Some people are fans of the Cleveland Browns. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Cleveland Browns. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Cleveland Browns.
Your 2023 record: 11-6. These guys beat the 49ers, Ravens, Texans, and a handful of other real teams during the regular season. They even got to rest their starters in Week 18, because they had a playoff spot locked up. Somehow they managed to do this without their best running back, their best offensive tackle, and the starting QB they sold their damp brown soul for. They had to rely on a formerly couchbound Joe Flacco leading them down the stretch, and Flacco ended up winning Comeback Player of the Year, presumably by default, for it. Relative to their past, one can only describe this past Browns season as “triumphant.”
That’s pretty much the last nice thing I’ll say here. You genuises yoked your future to a $230 million anchor that’s marinated in 60 gallons of Dior Sauvage. You sported a championship defense last year. That’s not hyperbole. By every advanced metric, this Browns defense was as a good as … oh, I dunno, let’s say the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. All they needed was a modern Trent Dilfer (no, not that one) to safely game-manage them deep into the playoffs. Instead, they were forced to cycle through four different QBs, with Flacco somehow managing to be the best of them by FAR. Not good.
Also not good: Losing to the “rival” Steelers on a T.J. Watt scoop and score; letting Geno Smith beat them on a last-second TD pass that WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught behind the line of scrimmage; getting crushed by Denver in a game where Russell Wilson passed for a whopping 134 yards, and then getting destroyed by the Rams a week later. All of that should have clued you into the fact that this team wasn’t quite the sum of its parts. Well, that and the fact that THEY’RE THE CLEVELAND FUCKING BROWNS. The Browns couldn’t turn on a lamp without watching a YouTube tutorial first. So when these guys traveled down to Houston for a wild card game against the AFC South champs, did YOU think they stood a chance? Did anyone? Did they even think it was possible?
Judging by the 45-14 final score, they didn’t. Because hoo doggie, you boys got LIT THE FUCK UP down in Texas, by the same guys who tricked you into trading the deed to your city for Deshaun Watson. That’s right: Jack Easterby's team fleeced you. Now the Texans have an incredible young passer who makes them an instant annual Super Bowl threat, and you have … whatever this is.
Your coach: Two-time Coach of the Year Kevin Stefanski. Stefanski has never led these Browns past the divisional round, but all Browns coaches are graded on a curve that bends more than the GateKeeper at Cedar Point. In any other city, Kevin Stefanski would have had Cam Cameron’s career. Here, he’s the greatest head coach the New Browns have ever had. If he loses just one more playoff game, they’ll rename the entire city after him.
Everything bad about the 2023 Browns could be traced back to their shortcomings on offense, so Stefanski dumped offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt after the season and brought in this man to make everything better:
That’s former Heisman winner Ken Dorsey, who hates running the ball and whose Bills ripped off six wins in their final seven games after they fired him in November. Imagine YOU being the problem in Buffalo and not Sean McDermott. Dorsey must have pinned 500 photos of Timothy McVeigh to his office wall to be the bad guy in Orchard Park. He also couldn’t run a consistent offense with Josh Allen at his disposal. Now he has to do it with…
Your quarterback: Deshaun Watson, who ended last season on IR thanks to a broken glenoid bone in his shoulder. I don’t know what a glenoid bone is, and I won’t be asking Deshaun to show me where it is on his body. When this man gets injured, every physical therapist within a 100-mile radius has a nervous breakdown. But now he’s healthy (sure he is) and ready to live up to the unprecedented (still!) amount of guaranteed money that Cleveland offered for his services three years ago.
There’s just one small problem there, which is that he sucks.
Now I’ve done my fair share of wishcasting on other QBs whom I’ve found personally repugnant. I said Jordan Love was a flop, but he wasn’t. I said Ben Roethlisberger was never all that good, but he 100 percent was. But this time, I don’t have to pretend that Deshaun Watson sucks, because he actually does. According to the FTN Almanac, “Watson has yet to produce a positive season-long passing DVOA with the Browns.” He’s also never played a full season in Cleveland, has 14 passing TDs to nine picks, and the 2,217 total passing yards he’s amassed in two seasons with the Browns are less than half the passing yards he notched in his final season with the Texans alone. His completion percentage is way down. His yards-per-attempt average is way down. And reports out of preseason joint practices were that he was fucking terrible. NICE.
