CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com) – Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans! There’s no game today, and I’m not sure what to do with myself.
Wait a minute, I know exactly what I’ll do. I’m going to sit at this computer and build some stuff. Because that’s what webdorks do, and I am a webdork.
Still, that’s the thing about a Thursday night win. You get the mini-bye whether you want it or not. The team takes four days off, and the fans take ten. This particular Sunday, the Browns are 3-1 and alone in first place in the AFC North, so instead of spending the afternoon yelling at our own team, we get to spend it yelling at everybody else’s.
October scoreboard-watching is a lot different from the one I’ve learned. You see, I know how to do this in December. Most of us learned scoreboard watching the hard way, with a calculator and a draft order chart, rooting for the Jets to win so we could pick third instead of fifth. Our own Jack Duffin has been running a weekly rooting guide since the start of the season, and if you go back and read the early ones, that’s what it was built for. The Browns were favored to land a top-three pick before the season started. His column still tracks the first overall pick odds every week, out of habit or superstition; I’m not sure which.
This week the guide has a new name. Path to the Playoffs. And the first game on the list tells me to root for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Jaguars.
Look, they did us a favor once already. That trade down in 2025 is the reason Mason Graham, KC Concepcion, and Quinshon Judkins are in Berea. So fine. Go Jags. I’ll be on the couch, wearing orange, cheering for teal, and wondering what happened to my life.
FROM +900 TO +300: The numbers, per Jack: the Browns’ playoff odds went from +600 before Week 1, to +900 after the opener, to +725, to +300 heading into today. “I said if the Browns went 3-1, then we would take making the playoffs as a serious consideration,” he writes. Consider it considered. The rooting list is Jaguars over the Bengals, Titans over the Ravens (Jack admits that one is “highly unlikely”), the Bills over the Patriots, the Chiefs over the Raiders, the Cowboys over the Texans, and the Commanders over the Colts in London, where, as Jack puts it, “weird results can happen overseas.” He should know.
My favorite line in the piece is about the draft order, which currently has the Browns picking 27th and the Rams, whose first-rounder we own from the Myles Garrett trade, picking 15th. “The Browns picking higher than the Rams would be a shock outcome for the NFL season when one was expected to have a top three pick and the other being Super Bowl favorites.” Shock outcome. That’s the right way to put it. Our Watercooler preview of the other games calls Jacksonville at Cincinnati the game of the day. I agree. Let the Jaguars go back to their beautiful city with a win and have a couple of days to enjoy the strip malls, pythons, and ginormous bugs that infest their hometown, as only huge, man-eating cockroaches can.
GRAHAM, MAYBE BY BALTIMORE: Yesterday we were counting blessings. Today we’re counting days. Mary Kay Cabot reports that a source wouldn’t be surprised if Mason Graham is back for the Ravens on Oct. 18, which would mean he misses only the Jets game next Sunday. She credits his “old-school toughness” and the three extra days of healing that come with a Thursday injury. In Ask the Insiders, a member asked the obvious follow-up, Graham to IR or no?, and the answer that came back is that the team saying “week to week” points to fewer than four games, so he likely just sits on the inactive list. Another subscriber is already doing IR math on Dillon Gabriel and Kalia Davis. That’s a lot of people reading the injury rules on a Saturday. Welcome to contending.
MF-ING THE SACK: The best thing anybody said this weekend came from Todd Monken, describing his reaction to Deshaun Watson taking a sack on the game-winning drive, the one that pushed Andre Szmyt back to a 56-yarder. “I was (–ing) him taking the sack. What are you doing, for God’s sakes?” he told Cabot. Then he watched the tape, saw Patrick Queen sitting in the slant lane, and changed his mind. “You look back and you go, ‘you know what? He might have thrown a pick there.’” And then, my favorite part: “He thinks he’s right 100% of the time. He’s not right 100% of the time, but he’s right a lot.” That is the most honest thing a head coach has said about a quarterback in this town in a while. Monken also took the blame for one of Watson’s two turnovers, the zone read that T.J. Watt baited into a strip. “My fault, for God’s sakes, you ought to know better,” he said, calling Watt “that crafty son of a gun.” A coach who falls on the sword for his quarterback and swears at him in the same press conference. Again, he’s winning and he’s my age, so I’m biased, but I like this guy.
