The 2017 NFL regular season has come to a close, and while the playoff excitement is in full force, only one NFL team comes to mind in the state of Ohio. The Cleveland Browns. A name for an American football franchise that is synonymous with dysfunction and losing. The team historically has seen its fair share of wins, but that came to a crashing halt when the team was relocated to Baltimore by Art Modell. Since then the team has been terrible.
Recently the Browns have become the first team since 2008 to post the infamous “imperfect” season of zero wins and sixteen losses. Only the Detroit Lions have had a 0-16 season before in NFL history, but the Browns are actually looking to be in worse shape. In two years under head coach Hue Jackson, Cleveland has posted just one win in thirty-two games. 1-31 in two full seasons.
This failure under Hue Jackson is par for the course with the Cleveland Browns. Since the year 2000, the Browns have won 86 out of their 272 games played. Along with this historic rut has come a plethora of poorly utilized draft picks and player gambles. There have been twenty-eight different people start under center for Cleveland, a fact that has helped granted a reputation of a laughing stock in the football world. The Browns cannot find a coach, general manager, or a quarterback that can execute on the field and win ball games. There is a culture problem that runs from Jimmy Haslam, the team owner, all the way down to the incompetent coaching staff.
The best chance for the Browns to ever climb out of this rut is a complete overhaul from top to bottom. The team has not seen any consistent success in the new era and that is a trend that will likely continue until the entire culture surrounding the franchise is scrapped. Any player can be cut or traded, and any coach can be fired.
There isn’t any way that Haslam can be forced to sell the team but it is highly unlikely that he is enjoying anything about what is going on with his team. If he sells the team to another person maybe they could create a culture that players would want to play for. There is no team in professional sports that is harder for their fan base to support than the Cleveland Browns.
