It's The Day After Christmas For Browns Fans

If Sunday morning was the proverbial Christmas Eve for Browns, ready to open their presents and see what gifts this football season would bring them, this week is the day after Christmas when the reality that you didn’t get what you wanted sets in.  It’s amazing how every opening day for Browns fans quickly changes from the high point of the year, to the pit of despair in the course of three hours or less.

New year, new coach, new players, new QB, new management, exact same result.  Somehow we expected different, and somehow we ignored that voice in the back of our heads telling us to not get too excited.  We knew that we would be disappointed, and yet we allow it to happen on the off-chance that one year we will have a winner.   Browns fans are either the greatest in sports, or just a bunch of people that don’t learn from their past mistakes.

The good news is that, despite how bleak things looked on Sunday, the schedule does allow this team an opportunity to win some games.  This week with Peyton Manning and a host of Colts not playing, would appear to be one of those games.  Win this game and the team is .500 with an easy road ahead if they can play like many think they are capable.  Lose and you might as well pre-order your Andrew Luck jersey in Orange and Brown.

In fact, a loss on Sunday would be the fourth straight season in which the Browns have lost their first two games of the season.  That would be four straight seasons in which your hopes have been dashed before fall even officially begins.  Steeler's fans are pulling their hair out right now because their team lost the first game.

Taking the ‘walk of shame’ as we all know if after the game last Sunday, I was writing a much more negative article in my head.  One that pointed out how little has really changed despite there being new personnel at every level, how it starts with an owner that doesn’t give a damn, and Colt McCoy looked a little too much like Charlie Frye last Sunday.  

I decided not to write that article in order to see how the team would respond.  Will McCoy look like the guy he did early in the Preseason, will the defense be able to stop anything, and will Pat Shurmer not look like a guy coaching the second game of his career?  If they don’t find a way to fix the myriad issues from week 1, things will get ugly fast.