Congratulations, Cleveland Browns! You went 0-16!
By John Buhler
Before you all jump into Lake Erie to celebrate your awful season, let’s all congratulate the Cleveland Browns on going 0-16.
It was bad, real bad. We didn’t think we’d see it happen again, but it did. The horror show that was the inert 2008 Detroit Lions was almost unbearable to watch. Nobody lost like them. That is, until the Cleveland Browns decided to join the party of not winning any football games nine years later.
The Browns entered 2017 with somewhat of an optimistic mind set. They had two picks in the top 12 of the NFL Draft, including No. 1 overall. Cleveland got to see all the best seniors in the world down in Mobile in the Reese’s Senior Bowl. I mean, they were going to win a game for Hue Jackson this year, right?
Well, that would be a no, as the Browns somehow managed to go 0-16 this season. The coaching staff for the Pittsburgh Steelers could have played and still probably won on Sunday. At some point in the year, we all thought Cleveland was going to win a game. Except not Cleveland, as their dysfunctional tank-tastic Moneyball front office wanted no part of W’s in the win column.
To not win a game in a football season, your levels of bad have to be through the roof. First, you must take a defensive end out of an underwhelming SEC school first overall, hands down. Second, you must trade the No. 12 overall pick to another team that doesn’t have a quarterback and see the Houston Texans draft Deshaun Watson. You know, the guy that beat Alabama in the national championship for Clemson.
Not to be outdone, the Browns would draft the other Deshaun in this draft in the not-ready DeShone Kizer out of Notre Dame. He won four more games quarterbacking the 2016 Notre Dame Fighting Irish than he did the 2017 Browns. Of course, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said Kizer wasn’t ready, because he wasn’t.
You know who might have been ready? Brock Osweiler, who the Browns traded for to collect a draft pick. Osweiler didn’t make the team out of training camp. He would have definitely won at least two games quarterbacking the Browns because Bröck Röcks!
Of course, there were reasons that the Browns went home at 5:00 p.m. ET the day before the trade deadline. Jackson wanted A.J. McCarron of the Cincinnati Bengals to be his quarterback. Former general manager Sashi Brown did not and that’s why the paperwork to the league office to orchestrate the trade was late and incomplete.
It got so bad that Brown had to go from the Browns. Coming in was former Kansas City Chiefs general manager John Dorsey, who said some interesting things at the podium after getting hired. While Sam Darnold might be okay with playing in Cleveland, Josh Rosen is not. He’d prefer to fall in the draft and Dorsey is all about Baker Mayfield anyway.
Jackson once told us that he would take a swim in Lake Erie if the Browns didn’t win a game this year. Well, where are your trunks, dude? If Cosmo Kramer can swim for meters and meters in the East River, you can celebrate this mediocrity with a brief dip in the one of the Greatest Lakes in the world.
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What the 2008 Lions taught us is that one is the loneliest number. Cleveland has now joined them, as two is the second loneliest number. Maybe the Browns can draft the heir apparent to Bernie Kosar in 2018? Is it Darnold, Rosen or some guy we haven’t even heard of yet? Congratulations on putting us through one of the worst seasons in football history! Browns fans, we’re here for you in spirit. Now let’s see Hue swim because winning is hard.