As Browns Fans Contemplate Another First Round Pick . . . .

If you didn’t know that he lived in Europe in the 19th century, you’d probably swear that Edvard Munch was a Cleveland Browns fan.

Why?  Because The Scream perfectly captures, better than anything else I’ve seen, the unique combination of horror, fear, disgust, and profound dread that grips Cleveland Browns fans as they contemplate the team making another first-round pick in the NFL draft.  Indeed, Munch even painted the disturbing, roiling sky behind the angst-ridden screamer in the Browns’ familiar orange colors.

If you’re a Browns fan, knowing that the NFL draft is only a few hours away and that the Cleveland franchise has the first choice to boot, you feel almost compelled to cup your face in your hands, let your eyes open wide, and howl out to the waiting world the deep anxiety and disquiet that you feel as you consider prior drafts and contemplate the likes of Gerard Warren, Tim Couch, Brady Quinn, Kellen Winslow . . . and Johnny Manziel.

In fact, any fan of another NFL team would think of the ludicrous choice of “Johnny Football” and feel a perverse sense of comfort.  After all, how could this year’s pick possibly be any more wrong-headed and disastrous than that?  But this is the Cleveland Browns, remember.  With the Browns, all things bad are possible.

Go ahead, Browns Backers!  Tip back your head and wail for all you’re worth.  The NFL draft is here.

MoneyBrowns

The Cleveland Browns seem to at least have a strategy for the upcoming NFL draft.  That’s a change from past years when the Browns clearly didn’t know what the hell they were doing and appeared to be just winging it on draft day.

The Browns had the number 2 pick in this year’s draft — no surprise there; given their record of failure, the Browns always have a pick in the top ten — but they traded down with the Eagles to try to accumulate picks.  That took the Browns out of contention for the two hot quarterbacks in the draft, but it left them with the eighth pick and gave them 12 picks overall and six in the first 100, in a draft that’s supposed to be a deep one.  That’s a smart play in my book, because the Browns’ roster is starved of talent.  In fact, it’s so bad that Las Vegas oddsmakers currently have the Browns as underdogs in every game of the 2016 season.  0-16, here we come!

I’m leery of drafting a QB in the first round, too.  First-round quarterbacks often are busts.  That’s been true for the Browns, starting with Tim Couch and including Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden and Johnny Manziel.  All were dismal failures.  And you can’t blame the quarterbacks exclusively for the failures, either, if there’s no offensive line or surrounding talent.  Rather than spend a high pick on the quarterback of the moment, I’d rather build the talent level.  The best picks the Browns made after coming back into the NFL — Joe Thomas and Joe Haden — were bread-and-butter players you could build a team around.  Unfortunately, the Browns didn’t have the eye for talent that let them complete the team-building process.  That doesn’t mean the model is wrong, it just means that the Browns need somebody who can distinguish a stud from a dud.

This year, the Browns have a new team of people to try to accomplish that.  They have a new head coach, a new front office and a new approach:  analytics, a la Moneyball.  The Browns hired Paul DePodesta away from the New York Mets and put him in place as Chief Strategy Officer.  It’s weird to think that an NFL team needs somebody to set a “strategy” — how about, “Just win, baby!” — but maybe a clearly delineated strategy will help the rudderless Browns.  I’m hesitant to buy into generic “analytics” as a panacea, too, but I think taking a more structured approach to evaluating players is bound to help.  No one using analytics would have drafted Johnny Manziel.  (Of course, the Browns being the Browns, some fans of analytics in the NFL are afraid that having Cleveland lead the way inevitably means that analytics in the NFL are doomed, and one commented that they thought DePodesta was a genius until he decided to work for the Browns.)

So we’ve got a new set of decision-makers, and a new strategy and approach.  Now comes the hard part — actually picking players, both in the draft and via free agency.  Browns Backers the world over are holding their breath, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this group will actually show that it knows what it’s doing.  Why not?  We’ve been holding our breath for so long it’s become second nature.

Another Loss To Start The Season In Browns Town

Today the Cleveland Browns started off another season with an opening game loss.

What’s that, you say?  The game hasn’t been played yet?

So what?  The Browns losing their opening game is more predictable than the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.  Since coming back to the NFL, they have lost their first game with brutal, shocking consistency.

Does anyone really doubt that it will happen again this year?  After all, the Browns will be starting a quarterback who apparently was born during the Eisenhower Administration and who has played for a number of teams without any distinction.  Their back-up is a rag-armed ex-Heisman Trophy winner who is in the process of proving that the Heisman Jinx is alive and well.  Their exciting offensive players have turned out to be either head cases or juvenile delinquents — or both — and now they’re heading into the season without any significant offensive threats.  While I expect the defense to be reasonably stout, they inevitably will get worn down from being on the field constantly as individual games, and ultimately the long NFL season, progress to another bitter losing campaign for the Orange and Brown.

I try to be positive about the Browns, but this year it’s hard to be anything but harshly and protectively pessimistic.  The NFL is a quarterback’s league, and the Browns really don’t have one.  What has Josh McCown ever done to make the loyal Browns Backers think he will be anything other than the latest entry in the Browns’ revolving door list of QBs?

The only good thing about the inevitable loss today is that it is an away game, so at least the Browns won’t start the season with their perennial home opener loss.

Johnny Rehab

Johnny Manziel has been a lightning rod ever since he burst onto the national scene at Texas A&M.  From the moment he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns and made the rubbing dollar bills gesture that opposing players then mimicked whenever they sacked him, “Johnny Football” has been the object of attention and controversy.

Manziel cashed in on his notoriety, becoming the only backup player in the NFL to be featured in national TV commercials.  He also became a complete pain in the ass to the Browns, missing meetings, hosting ill-timed parties, showing an utter lack of professionalism, and then stumbling in big games after being given the chance to play.

