I’ve been writing about the Cleveland Browns on this little
blog and elsewhere for 9 years, 9 miserable friggin’ years. To understand the misery, the pride
swallowing siege that it’s been, when I started the Browns had already been
back from NFL-mandated purgatory for 7 years.
In those first 7 seasons of Browns 2.0, the team had one winning record
and one playoff appearance. Both came
under the weird tenure of Butch Davis. In
retrospect, those were the good time.
During those first 7 years, there were only two head coaches
for the Browns and two owner. In
context, that’s not too shabby, the key word being context.
Since then, the Browns have been in a free fall without
end. Alcoholics and drug addicts hit
rock bottom. The Browns never do. There is no bottom, rock or otherwise. When you think the franchise can’t get worse,
it does, spectacularly so in fact. The
Browns haven’t been content being the worst franchise in pro football. They’ve taken it to the next level, which is
the worst franchise in North American sports.
Only a lack of knowledge on the intricacies of the various European
soccer leagues and southern hemisphere winter baseball prevents me from saying
it’s the worst franchise in the entire world.
I do suspect that’s true, however and if it’s not they are in the top 3.
In the last 9 years the Browns have had 6 head coaches, 10
offensive coordinators, 11 different quarterbacks (but far more that have
actually started a game) and a third owner. The team has had a losing record, a
deeply losing record, in all but one year.
In a 16 game season, the Browns typically win about 25% of their games,
which translates to about 4 or 5 a year.
They won 10 games once. As befits
everything else about this team, naturally a 10-win season it wasn’t good
enough to make the playoffs even though in almost any other season it would
probably get them a bye. When it comes
to the Browns, nothing is ever good enough or even close to good enough or even
in the same stratosphere of good enough.
My point here is to not recount a history you already
understand. It’s to let you know that I
know what you know and to let you know that when I say that despite how bad the
last 9 years have been, this season is truly the worst in every measurable and
emotional way, it’s not hyperbole, just fact.
I can’t tell if Jimmy Haslam is the worst owner ever, the
dumbest owner ever or just the most naïve owner ever. But he is something and at this point the
label doesn’t matter. He’s overseeing
such a spectacularly inept enterprise that he bares just as much responsibility
for the mess as the two fools who came before him, Al and Randy Lerner,
separately or together, it doesn’t matter.
We live in an era of instant gratification, maybe we always
have. As fans we see incompetence and we
demand that heads roll because we want the satisfaction of knowing that
somebody who has so violated our trust, our patience and our loyalty hasn’t
just been taken out to the woodshed and spanked, hard. We want to know that those responsible are
forever extricated from our lives, never to be seen or heard from again, except
on the sidelines of our worst enemies, like Michigan. It’s the only way we get closure, the only
way we get a measure of accomplishment from a leisure pursuit that has been
tortuous to us.
In that vein, it’s rather remarkable that Haslam continues
to hold on to anyone in his front office, even with but a few weeks remaining. Head coach Mike Pettine is earnest in
approach but overwhelmed by the task in front of him. Every week in every way
imaginable he puts it all on display.
The team never seems to have any sort of game plan on either offense or
defense. Pettine never offers an
adjustment to the circumstances in front of him. His teams are undisciplined and lack
focus. He can’t even manage the clock or
figure out when to call a time out. He’s
not instilled any sense of culture or ownership within the players he
controls. They play a lifeless brand of
scattered football, emotionless and generic.
In every way possible or imaginable, the team reflects the stoic
incompetence of the man in charge each Sunday.
Now some argue that Pettine can only do so much with what
Ray Farmer, the general manager gives him.
True enough. It’s hard to have a
game plan on either side of the ball when you know before the first scheme
crosses your mind you don’t have the players that could execute it with any
sort of precision, let alone competence, let alone consistency Pettine is hamstrung in ways that are hard to
fathom, no doubt.
Yet the truly gifted coaches still find a way to make
occasional chicken salad out of the chicken shit they’ve been handed and maybe
that’s the best you can say about last Sunday’s victory over a team and
franchise in just as bad shape, the San Francisco 49ers. But ask yourself this: can you name one instance where Pettine
demonstrated in any measurable way an ability to overcome his circumstances? You can’t because there isn’t one. Here’s another way to think about it. If the Browns were to play New England this
weekend and the NFL required that Pettine and Bill Belichick switch jobs that
week, by the game on Sunday the Belichick-coached Browns would be favored over
the Pettine-coached Patriots, mainly because Pettine would find a way to take
the ball out of Tom Brady’s hands.
Pettine doesn’t need to be Belichick to be successful. But he needs to be better than he is. Two years, in this context, is enough time to
conclude that for whatever value stability has its pursuit in this case would
just be another fool’s errand. If
Pettine remains it just delays the ability to try once again to stem the depth
of its constant fall.
Now the other side of that coin is that Pettine is the devil
you know. His abilities clearly match
those of the talentless boobs that surround him. And if he leaves, do you really trust Haslam
with the next selection? That is the
crux of the matter, isn’t it? Whatever
else you think of Haslam he’s more than proven to be an incredibly inept
decision maker.
