I love it when NFL teams post a video from inside a victorious locker room. I love to see Dan Campbell look down at his little stat sheet and shout, "O-line! Where's the O-line? One-hundred forty-four yards on the ground! Holy cow, men!" while losing his voice. I love it when a sheepish running back is given a game ball and asked to say something to the team, and all he can manage is, "Love y'all boys. Let's keep it going." I love when a doofy starting quarterback's voice cracks as he breaks down the huddle. I even love it when Ben Johnson rips his shirt off. So of course the Cleveland Browns, the most dispiriting and despicable 5-2 team in the league, have managed to suck all the juice out of the format.
Our first big problem here is that Todd Monken is an absolute dud. He's carrying himself throughout this speech like he's condescending to a Home Depot employee. "I don't know how much we rushed for, but that looked like how we want it to look like." Excuse me? No, you idiot. Where is your stat sheet? You have to yell the yardage number so everyone can cheer. And what's this, you're telling me that you weren't sure if Denzel Ward was going to play, but then he did play, and of course you should have known that he was going to? Amazing story, coach, thank you.
And what's with this game ball inflation? Monken hands out six goddamn balls in this clip, which seems like way too many to give out after barely escaping with a win against a dreadful Titans team. If you turn the ball over twice and let Tony Pollard run for 129 yards, you get three game balls, max.
Of course the video has to end with Deshaun Watson, a vile creep that the NFL media-industrial complex is going out of its way to turn into an inspirational figure, receiving the final game ball. That's his reward for continuing his streak of playing like absolute shit for most of the game, and then somehow leading a game-winning drive in the fourth quarter. "Party at Deshaun's house?" Monken yells at the end of the video, referencing the grim, food truck–based house party Watson threw for his teammates after last week's victory. What a cool guy.
