A shot of realism

With all the feel-good talk surrounding the Browns this season, it is reasonable to assume there's got to be some pushback somewhere along the way. At the same time, there's also got to be a few doses of realism.

With the beginning of training camp about a week away, Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield gently slammed the brakes on what to look forward to this season with a dose or two of that realism the other day at his youth football clinic in an eastern Cleveland suburb.

"We have a lot of great players (on offense)," he said, "and this isn't taking anything away from them because I love these guys. But it doesn't matter who we have. If we don't have chemistry and we don't do our jobs, none of it matters.

"I'd say not taking anything for granted when it comes to chemistry. . . . The most important part is leaving nothing left unsaid. To me, that's where we are right now." In other words, emphasize communication.

Spot on. All that talent means nothing if even just one member of that unit strays and and plays differently. That's all it would take for an offense, whose success depends heavily on rhythm, timing and cohesion, to malfunction.

How often have we heard coaches after a loss moan that one little mistake here and another little mistake there contributed to the loss? Missed assignments are commonplace in football. 

Keeping them at a minimum separates the average teams from the good teams, the good teams from the great teams and the great teams from the championship teams.

Many, many years ago, Joan Ryan, the wife of Browns quarterback Frank Ryan, wrote a weekly in-season column for my old employer, The Plain Dealer. That was back when the Browns were one of the strongest franchises in the National Football League.

On occasion, she wrote about "zero defects," labeling them the great difference between winning and losing. The team that committed the fewest errors generally emerged victorious. Back then, fans did not view games as analytically as they do now.

Mayfield gets it. And by it, I mean he has a firm grasp on all levels as to what it will take to make certain another gigantic letdown, such as what happened during the awful 2019 campaign, is not repeated. 

He knows what it takes to make the coming season at least as successful as 2020's breakout season, if not more-so. He has declared publicly and confidently how he intends to run the huddle this season. Count on his mates on that side of the football paying rapt attention at all times 

Otherwise, as he said, "If . . . we don't have chemistry and don't do our jobs, none of it matters." 

Music to Kevin Stefanski's ears.