The Name They Were Chanting
House Jaguars · House Browns · A court intrigue — The wrong man in the right chair
Patience Is A Vow. — the words of House Jaguars
Todd Monken is the new steward of House Browns, and his first real decision was the one Cleveland had been arguing about since spring: four men wanted the lord’s seat, and he gave it to the most expensive of them.
By the third quarter on Sunday, the supporters who had flown down to Jacksonville were chanting for one of the other three.
The man he chose is Deshaun Watson, who came to Cleveland on the most guaranteed money ever handed to a lord in this sport and has given the house almost nothing on the field since. Nobody in Cleveland argues about that part. It is not an opinion, it is the size of the cheque, and it sits over the building like weather.
The man the crowd wanted is Shedeur Sanders — second year, unproven, the most famous name in the room, and adored by people who have run out of patience with everything else about this house.
Monken chose the veteran. It was a defensible choice, and it is now the thing he will be asked about every week for as long as he holds the job.
It went wrong inside an hour. Watson gave the ball away twice before the interval, and Jacksonville — a house that won almost everything last season and then lost the one January game it got — took both gifts and used them properly.
Trevor Lawrence spent the day being the lord Jacksonville thought it was getting when it took the most anticipated young player of his generation. He barely missed a throw. Four scores.
By early in the third quarter Cleveland had managed nothing at all and was more than four scores down, and Jacksonville started taking its best men off the field to rest them. That is not mercy. That is a house deciding there is nothing left in the afternoon worth risking anybody for.
That is when the chanting started, high in the corner where the visiting supporters sit.
They were not booing the result. They were asking, in unison, in a stranger’s hall, for their own lord to be taken off and a different man sent out.
A house can survive losing by a distance, and Cleveland lost by a distance. Surviving your own people is harder — the ones who bought flights and hotel rooms in order to stand in somebody else’s building and say out loud that the man in the seat is the wrong one.
Watson cannot answer a chant. The only answer available to him is to play better next Sunday, and he has a week to find it. Monken has no answer either, unless he changes his mind in public after one game in the job.
Ships of the week: Lawrence and a house that has waited a long time to look like that. Villain of the week: the contract, which everyone in Cleveland can recite and nobody can undo. Next week: Monken is asked the question again, and this time the answer costs him something.
The Record
- Jaguars 34, Browns 10 — EverBank Stadium, Jacksonville, 1:00 p.m. kickoff
- Jacksonville went 13-4 last season; Cleveland went 5-12
- Todd Monken's first game as Browns head coach, after Kevin Stefanski's two-time Coach of the Year tenure ended
- Monken named Deshaun Watson the starter over Shedeur Sanders. It was the Browns' biggest storyline of the spring and summer. Dillon Gabriel is on injured reserve
- Trevor Lawrence: 18 of 23, four touchdowns, a career-high 150.6 passer rating
- Jacksonville led 31-0 early in the third quarter and pulled most of its starters soon after
- Deshaun Watson: 16 of 22, 205 yards, a touchdown and an interception, plus a lost fumble. Both giveaways came in the first half
- Cleveland was held to 272 total yards, most of it after the result was settled
- Travelling Cleveland supporters chanted for Sanders
The line you say tomorrow“Cleveland's travelling supporters spent the afternoon chanting for the quarterback their new coach had benched.”