THE CONTRACT QUESTION, ALREADY: Four games in and our members want to talk about 2027. One subscriber projected Watson’s numbers over a full season at roughly 3,600 yards and 26 touchdowns and asked whether that earns an extension. Jack Duffin would give him a one-year deal as a bridge, “potentially playing the whole year (Smith/Mahomes style).” Pete Smith is less impressed: “Nothing I’ve seen from Watson looks reliable or sustainable. He’s functional.” Pete also points out that without a roughing call in Jacksonville and Szmyt’s brilliance Thursday, “Watson likely faces far more scrutiny.” Over in the Watercooler, GhostofTedCox called Watson “sorta like a poor mans Josh Allen. (OK, very poor).” Brrexkl is holding his verdict until Week 9, which is the right instinct for a 31-year-old with two Achilles surgeries. For the record, per the early stats thread, Watson is completing 69.6 percent with six touchdowns, two picks and a 101.2 rating. And 11 sacks. Somebody tell the offensive line it’s October.
CHAPTER AND VERSE, PART THREE: The Jared Verse discourse has entered its backlash phase, now that he remains sackless, yet loud. Chas Dawg, in Revisiting Verse, calls Thursday “one of the worst performances I can recall by a starting defender” and tallies it as “Three penalties, two tackles, one punch, zero reason to yap.” Brrexkl counters with an AP note that Verse leads the team in hurries. VT1983 had the shortest and best take: “Need his plays to exceed his mouth.” Monken, for his part, told Cabot talk without production “is just a vapor,” and says Verse backs it up with how he practices and plays. The rematch in Pittsburgh is Nov. 1.
THE FLAGS, STILL FLYING: Twelve penalties against Carolina. Fourteen against Pittsburgh. Monken: “That many penalties are not a recipe for success. We all know that.” He promised to “fight like hell to clean it up” when the players return Tuesday. The Browns’ self-torment about yellow flags continues.
WEBDORK CORNER: A short programming note, since some of you have asked. Actually, you haven’t, but saying that is an excuse to talk about what I did on Friday and Saturday. As of yesterday, profile signatures are live for subscribers: three lines, one link, no images. I’m starting small deliberately; thirty years of running message boards has taught me that signatures expand to fill all available space if you let them. There’s also now an X in the corner of the reply box so you can throw away a quote you started and regret, which RockyAtTheGym had been asking about. Full credit to FakeJerrySherk, who reminded me the old boards had it. And yes, you can ignore users, on desktop or your phone, though not administrators or moderators, whom you’ll just have to keep enduring. NorCalBrownsFan, testing his new signature, asked, “Who do I have to offend around here to get warning points? It sounds prestigious.” Keep going, sir. You’re on your way.
MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN: It’s October, and the Guardians are playing baseball that matters. The Guardians then lost 3-0 to the White Sox. Our LiveWire thread opened its doors to Buckeyes and Guardians talk for the day. And Michigan had the kind of Saturday that produces a thread called “The Demise of Michigan,” which has a lot of joy in it from the Buckeyes faithful. I’ll admit I posted in it. Man, that Michigan offense. Oof. My apologies to any Michigan fans who read this column or site, but you know you would do the same if the tables were turned, with an extra box of salt swiped from the opposing team’s cupboard to rub into the wound.
So that’s your Sunday.
Go Jags, I guess.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…
Underwater Umbrellas Could Protect Coral Reefs From Heat Damage
Don’t underestimate how crucial coral reefs are in our ecosystem. Or the threat they’re under due to the changing climate. After the 2023 heat wave “essentially wiped out branching corals” in the Florida Keys, Dr. Karen Neely and a team from Nova Southeastern University tried something gloriously low-tech. They built parasol-like shades out of PVC pipe and nylon fabric, floated them a foot above 20 brain corals at Newfound Harbor, and cut the light hitting them by 60 percent. That summer brought the second-highest heat stress on record at the site. The shaded corals lost less color than expected, and some even got their color back after the shades went up. Shade can’t cool the water, Neely explains, but it blocks the UV that makes heat damage worse. The catch is scale; you’re not putting an umbrella over the whole Caribbean. Still. Northeast Ohio is spending $2.6 billion to put a roof over 67,500 football fans. Florida saved a reef with pipe from the hardware store. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, and I’m not going to be the one to bring it up at the next council meeting.
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When not cheering for the Jacksonville Jaguars against every instinct he has, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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