The best part about being the worst team in the NFL is you get the first pick in the NFL Draft.
Technically, the Browns were not the worst team in the NFL in 2024. But if you saw them play last year, I mean, come on! I defy you to find another team that was worse.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
See? Told you so.
As trainwrecks go, the 2024 Cleveland Browns pretty much wrote the book, touched all the bases and left no stones unturned when it came to fielding their version of sheer, unadulterated, unwatchable, undecipherable, inexplicable NFL football.
And that was on their best days. You know, one of the three games (out of 17) that they did not lose.
Ah! The good old days!
How bad was it?
The Browns have already brought back Joe Flacco in hopes of bringing some order to the unbridled chaos that was 2024, in which, um, did I mention that they lost every game except three?
In the NFL, losing almost every game you play is a good way to get the attention of the team’s owner, unless the owner is already busy trying to crawl out from under the worst contract in NFL history, which was given to the player in question by the owner in question.
This, as we all know, is how the current front office of the Browns has operated. It is also, one could argue, how the Browns find themselves, as the NFL Draft approaches, with the rarest of organizational perplexities.
Or, to put it another way, it is another example of how, too often in their history, the Browns find themselves once again as their own worst enemy.
Let’s just say they have been down this road before.
Normally, when any NFL team craters, when everything that was tried not only failed, but failed spectacularly, it is the owner who summons to his office those who are most responsible for the team losing almost all its games during the season.
In other words, the general manager and the head coach. That’s where the inquisition begins. There could be a few other invited persons of interest within the organization as well. But the gist of the inquest is straightforward.
The owner wants to know why the team lost almost all its games during the season, which, in turn, could be fairly explained by the general manager and head coach defending themselves by saying, “because we didn’t have a quarterback.”
They would be right, they are still right, and they will continue to be right until the Browns trade for a quarterback or acquire one in the NFL Draft.
Their track record on both of those fronts is, to put it mildly, abysmal.
Worse yet, the reason for that was the owner, who decided to trade for a quarterback, and then immediately sign him to the largest, and worst, contract in NFL history, and that quarterback spent most of his time being suspended or being injured.
Meanwhile, it is not uncommon for general managers and/or head coaches to get fired when an NFL team craters the way the Browns cratered.
Most of the time, however, the cratering is the result of poor coaching, poor drafting or poor trades.
The reason is usually not due to a meddling owner.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when the Haslams, GM Andrew Berry and coach Kevin Stefanski convened to discuss how in the world they got themselves into this mess.
I think we can all agree the Browns, as currently constituted, are a certifiable mess: 3-14 is 3-14 no matter how you slice it.
In the NFL, general managers, and coaches, too, get fired when stuff like this happens.
Owners never get fired, and by “never” we mean “ever.” Because owners are their own boss. The next time one of them fires himself will be the first time.
So when looking for the guiltiest party for a 3-14 season, you can eliminate the owner right off the bat. Because what is he going to do, fire himself?
Typically, it is the general manager and the head coach whose careers tend to be the most in jeopardy following a catastrophic season. There is no indication, however, that Berry or Stefanski has anything to worry about. They both signed contract extensions before the start of last season. For how much and for how long is anybody’s guess.
This kind of stuff almost never happens when the guiltiest party is the team’s owner, who thinks he’s found a quarterback to dream on, and then signs him to the most outrageous contract in the history of the sport.
What could possibly go wrong already has, because these are the Browns, who now must pull a rabbit, if not a quarterback, out of the draft.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
