Real expectations for Browns in 2019 include growing pains

The third youngest team with a rookie head coach was expected to be world-beaters for some reason; in reality we need to sit back and expect growing pains for the Cleveland Browns.

The Cleveland Browns completed an utter meltdown in a Monday night loss at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers by a score of 31-3. Offense, defense, and special teams struggled for the Browns as the 49ers capitalized on every single blunder made by the brown and orange.

While yesterday was a complete mess, growing pains are to be expected, and the expectations that this Browns team came into the season with were unrealistic. Throughout the history of the NFL, when have such high expectations been placed on the third-youngest team in the league with a first-year head coach?

The Browns’ cornerstones of their franchise are respectively in their second and third years in the league, and while head coach Freddie Kitchens controlled the offense for the last half of the 2018 season, this is, after all, his first year as a head coach in the NFL. Baker Mayfield has just completed the 18th start of his career, barely over a full season as a starting quarterback, so why were the expectations for him to come out and be an MVP candidate in just his second season?

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Denzel Ward, who needs to get on the field, looks like a promising building block in a young secondary, but he too is in just his second season. The most talented player on this Browns’ team, Myles Garrett, is in just his third season in the league; again, the third-youngest team in the league is expected to know how to win like the New England Patriots after a half of a season of success.

While the Browns have issues to work out on the offensive side of the ball, and discipline seems to be lacking in Cleveland, they are experiencing growing pains of a young team with a rookie head coach. This type of struggle early on is normal in every sport around the world, and especially in the National Football League.

This team, even from the offseason, was destined to be a 9-7 or 10-6 team, which is still very much in reach. To expect this team to go 13-3 and win a couple of playoff games is unrealistic and any disappointment currently experienced is on the fan base and media for building up a young and inexperienced team and staff that does not yet know how to win to be the Patriots, and for Kitchens to be Bill Belichick this year.

The 2019 Cleveland Browns are and have been, destined to be a wildcard team (although they can win the division in the struggling AFC North still), and for a first-round exit. The real expectations for this team are in 2020 when Kitchens has a full year under his belt and this extremely young team gets a year older, wiser, and understands how to win games in the NFL.

The next two games for the Browns will be rough, and the bye week cannot come soon enough; next week they take on the 4-1 Seattle Seahawks at home, then the Patriots after the bye week. However, after the bye week, the schedule gets much easier for Cleveland and they should take this opportunity to settle in and find their identity.

To quote Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers, “R-E-L-A-X. Relax.” The Browns are five games into a new regime and still fresh in their culture change; expecting them to be world beaters in year-one is a trap for disappointment. Sit back, watch this young team grow and develop, then watch the Browns take the league by storm in 2020.