Some time for 22

22
Cover corner: the 1975 LP simply titled "Stills."

Yep, I’m back, now that the Browns have already won double the games they did last season, since I’m counting preseason, and after last night why wouldn’t we, right?

Recently an old friend found the pictured Stephen Stills album at a used record store, and he figured I should have it. The first real concert we attended together back in the day happened to be CSN. Of course it was the Browns jersey that caught his eye.

So what better day and what better way to send in a new season here at Browns Plainly than with this Clarence Scott-era jersey?

After all, today’s the 22nd of August.

And 22 is the number of players on the field for every play.

So of course, it’s the number of offensive and defensive starters whom the Browns are deciding to field.

The current wearer of 22, rookie safety/returner Jabril Peppers, seems primed to be among them. I had hoped the first-rounder from Michigan would keep the number 27 he was initially assigned, based on those echoes with Thom Darden, whom I had the pleasure to meet in March.

But I also enjoyed meeting Felix Wright in December, and he wore his number 22 to great effect too. So there’s a certain personal symmetry for me that Peppers (who played his college home games about a 22-minute drive from my house) would end up in the double-twos.

The Browns’ quarterback question is as always an interesting one. Big Brock Osweiler is no franchise QB. But he’s probably the best choice at the outset for what might again be a fluid situation at the game’s most important position. It’s odds-on certainty that the surviving three QBs on the opening day roster will be Osweiler (wearing 17), plus the raw but intriguing DeShone Kizer (7), plus the limited but game Cody Kessler (6), minus fellow sophomore Kevin Hogan (8). You know what that equals?

22.

Anyway, I read somewhere (and it was on the internet, so it must be true) that the phenomenal folk rocker Stills wore various football jerseys during that period — really decades before it became such a “thing” — because they were comfortably loose and therefore ideal for guitar playing and performing.

The track list for this album might strike a few resonant chords for Browns followers and fans. it includes Turn Back The Pages, My Favorite Changes, In The Way, First Things First, As I Come Of Age, Shuffle Just As Bad, and Cold Cold World. Let your mind make of those what it will.

I don’t know that Stills had any particular affinity for the Browns or for Scott, who wore the number with distinction as a career-long Brown from 1971 to 1983. But I like them both. So there.

And my Browns will go no worse than 2-2 this preseason. And it’s been 22 years since the Browns have won a playoff game.

And that’s enough for now, Maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about my own cover corner, Joe Haden, and what his career resurgence would mean for the development of the 2017 Browns. Rock on.