Browns: 5 good things and 5 bad things from the Texans win
By Chad Porto
The Cleveland Browns defeated the Houston Texans by a score of 10-7 on Sunday, and despite the weather, it wasn’t all bad.
The Browns are now 6-3 for the first time since 2014 but unlike that fluke of a year, the Browns are actually a good team this year. That may not have been completely obvious if you were watching the boxscore but the Browns were actually very efficient against the Texans on Sunday. The problem wasn’t so much anyone’s play necessarily, but the weather.
The weather was horrifically bad, just like two weeks prior with the Las Vegas Raiders. The big difference between the games, however, was the Browns’ offense was back to full strength after the returns of Nick Chubb, Wyatt Teller, and Austin Hooper. On top of that, Kareem Hunt seemed to have had a new spring to his step. The announcers and pundits on Twitter wondered if Hunt had recovered from his nagging injuries over the bye week.
It’s more likely that the Texans’ defense was as bad as expected.
It did take Chubb longer to get going than some had hoped but once he did the game was over. Baker Mayfield looked surprisingly good considering he was throwing into winds that exceeded 40-50 MPH outside the stadium, and presumably much faster inside due to the way the building funnels wind flow. Both Mayfield and Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson couldn’t get much going through the air.
The wind was so bad that there was a bird on the field of play for at least two-quarters because it couldn’t take off in the conditions. The wind was also so bad at points that the hard-cameras, which are cameras that are weighted to the ground, were shaking while the game was going on. It made the entire game feel like an episode of Star Trek.
Despite the weather, which produced severe thunderstorms, severe wind advisories, and even a few tornado warnings in the surrounding counties, the Browns were able to get past that and the Texans, proving that they can tackle adversity.