Get it? ‘Cuz it was windy as hell?

I know, cheesy. The unfortunate bread and butter of my humor.

The Cleveland Browns fell to the Las Vegas [but still very much Oakland] Raiders 16-6 in a game filled with should-be touchdowns that weren’t, field goals that Mother Nature claimed as her own, and Josh Jacobs running amok all over FirstEnergy Stadium.

Fine, I’ll say it: I jumped the gun on the 9-2 by December thing.

But give me a break, I’m still in the process of truly becoming a depressed Browns fan. My spirit is still in its naive infancy, but longtime Browns sufferer Ray McKenzie will show me the ropes soon enough.

For the first time this season, a Browns loss didn’t heavily support the ‘We Hate Baker Brigade.’

Amongst the grueling weather conditions, Baker Mayfield was largely good Sunday despite the numbers suggesting otherwise. A number Baker’s passes, although not all perfect, were plenty enough for his talented counterparts to come up with, but the cards just weren’t in Cleveland’s favor and most those passes ended up on the turf.

Most notably, David Njoku dropped a room service pass from Mayfield that would’ve extended a big drive in the 2nd half, and I got the vibe he’s just waiting to depart to his next club on Nov. 3rd.

Jarvis Landry, who the Browns will lean heavily on without Odell Beckham Jr., made an incredible one-armed catch in traffic late in the 4th to pay homage to his fallen best friend. But the effort was too little too late. Baker even found him in the end zone, an absolute dart that Landry got both hands on, but was met by too much heat from the Raider defense and could not bring down with him.

Las Vegas’s defense used the elements to their advantage, chilling out Cleveland’s offense. They dominated the game’s time of possession, and used the aforementioned Jacobs coupled with timely runs by quarterback Derek Carr to slowly wear down the Browns’ defense. Controlling the pace, the Raiders were in command of the game throughout, even though the score was tied 6-all going into the 4th.

The Browns will trudge into their bye week 5-3, without a grand hall of accomplishments to show for it. They were torched in their meetings with the inter-divisional rival Ravens and the Steelers, with Pittsburgh looking like an early pick for Super Bowl favorites. They beat the lowly Bengals twice, with one of the games being more of an escape than a solid win. The nameless team from Washington also game them a run, although they’ve been a bit more competitive than Cincinnati. And finally, they outgunned Dak and the Cowboys, who haven’t stopped anybody all year.

The good news is, their next three games are still extremely winnable. The bye week will also help the team get a little healthier before they finish out the second half of the season. Nick Chubb is on the return as well.

The bad news is, this loss does give the Raiders an advantage over the Browns in a potential tiebreaker. In its first game without its two biggest offensive weapons in OBJ and Chubb (although you kinda count last week’s Bengal game as one), the team did not score a touchdown. And they’re still the Cleveland Browns, so what can go wrong is destined to do so.

I’ll enjoy cheering for some of Cleveland’s competition in the AFC to lose next Sunday while the Browns recuperate.

No basketball or baseball sucks, but this helps me dive further into football. I can tell why the rest of you love this shit. The stress is 20 times worse, you have to sit on losses for a week, and fantasy just adds either more rage or more joy (mostly rage for me and the rest of the Zeke drafters) to the chaos.

It’s fucking fantastic. Seriously.

Not sure what I was doing earlier, but I can assume I was somehow subconsciously saving myself from becoming a Browns fan for as long as I could.

It is now far too late.

Ari’s new album was hittin’ all weekend.

Cheers.