This weekend, the Cleveland Browns play their last game of the NFL regular season. It is a meaningless contest.
That, in and of itself, is not unusual. Since returning to the NFL in 1999, the Browns have had many games at the end of their regular season schedule that have been meaningless–but always because the team has long since been eliminated from the playoffs. We Browns Backers have been conditioned to endure meaningless last games that are bitter exercises. If you watched them–and many of us, admittedly, had already thrown in the towel by that point and stopped inflicting pain on our sports psyches–the last Browns game of the season was a dismal event, filled with welling anger at the football fates and what-could-have-been and what-never-was rationalizing about what the Browns could have done differently.
But tomorrow’s game is meaningless in a different way. It’s meaningless because the Browns have already clinched a playoff spot, and the outcome of the contest can’t affect their seeding or where they might play. Browns fans don’t know what to do under these circumstances, with no drumbeat of failure and futility sounding. We haven’t developed the football fanship reflexes needed to deal with this situation.
Being Browns fans, of course, we worry about the anvil dropping on our heads, which in this case means an injury to some crucial player that wrecks the Browns’ postseason hopes. But beyond that, what are we supposed to do? Scout the teams that the Browns might play in the wild card round? Argue about which of the Browns stars should absolutely not see the field under any circumstances? Care about the performance of the backups who will be getting most of the playing time during the game? Wonder how the Browns picked the quarterback they added to the roster this week who will be starting the game?
Don’t get me wrong: I welcome this new scenario that the team has presented to the loyal Browns Backers across the globe. We’re up to the challenge of learning a new way to watch a meaningless end-of-the-regular season contest. But could the fans of one of the perennial playoff teams, like the Chiefs, give us a primer on what we are supposed to do this weekend?
Webner House 