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SPORTS ILLUSTRATED AUGUS T 26–SEP TEM
BER 2, 2019
finished third in the AFC North. “We ain’t done s---,”
he says, suggesting a magazine headline along the lines
of unfinished business. He’ll push that message on
his players daily—that and, of course, Don’t Be Scared.
In Landry’s eyes, the message is getting through. Last
season he saw how the pall that had long covered the
franchise still affected his teammates. It was in the locker
room culture he was fighting so hard to overhaul, and
on the field, where he felt refs didn’t give his team any
calls, as if Cleveland were fighting not just its opponents
but its own history. He believes that changed, though,
once Mayfield took over and Kitchens was promoted
and the wins started to string together.
“That stigma, that aura that was always
over the Cleveland Browns,” he says. “I
can feel it coming off.”THREE MONTHS before their most
anticipated season in decades,
six Cleveland diehards sit outside a
downtown bar, drinking beers and
smoking cigars and comparing Browns
tattoos. Some of them were there when
the team won its last championship, 55
years ago. Others helped create the rabid
Dawg Pound seating section, famed for
its fans wearing dog masks and for fight-
ing visiting fans. They still go by names
like Big Dawg and D Dawg and Dawg
Face. They believe it’s their obligation
to support the team, always.
“We’ve seen it all.” “The dynasty.” “The
heartbreak.” “We always have had hope.” “That’s how we
are raised in Cleveland.” “We don’t give up... ”
They remember the early years: the Browns’ foundation
in the All-America Football Conference, in 1946, and how
they promptly won their first title; how they joined the
NFL in ’50 and won a championship right away there,
too. How in the first 10 seasons they won seven titles,
then added an eighth in ’64, in Cleveland. Some rushed
the field that day, climbed the goalposts.
“... We still have eight championships.” “That means
something.” “It’s part of history.” “Our history... ”
Cleveland was booming back then, its economy
flourishing, its population approaching one million.
But by the 1960s the town’s steel and iron factories
were closing, and people fled en masse, the city left so
polluted that in ’69 the Cuyahoga River turned inferno
after debris caught fire, still a source of embarrass-
ment. Still, even when Cleveland defaulted on bank
loans in ’78—the first American city since the Greathouse across the street from his old friend, fulfilling
their childhood dream.
The two receivers know there’s work to be done.
Talent alone doesn’t win championships—“How many
playoff games have they played in?” Kitchens asks of
his offensive stars; “How many Super Bowls?”—but
Cleveland boasts so much of it that new challenges
may be on the horizon.
Dorsey believes any potential issues having to do with
a glut of offensive firepower will be offset by Mayfield’s
“unique way of distributing the ball.” (Of his 27 touch-
downs last season, no player caught more than four.)Beckham, for his part, thinks any such problems will
sort themselves out. “Somebody,” he says, “is going to
put that motherf----- in the end zone.”
All the receiver wants now is “to play football and
not deal with the extra stuff”—he even shaved off his
golden curls as proof. He laments, though, that the
media doesn’t appear willing to let him start fresh,
pointing out all the attention he already received for
skipping voluntary OTAs in May.
He and Landry push back on the notion that Cleve-
land’s combination of locker room personalities could
be combustible. From their viewpoint, they’ve simply
been misunderstood—the same way people classify
anything else they don’t understand, to make them feel
more comfortable. Like UFOs, Beckham says.
Dorsey, meanwhile, has been listening this offseason
to Public Enemy’s rap anthem “Don’t Believe the Hype”
and relaying that message to his players. He reminds ev-
eryone that, despite all their success last year, the BrownsEXPLOSIVE
OFFENSE
Mayfield,
Beckham
and Landry
have the
potential
to light
Cleveland
afire—in
ways good
and bad.