Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.
We've all heard the old children's mantra, a way for adults to teach kids that someone saying something about them isn't that big of a deal.
That might be the case for kids, but in sports, players and teams use the words of opponents for motivation -- at least when they win. When they actually lose, there's typically not a lot said about perceived disrespect.
So it is with JuJu Smith-Schuster's "Browns is the Browns" comment made before the Steelers played them in the postseason earlier this year. Smith-Schuster didn't mean it disrespectfully. I was on the Zoom call when he said it. I didn't perceive that he was disrespecting Cleveland.
He was saying they were a good team, but they were just the next team on the schedule. It's something Mike Tomlin preaches to his team all the time.
In this case, the fanbase in Cleveland and the Browns themselves -- both of whom obviously have an inferiority complex when it comes to the Steelers -- took it and ran with it. And when they beat the Steelers, 48-37, in that postseason game, jumping out to a 28-0 first-quarter lead, they won the right to gloat.
And gloat they did. Browns players mentioned Smith-Schuster's statement after the game. A billboard went up in Cleveland proclaiming "The Browns is the Browns" (as if they could be anyone else).
Smith-Schuster was asked about the incident in an interview with Pro Football Talk last week and whether it motivated the Browns.
“Probably a lot, honestly,” Smith-Schuster said. “I’m not going to lie to you. It got to a point where the Cleveland Browns had a billboard up in Cleveland that said, ‘The Browns is the Browns.’ I think by me saying that, it says that a lot of people care about what I say. ... At the end of the day, I said what I said. I don’t take anything back. They did come out there, they did whoop our ass. It is what it is. We lost that game. We lost early in that game in the first five, 10 minutes. We still fought. I’ll tell you one thing about our team, we still fought to the end. It wasn’t good enough."
Whether opponents are motivated by statements or not is debatable. But to the victors go the spoils. So, if you're going to talk before a game, you'd better be ready to back it up.
For example, nobody took Joey Porter to task for calling out Jerramy Stevens before Super Bowl XL. But had the Seahawks won, Stevens would still be trash talking Porter.
It's why, no matter the opponent, how good or bad the defense might be, Ben Roethlisberger talks them up like they're the second-coming of the 1976 Steelers.
It's boring. It's not controversial at all.
Those words are often overblown by the media. And if your team wins, nobody mentions it. But if you lose, it's going to be thrown back in your face.
Smith-Schuster is the latest to learn that lesson.
YOUR TURN: Do you think Smith-Schuster learned his lesson?
