If Mike Vrabel were not such a good head coach, I would be predicting a blow out in Super Bowl 60 however Vrabel is indeed a very good coach.
Still, I see Seattle winning and covering the spread. Mike McDonald is also an excellent coach and his team is peaking at the perfect time. Seattle's big play offense and dominant defense will be more than enough to win on Super Bowl Sunday
Brown BLog Predicts
Seattle 30
New England 20
The Brown BLog are 7-5 predicting NFL playoff games.
The righteous indignation has been immediate. News leaked that Bill Belichick was not voted a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and suddenly the football world clutched its pearls. How could the greatest coach of all time be “snubbed”?
That reaction only makes sense if you choose to remember Bill Belichick in pieces instead of as a whole.
Because Spygate was not a minor lapse. It was systemic cheating, executed with intent. The facts are not in dispute: unauthorized videotaping of opponents’ plays and signals, in direct violation of explicit league rules.
This wasn’t a toe over the line. It was a stride.
The National Football League understood that perfectly well at the time. That’s why the penalties against the New England Patriots were among the harshest ever levied on a franchise: a $500,000 fine for Belichick, a $250,000 fine of the Pats, forfeiture of their first round draft pick and public humiliation. The league did not treat Spygate as trivia. They treated it as a scandal.
But here’s the part that continues to get memory-holed.
The NFL did not come down even harder on Belichick because the league is exquisitely sensitive to negative publicity. Banishing the most successful coach of the modern era would have kept the story alive, invited discovery, and encouraged questions the league did not want asked. So the strategy was containment: punish the organization heavily, send a message, and make the problem disappear.
Which brings us to the name that almost always hovers just offstage: Ernie Adams.
Within league circles, Adams was long regarded as Belichick’s consigliere, the keeper of advantages. There are long-standing whispers about his role in pushing the Patriots’ edge-finding beyond what others dared attempt. Many around the league believe that what was exposed was merely the visible portion of a much larger, more sophisticated system.
That belief matters.
Because Spygate validated the rumors. It confirmed, beyond doubt, that the Patriots under Belichick were willing to violate clear rules if it produced competitive advantage. Once that threshold is crossed, skepticism about everything else is rational judgment.
And this is where the Hall of Fame outrage collapses entirely.
In baseball, writers have kept Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire out of Cooperstown for alleged steroid use even though, at the time, those substances were not explicitly banned. In other words, baseball chose moral judgment over technical legality.
Football fans now argue that documented, proven cheating should simply be forgiven.
That’s incoherent.
If baseball can exclude players for violations that lived in gray areas, then it is entirely justified that Belichick be denied entry to Pro Football Hall of Fame for cheating that was real, documented, punished, and widely believed to extend further than what could be cleanly proven.
And to be clear: I’m not arguing that Belichick will never get into Canton. I’m arguing that, as far as I’m concerned, he shouldn’t.
The Hall of Fame is a historical judgment. It exists to tell future fans not just who won, but how they won. Belichick’s record includes the most consequential cheating scandal in modern NFL history and a cloud of credible suspicion that it was not an isolated act.
That demands restraint.
If voters hesitate, that is the Hall doing its job.
Belichick changed football.
He also broke it.
History is allowed to remember both.
⚠️ Warning: This article is strictly satire. Any resemblance to actual NFL hiring practices no matter how absurd is purely coincidental.
Earlier today, one of the Cleveland Browns head coaching candidates’ letters to Andrew Berry somehow leaked to the Brown Blog, offering a rare, unfiltered glimpse into just how bold one applicant may be in explaining why he is the man to fix the Cleveland Browns.
Dear Andrew Berry,
Following our recent interview and in compliance with what I now understand is the NFL’s only graduate-level admissions requirement for a head coaching job, I am pleased to submit the requested essay explaining why I wish to become the next head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
I am uniquely qualified for this role for one simple reason: the Browns are a mess of such epic proportions that it will take an extraordinary human being to fix them. Not a good coach. Not a clever coach. An extraordinary one. The kind of man who can walk calmly through organizational chaos while holding a laminated play sheet in one hand.
I am not applying despite the dysfunction. I am applying because of it. Lesser men look at the Browns and see risk. I see opportunity. I see a franchise that has tried almost everything except the radical idea of letting the football coach coach football while everyone else politely backs away.
My strongest qualification is my personality. I possess a rare combination of confidence, stubbornness, and emotional callus that allows me to absorb criticism, chaos, and unsolicited advice without blinking. This will be essential in my primary early responsibility: ensuring that you, Jimmy Haslam, and all other well-intentioned adults in the building stay the fuck out of the way while I attempt the delicate, complicated task of winning football games.