As for Farmer, he’s actually more incompetent than Pettine
and the comparison isn’t hardly even fair.
If Pettine is measured only in the context of the idiots that surround
him in Berea then of course he should keep his job. But that is hardly the measure stick. Simply because Farmer is the worst general
manager in the history of general managers isn’t the way to judge Pettine. It’s the way to judge Farmer. Fire Farmer now. The team showed that it could live without
him for 4 games. Hell, one of their three
wins came when Farmer was on suspension and another win came the week he
returned, meaning he didn’t have time to muck up anything. Since he’s really been back the team has won
only once. It’s not a coincidence.
I’ve already detailed chapter and verse in the past as to
what makes Farmer so bad at his job. He’s
blown every first round pick he’s been given.
He’s signed no meaningful free agents but did squander valuable cash and
cap space on Dwayne Bowe, the worst free agent acquisition since Andre Rison. Actually that’s unfair to Rison. In his one year in Cleveland Rison played in
all 16 games and had 47 receptions. His production didn’t match what the team
paid and they acquired him when they had no money to pay him. But he did produce, relatively speaking. Bowe
is so bad on a team with but one legitimate receiver and still can’t crack the
game day roster, let alone the starting roster.
There’s been almost zero production.
If you really think about it, Bowe is the poster child for the entire
franchise. Lots of money invested,
nothing to show for it.
But the book on Farmer is so much more. He’s arrogant to a fault. The willful disregard for the rules on
texting is one thing. More damning
though is his almost obstinate refusal to attend pro days last year for many of
the top prospects. Farmer treated it as an activity beneath his pay grade, I
guess. As a result Farmer lost the
opportunity, on purpose, to offer to his employer the main skill he’s being
paid to exercise—his informed and considered opinion.
Almost everyone else in the world outside of Farmer and
Jerry Jones, apparently, saw the hot mess that was Johnny Manziel. The guy just didn’t send up red flags from
time to time. He waved around fistfuls
at almost every hour of every day. And
yet Farmer ignored every warning sign anyway.
The same is true for Justin Gilbert.
How Farmer could not have known that Gilbert lacked even the most basic
of work ethics is beyond me, but then again he missed the same thing on Bowe so
there is that. Cameron Erving and Danny
Shelton, this year’s Manziel and Gilbert, are very average talents at
best. Erving has been benched on a team
that’s won only three games, one in which he didn’t even play. Indeed against Seattle, Erving saw the field
only out of necessity. The Browns could
have played with one less linemen and left Erving on the bench and the result
would have been no different. As for
Shelton, he’s run over so often by opposing centers and guards you’d think he
was auditioning for the Wile E. Coyote role in the live action version of The
Road Runner cartoon series.
In other words, it’s not just that Farmer is bad at
drafting. He’s lazy and arrogant and a
significant contributor to the awful culture deeply imbedded within the walls
of Berea. He’s neither a winner nor
understands what it even means to be a winner or to build a winning
culture. There’s nothing about Farmer’s
performance, not one hint that suggest he could possibly be part of the long
term answer in turning the franchise around.
Cutting that cord now would be the best possible message to the
franchise. Keeping him one minute longer
only exacerbates Haslam’s tenuous control over the franchise.
The ultimate problem with this franchise, and this falls
back to where this all started, is the owner.
No one publicly understands what Haslam stands for and I’ve heard no one
inside Berea who could articulate Haslam’s specific vision either, outside of amorphous
concepts of building a winner and valuing stability. Well, Haslam’s done neither in his short
tenure and yet there’s no reason to suggest that valuing stability at this
juncture will lead to building a winner.
None of that means that Haslam needs to sell the team. Maybe he can rebuild the trust he never fully
got anyway. To do that though he needs
to get the hell out of the way. He needs
to find a respected franchise guru, someone who knows how to build a structure
and a culture. That isn’t going to come
easy.
The intriguing aspect of the ridiculous rumor about Urban
Meyer coming to the Browns was the type of package that was supposedly on the
table. It included not just a huge
salary but a piece of the ownership pie.
Meyer isn’t coming to Cleveland under any circumstances. But the kind of package he would garner is
exactly what it would take to get someone as credible as Meyer to come to town.
Randy Lerner thought he had that in Mike Holmgren. The thought made sense except Holmgren was
simply the wrong guy. His football
knowledge was top notch but his commitment to the team was middling, at
best. He never fully relocated to
Cleveland, spending most of his time either in Seattle or Arizona, neither of
which were conducive to building a team in Cleveland. Holmgren also lacked the brutal honestly of
an architect like Belichick, which is why Holmgren kept Eric Mangini a year
longer than he deserved and then filled the breach with the son of a friend in
Pat Shurmur.
I
don’t know who is out there to take on this kind of reclamation project and I’m
not sure Haslam has the wherewithal to come up with the right package to get
him anyway. I guess what I’m saying is
that it easily could be at least another 9 years of abject frustration and if I’m
still writing about them then, have me committed. Better yet, just drop me a card at whatever
institution I’m a resident as I would have likely voluntarily committed myself
well before then.
