FirstEnergy Stadium, where the Cleveland Browns have laced up every Fall since 1999, has famously been called a Factory of Sadness. Season after season Browns' fans have filtered into the first home game filled with cautious optimism only to have their hopes quickly shattered, the all too familiar mantra "There's always next year!" ringing through the air as the stands empty.

But for the first time in decades there is reason for hope! In 2020 the Browns went 11-5, made the playoffs and won their first playoff game since 1994, against their biggest rivals no less. The 2021 team, on paper, is the most loaded the roster has been since the team returned in 1999, and fan expectations are higher than ever.

Before kickoff this coming Sunday September 12, 2021 in Arrowhead Stadium, I wanted to relive the 2020 Divisional round game and show the spark that last year's team lit.

Browns Twitter During the 2020 Divisional Round Game

I am a huge Browns fan, and, if you aren't familiar with my research work, I am also a mathematician that frequently works with Twitter data. For many years now I have been intrigued by the idea that you could follow a game, not on the television (which I prefer), but on your Twitter feed. For fun, I pulled tweets that contained the word "Browns" off of the Twitter API from a little after 11 AM to about 8 PM on January 17, 2021.

At the end of the day, this collection of Browns tweets consisted of 273,547 unique tweets, 95,306 of which were retweets. Before looking at these tweets I want to point out that these are not all of the tweets posted about the Browns on that day, just a small sample that Twitter lets me collect though its API. Still, that is a lot of tweets!

Let's start by just looking at the tweets posted each minute from 11 to 8. You can see the five most frequently posted tweets for each three minute period by scrolling over the small orange dots on the plot. I think you can get a pretty good feel for the biggest in-game action this way. See how they compare to the big game highlights according to the NFL.

Note: I removed obvious identifiers for the users that posted these tweets to try and protect their privacy. The only poster usernames I left in were @Browns, @Chiefs, @NFL and a certain former Brown.

While reliving the events of this game can bring about the full spectrum of emotions for any Browns fan, I want to focus on one big take away. We are overwhelmingly proud of our team and hopeful for the future! Look at the tweets that started to flow in after the game. We could not wait for the 2021 season to start.

I wanted to try and quantify just how this game impacted the emotions of Browns Twitter. I turned to a project known as Hedonometer, that looks to quantify how "happy" Twitter is on any given day using a random sample of 10% of the tweets posted on that day. Applying their algorithm to these tweets I measured just how "happy" Browns Twitter was throughout game day. A higher score means that the tweets posted in that minute tended to be happier, while a lower score means that the tweets were sadder.

Looking at the sentiment over time and comparing it with our earlier plot allows us to infer how the emotions of these tweets were impacted by the game. The Twitter fan base was really excited for this game, but that excitement quickly died down during the first half, with a true low coming right around when Higgins fumbled into the endzone. However, as the Browns worked to close the deficit, Twitter responded in kind, that is until backup Chiefs QB Chad Henne converted that fourth down. After the game, spirits quickly rose with tweets full of pride and hope for what the future will bring the Dawg Pound.

Moving into the 2021 NFL season I am filled with hope and cautious optimism for this team. I cannot wait to see us in action, and I look forward to hearing my favorite football play-by-play man, Jim Donovan, say "The running back is Chubb." While I will not be visiting the factory in person this season, I am excited to consume the gladness it will be churning out from the comfort of my living room. And hey, there's always this year!

For those of you interested in the methods behind this post I encourage you to visit Hedonometer's website (linked in the main text above). I also plan to post a methods writeup for this blog post soon and I will link to it here when it is ready.