About fans booing players and players lashing back at fans

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Fans booing, players complaining ...

Where to begin?

Let’s start with Ohio State product Justin Fields. After his Bears lost 27-10 to Green Bay, Fields said, “It hurts more in the locker room than for Bears fans. … They aren’t putting in any work.”

If you’re a Bears fan, you are stuck with a lousy team. According to Statista, the average price of a Bears ticket is $122. That’s one ticket. It also doesn’t count parking, concessions, gas, etc. Two people going to a game can easily spend $300.

Other media outlets have the average NFL ticket price at $200. No matter what data you use, it’s expensive.

The obvious point missed by Fields is fans have to “put in the work” to pay for the tickets to go to the games, and help pay his salary.

To his credit, Fields soon apologized.

“First off, I was frustrated after the game,” Fields told the Chicago media. “No. 1, I didn’t want to come talk to you guys (media). I wasn’t in the mood to come and talk to you guys. I should’ve done a better job explaining what I meant by that.

“But, what I meant by that, I’m talking about work regarding the game on Sunday, winning the game. I don’t know any fans. I don’t know what they’re doing in their personal lives. I respect every fan that we have. I’m glad that we have fans. I would never disrespect anybody on what they do or what they love to do.”

Good job, Justin. Fans can understand frustration. They also can be sympathetic about athletes having to face the media after a bad loss. Fields came across as human, and he should be respected for that.

A revealing comment is “I don’t know any fans. I don’t know what they’re doing in their personal lives.”

At least on a casual level, the players actually do know fans – but they are clueless about the jobs and personal challenges faced by most fans.

Cleveland Browns’ fans cheer on their team in Week 2 against the New York Jets at FirstEnergy Stadium.

ABOUT MYLES GARRETT

That brings us to Myles Garrett and what he said after his Browns blew a 13-point lead in the final two minutes and lost to the Jets 31-30 at FirstEnergy Stadium.

“The more disappointing thing was the booing at the end,” he said. “It was not the most optimal ending that we’d want. Of course we’d want to win. Of course we wanted to play out the game and it end 30-16 or 30-17 or whatever it was ... But that’s not always how it goes. These guys are still putting their asses on the line and playing as hard as they can, and they should be respected as such.”

Like Fields, Garrett was frustrated after the loss.

Garrett took the booing as a sign of disrespect rather than what it was – what he also was feeling – anger and frustration after the loss. According to ESPN, the last time a team blew a lead of at least 13 points in the final two minutes was in 2001.

No wonder fans booed. Several other Browns such as Joel Bitonio and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah said they understood the reaction of the customers.

Garrett didn’t blame the fans for the loss. He pointed a finger at himself. He also challenged his teammates and coaches to improve.

“It’s two games and we have plenty more games to play,” Garrett said. “We have a lot of time to correct what we’re doing, so we don’t want to see this crowd, this stadium give up on us this early. We want to see them completely behind us.

“And it’s disappointing for everybody, but it’s absolutely disappointing for us as a team just knowing that we had them with our foot on their throat and we didn’t finish them, and that’s completely on us.”

Cleveland Browns’ fans cheer on their team against the New York Jets.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Let’s first start with the fans. They have been known to cross lines of respectable behavior. A fan fired a water bottle at Browns owner Jimmy Haslam near the end of the Jets game.

We can’t have fans throwing things. Or fans shouting obscenities and making personal attacks on players, as has happened in the NBA, where the customers are right on top of the players. Some family members of players have been harassed by fans.

Just as many fans have disturbing stories of encounters with rude players, the players can counter with their experiences with unruly fans.

Fields is right. Fans don’t know the full emotional and physical price players pay to perform at such a high level. They do know the players are outrageously paid, compared to the average person. And they know the job of being professional athletes comes with incredible perks from exceptional medical care to public adulation.

Players want fans to know they are people, too.

But the same is true of fans. They are people, too.

When it comes to Browns fans, if they had stopped coming games every time they booed their team – the Browns would have been playing in an empty lakefront stadium for the last 20 years.

The fans keep coming back. I know some fans who don’t go on a vacation in order to buy Browns season tickets. They make major financial and personal sacrifices to follow the NFL’s worst team since it returned in 1999. They have won only one of every three games since 2000, according to Statmuse.

That also doesn’t count the trauma of the move to Baltimore in 1995 and the return as a dismal expansion team in 1999. If the Browns were a restaurant, most of their customers would have ended up in the hospital with food poisoning.

Many of the Browns’ players were not alive when the team moved. Most have no idea what the Cleveland fan base has endured. But they still need to respect the fans, the vast majority who are just praying for a reason to believe in their beloved orange helmets.

Just as Garrett asked the fans for patience and understanding, the same is required from the players when they talk about the fans.

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