Cleveland Browns: No love from ESPN’s early power rankings
By Thomas Moore
The Cleveland Browns kick off the 2016 offseason by holding down the basement in ESPN’s first power rankings of the new year.
The Cleveland Browns and the rest of the NFL are barely two days away from the end of Super Bowl 50, which apparently means it is time to start looking toward the 2016 season.
ESPN got the ball rolling with its admittedly “way-too-early” power rankings for the upcoming season, and there is little to no love for the Cleveland Browns, which came in at No. 32:
"Why they’re here: No voter placed the Browns higher than No. 31. That’s what happens when you lose 10 of 11 to finish the season, fire the head coach, make major front-office changes, and move on from your recent first-round pick quarterback. And Cleveland could lose a pair of its top offensive linemen this offseason."
"What could change: Start with the culture, with Hue Jackson in town and Johnny Manziel soon to be out. Jackson was a coveted interview and the Browns got him, a major positive for the organization after the Chip Kelly drama of a few years ago. There’s also this: Exactly 15 months ago, the Browns were 7-6 and one game out of a playoff spot, switched to Manziel and have gone 3-16 since. No, the losing wasn’t all Manziel. But there are at least embers of winning still on the roster, Josh Gordon could return, and an exciting new face is leading the charge."
While rankings of these sort are always subjective, especially as we don’t know what the Browns and the rest of the league’s teams will do in free agency and the 2016 NFL Draft, but that doesn’t mean there is not still room to quibble.
The biggest complaint is that the Browns trail the Tennessee Titans, who came in at No. 31, by a wide margin in the polling. The Browns finished with 40 points, while the Titans are at 59 – almost 50 percent higher than the Browns. Sure, the Titans have Marcus Mariota at quarterback, but a year after having the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 draft, the Titans somehow got worse and hold the No. 1 overall selection this year.
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And while the Browns nailed one of the top coaching hires in head coach Hue Jackson, the Titans underwhelmed by retaining interim head coach Mike Mularkey, who has lost 32 of the past 41 games he has served as head coach.
Or how about the Jacksonville Jaguars, who somehow more than tripled the Browns vote total to come in at No. 29 after, as ESPN pointed out, posting the following win totals over the past five years: five, two, three, four and five. And that is while playing in the pillow-soft AFC South Division!
Of course, the Titans with Mariota and the Jaguars with Blake Bortles have quarterbacks that they believe are players to build around, while the Browns continue on their 23-year journey to find such a player.
In the end, it’s all fun and games on an otherwise slow news days.
And at least we all know the Browns have nowhere to go but up.