Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Before I head out to the Cotton Bowl tonight, just a note about our upcoming schedule. There will be no newsletter on Monday or Wednesday, but Kevin Sweeney has you covered on Tuesday after the College Football Playoff semifinals.
In today’s SI:AM:
🟠 A rare playoff appearance for the Browns
🦫 Trouble for Seattle’s first hockey bar
From the couch to the playoffs
With their convincing 37–20 win over the New York Jets last night, the Cleveland Browns became the third AFC team to clinch a playoff spot. It’s just the franchise’s third postseason appearance since it returned to Cleveland in 1999. A victory over the Bengals in the season finale would give the team its most wins in a season since ’86.
This is exactly the type of success that the Browns envisioned when they traded for Deshaun Watson before last season and gave him his unprecedented fully guaranteed contract. Except Watson isn’t the one leading them into the postseason.
It’s been a tumultuous season for the Browns, who have started four different players at quarterback. They were 5–1 in games started by Watson, who suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in November. Rookie fifth-round pick Dorian Thompson-Robinson started three games and journeyman backup P.J. Walker started two. With Thompson-Robinson injured and Walker struggling, Cleveland turned to veteran Joe Flacco to start its Week 13 game against the Rams. The Browns lost that game, but Flacco has led them to four straight victories since and propelled them into the playoffs.
Flacco turns 39 in two weeks. He spent most of the season sitting at home waiting for a team to call before Cleveland reached out in the wake of Watson’s injury and offered a spot on the practice squad. Flacco accepted—and it paid off.
Flacco hasn’t been perfect in his five games under center this season (he’s thrown eight interceptions), but he’s the reason the Browns are where they are. He’s averaging 323.2 passing yards per game and has surpassed the 300-yard mark in each in four straight games, making him the only player in Browns history to do so. They needed Flacco to step up because the running game had struggled in recent weeks (averaging just 2.5 yards per attempt in the four games before last night), while the defense carried the team.
In some ways, the Browns are what the Jets hoped to be this season. They have a tremendous defense that had to make up for their serious offensive deficiencies. However, the Jets haven't experienced comparable success at quarterback. In fact, New York hasn’t had 300 net passing yards in a game this season. It would be silly to suggest that the Jets, who employed Flacco for the past three years and could have brought him back at any point this season, would be playoff-bound if he played instead of Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian. (The Browns have better pass-catching depth than the Jets, for one thing.) But still, Jets fans have to be wondering how their season would have gone if they’d given Flacco a shot.
Flacco’s run with the Browns is one of the best stories in the NFL. After waiting all year for an opportunity to show that he still had something to contribute to a team, he’s made the most of the chance. The Browns’ history has been marked by instability at quarterback, and Watson’s injury could have easily sunk their season. But Flacco has come out of nowhere to help earn the franchise a rare playoff opportunity. Regardless of how it ends, it’s been a memorable season in Cleveland.
The best of Sports Illustrated
Charles Krupa/AP Photo
- Seattle’s first hockey bar, The Angry Beaver, is a fixture in the city’s sports scene, but as the Winter Classic approaches, Greg Bishop writes that the bar is dangerously close to shutting its doors forever.
- Bishop also wrote about Florida State lineman Casey Roddick, who was key to helping the team refocus after its Playoff snub.
- Kevin Sweeney has a list of mid-season men’s basketball All-American contenders.
- The Pistons suffered the most excruciating defeat of their seemingly unending losing streak, blowing a 21-point lead against the Celtics to drop their 28th game in a row.
- Here’s what the NFL playoff picture looks like now that the Browns have clinched their spot.
- You have to see this photo of the mark a WWE wrestler’s makeup left on the ring mat.
The top five...
… moments from the Pop-Tarts Bowl
5. The mascot dancing behind a ref.
4. The mascot feeding a Pop-Tart to a reporter.
3. ESPN announcer Anish Shroff’s explanation of the mascot’s fate: “Here’s the sad part of the story: After the game he will be devoured, he will die, and he will be his own last meal.”
2. Kansas State offensive lineman Cooper Beebe’s review of the edible mascot.
1. The moment the mascot was finally lowered into a giant toaster and emerged to be eaten by the victorious Wildcats.
SIQ
What team was Ohio State playing in the Gator Bowl when coach Woody Hayes infamously punched an opposing player on this day in 1978?
- Maryland
- Clemson
- Ole Miss
- Oklahoma State
Yesterday’s SIQ: Which quarterback is credited with popularizing the term “Hail Mary?” (Dec. 28 is the anniversary of the game-winning touchdown pass that inspired him to invoke the prayer in a postgame interview.)
- Doug Flutie
- Jim Kelly
- Joe Montana
- Roger Staubach
Answer: Roger Staubach. The play came in the closing seconds of a playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings on Dec. 28, 1975. With the ball at the 50-yard line and the Dallas Cowboys trailing 14–10, Staubach reared back and uncorked a desperate heave to Drew Pearson, who caught the ball just shy of the goal line and ran into the end zone to win the game.
“I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary,” Staubach said in the locker room after the game.
In subsequent interviews over the years, Staubach has said he could have just as easily referenced a different prayer.
“I was a Catholic kid from Cincinnati, and they asked me what were you thinking about when you threw the ball, and I said, ‘When I closed my eyes I said a Hail Mary.’ I could have said Our Father, Glory Be, The Apostles Creed,” he told the Cowboys’ team website in 2019.
Staubach’s pass wasn’t the first football play to be described as a Hail Mary, though, according to the History Channel. In 1922, Notre Dame players literally said a Hail Mary in the huddle before a touchdown play. A newspaper article on another Catholic school football team, Georgetown, used the term in ’41. Staubach himself described another play as a Hail Mary when he was in college at the Naval Academy in ’63.
But it was Staubach’s 1975 pass to Pearson that popularized the use of Hail Mary and was included in an Associated Press article that was reprinted in newspapers across the country.
