Browns HC Todd Monken takes aim at old Cleveland punchline with telling statement
Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken closed his Sept. 20 press conference in Tampa with a profane send-off for the oldest joke about his franchise. The Browns had just beaten the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23-19 for his first win as an NFL head coach, and the line he was answering came from Mike Tomlin, former Steelers coach who is currently working as an analyst for NBC. Tomlin had leaned on the “Browns is the Browns” punchline after Cleveland’s lopsided Week 1 loss to Jacksonville.
“Browns are gonna Browns. [Expletive] that! The guys took that to heart,” Monken said that day.
On Friday, with Cleveland at 4-2 and alone in first place in the AFC North, Monken brought the phrase back during an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show. This time, he attached a timeline that runs two decades past the current season and, by his own framing, past his time in the job.
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“I said this when I got the job. Wouldn’t it be cool that, 20 years from now when I’m 80, that people look back and go, ‘Man, why don’t we do it more like the Browns?’ 20 years from now, you flipped the narrative to where they’re no longer saying, ‘Browns are gonna Browns.’ They’re saying that, ‘Why aren’t we more like the Browns? Why don’t we do it more like them?’ Irrespective of how long I’m the head coach here, isn’t that what you should be doing?” Monken said.
Monken is 60 years old and in his first head coaching job, Cleveland hired him in January to take over a team coming off 3-14 and 5-12 seasons. The Sep version of the line was a rebuttal aimed at a television critic. Friday’s version sets a standard for the whole organization, and the “irrespective of how long” caveat frames it as something he expects to outlast him.
Do you agreed the narrative has actually flipped at 4-2?
Cleveland has needed four game-winning drives to reach 4-2, and the offense averages 17.7 points per game, tied for 28th in the league. The Browns are one of only five teams in the last 20 seasons to win at least four of their first six games while scoring fewer than 18 points per game.
Two of the wins is the over Pittsburgh and Baltimore, which were settled by Andre Szmyt field goals inside the final 10 seconds.
The same final-drive games that put Cleveland in first place could have flipped on a single kick, and a couple of those swings going the other way would bring the old punchline right back.
Monken offered a more measured description of the current team in the same interview.
“Well, we’re still a work in progress, and we still have a very young team. As I said, there’s no better time than now with our young roster and we’re still under construction,” Monken said.
Coming from a coach whose team leads its division, that admission keeps the 20-year talk tied to what the Browns are right now: a young roster winning close games while its offense catches up.
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