Todd Monken responds to Mike Tomlin: It's not Browns being Browns, it's Browns playing poorly for one week

During the pregame show for Sunday night’s matchup between the Cowboys and Giants, new NBC analyst Mike Tomlin quoted one of his former players when talking about Cleveland’s ugly 34-10 loss to Jacksonville.

“In the words of my friend JuJu Smith-Schuster,” Tomlin said, “the Browns is the Browns.”

Smith-Schuster made those words famous back in 2020, ironically before the Browns then pounded the Tomlin-led Steelers in the wild card round. But the saying has stuck in part because the Browns have had just one winning season since — and even that ended with an ugly postseason loss.

Asked about Tomlin’s comments in his Monday video conference, first-year head coach Todd Monken seemed to take some exception to them.

“Well, again, everybody’s afforded their opinions. That’s what you do when you go from coaching to television,” Monken said. “We have to own that. We have to own that. We didn’t play very well. I don’t see it that way, Browns being Browns. I don’t see it that way. Every week is different, every team is different. We just didn’t play well. That’s one week. That’s not Browns being Browns, that’s Browns being poorly on one week.

“So, again, everybody’s afforded their opinion. And the only way to change people’s opinion is to play better. That’s a fact. We don’t want to be considered an also-ran, then we have to play better. We have to coach better, and we have to play better.”

At this point, Monken is right — the only way the Browns can change their perception is by winning. We’ll see if they can at least be competitive against the Buccaneers on Sunday, though that will be unlikely if Deshaun Watson does not play any better at quarterback.