Were this any other regular season, JC Tretter would be getting ready to head home now. He would be packing up his locker, attending his exit interviews, taking stock with fellow Browns of their 7–9 finish, last in the AFC North. Instead the center is on the phone between team meetings on a Tuesday evening, explaining how he feels as he and the team prepare for an unprecedented—and meaningless, in Cleveland—17th game.
“It’s almost like a body-clock thing,” Tretter says. “You get used to the season being done at 16, because that’s how you’ve always trained. So it’s definitely different.