Forgive me for going all broken record on you, but I need to justify my fears right now. History tends to repeat itself, right? Every history teacher will tell you that, and lots of people who paid attention in one history class will also say it.

So I find my mind drifting to a time in the past, to a freakishly athletic Cleveland sports star who was rising to the ranks of being a nationally recognized megastar. He had the ideal body, all the tools, said the right things, had passionate fans, and had a slight, kind of nagging injury. Fast forward five years, and Grady Sizemore has barely played baseball since. Not satisfied? How about keeping the exact same lead-in sentence, then changing the “Grady Sizemore” part to say “Travis Hafner?” Is that better?

I know, they’re both baseball players and the Cleveland Indians have a habit of being a disappointment recently (60 years or so). But if you want to look at it similarly, can you think of a time when the Browns had a big, strong running back who was verging on NFL stardom? A guy who seemed indestructible? A guy who looked like he was as strong as a house and as fast as the sports car in the driveway? A guy who could literally run people over and keep right on truckin’? Strain your memories…it was Peyton Hillis, obviously. A nagging quasi-injury led to more nagging quasi-injuries, leading to a terrible season and his signing in Kansas City.

For Trent Richardson, he has no history with the Browns. He has no history in the NFL, nor does he have a history of injuries or even being banged up (it’s hard to bang up a guy who appears to be made of steel). My problem with that is the old expression of “If it seems too good to be true, it is.”

I say this a lot in this column space, but I’m saying it again. I desperately want to be wrong on this one. I want Richardson to come back at full strength by Week One. I want him to be the wrecking ball, shape-shifting, freak athlete that he currently is. I want him to run over, around, and through defenders on a weekly basis. I want him to bench press an entire opposing team on his way to the end zone. I’m just genuinely terrified that it won’t be happening as soon as I want it.

You might be saying “But the surgery went fine.” Well, yeah. Have you ever heard of an athlete who had surgery and the immediate response was “Nope. We screwed that up big time. He’s never walking again?” That doesn’t happen. Even when it’s Peyton Manning’s neck, it takes several months to find out that there’s been a problem.

I used to be in the camp of not worrying about it and hoping a player takes an extra week off, just so he’s fully healed when he comes back. I still think that’s always the best option. Be extremely careful – this is a potential franchise player. I don’t want to see chances being taken on the guy whose backups hardly anyone can name.

Players get hurt all the time. It seems like it happens to the Browns in particularly painful fashion. I know that doesn’t make sense and I’m sure statistics would not back it up, so don’t bother. But it’s a bummer, and I’m used to it. There’s no other way to say it. I want Trent Richardson to be perfectly healthy, and he’s already not perfectly healthy. That scares me to death.

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I know that most of my posts are a little bit heavy on thoughts. I like to dig into things that are tangential to football and have a bearing on the community or the fan base instead of just talking about football. I don’t write game recaps, I don’t write three-quote articles, and I usually don’t write state-the-fact pieces. But what I’m about to do is something that I just can’t ignore anymore, nor can I put off writing about it. I want Trent Richardson to obviously sign quickly, and I want him to sign for the reason that I’m about to express.

That guy is a monster.

I’m not saying he’s strong and fast, I’m saying he is legitimately terrifying becuase of how strong and fast he is.

Things I know about Trent Richardson: he runs over people. He runs around people. He runs past people. He has flattened a coach/man who was well over 200 pounds during a blocking drill. He allegedly benches 475 pounds. He truly looks like he could squat a dump truck. He spends his free time chasing his two kids, which might be the most exhausting thing out of the whole bunch.

I watched the Sports Science clip that was posted here on DPD a few days ago. I should mention that I think Sports Science is one of the dumbest pieces of television that exists, and that’s saying an awful lot because of how much garbage is on ESPN, let alone all of the channels in the world. I don’t even remember the majority of what the segment was about, but I know that every single time they showed Richardson doing just about anything, I shook my head and thought, “My god, what a freak.”

He’s not the fastest guy in the world, which I’m fine with, but the jukes are just head-scratchers. And the stiff arm. And the running-with-anger. And the sheer strength. He’s reportedly 5-9 and 228 pounds. Think about that for a minute. Normal people with those measurements would be considered “dangerously overweight” by conventional standards. Richardson, on the other hand, has a body that would give a sculpture body image issues.

Of course, I know how this works. He’s on the Browns so he’ll come down with a staph infection or he will spontaneously combust or he’ll step outside one day and get mauled by an escaped bonobo (which are usually extremely docile, by the way) and that’ll be that. It’s impossible to not assume the worst at all times, right? When I re-upped my Ohio driver’s license I think that was one of the forms I signed.

Optimism is scary as a Browns fan, and I’ll say that I don’t think he’s going to win 12 games for the ol’ brown and orange this year. But I can safely say that I’m excited to at least have a legitimate physical marvel on the team.

Go Browns.

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If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably noticed that people who like Cleveland (and its sports) tend to stick together. While I’ll argue with almost anyone about almost anything, there’s a good chance that we’ll settle on wanting the same team to win, and that’s good enough.

With that strong community vibe, we get tiny little articles that mean nothing to the world but mean something to us. One of those tidbits I saw was about Brandon Weeden wearing an Indians shirt on the podium after a practice (or whatever these things are that they’re doing).

At first glance, who cares that he’s wearing an Indians T-shirt? Why should what shirt he’s wearing make any difference to anyone? It shouldn’t. But it does. The simplest way to become a fan favorite in Cleveland is to drink the Kool-Aid. All you have to do is make it seem like you love what’s going on in the city and that you’re a fan yourself and suddenly you’re the most lovable thing in town – puppies notwithstanding, of course.

If there was any doubt about this, take a look at Joe Haden. The Browns have had good players periodically over the last 15 years (not quite true, but work with me here) who have not necessarily been welcomed in the community. Similarly, it’s gone on in other sports – the Tribe and Cavs have had players who were tremendously talented but not personally adored.

There have been players who are loved from the fans’ point of view but everyone knows there’s something going on with them that we’ll never quite connect on. For instance, we loved when William Green was taking in 80-yard screen passes for scores, but we knew that we’d never understand how he “stabbed himself in the back” while “moving boxes.”

Haden is either truly loving it or he’s the best actor in the city. And we all love him for it. When he decks out in Cavs gear for the games or when he goes to the NBA draft lottery, that’s all stuff that he’s going out of his way to do in the interest of enhancing his public image. I know that he probably has a great publicist to encourage him to do those things, but he still does them. He doesn’t care about his “global brand” because he does care about his local brand.

What I’m getting at is this: Weeden wore a Tribe tee and it endeared him to the community. It’s that simple. He doesn’t have to do that, and no one should really care, but it matters. If Colt McCoy had been decking himself out in Cleveland gear from the start, I suspect he would have a longer leash.

Be honest with yourself and think about whether or not you would be more apt to give a guy a second chance if he were more likable. You know you would – that’s human nature. Joe Haden was asleep at the wheel when the Cincinnati Bengals scored the go-ahead quick-snap touchdown last season and we ultimately let it slide because we like Joe Haden. Sure, he makes up for it by doing things well for the overwhelming majority of time he’s on the field, but that one really burned.

We’re already turning the other way with Weeden, and that’s really going to help him out.

I would also love to see him don a weird jersey number and occasionally hide in the corner of the court and just knock down three-pointers all night for the Cavs, but I’m very selfish.

Go Browns.

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