Ed Puskas: You play to win the game

Freddie Kitchens has received rave reviews for his play calling as the Cleveland Browns’ offensive coordinator.

There is little new ground to break in football because everything has been done before. But whether Kitchens is drawing plays up in the dirt on Sunday like Bernie Kosar or on a chalkboard in Berea during the week, he seems to come up with a new wrinkle every week.

Triple-reverse option pass by Jarvis Landry? Done that.

Statue of Liberty handoff? Done that.

Landry up the middle on a counter? Done that.

It’s amazing how many of these plays can work when your quarterback — a 23-year-old rookie at that — is a legitimate threat to put the ball 25 or 30 yards downfield into a postage stamp-sized window.

The pass Baker Mayfield threw to tight end David Njoku to clinch a 26-18 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday was just such a throw. Mayfield beat a defender who couldn’t have been any closer to Njoku without wearing his jersey.

Risky business?

“No, there are 11 guys there on every play,” Mayfield said. “It’s all right. I have thrown in tighter windows.”

The best play Kitchens has added to the Browns’ repertoire is run out of the victory formation.

The running joke when the Browns started winning games this season was that practices would have to be lengthened so they could work on the intricacies of taking a knee.

You can argue about the collective skill of the teams the Browns (7-7-1) have defeated of late, but after going 0-16 a year ago and 1-31 the last two seasons, any Ws are good Ws in Cleveland.

And yet there appear to be Browns fans to whom winning is a strange, new phenomenon. These poor souls have experienced winning so infrequently that they simply can’t wrap their head — or arms — around it.

How else can you explain the reality that some Browns fans value the misery of another team and its followers over the potential success of the team they claim to live and die with every week from September to January?

To wit: Some fans are actually saying that the Browns should lose their season finale in Baltimore on Sunday so that the Ravens can make the playoffs instead of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The rationale of these misguided souls is that there is more to like about keeping the Steelers out of the playoffs than in the Browns ending the season on a four-game winning streak and finishing above .500.

Forget the notion that the Browns might not know how to win. Losing to spite the Steelers and their fans shows some fans still have a Hue-ge problem with the victory formation.

Herm Edwards probably said it best: “You play to win the game.”

I know winning is new to some Cleveland fans, but don’t be afraid to embrace it. It’s always better than wallowing in another team’s misery.

But if ruining another team’s season is truly what motivates you, remember this:

The Ravens are the team Art Modell moved out of Cleveland in 1995.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.