Browns: Is 4.5 a solid over/under for wins in 2018?
By Thomas Moore
The Cleveland Browns have had trouble winning games, especially the past two years. So taking the over on 4.5 wins for 2018 may be a tough bet.
The Cleveland Browns will have a decidedly different look come the fall.
No, they won’t be getting rid the uniforms that look as if they came straight out of the Mountain West Conference, unfortunately, but with 12 draft picks and somewhere north of $100 million in available cap space, there will be some different players wearing those uniforms.
The Browns got a jump on the changes in December when John Dorsey took over the front office as general manager. He has quickly brought Alonzo Highsmith and Eliot Wolf over from the Green Bay Packers to serve as allies and help take the current rebuild to the next level.
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How much all those changes transforms the Browns won-loss record remains to be seen, but just as we have now entered mock draft season, so is it time to start predicting the team’s final record.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell tackled that very question this week with an attempt to predict where sports books in Las Vegas will set the over/under for the win total of every NFL team this fall. For the Browns, Barnwell landed on 4.5 wins as the sweet spot:
"The Browns’ total for 2017 was 4.5 wins, and you know how that one went. Why would they go up again at 4.5 wins for 2018, then? Sheer regression toward the mean. Most teams as bad as the Browns – although clearly not all — bounce back some after seasons as bad as the one we saw from Cleveland in 2017. The Browns will almost surely make an upgrade at quarterback this offseason, including the possibility of acquiring a veteran and drafting a passer with the first overall pick. I suspect this one would still probably require some juice on the under."
A win total of 4.5 doesn’t sound like it should be all that difficult, which of course is one of the reasons why there are so many large shiny buildings in Las Vegas. There is also the recent history of the team in question, as the Browns have had more than four wins just four times since 2007 – the last coming four years ago.
In fact, since returning to the NFL in 1999, the Browns have won four or fewer games a staggering 10 times.
The biggest thing holding the Browns back from hitting the over number on wins is due to the one change they did not make this offseason — head coach Hue Jackson.
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Jackson will tell anyone who will listen that it was a Herculean task, one that he and he alone could have accomplished, simply to win one game with the Browns the past two seasons. The odds that the Browns will jump to five or more wins with Jackson still on the sidelines may be too big for even a seasoned Vegas bookie to take on.