The Browns are in trouble as they travel to Baltimore to face the Ratbirds, a loathsome franchise that seems to have all the advantages on their side at the moment.
This is going to be intense and a little personal for some people. Baltimore is the favorite to win and should be.
They’re almost at full strength and the Browns are coming to town with two backup offensive tackles against a top-notch defense.
But the Browns will go out there on Sunday and (hopefully) play their best. They might even win, because that’s how competition works.
Once the ball rolls, it doesn’t matter who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. It’s all subjective anyway, no matter how much I joke in this space about moral absolutes.
Browns fans definitely think the Ravens are the bad guys. While Browns fans fought to get their franchise back, the Ravens threw money around and stole theirs, using a sleazy, inept businessman as a conduit to get back into the NFL spotlight.
It just so happened that they stole the team from Cleveland just a few years after they shouted their hatred of Indianapolis and Bob Irsay.
They quickly discovered the trade-off between moral relativism and winning in football, embracing Ray Lewis when he led them to the Super Bowl early in their existence.
Now they can point to Cleveland, claim that we’re complaining about the whole “team theft” thing, that we’ve given back our franchise, and that we ourselves are practicing moral relativism.
They can rationalize not liking us the same way we can rationalize not liking us.
Both sides want the same thing: playoffs and Super Bowl.
It may be that neither party likes the other and that they have to go through the other’s path to get what they want.
As long as this aversion doesn’t result in rule violations or unnecessary unsportsmanlike or off-court behavior, everything is fine.
It raises the stakes and increases the intensity of what is basically just an entertainment event.
I’ve met many Ratbird fans (Ratfans for short) over the years, given my decades-long tendency to give them a hard time, and strangely enough, most of them are people just like you and me.
They’re just unlucky enough to have to face an ersatz football team. As in any group, there are good people and bad people, smart and not-so-smart, well-intentioned and not-so-smart.
Just like Browns fans.
This kind of competition is everywhere.
The Baltimore-Cleveland football rivalry is comparable to many other sports rivalries around the world.
It’s not just about sports. It is also anchored in our economic and political systems. For example, OBR has competitors in the Cleveland Browns website business.
There are many of them, all vying for the attention of Cleveland Browns fans. Some of them offer good products, others not so much.
Some of them are good people, others not so much. There are one or two that I find particularly distasteful, but then again, they have probably also generated strong antipathy towards me. It does not matter.
As long as it doesn’t “overflow”, everything is fine. We go out and compete. Some have built-in benefits; some have to struggle.
But every day we wake up, go out and do our best. I think the OBR team and our friends are the right ones. Our competitors probably don’t think so.
And that’s what will happen on Sunday when the Cleveland Browns give it their all against a team that most Cleveland Browns fans can’t stand and are desperate to beat.
The odds are against them, and if they win, it will mean something to them and their fans.
It’s like you and me when we try to compete in the economic system. If we win, it will mean something, at least for us.
The odds may be against us, you and I, but we go out and compete anyway, which shows us that we have no excuse not to do the same.
We expect nothing less from our football team and, if they win, perhaps they will show us that we can do it too.
Jake continues his weekend podcast coverage. He and Andrew will kick off the show this week with a discussion of all the offensive tackle options, with the top three on the depth chart set to miss the game.
They talk more about what makes this game so important. Then the two take you through the weekend’s biggest college football games and the rest of the NFL schedule, giving you their opinions on who wins and why.
All season long, Andrew Spayde and Jake Burns will preview and evaluate these weeks of college football with an eye on the best talent the Browns can select in the upcoming draft, while also noting the biggest games we all love to watch each week.
Week 10 had some close calls. Georgia was pushed to the limit by Missouri, Washington got all it could handle from USC, and Texas and Alabama also came close to heavy losses.
The week’s upsets were one level lower in the rankings, but Oklahoma State, Clemson and Arizona all earned high-profile wins over ranked teams.
Week 11 features four ranked matchups that should all be compelling. Michigan finally gets tested amid scandal by traveling to Happy Valley, Washington looks to keep its playoff berth alive as it hosts Utah, Ole Miss heads to Athens to try to catch the Bulldogs, and Tennessee visits Missouri in what remains a very strange situation. SEC “East” clash.
Let’s take a look at the details of the best of week 10 and what we can watch in week 11.
Andrew: Again, I know we don’t want to call too many to deal with in the country.
