There Is No End To The Browns Nightmare

 

If you looked at just the stats and not the scoreboard, you'd be positive that the Browns won the game.  Since 1950, teams have been 225-0 when holding opponents to under 175 yards and committed zero turnovers.  The Browns held the Jets to 169 yards and made no turnovers.  That 225-0 record is now 225-1 thanks to YOUR Cleveland Browns.  I don't know how the fuck these guys do it.  What is it called when it is browner than Brownsy?  Brownsy Supreme?  I dunno.  The Jets completed 6 passes on Sunday, only one of which was for more than four yards and won the game.  Fields had 54 yards passing and he won the game.  Look at the team stats.  It seems impossible, but the Jets won.  Those two consecutive special teams touchdowns the Jets scored was quintessential Browns though, wasn't it?  I laughed out loud on the second one.  Holy shit is this team bad.

I imagine the online world will explode screaming for the Browns to fire everyone.  I mean, they can I guess, but what does that accomplish?  It's not like they can move an interim coach into the job and everything will change.  I can hear it now, those dipshit callers on sports talk, yelling into their phones about how those knife in the gut late penalties are all about coaching.  That's not on Stefanski and Co.  The guy that jumped offsides with 40 seconds left to give the Jets that game ending first down certainly has had it mentioned to him to not leap offsides in crucial moments.  That's on the player.  Also, to have an expectation of Dillon Gabriel surgically guiding the Browns down the field for a game winning touchdown is insane.  Gabriel is what he is, a backup QB that will bounce around the league for a few years.  You'll be watching a Jaguars v Falcons game two years from now and see him standing on the sideline chewing gum in a Jags cap.  "Isn't that our old guy?  What the fuck was his name again?"

If you look at the Browns, the situation is hopeless.  The incompetent meddling owners have hired a second rate front office which has bungled the player acquisition that hands a poor roster to a coach that doesn't have the ability to create something which is greater than the sum of its parts.  There is no way this organization can win.  I have absolutely no idea what you try to repair first.  No matter what you do, you still have the influence of the Haslams coming top down.  The Haslam crew have shown themselves to be absolutely incapable of running an NFL franchise and, even worse, also unable to remove themselves from the equation.  They can't help themselves.  They are one of those people that think they are smart because their family is rich.  "Dude, your Dad built a truckstop business.  You don't know shit about football."  If they could remove themselves from any influence on the football side of the business, they'd have a chance.  The problem is, they can't seem to do that.  It's all ego.

The front office at least rid themselves of Paul Depodesta, perhaps the biggest fraud in American Sports in our lifetime.  If there is no "Moneyball", Depodesta would be one of those bland guys in a conference room with some associate VP title serving on committees saying things like "I'm on it Bill".  Instead, the Browns brought him and his "analytics" approach, and I swear to God I bet the team thought he was Jonah Hill until the interview.  Depodesta went 56-99-1, headed up an 0-16 season, and facilitated the Watson trade.  What a legacy!  It's not like he has some great track record before the Browns either.  Depodesta was the GM of a really good Dodgers team when he got there in 2005, and by 2006 they had the second worst record the organization had endured since moving to LA in 1958.  He gets fired after 20 months.  Depodesta lands in San Diego the same year working for the first place Padres.  He becomes executive VP two years later and the team finishes in last place.  He then becomes a VP of scouting and player development for the Mets before landing that Browns gig.  The one thing he managed to do in Cleveland was create plausible deniability for the losing culture since it was never clear as to what he actually did for the organization.  Good riddance.  Paul Depodesta never wins anywhere and he will lose in Colorado too.

The question then becomes what to do about Stefanski.  It seems to me they have to cut him loose.  They probably won't find anyone to coach that is "The Answer", but I don't see how the organization can publicly move forward with him at this point.  He's never won the AFC North.  He hasn't won a playoff game.  (He was home sick on that one don't forget.)  It seems to me that Stefanski thinks this say nothing bland media persona of his projects calm leadership, but at this point his corporate non-answers to questions are feeling more "Shut the fuck up Kevin and show a pulse".  There is a narrative out there about what a fucking genius he is, but his record against the spread is the worst in the league.  Put another way, Stefanski's performance versus expectation is a little worse than Raheem Morris of the Falcons.  I can't recall anyone calling Raheem Morris a "genius", so maybe Stefanski was proclaimed as a coaching oracle on a couple outlier events.  The worm has turned on Steafnski I think.  Stefanski's days are numbered.

While it's fun to completely blame Stefanski, the roster decisions have been awful.  The Watson trade destroyed the team for a decade.  They lost three years of #1 picks and are on the hook for an $85M cap hit next year for what was one of the worst performing QBs in the league that never actually plays football.  Get ready for more excitement.  The roster is going to really suck again next year too.  There is an interesting "chicken or the egg" exercise about the QBs in Cleveland.  As Baker sucked at the end here, went to Tampa and is an MVP candidate, does that mean because Watson was great in Houston and sucked here it's because of the Stefanski offense?  With the multi pronged shit show that is the Cleveland Browns, you can't dismiss the idea completely.  The Browns are a big pile of shit with plenty of pipes dropping more turds onto the stack.  

I suppose the public discussion will be putting Sanders in at QB.  Gabriel sucks and I am assuming Sanders will too.  Maybe he will suck less.  Maybe he will suck more.  I don't think anyone in the organization cares.  They are drafting the next QB they are going to destroy this Spring.  They don't care about the current QBs on the roster.  Both Sanders and Gabriel are going to be trivia answers in about a year.  The Browns will have to absorb another debacle of a season 2026 because they don't have any money to sign good players, and they can't draft enough players to fill the roster holes.  The entire organizational focus now is on the Brookpark stadium we don't need or want and hoping that they somehow cobble together a team that isn't a total embarrassment when that opens.  I don't see how they can do that.  Not this group of people doing the same shit they do every year but with slightly different details.  The Browns situation is hopeless.  I again find myself thinking the only way out of this for NE Ohio is burning down the Browns offices in Berea, and keep burning it down whenever they try to rebuild.  Someone has to stop this nightmare.

Go Browns.