Monken shrugs off Browns-Steelers rivalry ahead of Pittsburgh trip

BrownsTodd Monken downplays Browns-Steelers rivalry ahead of Pittsburgh gameBy Orange and Brown Talk Podcast, cleveland.comCLEVELAND, Ohio — Todd Monken sat down at his Wednesday press conference and got hit with the question every Browns head coach eventually has to answer during Steelers week: How much time did you spend talking to your players about the rivalry?His answer? Not much.When pressed on whether he even sees value in that kind of historical framing, Monken simply said no. When asked about the Browns’ 20-plus-year regular season losing streak in Pittsburgh, he shrugged it off. He’s worried about this year — this week — and really just today.Mason Graham has a chance to do something not seen in nearly two decadesBrowns at Steelers: Storylines, scouting report and picks for Sunday: Orange and Brown Talk preview (Podcast)Todd Monken had plenty to say after Browns’ costly 12-men penalty. Special teams coordinator Byron Storer knew he deserved itFor some Browns fans, that read as flat. Sports talk radio wanted a fired-up Monken, someone showing up to the podium with visible contempt for Acrisure Stadium and everything that happens inside it. Instead, they got what Orange and Brown Talk host Dan Labbe described as the most Todd Monken thing ever.But Labbe isn’t complaining. He thinks the muted approach is exactly right — and the reasoning runs deeper than simply avoiding bulletin board material.“I think also, like, the truth in it is he probably doesn’t want to spend so much time overhyping it with them and putting so much extra weight on it that it does sort of have this unintentional effect of maybe intimidating these guys in some way,” Labbe said. “It’s that joke we talk about all the time. I bring it up, like, every day. These guys are so young, they, like, don’t know that they’re supposed to be stressed out by this or that. The Browns haven’t won in Pittsburgh since 2003, like before some of them were born, which is wild.”That’s the core of the argument. This Browns roster is genuinely young. Carson Schwesinger grew up in California. Mason Graham grew up in California. These players didn’t spend their childhoods watching the Browns fail in Pittsburgh year after year. They don’t carry that particular scar. And according to Labbe, that’s actually an advantage — as long as nobody goes out of their way to hand it to them.“If you put too much on this and you put that on these players, you’re putting this weight on them that they haven’t earned,” Labbe said. “Things are starting to go wrong on Sunday, and now all of a sudden they’re feeling this 22-year losing streak that they had nothing to do with and that they’re paying for the sins of the organization well before they were here.”Browns beat reporter Ashley Bastock added that NFL division rivalries are just built differently than college ones. In the Ohio State–Michigan rivalry, reverence for the history is practically a requirement. In the NFL, the schedule creates the intensity naturally — you play these teams twice, the tiebreakers matter, and the stakes are automatically elevated. You don’t need to manufacture weight that’s already there.There’s also something to be said for how strategically Monken deploys his sharper moments. When the Ravens dismissed the Browns in Week 1, Monken quietly held onto Mike Tomlin’s “the Browns is the Browns” comment and dropped it after the next win — a perfectly timed mic drop that landed because it felt earned. Walking into his Wednesday presser already fuming about Steelers history would have felt cheap by comparison.The bet Monken seems to be making is simple: let this team play the game, let them feel it for themselves and let the rivalry become theirs. Not the franchise’s. Theirs.If they win Sunday in Pittsburgh, you’ll probably get a very different version of Todd Monken at the podium.This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff.