Dave George: Forget hopes for Fins; take loser reality of Browns
For Miami fans agonizing after missing playoffs at 6-10, switch to Browns, and your problem quickly vanishes.
Still haven’t come up with a New Year’s resolution? Consider this.
“Having been burned repeatedly by the Miami Dolphins, and in recognition of the fact that the team’s newly announced plan for 2018 is based once more on trying harder to do stuff better, I resolve to take one season off from this emotional and psychological tor
ture and become a temporary fan of the Cleveland Browns instead.”
Sure, it’s a crazy concept. Why would anyone sign on to identify with a team
that just finished 0-16 and went 1-15 before that?
There actually may be more than
one reasonable answer to that, though, if “reasonable” is found somewhere between the extremes of recognizing that NFL action has redeeming social value, even in its basest form, and gen-
uinely expecting that the Dolphins will win the Super Bowl, ever.
Here follows a short list of Brown-boosting rationales.
1. You know what you are getting with the Browns. This makes life so much easier.
No more fretting about some early-season loss that might wind up costing you a playoff spot in December. No more Monday morning depression over
some blown fourth-quarter lead, or at least not the kind of blue mood that anyone else at work will want to indulge.
It’s all good, baby, which is to say that it’s all bad. So what else is new?
2. Always begging the Dolphins to draft a miracle-working quarterback in the first round? Well, you’ll be barking up the right tree with the Browns. The way they see it, it’s all passers all the time.
Three times in the past 11 drafts Cleveland has spent a first-rounder on a quarterback, and in 2017 it was DeShone Kizer, a second-rounder. Miami has drafted a quarterback in the first round
just three times in its entire franchise history. The Browns naturally have the top pick in 2018, so they’ll be looking at Josh Rosen, Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold or, who knows, maybe all three. Yahtzee!
3. LeBron James lives in Cleveland these days. You can feel comfortable again breaking out some of his gear from the Big Three era to wear at the meetings of Browns Backers in West Palm Beach and Port St. Lucie. Those are only a few of the official clubs. There actually are Browns fans gathering all over South Florida to watch games at bars and restaurants, finding strength and good humor in numbers. That’s more therapeutic than wishing and whining over playoff tiebreakers.
4. Already there is much in common between Browns and Dolphins fans, which should ease the transition. Cleveland hasn’t won an NFL title in 50-plus years, back before the Super Bowl came to be. With Miami it’s 40-plus. If there’s a difference, it’s not nearly as great as it used to be.
5. Best of all, unlike in South Florida, there’s the chance to enjoy a downtown parade every now and then in recognition of your favorite team.
At noon Saturday, there’s a “Perfect Season” parade planned for the streets around Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium. It’s being organized by a plucky fan who sees 0-16 as the perfect demonstration of the incompetence at Browns headquarters, and he’s raising money for insurance, security and bathroom facilities, according to city permit requirements, with whatever’s left over going to a local food bank. So far, about 4,000 people have registered to participate, each listing the number of vehicles and floats and bicycles that they are bringing. There will be a parade queen, too. How’s that for congeniality, and making the best of a monotonously bad situation?
So that’s the Browns in a nutshell, but if anyone wants to talk about monotony, how about the largely uninterrupted string of mediocre seasons Miami has produced in recent years?
Ten wins and a playoff spot last year was refreshing, to be sure, but generally it’s been
.500 or worse for too long. Draft picks too far down in the order to make much of a dent. Win totals just a little too high to tear it all up and start over again. And here is what we get for inspiration from the Dolphins’ leaders this week.
“We’ve got to learn, again, what went wrong this year and try to get a better product on the field,” says Executive Vice President of Football Operations Mike Tannenbaum.
“I think it’s hard to really pinpoint either way, good or bad, right now,” says coach Adam Gase, when asked to name some areas where the 2017 Dolphins exceeded his expectations.
And then there’s general manager Chris Grier saying, “Again, everyone, we’re 6-10. We’ve got to get better. It’s not acceptable. We’re all ultra-competitive up here. You guys know Adam. He’d kill his own dog if he had to, to go to the Super Bowl.”
Of course, that joke was in poor taste, as quickly acknowledged by Grier. Everybody loves dogs.
All things considered, if only for a mental break, embracing the Dawg Pound has some appeal, too.
That’s because the Dolphins have returned to that state of unrest where they are not too good, not too bad, not too anything.
The Browns? They live on the bottom, which means they’re always, always looking up.