Cleveland Browns: Thumbs up, thumbs down at the midway point

The Cleveland Browns may be 0-8, but not everything is doom and gloom for the team. Here is a look at what has gone right, and wrong, so far this season.

The Cleveland Browns have reached the midway point of the 2016 NFL season carrying the banner as the league’s only winless team.

The last time the Browns started a season so poorly was in 1975 when first-year coach Forrest Gregg took over a team that had breathed the last of its dynasty years. That team lost its first nine games before winning three-of-four in what would ultimately be a 3-11 season,

While this year’s Browns team is 0-8, not all of their losses have been created equally.

The team has only been blown out twice — against the New England Patriots and Cincinnati Bengals – have lost four games by a combined total of just 16 points and have had a pair of come-from-ahead defeats.

“I think it is one that you hate to be in that situation, but it is kind of if you look at the challenges that you can face in this league, it is probably the hardest one and the toughest one,” quarterback Josh McCown said of the current situation. “To me, when you are building something you want to lay a great foundation, but the way that you can lay that foundation to build tough-minded people is to be able to have a group of guys that comes to work every week and works hard and does what they are supposed to do no matter what.

“It is not the best situation right now. None of us would have asked to be in it, but this is what we are and we are going to keep fighting. Everybody in this locker room is going to keep fighting, and that is the head coach’s mentality and we will follow his lead.”

While the situation is far from ideal, the Browns have produced some positives through the first eight weeks. So let’s run through a “thumbs up, thumbs” down on where the team resides as they prepare to host the Dallas Cowboys.