Cleveland Browns News and Rumors 10/25: Smashing Helmets, Scavenging Rats, and Slapping Fish (2025)

Cleveland Browns News and Rumors 10/25: Smashing Helmets, Scavenging Rats, and Slapping Fish (1)

Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!

Yesterday afternoon, I was invited to talk to a young group of college students about the challenges of modern publishers attempting to connect with Gen Z consumers of information. It's a challenge I never considered when I first started working on a Browns website in my study back in the mid-90s, when I was myself was my mid-30s and considered myself still young.

But now, there's a tremendous gulf between myself and the youngest generation of Browns fans that I must find a way to cross. The old technologies and approaches no longer reach this type of consumer, which I discovered in real time as I tried to explain my challenges to this young audience. For example, in a few minutes, I will illustrate the relationship between the City of Cleveland and the Haslam Sports Group using a 45-year-old Monty Python clip that I find hilarious, but that will probably be completely lost on anyone under 40.

At its root, the question is how I can move a group of people interested in the Cleveland Browns from doomscrolling inch-deep instant feedback hot-take loops like Instagram and Xitter to a place where there is deeper analysis, vetted facts, and community like the OBR? How can I take them from the social media carnival ride to an island of sanity? Or do they even want to make that trip?

I asked the young people for advice, which they will go on to try to provide. I told them that it's not a question specific to the Cleveland Browns—whether people want long-attention-span media applies across the board to other sports and topics like music and other interests. It also expands significantly to critical issues like politics, where deliberate misinformation and intentionally constructed information bubbles cloud the picture.

Cleveland Browns News and Rumors 10/25: Smashing Helmets, Scavenging Rats, and Slapping Fish (2)

While I try to figure that out, we're presented with immediate chaos on the Browns side of the world, where Jerry Jeudy would like to move on from his (understandable, IMO) helmet smashing on the Browns sideline during the Bengals game. I've often thought that wide receivers are the most prone of all football players to go insane during the course of a game. After all, they depend on being targeted by fickle and/or inept quarterbacks all day, with chatty defensive backs taunting them through the earholes in their helmets throughout. It's a situation ripe for driving a player absolutely batty.

Meanwhile, Ken Dorsey did his best to set expectations for offensive improvement at zero, offering that he's not a magic coach with a magic pill to fix the offense. Because if he had a red or blue pill to get us into an alternative universe, I could sure use one to go through the mirror into a universe that is not 1-6 right about now.

Finally, shortly after I emerged from the meeting with the young men and women who were going to show me the trick to attracting the youths of Cleveland Browns fandom to the OBR, I received a message from Haslam Sports Group and their battalion of lawyers announcing that they were going file a lawsuit to clear up this "Modell Law" nonsense that attention-craving City Council members were yammering on about.

This is what happens when small-scale politicians run off to the media, flapping their gums about filing lawsuits against billionaire NFL owners on the shakiest of grounds. It's the equivalent of slapping a temporarily tolerant individual with a pair of small fish, as shown below:

Not advised.

Have a good one! GO BROWNS!

JERRY JEUDY TAKES IT BACK

Jerry Jeudy admits frustration: Football is an emotional sport - (nbcsports.com)

'Football is an emotional sport': Browns' Jerry Jeudy admits lack of targets 'frustrating' - (beaconjournal.com)

Jerry Jeudy embraces playing with emotion, but wishes hadn’t shown frustration with helmet toss - (brownszone.com)

I'd be expressing frustration, too, if I was open all day and didn't get a single target until Jameis Winston showed up. Then again, I'm a fat and slow old middle-aged man (if that), so this is not likely to happen. But I get frustrated about other things, such as being fat and slow, so I can relate, I guess.

THE RATS ARE FLOATING NEARBY

Ravens-Browns Preview - (cbssports.com)

Browns focused on execution on all three phases ahead of Ravens matchup - (clevelandbrowns.com)

3 burning questions for Cleveland Browns to answer against Baltimore Ravens - (beaconjournal.com)

KEN DORSEY SPEAKS

Brownie Bites: Browns offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey says ‘no magic coach or magic pill’ to fix offense - (audacy.com)

Ken Dorsey: There's no magic coach or magic pill to fix the offense - (nbcsports.com)

'Not a magic coach': Ken Dorsey not changing approach now as Browns' play-caller - (beaconjournal.com)

The curious timing of Browns coach Kevin Stefanski’s decision to give up play calling - (nytimes.com, paywalled)

I don't think there's curious timing at all, but my rambling isn't paywalled like every utterance that drops from the lips of the Athletic, so it doesn't have that inherent value. Meanwhile, Ken Dorsey did not apparently trade a cow for any magic beans, so there's that.