Todd Monken Fires Back at Mike Tomlin’s ‘Browns Is the Browns’ Jab After Cleveland Edges Tampa Bay

Cleveland Browns head coach Todd Monken delivered an emphatic — and profane — rebuttal to national television criticism on Sunday, after his team gutted out a 23-19 road victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The exchange began in Week 1, when Cleveland opened its season with a lopsided loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. During NBC’s “Football Night in America” coverage, former longtime Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, now an analyst on the network’s Sunday night studio show, invoked a phrase made famous by one of his ex-players: “In the words of my friend JuJu Smith-Schuster, the Browns is the Browns.”

Monken’s retort following Sunday’s win in Tampa left little ambiguity. “Browns are gonna Browns. F*** that!” the coach told reporters, adding, “The guys took that to heart.”

The coach said the season-opening stumble galvanized his roster rather than deflating it. He pointed to heated practice sessions in the days before the Buccaneers game as evidence that players refused to accept the opening-week performance as representative of the team’s standards.

“I thought our guys did a great job of hanging together,” Monken said, describing Wednesday scuffles at practice as a positive sign that players were upset with how the team had played. “Played awful. It wasn’t the standard.”

Monken’s Sunday response was notably sharper than his initial reaction earlier in the week. Speaking to reporters the Monday after the Jacksonville loss, he had taken a more measured — though still pointed — tone, saying that opinions come with the territory when coaches move into broadcasting.

“Everybody’s afforded their opinions. That’s what you do when you go from coaching to television,” Monken said at the time. “I don’t see it that way, ‘Browns being Browns.’ … The only way to change people’s opinions is to play better. That’s a fact.”

The dust-up carries a media-industry undercurrent: Tomlin’s commentary aired on the NBC Sports studio program produced under Comcast, whose media holdings include the NBC broadcast network that carries “Football Night in America” and Sunday Night Football. Comcast shares traded at $22.74 in recent action, down 1.22% from the prior close of $23.02, with a market capitalization of roughly $92.5 billion.

What to watch

• Whether Cleveland can string together consecutive wins and sustain the turnaround Monken has emphasized.
• Any further on-air commentary from Tomlin or the NBC studio desk regarding the Browns’ trajectory.
• Cleveland’s upcoming schedule, which will test whether the Week 2 performance reflects lasting improvement or a one-week rebound.

Source: original release