Hapless O-16 Browns’ issues run deep
When Hue Jackson BEREA, OHIO was hired less than two years ago, he was greeted in the lobby of the Browns’ headquarters by cheering team employees.
They beamed and clapped while shaking hands with their new hero, this offensive mastermind and quarterback guru. Finally, they thought, here was the coach who would restore glory to the NFL franchise.
Jackson was supposed to fix things. They’ve only grown worse.
A civic treasure during the Jim Brown years, Cleveland’s pro football team is now a shameful mess, a historic flop. The worst of the worst. Rock bottom.
With their 28-24 loss Sunday to the Pittsburgh Steelers, who rested stars Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Le’Veon Bell and other regulars for the playoffs, the Browns wrote their name into the annals of sports sadness by finishing 0-16 and joining the 2008 Detroit Lions as the only teams to go winless for a 16-game season — 16 up, 16 down.
In a league designed to provide parity and hope, the Browns followed a 1-15 season with one even worse and have gone more than a calendar year between victories.
The 2017 Browns stumbled their way into the pathetic pantheon of rotten teams along with the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers (9-73), 1974-75 Washington Capitals (8-67-5) and 2003 Detroit Tigers (43-119) as some of the sorriest squads to hit the hardwood, ice or diamond.
And now that Buffalo is back in the AFC playoffs, Cleveland’s postseason drought stretching to 2002 is the league’s longest.
“The bottom line is we did not play well enough, we did not coach well enough and we did not get the things done that we set out to do,” said Jackson, who kept his job despite going 1-31 — the worst twoyear stretch in 98 NFL seasons.
Not enough talent. Too many turnovers. Those were the main reasons behind the Browns’ continued fall from grace this season. But the team’s issues are older and run deeper.
Owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam thought they solved numerous problems — deplorable drafting, front-office dysfunction, fan apathy — when they revamped their football hierarchy following the 2015 season by hiring Jackson.
The Haslams promoted salary cap expert Sashi Brown to vicepresident of football operations and brought aboard Paul DePodesta, a baseball executive with an analytics background, as their strategy officer to plot the Browns’ course to relevance.
Instead, they’ve descended to new depths.
For all that Brown and DePodesta provided in terms of smarts and managerial savvy, their lack of experience and football intellect was dooming. Their initial decision not to re-sign some veteran free agents in favour of younger players came back to haunt the Browns, who haven’t filled major holes.
More troubling, the Browns’ brass passed on selecting quarterbacks Carson Wentz or Deshaun Watson the past two drafts, blowing the chance to finally find the long-term QB the franchise has coveted for two decades.