Cleveland Browns: 2 valid, dumb reasons to lose Week 17 on purpose

There are calls for the Cleveland Browns to sit their star players in Week 17, which would likely result in a loss. But the Browns should resist and go for the win.

My buddy, a Cowboys fan, just told me the Cleveland Browns need to sit their starters in Week 17.

And it’s not because he wants to keep the Steelers out of the playoffs.

“Sit Baker Mayfield, sit Nick Chubb, sit Jarvis Landry, sit all your starters!” my buddy ranted. “Protect your future. Who cares if you lose? Browns are out of the playoffs, a win means nothing. An injury to any starter in a meaningless game like this is unacceptable.”

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A valid point, one that’s being echoed all over the internet this week.

Of course, even more fans are arguing over whether the 7-7-1 Browns should lose to the 9-6 Baltimore Ravens on purpose for an entirely different reason. A Ravens win guarantees they’d win the AFC North and be the fourth seed in the playoffs instead of the much-hated 8-6-1 Pittsburgh Steelers.

Let the Ravens win and the Steelers go home.

On paper, those arguments – lose the game to protect your star players from injury and to prevent your rival from getting to the playoffs – make total sense.

Who wants their stars injured or their rivals to shine?

But sports competition isn’t propelled by logic or swayable by possible injury, it’s fueled by the need to be the best. To outwit and outplay the competition, to train and game plan and execute better than the team you’re playing in order to not only win the game, but to defeat the enemy who dared enter the same stadium that day.

Professional athletes play to win. Period.

Imagine the message that sitting Mayfield and Chubb and Landry sends to the team, to their fans, to the rest of the NFL. Might as well take out a full-page SI ad that says, “Hey everybody, the Browns are afraid to get hurt and they’re still okay with losing!”

Well, by Dorsey, they’re not.

The Dorsey-Williams-Kitchens-Baker Browns are 5-2 and a Week 17 win would give the Browns their first winning record since 2007.

Beating the Ravens would be the Browns’ fourth win in a row and they’d be 6-2 since enduring a head coaching and offensive coordinator change after Week 8 that would have hogtied most NFL franchises.

Instead, the losing Browns learned to win, and now Baker expects his team to win every time they take the field. And so do their fans.

My buddy the Cowboys fan thinks that since the Browns are out of the playoffs, a win means nothing, but Dallas has an entirely different relationship with winning than Cleveland does. Meaning they’ve done it way more often lately.

Winning is so new to the Browns these days that skipping one on purpose is unthinkable, like skipping Christmas or a kiss.

Besides, there are no meaningless games in the NFL and only sixteen of them per season, and for the Browns to lose any one of them on purpose would be an open-palm slap to the ghost-face of Otto Graham.

WWBKD? What would Bernie Kosar do?

He’d do his best to win, certainly, because to lose on purpose is unnatural to a winner.

To the playoff hungry Browns, a final victory over a favored opponent means a winning record. And that says clearly that the football culture by Lake Erie has changed, and wins are no longer as rare in Cleveland as turn signals or LeBron jerseys.

And then there’s the other gift Bakers’ Browns have given to their fans in 2018 – we get to watch the desperate Steelers publicly root for the Browns and it’s hilarious. It’s like if the school bully suddenly realized the girl he’s in love with is your sister.

Dance, Steelers, dance.

Lose Week 17 on purpose?

Never in a million years, Browns fans.

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A Week 17 playoff-spoiling win over the Baltimore Ravens will be as satisfying as an eagle on the eighteenth hole, and there should be zero doubt in anyone’s mind that Baker’s Browns will be happy with anything less.

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