The 2020-2021 NFL thread

Thomas Veil said:
☹️ Oh man. Browns 17, Chiefs 22. So near and yet so far.
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Oh well, I was hoping for the Bills to play the AFC Championship at home, but a Bills/Chiefs matchup is what everybody wants to see: they clearly are the best 2 teams this season.
 
Funny story, but when I was in HS we played against Drew Brees in the playoffs when he was at Austin Westlake HS.

At the time my team was ranked #9 in TX and his team was ranked #1. They killed us 41-0. I remember that score because at the time it was one of our worst defeats as a program and also a shutout. Westlake and Brees killed everyone that year and even won the State Championship by 40 points. So at the end, I didn't feel so bad losing to them by 41. They beat everyone by 40+ that year lol
 
I remember when one of the area high schools faced a team from another state and broke their 212 game winning streak.
 
Thomas Veil said:
☹️ Oh man. Browns 17, Chiefs 22. So near and yet so far.
Click to expand...

We were both cheering for the Browns, even though one of us is a Steelers fan :D They came a long way, tough division (minus the Bungles ...), looked good against Pitt, bummer.

Who's the guy playing QB for Tampa Bay? Rookie?
 
Indulge me a bit here.

The term "long suffering Browns fan" has unfortunately been used so often it's almost a cliché. It's not just since 1999 when the expansion Browns came back; it was the three years before that when we didn't have a team. That's over two decades of bad or no football.

I'm old enough to remember the years we were in the AFC championship game and Bernie Kosar & company almost, almost took us to the Super Bowl. That was the last time we had a team that felt like a real winner, the way this one does.

For the last twenty years, Sunday afternoons for me have pretty much been a masochistic ritual of watching the game with a sense of dread, hoping against hope only to see us either getting blown out of the water or finding a creative way to lose a close winnable game. Just thinking about that tightens my gut, and for those twenty years the way I dealt with the anger--if it was warm enough out--was to go out and cut the grass, just to expend some energy and work off my mad-on. If it wasn't warm enough, my wife knew to stay away from me for a few hours. :brickwall:

I don't think many of us saw the recent 1-15 and 0-16 seasons as the beginning of better things. But we finally got a front office that knew how to construct a team, and with the exception of one fallback year (thanks, Freddie Kitchens), we've been on an upward trajectory since.

This year we went 11-5 and never lost two games in a row. I've enjoyed (almost) every contest, and it finally feels like we've been released from football hell. I have a lot of faith in Kevin Stefanski. He's a young creative coach who, when he makes a mistake, makes new ones. That's not a joke. When Belichick was here he kept making the same old ones. Mention the words "Metcalf up the middle" to any Browns fan and watch them roll their eyes. At least Stefanski seems to learn from his errors.

All this is in the service of telling you that yesterday when we lost that game against Kansas City, I was surprised to find myself coming away happy. Oh, not about the loss. I'd have loved to have kept on going into this year's championship game. But we put up a good fight. (Hell, we scored 14 more points than Baltimore did the day before!) And after 20+ years of gut-churning misery, I can finally look back at the season and think, "What a ride!" and look forward to the season to come instead of sulking about our biennial search for a new head coach and GM.

In northern Ohio right now and for Browns Backers everywhere, life is good. 🙂

Alli said:
So disappointing. And an awful final game for Drew Brees. Hopefully the team can stay healthy next year.
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He's still a great player. I have no idea whether he'll come back or choose to retire before his skills diminish.

DT said:
We were both cheering for the Browns, even though one of us is a Steelers fan :D They came a long way, tough division (minus the Bungles ...), looked good against Pitt, bummer.
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"Bungles"...now that's an AFC North person talking. 😅
 
Thomas Veil said:
That's over two decades of bad or no football.
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Well, there was '02, when they made the playoffs but were edged out in the first game by the [redacted] (I have developed a loathing for that team because of that stupid XL fiasco). And they were 10-6 in '07 but just missed the WC cut. So there were two or three non-horrible seasons in there. And, really, that 0-16 season generated a lot of empathy for them.
 
And now for something completely different: a Super Bowl with Tom Brady in it. 🙄

I’m already rooting for the other side, whether it’s the Bills or the Chiefs.
 

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