Why Your Team Sucks 2012: Cleveland Browns
Drew Magary
Some people are fans of the Cleveland Browns. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cleveland Browns. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here.
1. IMPOSTORS. Ever see one of those shitty movies where a child goes missing for years, and then he returns to his parents and everyone is happy, until the parents soon realize that Little Junior wasn't quite the same as before? His mannerisms are a bit off. He seems detached. Sometimes, at night, they find him sharpening a saw in the basement. Then they realize that the child isn't their child at all. It's a fucking cyborg disguised as a kid, or they realize the kid has been possessed by a three-horned sand demon. That's the New Browns. Everything I wrote about them three years ago still holds true today. They're IMPOSTORS. They're like the Talented Mister Ripley if the Talented Mister Ripley weren't all that talented.
Now that Al Davis is cold and dead in the ground, this is single most depressing franchise in the NFL. The Browns, as presently constituted, don't even feel like a team. They're like a POW camp for NFL players hoping to one day escape to a real team. I wanted to go to a Browns game in person but it turns out that, in order to do so, you have to die and be sentenced to afterlife purification in order to find yourself at their home stadium. Many teams can stake their claim to having an awful history of quarterbacking, but take a look at the New Browns list:
• Tim Couch
• Ty Detmer
• Doug Pederson
• Spergon Wynn
• Kelly Holcomb
• Jeff Garcia
• Luke McCown
• Trent Dilfer
• Charlie Frye
• Derek Anderson
• Brady Quinn
• Ken Dorsey
• Bruce Gradkowski
• Colt McCoy
• Seneca Wallace
I just ... God, it's so awful, isn't it? It's depressing. It's genuinely depressing. BROWN is such an apt word for them. Watching this team is like being forced to sit through The Phantom Menace. They're the sequel fanboys were hoping for, only the end product somehow made everything that came before it even worse. I know Browns fans are among the most loyal and devoted in football. But in all honesty, don't you kinda wish they had never come back? There has to be a small part of you that wishes the New Browns had never been born. Far better to spend the past decade imagining having a fun, winning team instead of having to watch the toxic sludge this franchise is in reality. You might hate yourself for thinking it, but surely it crossed your mind whenever you saw Charlie Frye try to complete a pass.
And the worst part is that other teams routinely lift themselves out of laughingstock status. The Patriots used to be a joke. The Saints used to be a joke. Even the Lions—THE LIONS—have gotten their act together. And yet, it still doesn't feel as if this franchise will ever right itself. The New Browns are not an affectionate, cuddly bunch. They are the living dead.
2. Trent Richardson is doomed. You can hear the desperation when the Browns tell you that their new rookie running back will be back in time from surgery to start the season. They so urgently want you to believe that, but you and I know better. You and I know that the Browns locker room is a haven of filth and disease matched only by the outdoor toilets of central Mumbai. The Browns are like a fucking Robin Cook novel come to life. People just mysteriously fall ill and die all over the place. The team's surgical instruments are all covered with black algae. Does this team even have a training staff? Is there some evil equipment manager who's secretly a Steelers fan and throws all the Purell shipments into a nearby ravine? Cleveland is where players go to die. Richardson is never coming back. He's going to lose all his limbs and his sight and hearing and he'll be begging his nurses to kill him by shaking his head in Morse Code. SOS ... Help meeeeeee ...
They shouldn't have even traded up for Richardson to begin with. The Vikings were never gonna take him. The Bucs were never really gonna outmaneuver them. And why are you taking a back that high? It's the most disposable position in the sport. Now the New Browns have an injured back and Chris Weinke Jr. to show for their drafting efforts. Holy shit, somehow things feel even more hopeless than they did a second ago.
3. Who will be catching the ball? I honestly have no idea. Is Frisman Jackson still there? No? Could Webster Slaughter have a son and let him play for this team? Because Webster Slaughter ruled. This team just burned a second-round pick to take Josh Gordon in the supplemental draft, that's how bereft they are at the position. They have no tight ends and whatever tight ends they DO put out on the field will die of staph infection by Week 7. The defense is puke. The rest of the division is vastly superior. There is nothing good that can come from any of this.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.
4. Let's talk about the new owner. I haven't gotten to the fact that the new Browns owner was a minority Steelers owner. JESUS. It's like the final insult. Here's a team that's run by a half-retired Mike Holmgren and coached by an empty vessel, and now it's been purchased by the enemy. I don't think Jimmy Haslam wants this team to succeed at all. I think he's gonna cut the brakes on the team bus on the way to the opener. Then he's gonna sleep with every Browns fan's wife, then light up a cigar and cackle like a madman.
