These five members of the Cleveland Browns need a great game against the Tennessee Titans if the Browns are to finally win a season opener.
The cover is about to be taken off the 2019 Cleveland Browns and the endless offseason of waiting will finally culminate with Week 1 contest against the Tennessee Titans.
Per Bovada, the Browns are 6.0-point favorites as the organization looks to win its first season opener since Jeff Garcia quarterbacked Cleveland past the Baltimore Ravens in 2004.
The Browns came close a season ago against the hated Pittsburgh Steelers, but their inability to cash in a field goal ultimately cast a gray cloud over the entire first half of the season and pretty much doomed the future of Hue Jackson.
That cloud got lifted after the Steelers delivered a beat down Week 8 beat down. Jackson and Todd Haley were fired and Freddie Kitchens assumed play calling duties, helping to turn Baker Mayfield into a star.
Since then, the Browns have put themselves squarely into the center of national debates as to whether they can not only challenge for a division title, but somehow appear in the Super Bowl after going 7-39-1 the past three seasons.
The fans are buying in, too. There’s plenty of saltiness being thrown around over Platform Brewing being bought out by Anheuser-Busch, but watching the purchase line for a Browns’ branded Bud Light Fridge wrap around a downtown block serves as the reminder that the Browns trump all, even in the the corporate vs. craft beer wars.
FirstEngergy Stadium will be crazy as it gets when the Browns and Titans kickoff. The atmosphere promises to rival the “Run, William, Run” feel of the final game of the 2002 season. A contest the Browns won thanks to William Green and Jim Donovan’s magical voice.
If the Browns are to enjoy that same outcome, then these five players must play lights out.