5 Cleveland Browns bold predictions against the Cardinals
The Cleveland Browns attempt to snap a four-road game losing streak when they travel out west to take on the Arizona Cardinals. Here are 5 bold predictions for Week 15.
Coming off an uneven home win over the hapless Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Browns need to play their best football heading into the last three games of the 2019 regular season.
It’s hard to remember the last time the Cleveland Browns had a non-divisional game that had as many storylines as their Week 15 matchup with the Arizona Cardinals does. There’s almost too many to keep track of.
You have Baker Mayfield vs Kliff Kingsbury, his old coach who forced him out of Texas Tech by not offering him a scholarship. Then you have a doozy, Baker Mayfield vs Kyler Murray. That storyline contains all sorts of different angles, they’re ex-teammates, both Heisman Trophy winners, as well as the last two No. 1 overall picks facing off.
Then you have the Browns coaches and their storylines. Browns’ head coach Freddie Kitchens going back to Arizona, a place where he was the longest-tenured assistant coach in franchise history. You also have defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, who was the Cardinals head coach just last season getting to face his former team.
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On top of all those different angles, this might be the most important one. The Browns will be visited by the ghosts of kickers and punters pasts on Sunday. Zane Gonzalez was cut by the Browns just last season and is now kicking field goals for the Cardinals. He is fifth in the NFL in scoring this season. The Browns will also be fielding punts from Andy Lee, who they traded off during the Sashi Brown regime.
But once kickoff happens, none of those storylines will mean anything. The two teams were already going to try to beat each other. They’re not going to try to beat each other more because of the myriad of storylines attached to the contest.
As it does every Sunday, it will come down to X’s and O’s and players making plays. The Browns need to focus on those things and drown out all the outside noise that they hopefully left behind in Cleveland. If the Browns can put the blinders on and focus on the task at hand, they should be able to leave Glendale, Arizona with a W. That would put the Browns at an even 7-7 with two games left to play.
Their destiny is no longer in their hands. All they can do is control what they can control and run the table. After all, fortune favors the bold. Here are five bold predictions for Sunday’s game.