Cliff Clavin was the postal-clerk character in the hit TV show Cheers! in the 1980s. In one well-reviewed episode, Cliff Clavin appears on the game show Jeopardy! with host Alex Trebek. All of the categories in the trivia show are to his liking and Clavin builds up a huge lead over the other contestants in the episode.
As fans of the game show all know, if you are in Final Jeopardy, you can't really lose if you are ahead by double your opponent - unless you do something to cause the loss yourself. If you are more than double your opponent, you can simply wager nothing at Final Jeopardy and no one can reach you even if they double up. That's to say you can be out of the reach of your opponent's powers provided that you don't will yourself back into reach.
Cliff Clavin bet too much on Final Jeopardy in the Cheers! episode.That brought him within reach of his closest opponent and he lost the game. Such a gaffe became known as "Pulling a Cliff Clavin" in Jeopardy! lingo.
Here enter the 2022 Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns were in a similar position to Cliff Clavin. Through willpower alone, they could have chosen victory. Instead, they went for too much.
If you've ever followed a sporting event online using website updates instead of live streaming, then maybe you've noticed the win percentages that change after every play. If you've ever seen one at 99.9% and given up on the game, then the Cleveland Browns, in Week 2, were proof that the 0.1% does come into play every once in a while. The Browns just had to avoid committing suicide in Week 2 against the New York Jets and they didn't do it.
With 1:55 to play, Nick Chubb rushed for 12 yards and scored to go up by 13 points. If Chubb deliberately slid at the one or two-yard line, then Cleveland would have had a first down, and their opponent, the New York Jets, would have had no timeouts. With a forty-second play clock, you can burn 115 seconds in the NFL with three kneels.
If they kneeled on first down, second down, and third down the game would have ended in Cleveland's favor. Instead, Chubb scored the touchdown, the Browns missed the convert, the Jets got the ball back, the Jets scored their own touchdown, the Jets kicked a point after, the Jets executed an onside kick, the Jets scored another touchdown, and the Jets scored another point-after for the win.
In short, one of the most-lampooned franchises in the NFL pulled a Cliff Clavin. You can't make these things up. Week 2 of the NFL was basically a rewrite of a TV show plot from decades ago.
