Hamish’s Blog

I have been a fan of the Cleveland Browns (American football team) for 20 years now.

The first few years of that fandom were in the glory days when Bernie Kosar was QB and we had a division winning team who almost made the Superbowl on more than one occasion. There was a slump for a while and at one point the team was made defunct (the owner moved the franchise to Baltimore as the Ravens) but such is the level of Cleveland Browns fans’ enthusiasm that the city was awarded another franchise after a break of 3 years. The early days of the “new” Browns have been heartbreaking but thrilling for me and this year under Romeo Crennell we have, at last, built a team that can win games consistently. On Sunday night I watched the internet scoreboard and match reports page on the NFL website with ever growing excitement as the Browns won their 3rd match in a row (in a nerve jangling overtime battle) for the first time in more years than I care to look up.

The next two weeks are among the toughest of what remains of the season though as we battle it out with two divisional rival teams for the lead in the AFC North, our old rivals the Pittsburgh Steelers and the despised Baltimore Ravens. These two teams played each other on Monday night this week and the Steelers routed the Ravens 38 to 7. That means Cleveland are in second position and the Ravens third with Cincinnati trailing 4th.

Next week’s road game at Pittsburgh is going to be a tough test. We have the talent on the team to win it but even if we don’t (the Steelers are a very powerful team at the moment) we need keep our morale up and the momentum we have built over the last month and overcome the Ravens to keep us in contention for the division and the play-offs. We have a weaker (but never to be underestimated in the NFL!) final six opponents and if the players can stay healthy and keep their game to the standard it has been at (or better) then we could be looking at a winning record for the season for the first time in 5 years.

GO BROWNS!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 22:09 and is filed under American Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.