Cleveland Browns: 3 main takeaways from the trade deadline
By Andrew Seibt
3. The Browns are (still) the laughingstock of the NFL
It’s always going to get worse before it gets better. My high school baseball coach told me that when he benched me my senior season.
For some reason that line always stuck with me. How is something supposed to get worse before it gets better? Isn’t it just bad until it’s not? Why does it have to get worse?
That’s what I thought with the Cleveland Browns when Hue Jackson took over in 2016. For once, this coaching hire was exciting because the Browns had finally gotten the No. 1 coaching candidate on most teams’ wish list.
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With all of the free agents departing in that offseason, we knew we were in for a tough rebuild and really put the fanbase’s loyalty to the test.
The idea was that the Browns would tank, solve the quarterback position in the 2017 draft and show good signs of progress during this season. Again, great on paper but doesn’t really work in real life.
The only constant between the Browns and their three winning seasons since 1999 have been competent quarterback play. I say again, competent. Not elite, not great, not even good. Just competent.
Competent quarterback play enables you to develop a team around a quarterback, even if he’s not the 10-year franchise-changer we all want. The Browns can’t even seem to find that.
I would say it’s not their fault, but it is. They have completely botched the number one goal they set out to accomplish when taking over this team, and after the most recent trade bungle I see no possible solution at season’s end in which either party returns.
Next: A disastrous start to the bye week
Another lost year for the Browns, and another lost generation of fans. but I’ll keep watching on Sundays because it would be no fun to write about winning all the time, am I right?