This will not be easy. It will require firm boundaries, direct eye contact, and occasionally closing the office door and pretending I’m “watching tape” when I’m actually taking deep breaths. But I am prepared for this burden.
I understand the Browns are a “aligned environment.” I am happy to pretend I am aligned right up until kickoff. After that, feigned collaboration will be limited to nodding politely while I do the job you hired me to do.
I am not intimidated by history. Losing has had a long relationship with this organization, and I believe it’s time for an amicable separation. I am the man to help you move on.
Thank you again for this opportunity, and for reminding the league, via a leak on the The Rich Eisen Show, that the Browns do things their own way. I look forward to our next conversation, preferably one that does not require a written component.
Respectfully,
A Man Confident Enough to Try
An exciting round of NFL Playoff Games are here and the Brown BLog is here to predict them all.
Rams at Panthers
The Rams have to be a favorite to eventually get to the Super Bowl, this game won't be close
Brown BLog Predicts: Rams 31 Panthers 13
Packers at Bears
Tough game to predict. I think Caleb Williams is on the verge of greatness. He is the closest thing to John Elway that the NFL has seen since Elway retired. Jordan Love is already great so this one is by far the hardest game to predict this weekend. Can the Packers force Williams into a few mistakes. Can the Bears do the same to Love? What tips it for me is the Packers have suffered more injuries and the Bears are at home but it could go either way.
Brown BLog Predicts: Bears 27 Packers 24
Bills at Jaguars
One of the takeaways of the 2025 season is that strength of schedule is important. I have a hard time accepting the idea that the Jags are 13-4 strictly because they are such a good team. They had a weak schedule and the Bills had an extremely tough schedule. The Bills are flat out a better team and even on the road, they won't have trouble with the Jaguars
Brown BLog Predicts: Bills 30 Jaguars 20
Niners at Eagles
The defending Super Bowl Champion Eagles have been the focus of critics most of the 2025 season. I say "the critics are idiots". Eagles win a tough one
Brown BLog Predicts: Eagles 24 49ers 17
Chargers at Patriots
The Patriots have a great QB and have had a great season, however they also have benefitted from a weak schedule and defeating teams using second string QBs all season long. In an upset special, the Chargers win this one on the road
Brown BLog Predicts: Chargers 34 Patriots 23
Texans at Steelers
The Steelers are everyone's favorite team to underestimate and the Texans are everyone's favorite team to overestimate. Do so at your own risk, Mike Tomlin wins this one
Brown BLog Predicts: Steelers 24 Texans 14
It has been yet another season of wild disappointment for our Cleveland Browns and for game 17 we are on the road vs our in state rival the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Bengals are actually a great team when Joe Burrow starts, with a 5-2 record in those games he has started. Meanwhile our Browns are going to be missing two of their best athletes: Harold Fannin and Carson Schwesinger. I love Shedeur so I'll be hoping he comes up big but realistically a win for the Browns on the road vs Joe Burrow is unlikely.
The Brown BLog Predicts
Bengals 27
Browns 21
The Brown BLog is 9-7 year to date predicting Browns games.
Depending on how the Ravens do tonight against the Pack, the Steelers could have nothing to play for tomorrow or everything. Either way, they will beat the Browns.
The Brown BLog Predicts:
Steelers 24
Browns 17
The Brown BLog are 9-6 season to date predicting Browns games.
I was listening recently to a podcast with Seth Wickersham, who wrote a book about quarterbacks called American Kings, and he shared a small detail that stopped me in my tracks. At one point, Wickersham saw a notepad belonging to Tom Brady. Scribbled on it were affirmations, simple, direct statements Brady wrote to himself. Things like, “You are the man.”
My first reaction, like I suspect most people’s, was disbelief mixed with a little eye-rolling. Tom Brady? The guy with the rings, the records, the dynasty? If anyone on earth should be immune from self-doubt, surely it’s him. Doesn’t the world remind him daily that he’s special? Shouldn’t it be obvious, even to himself?
But the more I sat with it, the more that reaction unraveled.
Unlike almost any other profession, elite coaches and athletes live under a microscope of constant judgment. Even the best of the best are subjected to second-guessing that borders on oppressive. Every throw, every decision, every fraction of a second is replayed, dissected, and criticized by millions of people who have absolutely nothing at stake except their mood on a Sunday afternoon.