So this isn’t the Deshaun Watson you knew in Houston, and not just because he’s a monster. He’s washed, and will never regain his old Pro Bowl form. As such, the Browns were better off with Flacco at QB, but Flacco left for Indy this offseason. They better have replaced him with someone who knows what they’re doing. What’s that? Who’d they sign? Oh you gotta be shitting me…
This is the stupidest organization in football.
What’s new that sucks: Guess which team still didn’t have any first-round picks this spring because they traded for eternal infamy? To fix their offense, the Browns had to dig into the market for RBs D’Onta Foreman and Nyheim Hines, and then traded for Broncos washout Jerry Jeudy to be their WR2. They even gave Jeudy a contract extension worth $41 million guaranteed. Can I get a fat payday from this team? Like Watson and Jeudy, I too can’t play football for shit. Where’s MY golden parachute, Jimmy Haslam? How do I qualify for your Fuckhead Welfare Initiative? Do I need to dry hump an unsuspecting cashier and then fumble a can of soup down her shirt? Would that get me a bag? You fucking idiot. I hope you get run over by a semi.
Anyway, the roster. Even with Jeudy in the wideout room, Amari Cooper and the literal charred remains of David Njoku remain your only decent receiving threats. Hines and Foreman will be forced to assume too heavy of a workload should star RB Nick Chubb need extra time to recover from tearing every intact fiber inside of his knee last fall. But the defense? The defense is still insane. Free agent LBs Devin Bush and Jordan Hicks join an already loaded front seven, and the secondary remains talented enough for DC Jim Schwartz to play man coverage anytime he feels like it. Imagine if this team had a QB to pair with that defense. The mind reels.
Regardless, the schedule is soft enough that Cleveland could easily stage a repeat of last season, 57 QBs and all. Haslam is hoping that will be enough to get him the trophy he really wants:
Notice anything missing from those mock-ups? If you said “the city of Cleveland,” you win a free biscuit. Haslam and the Browns have already initiated the process of stadium grift, complete with vaguely threatening statements to move the team to the Ohio equivalent of Cobb County if Cleveland proper doesn’t hand them an attaché case filled with million-dollar bills. You’ve seen this movie many times over. The fact that it’s set in Cleveland this time makes the movie even longer, and more boring. I’d rather give a free stadium to the Proud Boys.
What has always sucked: By the time the Browns have gotten out from under Watson’s deal, their defense will be a shell of its former self. Good. This was precisely what you guys deserved for acquiring that man in the first place. You have everything in place: a good coach, an incredible defense, and a fanbase that’ll stay loyal even while you’re pissing down their leg. All you need is a QB. You thought Deshaun Watson would be that QB. SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKER. He sucks forever, and so do you. You were already a pathetic franchise when you crawled back out of Lake Erie in 1999. Now you’re doomed to be hamstrung, both morally and football-wise, until the moon crashes into the Earth.
Browns fans are just as dumb as Steelers fans, only without the hardware to make it all worth it.
What might not suck: I really like that Zak Zinter pick they made in Round 3. Say what you will about this team (I just did), but they sure know how to put together an O-line.
HEAR IT FROM BROWNS FANS!
Jamie:
Our QB room increasingly looks like the guys who catcall you on your way to interrogating Hannibal Lecter.
Joey:
The team's name is a color, but the logo is a different color.
Richard:
After the Browns traded for OBJ, my dad asks me if he should reserve a hotel room in Tampa during Super Bowl weekend in case the Browns make it. I talked him out of it. The Browns went 6-10 that year.
David:
See attached. I mean come on.
Rob:
We sold our soul, and the team's future, for a rapist who isn't even that good.
Kevin:
Imagine being able to legitimately argue that Joe Flacco is the best quarterback your team has had in *checks notes* decades. Fuck Haslam with an icicle made from Lake Erie's nastiest industrial runoff.
Ed:
Jacoby Brissett in ‘22 and Joe Flacco in ‘23 outplayed our $230M, masseuse-abusing QB1.
Alexander:
I will never forgive the Browns for this. It will always leave a battery-acid taste in my mouth knowing we sold our souls for a chance to win and couldn't even do that. The Haslams will move the stadium to the suburbs, and the Brads and Chads of Strongsville and Parma won't have to trouble themselves with seeing a single black person on their way to drinking their morning 12-pack.
Don:
My best friend and I talked ourselves into traveling to the playoff game in Houston. This would be the first chance the two of us (mid 40s) could watch a Browns playoff game in person since 2003. Cost was not a factor.
