Hi Browns fans welcome to week 2 of the season. Sunday the Browns travel to Baltimore’s M&T Stadium to take on the Baltimore Ratbirds, Game time is 12:00 noon CST and as usual the ChicagoLand Browns Backers/Northside Dawg Pound will meet up at Burke’s Public House 5401 N. Broadway to cheer the Browns onto victory. The Ratbirds have chosen Sunday’s game to celebrate the “anniversary” of their move from Cleveland to Baltimore in 1995. Before I get into this week’s game I feel a need to bring some context to Sunday’s “anniversary” especially for Browns fans who aren’t old enough to remember the sorry history of this anniversary. So bear with me for this bit of Browns history. Former Browns owner Art Modell is generally vilified in Cleveland for this betrayal of the City in moving the team to Baltimore in 1995. But there’s another villain in this story who’s been kinda lost in this sorry episode in Browns history. First a little background, in 1961 Art Modell, who at the time was a big time TV executive bought the Browns for close to $4 million dollars however, Modell put up only $250,000 of his own money while borrowing $3.7 million to complete the purchase. Modell would remain in debt for the entirety of his ownership of the team. After buying the team Modell used his experience in TV to help his fellow owners negotiate several multi-million dollars contracts with the TV networks that would soon make them very rich. He was generally credited with inventing the idea of Monday Night Football. At about the same time that Modell was making a name for himself in the NFL, New York City born Al Lerner was becoming one of the 400 richest men in the US with an estimated worth of $770 million roughly equal to $1.7 billion in today’s money, as chairman and CEO of MDNA bank, the 2nd largest issuer of credit cards in America. Despite his growing wealth Lerner had one unrealized dream. He wanted to own an NFL team. Since at least 1986 he’d been trying to buy a team with no luck. Lerner had known Modell since the 1970’s and routinely flew Modell to Browns’ road games in his private and was a fixture in the owner’s box at Browns home games. In 1984 in the middle of the night the owners of the then Baltimore Colts secretly moved the team to Indianapolis leaving Baltimore in shock. The NFL promised to give Baltimore a new franchise possibly led by Lerner but in 1993 the NFL stunned Baltimore by passing them over to award new franchises to Charlotte and Jacksonville. At about this same time Modell was in a nasty squabble with Cleveland over financing for a new stadium to replace the crumbling Cleveland Municipal Stadium where the Browns and Indians played. I was a season ticket owner in the Dawg Pound and I can attest that the stadium was a mess. Modell was angry that the City had begun the Gateway Project which would build a new stadiums for the Indians leaving the Browns as the only tenants in Cleveland Stadium which Modell now controlled. The loss of the Indians as tenants left Modell close to $20 million in loan debt. As Modell and the City continued to argue about financing for a new stadium with both sides making and breaking promises, Lerner began secretly double dealing by counseling Modell about possibly moving the team to reduce his debts while also advising Baltimore on strategies to build a new stadium to attract a team to replace the Colts. With negotiations stalled between Cleveland and Modell, Lerner secretly began trying to convince Modell to move the team to Baltimore and on November 6, 1995, Modell while sitting on Lerner’s private plane in Baltimore signed the papers finalizing the move of the Browns to Baltimore. The announcement of the secret agreement set off what can only be described as a war between Browns fans and the NFL and Modell. In an era before social media Browns fans initiated a war of harassment, with round the clock picketing around the hotel in Florida where Modell now lived along with picketing and loudly protesting at every NFL owners meeting and flooding NFL phones and fax lines, shutting down NFL phones for weeks. Fans cut up their MDNA credit cards, ravaged the stadium after the last home game and in one incident, a Cleveland cab driver abandoned a passenger in the countryside outside of Cleveland after learning he was an exec with the Browns. The City of Cleveland also sued Modell over the Browns stadium lease that tied the team to Cleveland until at least 1998. Faced with the ongoing loud protests from Browns fans and a lawsuit that most legal experts thought the City would win the NFL negotiated a settlement that would allow the Browns to move while promising to give Cleveland the next expansion team and Cleveland would retain the team name, colors and records for the new team. In 1998 after a brief bidding war and a $530 million franchise fee the owner of the new Browns franchise would be (you guessed it) Al Lerner. In a final rebuke to Art Modell who now owned the Baltimore Ravens the NFL split the $530 million franchise fee with all but one NFL team, Art Modell’s Ravens got nothing. Three years after secretly engineering his dream of owning an NFL team, Al Lerner died in 2002.
Now on to the game. After losing a heartbreaking game 40-41 on Sunday night against the Buffalo Bills we can expect the Ravens to be in a pretty foul mood (sorry about the pun) as they square off against the Browns who also lost a 1 point heartbreaker on Sunday. The pre-game has already gotten a bit chippy with Browns safety Grant Delpit saying that he didn’t think Raven’s RB Derrick Henry “is that hard to tackle” and Henry firing back with “we’ll see” on Sunday. The Ratbirds come into the game having given up 497 total yards to the Bills including 394 passing yards last Sunday. The Bills relentlessly attacked the Ratbirds with medium to deep passes outside the hashmarks and quick passes toward the sidelines to minimize the impact of Baltimore’s Pro Bowl safety Marlon Humphreys who only had 4 tackles in the game. Six different Bill’s players had receptions of over 20 yards during the game. The Bill’s offense also kept the Ratbirds defense off balance by also rushing for 108 yards averaging only 3.5 yards per rush but gaining 9 first downs on the ground. The Ratbirds countered with a punishing rushing attack between the tackles gaining 238 on the ground with Derrick Henry gaining 169 yards averaging 9.4 yards per carry. With these numbers the Browns offensive and defensive lines along with the kicking game will probably decide this game. Can the Browns offensive line protect Joe Flacco long enough to let him exploit a vulnerable Baltimore secondary while the defensive line and linebackers try to contain Henry and QB Lamar Jackson on the ground. Jackson gained 70 yards on only 6 carries while also throwing for 209 yards. Last Sunday the Browns defense held the Bengals offense to only 141 total yards including just 113 passing yards. To beat the Ratbirds they’ll need to repeat that effort. Last Sunday Browns rookie LB Carson Schwesinger graded out as the 6th best LB with an elite grade of 90.0 according to Pro Football Focus (PFF). On offense Joe Flacco will need to continue effectively throwing the ball. Last week he threw for 290 yards, despite his receivers dropping multiple passes and muffing 2 passes that turned into costly interceptions. If Browns receivers can figure out how to hold onto the ball and the offensive line can keep Flacco upright the Browns have a decent chance of scoring points against a passing defense currently ranked last in the NFL. Last week the Browns Joel Bitonio graded out at #1 and Wyatt Teller graded out #7 among guards in the NFL. Lastly Kicker Andre Szmyt is going to need to figure out some consistency in his kicking and not leave important points on the field with missed extra points and field goals.
See you Sunday GO BROWNS……GO GUARDIANS