The Browns moved to 3-1 when Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’s final, desperate heave was picked off by safety Grant Delpit on Thursday night and head coach Todd Monken reflected on how improbable that record would have felt not so long ago.
Week 1 saw the Jaguars pummel Monken’s team in his head coaching debut and much of the conversation was about whether they would bench quarterback Deshaun Watson before their Week 3 home opener. Those discussions all centered around the incessant boos Watson heard from Browns fans in an August preseason game against the Bills, but it turned out to be a lot of wasted words.
Watson has led game-winning drives in the fourth quarter each of the last three weeks and the entire Browns team has had little resemblance to the one that got blown out in Jacksonville.
“It’s a credit, I’ll go back to Deshaun, but to our team. I mean, that was a complete, maybe disaster is a little bit strong, but that’s a tough opening game in every phase, other than maybe kickoff return, maybe, other than that,” Monken said, via a transcript from the team. “But the guys trusted the process. We got stung a little bit, and our guys responded to that. And, man, that locker room is fun, right there celebrating those guys. Big, big, big divisional win. And so, but Deshaun, before the game, I got a chance to, I was in the coach’s office, and I was going over the call sheet with him again, and I said, ‘Isn’t this really cool? Like, you’re going to be introduced last, isn’t that really freaking cool?’ It was only seven weeks earlier, and, right, it’s, ‘Where are we going to go from here, right? The Bills game at home, right? Where are we going from here, where are you going, where are we going?’ So cool.”
Monken noted later in his press conference that its only three wins and there is certainly a lot of football left to be played, but that’s a promising prospect for Cleveland rather than a distressing one for the first time in a long time.