So when the Browns announced yesterday that Manziel checked into a treatment facility for unspecified reasons, and a family friend asked the public to respect his privacy, it was entirely predictable that Manziel would become the butt of bad jokes and cries of “Johnny Rehab” would be heard throughout the land.  You can even argue that, with his constant publicity-seeking conduct, Manziel has brought that kind of harsh reaction on himself.

But anyone who knows someone who goes into a treatment facility to try to turn their life around and grapple with an issue — whether it be alcoholism, another form of substance abuse, or some other kind of addiction or personal problem — knows that it is no laughing matter.  Manziel may have acted like a colossal jerk, and it looks like he will be the latest complete first-round bust that the Browns have selected, but he’s still a human being who obviously is struggling to grow up.  After all, he’s only 22 years old.

I could care less, really, about the appalling attention whore called “Johnny Football,” but maybe there’s still hope for the person inside named Johnny Manziel.  Good luck to him.

Down And Out

I knew that when the Browns decided to start Johnny Manziel, the season was over.  Sure enough, the Browns got crushed by the Bengals today in a game that was never even competitive.  Manziel was predictably awful.

I’m not saying that Johnny Manziel lost the game single-handedly, because he didn’t.  The whole team didn’t show up.  But when you have to change quarterbacks in the middle of what should be a sprint to the playoffs, and you’re going with a raw rookie whose arm strength is questionable and who made most of the great plays in his college career with his legs, you can’t really expect anything good to happen.  Real playoff teams just don’t do that.  Brian Hoyer’s awful play the past few weeks left the Browns coaches with no choice, because you can’t just let games slip through your fingers through offensive ineptitude — but only rabid fans would expect anything good to happen with Manziel making his first start in a crucial divisional match-up with the Browns’ fading playoff hopes on the line.

And so a season that once seemed promising has spiraled downward into a smelly, urine-soaked, rat-infested dumpster.  It’s the unfortunate lot of the Browns fan.  Now let’s turn our attention to the Buckeyes and that tilt against Alabama on January 1.

We Still Have A Long Way To Go

Slowly — all too slowly — we make progress on basic issues of treating everyone the same, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, and other characteristics.  Often, we stop and proudly congratulate ourselves on our enlightenment, and then, inevitably, something happens that shows that we aren’t quite as enlightened as we thought after all.

Consider the report ESPN ran recently concerning Michael Sam, the first admittedly gay man to play in the National Football League.  Sam, a linebacker, was a fine player in college.  He sacked Johnny Manziel of the Browns in the Rams’ most recent preseason game, but rather than reporting on Sam’s on-the-field performance the ESPN reporter addressed whether Sam was showering with his teammates — and thereby indulged in some of the most benighted stereotypes imaginable.  It’s amazing that such a report made it on the air, through who knows how many layers of editors and producers and anchors and production assistants, without someone at the network recognizing how demeaning and insulting it was, but it did.  To its credit, ESPN recognized that the report was an egregious blunder and apologized, but you still wonder how it happened in the first place.

One of Sam’s St. Louis teammates, defensive tackle Chris Long, tweeted:  “Dear ESPN, Everyone but you is over it.”  I wish that were true.

Another Browns National TV Debacle

The Cleveland Browns were on national TV last night, taking on the Washington Redskins on ESPN.  Why not check out my team?  After all, they’ve got a new coach (an annual occurrence), lots of new players (ditto), there’s a quarterback controversy (ditto ditto), and there’s hope for the future (the horrible, crippling curse of all deluded Cleveland sports fans).  Russell and I had our cell phones handy, ready to text our thoughts on the game and share some positive vibes.

Alas — as is always the case with Cleveland sports — it was not to be.  The Browns defense, at least, looked like an NFL-quality team.  Other than the fact that they were mysteriously penalized on every play, the D got decent pressure on the quarterback, forced some turnovers, and had a nice little goal-line stand.  There seems to be some depth there, too.  When the regular season arrives and the refs swallow their whistles a bit, the defense might even be good.

The offense was another story.  It started with a botched snap count, a blocking breakdown, and an uncontested sack on the first play, followed by a penalty on the second.  At that point, how many Browns fans thought:  “Uh oh, same old Browns”?  And they were right.  Words like putrid, awful, and embarrassing don’t begin to describe the futility the Browns starters showed in the first half last night.  Brian Hoyer, the quarterback who is coming back from surgery last year, was 2-6 for 16 yards, blew an easy TD throw, and was off on almost every pass.  Johnny Manziel was 7-16 for 65 yards, but even those lame stats were padded by a second-half series against second-teamers.  The Browns eked out a miserable 3 points after a turnover.

Fortunately for me, I decided not to watch the second half when the scrubs took over.  I therefore didn’t have to watch Manziel distinguish himself by flipping off the Redskins bench on national TV.  So, Johnny Football looked like Johnny Asshole.  Browns teammates say Manziel takes a terrible riding from opposing players and fans.  No surprise there!  Manziel is just a kid — people tend to forget that — but his antics on draft day, and his insistence on acting like a big shot when he hasn’t proven himself at the pro level, are bound to attract that kind of attention.  If he can’t keep his cool in a meaningless preseason game, how is he going to stay level-headed during a crucial play with an important game on the line?  Manziel’s stupid middle-finger salute tells us something about him, and it isn’t good news.

There’s some value in a game like this.  It was such a colossal failure that it’s bound to crush any lingering optimism that the Browns have turned a corner and smash the rose-colored glasses of the glass-half-full fans.  The rest of us Browns Backers will approach the start of the regular season with a wary attitude, like a cornered animal with its foot caught in a trap, and grimly determined to bear the impending pain for as long as we possibly can.