The Browns trailed by 10 at half before Flacco threw TWO pick sixes in the second half. In summation, we paid $400 a ticket plus airfare and lodging to watch Paul Wall, Mike Jones and Slim Thug perform at halftime.
Dennis:
A fun fact about the Haslems is that Dee has managed her MLS club in Columbus to two titles in five years of ownership, while Jimmy is still polling hobos for Browns roster advice.
Isaac:
Right around the time the Browns clinched their playoff spot, a local singer dropped this ear-bleeder:
That right there should be enough to have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yoinked out of Cleveland and shipped to a more deserving city.
What made it worse is that local news anchors kept filming random fans (including one who looked a little too much like Kevin Stefanski) singing it and driving my poor dog up the wall.
Vince Guerreri:
I watched the Browns-49ers game last year with my friend and mentor, the Rev. Dr. Joe Boyle, at the Cleveland Clinic. I met Joe at the college newspaper when I arrived there in the fall of 1995. We bonded over our shared ire at the Browns moving. He bought Andre Rison and Eric Metcalf jerseys on closeout, and regularly wore them for decades afterward. He was an absolute lunatic as a Browns fan. We went to a game in 2013 against the Jaguars, and last three possessions ended with two Brandon Weeden interceptions and a Brandon Weeden fumble for a safety. Joe got so mad that the usher came to check on him. "I've been working here since the place opened, and you're the angriest fan I've ever seen."
By then, Joe'd been fighting cancer for more than two years. The five-year survival rate was grim, but he passed it. He passed the ten-year survival rate. But things started catching up to him. That summer, he had a stroke, losing vision in one eye. (The text I got from him that morning read as follows: "I can't see out of one eye. Jacking off finally caught up with me.")
In October, he went to the Clinic in a helicopter, but he was feeling well enough to take visitors. I came to see him for the Browns game, a stunning victory. When San Francisco's Jake Moody shanked the kick, we yelled so loud that the nurse came and checked on us.
Joe actually rallied and left the hospital. He lived what passed for a normal life for another month. But he went back into the hospital, and it soon became clear he wouldn't come back out. He died the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, two days after a stirring win over the Steelers and a day after the Browns signed Joe Flacco to the practice squad. I told the story of the Jags game for his news obit and wore a Browns tie to his funeral.
Joe watched Flacco torture the Browns. He never got to see Flacco rip off four straight wins as Browns quarterback, culminating in a playoff-clinching win over the Jets right after Christmas. That was the game where the Browns' new sponsor, Dude Wipes offered a jersey exchange. They did not fully anticipate the demand. Every time Browns radio voice Jim Donovan had to say, "Dude Wipes: We Love Our Browns," I could hear him die a little on the inside. But it was a time to believe in a little magic. Maybe the fates owed Joe one.
Instead, the Browns got the doors blown off against the Texans. Serves me right. I should have remembered that there is no mercy in the universe for the Browns. They haven't been to a conference championship game since the 1980s. They haven't won the division since the 1980s. In fact, the Browns haven't had back-to-back winning seasons since the 1980s. And the Haslams do fundraisers for JD Vance.
Joey J:
Cleveland pundits still out here pretending the nasty man doesn't exist.
John:
To say this franchise has mystique is like saying that tightly coiled pile your dog leaves on my lawn has aura. This team is a prison. But instead of fearing the hell I’m in, I’m beginning to appreciate the industrial decor.
Matt:
Being a Browns fan is a series of ironic punishments. Did you make fun of the Ravens for employing Ray Rice? Now you have Kareem Hunt as your RB. Did you make fun of Big Ben's allegations and post that "Local Heroes Nab Sex Offender" meme? Now your QB has 23 victims (at least). Did you make fun of the Bengals’ white alternate helmets? Now you have them, and they're even more generic looking. Did you make "elite" jokes about Flacco? Now he's your savior.
Jared:
I think I preferred the team I watched most of my life: hapless, loveable lovers that everyone felt sorry for. Now I watch a moderately competitive team that hasn't won anything but that everyone still hates.
When the Rams went with a "fuck them picks" strategy, they won a Super Bowl. My team tried that and got a serial abuser who's only redeeming quality is that he was a good QB four years ago.
I guess it could be worse. At least I don't have to convince myself JJ McCarthy is the answer, since we haven't had a first round pick in 30 years.
Kyle:
Not much more can be said about why this team sucks, but I'll try:
They fucking suck.
Thanks.
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