Todd Monken pushes back on Mike Tomlin’s assessment: ‘That’s not Browns being Browns’

Pretty much every NFL fan who watched the Cleveland Browns’ moribund performance in Week 1 of the NFL season last weekend thought to themselves something akin to, “that’s the Browns for you.”

That includes NBC’s Mike Tomlin, who, when describing quarterback Deshaun Watson’s miserable performance in a 34-10 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, said, “In the words of my friend JuJu Smith-Schuster, the Browns is the Browns.”

The zinger landed extra hard given that Tomlin coached one of the Browns’ biggest rivals for 19 seasons, going 28-10-1 against Cleveland in that time.

Mike Tomlin: “In the words of my friend JuJu Smith-Schuster, the Browns is the Browns.” 🏈💀🎙️ pic.twitter.com/5jRJYeRgG1

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 14, 2026

Browns first-year coach Todd Monken was asked about Tomlin’s comments during his Monday video press conference, and he seemed understandably perturbed by them.

“Well, again, everybody’s afforded their opinions. That’s what you do when you go from coaching to television,” Monken said. “We have to own that. We have to own that. We didn’t play very well. I don’t see it that way, Browns being Browns. I don’t see it that way. Every week is different, every team is different. We just didn’t play well. That’s one week. That’s not Browns being Browns, that’s Browns being poorly on one week.

“So, again, everybody’s afforded their opinion. And the only way to change people’s opinion is to play better. That’s a fact. We don’t want to be considered an also-ran, then we have to play better. We have to coach better, and we have to play better.”

Monken is technically correct, but this is the Browns we’re talking about. There’s a reason a lot of people were nodding their heads when they heard Tomlin say it.