Browns Lose, Ready To Draft New Guys To Also Lose

 

I feel like I could cut and paste my column from last week.  The Browns are "quiet quitting" with this move to start Thompson-Robinson, perhaps the least capable starting QB the team has featured since Desean Kizer.  I read a good snarky line about DTR in that he doesn't throw the ball to his receivers but more that he throws the ball at them like he's trying to get them out in a game of dodgeball.  It's almost impossible to win an NFL game with Thompson-Robinson as your starter.  I'm a guy watching this from his couch.  If I know this, then so do the rest of the Browns, their coaching staff, and the front office.  What a shit show.  

DTR has produced 35 points in 5 NFL starts.  He's not suddenly going to get better.  He doesn't belong in the NFL.  His role is the "cling to the roster" guy that moves around for a few years on various teams until the next "project QB" guy drifts through.  You know what you have here, and it ain't good.  When I watch him on the bench I see a guy that looks like he's sitting in a medical waiting room counting down the minutes until he has to walk in for some horrible procedure.  "OK, this is going to really suck but just walk over there and take the pain.  It will be over soon." 

Again, I feel like the poor saps that paid for tickets to watch that abomination in the rain yesterday should file a class action lawsuit to get their money refunded from the grifting Haslam family.  That wasn't NFL football.  That was fraud.  There is no doubt which quarterback gives the team the best chance to win.  The Browns don't even have Winston listed as a backup, but instead the 3rd string emergency QB under Bailey Zappe, insuring the team has NO chance to compete for a victory.  It continues to be a mystery as to why the Browns don't start Winston, who at the very least provides entertainment value and leadership.  It's not like the Browns will make the correct draft selection in April, so any intentional tank job won't pay off anyway.  As usual, the Haslam Culture Of Grifting is trying to figure out a short cut to get to their desired end result.  

The Browns problem is not Xs and Os.  It is cultural.  They cannot succeed because they don't know what a successful organization looks like in the NFL.  Their gas station business practices have been documented to include fraud, shadow executive compensation plans, and witness tampering.  Though the public has a short memory, let's no forget Pilot Flying J's president Mark Hazelwood's remarks to Jimmy Haslam on tape.  "“I mean, I called Jimmy and told him I got busted at Western Express [a trucking company that discovered it was being defrauded]. … Oh he knew it — absolutely. I mean, [Haslam] knew all along that I was cost-plussin’ this guy. He knew it all along. Loved it. We were making $450,000 a month on [Western Express] … why wouldn’t he love it?”.   

Hazelwood got convicted, fell on the sword, left Flying J with a $40M severance package while Flying J paid for his legal fees, and then a couple years later got the case quietly overturned in the Great State of Tennessee where Jimmy Haslam's brother Bill was governor.  How did it get overturned?  When the two white judges hearing the appeal said the jury had been unfairly swayed by a recording of Hazelwood recounting a conversation with Haslam.  What did he say?  “Who buys the Raiders shit? Niggers,” Hazelwood said he told Haslam on the tape. “You think they’re going to wear something that says the fucking ‘Browns’ on it?” Hazelwood went on to say that in Cleveland “it ain’t nothing but niggers.”

That's your ownership.  Haslam said it in his introductory press conference.  "“If you look at our main company, Pilot Flying J, it's been in business for 53 years. We have a very, very senior group of individuals, a very set culture, and candidly, that’s how we plan on doing it here.".  Damn straight.  In a sense, he's a man of his word.  How in the world is that Browns front office going to compete in a game of strategy, wits, organizational skill, and public relations with Pittsburgh and Baltimore?  Seriously.  They have no chance.  It's every terrible good old boy Southern businessman cliche come to life.  The Cleveland Browns are just the aesthetics of a Flying J truck stop animated into an NFL franchise.  And the worst part?  They won't sell the team because the NFL is a money machine and it's going to keep making them richer.  Why wouldn't someone that got away with defrauding their customers and rigging up the courts think they could short cut their way to winning?

This thing is all bad.  I don't know what they do.  Really, what's the difference?  They have no clue where they are going or how to get there.  The Browns stadium is a black hole where hope goes to die.  The only way to properly be a Browns fan is to treat it as a tragic comedy.  Once you embrace the enjoyment of watching their failure, the particular details of each absurd wrong decision, can you truly wrap yourself in the Zen of true Browns fandom.  There is no joy with the Browns.  Only misery.  My advice is not to go crazy when they do whatever ridiculously stupid thing they do next.  Let their continued failure be a comedy and have a good laugh.  Unlike the courtrooms of Tennessee, the NFL has a scoreboard that is visible to all.  These people are losers and are unfit to own this franchise.  The scoreboard tells the tale.  3-13. 

Go Browns.