weekend slate begins, there are nine teams in the league that have nine wins or more. Eight of those nine teams have started the same quarterback in each contest.
The Browns are the ninth.
“We find a way, no matter what,” says running back Kareem Hunt.
These things don’t just happen in the NFL. What Cleveland has done this year is uncanny. When everything goes wrong they just find a way to make it right, over and over again. It doesn’t matter who is in the lineup, who is on injured reserve or who the opponent is. This team has shown time and time again that it will find a way.
It’s the opposite of what the Browns have been for more than two decades. How much of it can carry over after this magical season is yet to be seen, but it’s easy to see that a culture has been established that just hasn’t existed ever before with this franchise. Head coach Kevin Stefanski deserves the bulk of the credit for that. Given everything that’s gone against this team throughout the year, it would have been easy to roll over, kick the can down the road and say ‘just wait until next year!’ like so many other teams have before.
Instead, the Browns tried to go 1-0 every week. They’ve won games against some of the best teams in football with P.J. Walker and Dorian Thompson-Robinson starting at quarterback. They took on the attitude of the head coach and changed the culture for the better. Stefanski should win the NFL’s Coach of the Year award because of how this season has played out. He entered the year as a coach on the hot seat and ends it as unquestionably one of the best in football.
There are few units across the NFL more dominant than the Browns defense. They’re capable of taking over any game they play in. Flacco, at the ripe age of 38, is doing things that few quarterbacks in the NFL ever have. Thursday night he became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for 250 or more yards and multiple touchdowns in his first five games with a new franchise, according to ESPN. It’s not a stretch to say that he’s been the best quarterback the Browns have had since returning to action in 1999, and it’s only been five games. How this type of lightning in a bottle was captured we’ll never know.
With all the things that have gone wrong, but the magical ride continuing, it’s time to call the Browns what they just might be.
A team of destiny.
“We know we’re a good team,” says offensive guard Wyatt Teller, the only member of the Week 1 starting offensive line that hasn’t missed time this season. “Coach kind of started with, ‘if we win the division, then we get to go to the playoffs, then we get a chance. Then we’ll get to make our own destiny. That’s a positive. We’re starting to do it, but there’s still a lot to go.”
This Browns team is heading to the playoffs, and despite everything listed above and whatever is yet to come, is capable of winning the Super Bowl.
Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But it’s possible, and that’s something that has never truly been said about a post-1999 Browns team. The ride in 2002 was fun, and who knows what would have happened if not for the drop Dennis Northcutt had on that third down in Pittsburgh. The 2020 season felt like a rebirth for the franchise, but thanks to a pandemic, few were able to witness it in person or with friends and family.
This year feels different. This year, even with bad news seemingly around every corner, feels magical.
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