The following is a work of humor and satire about the upcoming Las Vegas Raiders vs. Cleveland Browns game. It may contain offensive language or imagery and as a result it should not be read by anyone.
Greetings, Raider Nation! It is I, the icing on your cinnamon roll, the salsa in your breakfast burrito, and the sizzle in your bacon, Raiderdamus the Great and Powerful. Last week brought the lowest of lows for the Raiders with an embarrassing defeat in Kansas City, but the Great Beyond, in his wisdom, foresaw such an outcome, predicting a blowout loss. I hope you all listened and girded your loins.
But this weekend or at some point, the Raiders will play the Browns, who are stricken with disease, and not just the general depression and malaise that comes from living in Cleveland. I have once again entreated the Great Beyond to share with us his thoughts regarding the game, and here is the message he sent:
“Art Modell looked at Cleveland in 1994 and said, Baltimore would be better than this place. That was the last great decision made by the Browns franchise. The Browns are as beloved as the DMV and as useless as Anne Frank’s drum set.”
Cleveland Burning
Cleveland is responsible for The Fumble, The Drive, the Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969 and the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Browns play their games at First Energy Stadium, which is ironic because they are never in first and bring no energy.
On August 6, 1945, the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Within two years, it was rebuilt. The rebuilding of the Cleveland Browns began on September 12, 1999 and was not completed until January 10, 2021 when they demolished the Steelers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. It took ten times as long to rebuild the Browns as it did to rebuild a city that was literally bombed into non-existence.
It turns out Nick Mullens will start for the Browns, but the Browns don’t need a quarterback, they need a plague doctor. This is the first time the pandemic has affected Cleveland, because all Browns fans were fat, lonely and depressed already.
Many Browns fans don’t necessarily choose to support the Browns, but are born into the fandom. I must say I’m surprised that new Browns fans continue to be born, because the Browns don’t know how to score. They do, however, know how to make people scream:
While this gentleman may be tired of losing, the Browns themselves seem to be fine with it. Hue Jackson managed to compile a 1-31 record with the team over the 2016 and 2017 seasons, to go with a 3-36-1 record with the team overall. Historically, the only people who do their job worse than Hue Jackson are PAC-12 referees and assorted members of Congress.
Draft Day
The Browns are the Mel Kiper of football teams, because their relevance starts on Draft Day and ends three days later. A movie was made about the Browns draft experience, fittingly called Draft Day, and it is to movies what the Browns are to football. When Roger Goodell says those fateful words, “the Cleveland Browns select…” you can safely disregard the rest of that sentence, because chances are good you’ll never hear that name again. Whoever they are, their teammates probably didn’t go to their birthday party. The Browns typically announce their draft picks on the team website, but I’m surprised they have a website because the team usually can’t string three W’s together.
Pro football was founded in the state of Ohio, and one of the worst things the game has given us is CTE. This horrible condition really only benefits the Browns, as their players might one day be able to forget they ever played for Cleveland. As the two teams in Ohio are the Browns and Bengals, we can safely say pro football is no longer played in Ohio. When the Ohio Highway Patrol catches people speeding, they give them Browns tickets.
If an Ohio native were to want to watch some quality football, they’d have to go to the historical football powerhouse in the state of Ohio, the best team in the state, the Cincinnati Bearcats, who will make their Playoff debut in a couple weeks. Ohio is home to many fine institutions of higher learning, as evidenced by Browns fans’ mastery of the English language.
Cleveland will be without half their offense for this game, but the Raiders have been playing with half an offense for months, so it’s even.
Raiders win, 24-19.
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*Top Photo: Jose Carlos Fajardo/The Mercury News