5. Hear it from Browns fans! Take a deep breath. We have a lot of grievances to wade through here.
Drew Magary
Some people are fans of the Cleveland Browns. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cleveland Browns. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here.
1. IMPOSTORS. Ever see one of those shitty movies where a child goes missing for years, and then he returns to his parents and everyone is happy, until the parents soon realize that Little Junior wasn't quite the same as before? His mannerisms are a bit off. He seems detached. Sometimes, at night, they find him sharpening a saw in the basement. Then they realize that the child isn't their child at all. It's a fucking cyborg disguised as a kid, or they realize the kid has been possessed by a three-horned sand demon. That's the New Browns. Everything I wrote about them three years ago still holds true today. They're IMPOSTORS. They're like the Talented Mister Ripley if the Talented Mister Ripley weren't all that talented.
Now that Al Davis is cold and dead in the ground, this is single most depressing franchise in the NFL. The Browns, as presently constituted, don't even feel like a team. They're like a POW camp for NFL players hoping to one day escape to a real team. I wanted to go to a Browns game in person but it turns out that, in order to do so, you have to die and be sentenced to afterlife purification in order to find yourself at their home stadium. Many teams can stake their claim to having an awful history of quarterbacking, but take a look at the New Browns list:
• Tim Couch
• Ty Detmer
• Doug Pederson
• Spergon Wynn
• Kelly Holcomb
• Jeff Garcia
• Luke McCown
• Trent Dilfer
• Charlie Frye
• Derek Anderson
• Brady Quinn
• Ken Dorsey
• Bruce Gradkowski
• Colt McCoy
• Seneca Wallace
I just ... God, it's so awful, isn't it? It's depressing. It's genuinely depressing. BROWN is such an apt word for them. Watching this team is like being forced to sit through The Phantom Menace. They're the sequel fanboys were hoping for, only the end product somehow made everything that came before it even worse. I know Browns fans are among the most loyal and devoted in football. But in all honesty, don't you kinda wish they had never come back? There has to be a small part of you that wishes the New Browns had never been born. Far better to spend the past decade imagining having a fun, winning team instead of having to watch the toxic sludge this franchise is in reality. You might hate yourself for thinking it, but surely it crossed your mind whenever you saw Charlie Frye try to complete a pass.
And the worst part is that other teams routinely lift themselves out of laughingstock status. The Patriots used to be a joke. The Saints used to be a joke. Even the Lions—THE LIONS—have gotten their act together. And yet, it still doesn't feel as if this franchise will ever right itself. The New Browns are not an affectionate, cuddly bunch. They are the living dead.
2. Trent Richardson is doomed. You can hear the desperation when the Browns tell you that their new rookie running back will be back in time from surgery to start the season. They so urgently want you to believe that, but you and I know better. You and I know that the Browns locker room is a haven of filth and disease matched only by the outdoor toilets of central Mumbai. The Browns are like a fucking Robin Cook novel come to life. People just mysteriously fall ill and die all over the place. The team's surgical instruments are all covered with black algae. Does this team even have a training staff? Is there some evil equipment manager who's secretly a Steelers fan and throws all the Purell shipments into a nearby ravine? Cleveland is where players go to die. Richardson is never coming back. He's going to lose all his limbs and his sight and hearing and he'll be begging his nurses to kill him by shaking his head in Morse Code. SOS ... Help meeeeeee ...
They shouldn't have even traded up for Richardson to begin with. The Vikings were never gonna take him. The Bucs were never really gonna outmaneuver them. And why are you taking a back that high? It's the most disposable position in the sport. Now the New Browns have an injured back and Chris Weinke Jr. to show for their drafting efforts. Holy shit, somehow things feel even more hopeless than they did a second ago.
3. Who will be catching the ball? I honestly have no idea. Is Frisman Jackson still there? No? Could Webster Slaughter have a son and let him play for this team? Because Webster Slaughter ruled. This team just burned a second-round pick to take Josh Gordon in the supplemental draft, that's how bereft they are at the position. They have no tight ends and whatever tight ends they DO put out on the field will die of staph infection by Week 7. The defense is puke. The rest of the division is vastly superior. There is nothing good that can come from any of this.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.
4. Let's talk about the new owner. I haven't gotten to the fact that the new Browns owner was a minority Steelers owner. JESUS. It's like the final insult. Here's a team that's run by a half-retired Mike Holmgren and coached by an empty vessel, and now it's been purchased by the enemy. I don't think Jimmy Haslam wants this team to succeed at all. I think he's gonna cut the brakes on the team bus on the way to the opener. Then he's gonna sleep with every Browns fan's wife, then light up a cigar and cackle like a madman.
5. Hear it from Browns fans! Take a deep breath. We have a lot of grievances to wade through here.