I know this impulse well, because I catch myself doing it all the time. Stefanski is a bad play caller, Caitlin Clark should have passed that ball. Aaron Rodgers should have thrown that one away. These thoughts pop out of my mouth as if they are obvious truths rather than armchair commentary. Every now and then, though, the stupidity of one of those remarks bounces off the wall and comes right back at me.
I imagine Kevin Stefanski sitting in the cube next to mine at work and turning to me with the same tone of certainty: “Jesus, John, how could you concede a five percent discount? They were ready to give you the order at list price.” The absurdity becomes clear pretty quickly. I am very glad that selling industrial machinery is not a spectator sport, complete with instant replay and a talk-radio postmortem.
That’s when the point really lands. If I, sitting comfortably on my couch, feel free to nitpick the decisions of world-class coaches and athletes, imagine what it feels like to be the one actually making those decisions, knowing the criticism is coming no matter what. Even Tom Brady is not immune to that barrage. In that context, writing “you are the man” on a notepad doesn’t look silly at all. It looks healthy.
Affirmations aren’t about ego. They’re about anchoring yourself when the noise gets loud. Performance, whether in sports, sales, or life, is always more fluid when it’s built on a foundation of thoughtful self-confidence. Not bravado. Not denial. Just a quiet reminder that you belong, that you’ve done the work, that one mistake doesn’t erase everything else.
That may be the real lesson to take from Brady’s notepad. It’s not that even legends need reassurance—though they do. It’s that all of us perform better when we remember we’re doing just fine. And maybe there’s a second lesson tucked in there for us fans as well. Our favorite athletes might actually perform a little better if we cheer them because they’re on our team, even if they make a mistake.
So while I have made a sport out of second guessing Kevin Stefanski I am also old enough to know, when it comes to football he is the expert. And after six years of winning and losing, he is as well positioned as anybody on earth to make the next 6 years good ones.
So call it an early New Years resolution, but I hope the Browns keep Coach Stefanski and I hope in spite of the legions of folks in the peanut gallery, that Kevin Stefanski reminds himself every day that he's one of 32 people on earth so qualified that he gets to lead an NFL team into battle every Sunday.
Confidence, it turns out, is not something you achieve once and keep forever. It’s something you practice. Sometimes with a Lombardi Trophy. Sometimes with a pen and a simple sentence written to yourself: you are the man.
The long-term success rate in the NFL on two point conversions is around 50%. The Browns, when they were down 14 vs the Titans last week, decided to go for 2 after a touchdown. Why not, the data says odds are if they attempt a two point conversion twice, they will score 2 points and if they were successful to get the first 2 they can win the game with an extra point.
I’d like to point out the problem with Browns analytics: that two point success rate is largely being achieved by experienced players when you look at the success rate across the entire NFL the athletes that score are experienced quarterbacks, wide receivers, running backs & tight ends
Obviously, if you put a high school team out there, the success rate in the NFL would be 0%, and if you put NFL rookies in all of the key spots on a two point play, it stands to reason the success rate is going to be significantly less than 50%
Statistics can lie, and when it comes to the Browns analytics they do
I am excited once again to root for the Browns.
Why? Shedeur Sanders.
Pundits abound with opinions about what makes a great QB. They site this or that statistic, they take one play and draw conclusions.
Here is what I see about Shedeur: He wins plays and every single time he lines up behind the center to throw the ball, he's trying to win that play. When there is man coverage, Shedeur recognizes it and looks for a mis match because he wants to win plays. Winning plays means winning games and sometimes it means making mistakes. What Sanders will learn with time is that an interception is not the end of the world if you make that risk when you're on the opponents side of that field. That's as good as a punt so long as you win the risk more than you lose and with Shedeur Sander's accuracy, he is going to win a lot more than he loses.
He has another characteristic that winners have. Sanders does not give a sweet shit what other people think. He's authentic and that makes him a leader. It also made him into a fifth round draft pick because the lilly white draft rooms of the NFL even in 2025 fear a young minority who won't kiss their ass.
My gut says the weather tomorrow is going to hold scoring down and in a game with artic conditions, good leadership combined with winning a few key plays can make all the difference in the world.
The Brown BLog Predicts
Shedeur and his Browns 17
Da Bears 14
The Brown BLog is 8-5 season to date predicting Browns games.
- Going for two points down 8
- Running a trick play, needing two points to tie the game
And
How any NFL coach or GM could look at Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders and decide that Gabriel is better just blows my mind
Where would this team be if Sanders was developed from the first day of training camp?
