For one day, Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden were Kings. And I was there!

With a lot of time on my hands (As we all have), I've been reminiscing here and there about various things from my past.  The other day I was specifically thinking about this dreamy taco place that I used to live near in Cincinnati and went to Facebook to see if I had ever taken any pictures of their Adobo Curry or Duck tacos, or their amazing pineapple salsa.

Sadly, I had not.*

But in my search I found this from September of 2012:

And realized that I never told the story of my first and only NFL game on this page.  So I'll tell it today!

2012 was my first year living in Cincinnati, as my wife (Then girlfriend) and I had just moved there out of grad school to start our life together.  We lived in a really cheap apartment with a ceiling that leaked and the occasional mouse (Yay cats) and got by on my really stressful teaching job in a behavioral school and my wife selling at craft fairs.  They were busy times but also fun times, with our neighborhood being totally badass (Given the aforementioned tacos for one) and me hitting the blogs hard (A quick review of September 2012 shows I was knee deep in Listia at the time...couldn't even tell you how that site works today!).

My in-laws live in Akron, and they were happy we moved a little closer to them (Only 3.5 hours), so they gifted me a Browns game for my birthday that Summer.  I had never been to an NFL game in my entire life, and at the time of my birthday my favorite QB - Seneca Wallace - was still on the active roster!  Life couldn't get any better.  Of course then the Browns 2012 draft happened, where they grabbed Brandon Weeden.  The team still had Colt McCoy and Thad Lewis around from 2011 and Seneca was way more expensive, so when final cuts came on August 31st, Seneca was gone.  Literally 17 days before my first NFL game, my favorite team cut my favorite player.  Such a bummer, albeit a very foreseeable bummer.

But a first game is still a first game, and I was pretty excited.  We drove the ten minutes to the stadium and entered, and I got this cool picture in my #6 Seneca Browns jersey:

Then the game happened, and I gotta say...it was something of a barn burner!  The final score was 34-24 Bengals, and it felt like big plays were happening all game:

The coolest part though (Or most depressing depending on your perspective), looking back on this game from 2020, is that it very well have been the best career game for both Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden. 

Yes, the second career game for each guy may have been their best career game.  Very Browns indeed.

For TRich, this being his best career game is pretty indisputable in my eyes.  He finished the game with over 100 yards rushing, 5.7 YPC, 145 yards overall, and two touchdowns (One rushing, one receiving).  In the rest of his 29 game career, Trent:
- Only broke 100 rushing yards twice more (This game was his 2nd highest total)
- Only passed 5.7 YPC once, in a game where he had just nine carries
- NEVER bested 145 yards overall
- And never scored more touchdowns in a game (He had two more games with two touchdowns in 2012).

If you watch the video above, the announcer several times talks about how Richardson was a franchise player, and he looked it that day.  Unfortunately he never was quite the same again.

As for Weeden, the accolade of best career game is a little more debatable, and I'd say at the very least it's his 2nd best game.  Versus Cincy, Weeden was 26/37 for 322 yards with 2 touchdowns.  That gave him a completion percentage of 70% and a QB rating of 114.9.  He was coming off a 4 interception week one, so this game was a solid comeback and hope for the future.

Except, in 35 career games:
- Weeden only bested 322 yards passing in a game twice
- Weeden only beat that Cincy game's 70% completion rate once - 84.62% with Dallas in 2015
- And Weeden only ever bested his 114 QB rating in his most recent start, a 116 in the Texans' playoff clinching 2015 Week 17 with over Indianapolis.

(If you're confused about those last two points, Weeden went from decent statistical QB filling in for an injured Tony Romo in 2015 to waived after a few losses, at which point the Texans added him and he ended up playing great in one of the biggest games in the Texans' short history.  2015 was a wild year for Weeden).

Wherever you exactly place these performances, 2012's Week 2 Browns/Bengals game featured two of the Browns' all time biggest draft busts playing at a level they would rarely, if ever, reach again.  And I was there. 

As a Browns fan...that feels pretty damn cool.

* And in case you were curious, here's somebody else's photo of those tacos:

The duck is in the top right corner and had a real chunky salsa to it.  I think the curry is top left...Man it was so delicious.  I miss that place.