Browns Diary, Week 16: 'Tis the Season

Cincinnati 24, Cleveland 6

Today seems as good a day as any to look back on this glorious Browns season and try to get a sense of our guy Kevin Stefanski’s mood. See if you can pick up a word or two that might help us get to the heart of his emotional well-being.

After getting stomped by the Cowboys and committing 11 penalties: “Really disappointed in our performance. Too sloppy. It’s disappointing. We’ll look at ways we can fix that.”

After losing to a horrendous Giants team: “It’s really disappointing on a bunch of different levels. I know we can be better, and we will be.”

After losing to a terrible Las Vegas team: “Obviously disappointed. You know, you pour so much into it to get those wins, and so you’re disappointed when you don’t get the results you want. But our guys have the right attitude.”

After getting crushed by Washington: “OK, obviously disappointed.… So disappointed, but nobody’s feeling sorry for us. We’ve got to do our work.”

After losing to Philadelphia: “Very frustrating. I know the guys are fighting like crazy, fighting like crazy, and I appreciate that.… We had our opportunities, and did not come through. That’s the frustrating part. Frustrating for me, frustrating for our players, frustrating for everybody.”

After losing to Cincinnati in October: “Yeah, it’s kind of bad football that’s holding you back. It’s got to get cleaned up. It’s a player thing, it’s the coaches that have to get it fixed—myself, I got to get it first because it’s holding us back. It’s really, really disappointing.”

After getting destroyed by the Chargers: “Obviously very disappointed with today. Costly mistakes hurt us… So extremely disappointed and we’ve got to learn from this.… It’s very disappointing. I mean it’s tough to not play to our best. That’s really frustrating.”

After getting blown out in the fourth quarter by a bad New Orleans team: “Very disappointing. Disappointing, going into the fourth quarter with a chance.… We all share in it. It’s an offense, defense, special teams, players and coaches type of thing.… I think where our record is, you’re obviously disappointed.”

After blowing the game late against Denver: ”Obviously, you’re very, very disappointed that you can’t finish that game.… Got to find a way to finish. That’s the very disappointing part for me and for the football team.”

After the Browns’ all-encompassing loss to Pittsburgh: “It’s extremely disappointing to not play well enough.… [on dumb penalty by Kadarius Toney] “Very disappointing. That’s not what we’re about. It’ll be addressed. It’s really, really, really disappointing.”

After the Browns’ delightful six-turnover loss to Kansas City: “You cannot turn the ball over six times and expect to win any football game.… so I’m obviously extremely disappointed that we did that. It’s not a question of effort. It’s not a question of how we’re working.”

And finally, on Sunday, after the Browns fell way behind early and committed turnovers and really came back against Cincinnati: “So really disappointing to put ourselves in the hole there.… Not a lack of effort. That’s not the issue.… Ultimately, it’s frustrating to come down here and not put ourselves in position.… It’s frustrating because we know how important that ball is.”

Now, maybe I’m reading too much into it, I mean, you can’t ever really know what’s going on inside another person… but it’s at least possible that Kevin Stefanski is disappointed. And frustrated. Also disappointed. The Browns are 3-12, and along the way they have lost to three of the worst teams in football (Giants, Raiders, Saints), and they were actually in position to lose all three of the games they did win, and they don’t have a quarterback, and they’re in salary cap hell, and their best player has made it publicly clear that he’s not going through another rebuild, and they have committed the most pre-snap penalties in football, and they have been outscored 113 to 59 the last four weeks, and they now have the worst point differential in the AFC, and they have committed at least three turnovers five weeks in a row, they now have the worst turnover margin in the NFL, and, just for fun, they keep sending a broken kicker out there to miss field goals because they signed him to a long-term deal and…

You know what? Kevin Stefanski is right! It is kind of disappointing!

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As Browns fans, we have not only been here before, we’ve rarely been anywhere else. This season will mark the FOURTEENTH TIME that the new Cleveland Browns will win five or fewer games in a season. That’s only since 2000, understand.

Most seasons with five or fewer wins since 2000:

• Cleveland Browns, 14

• Arizona Cardinals, 12

• Jacksonville Jaguars, 12

• Detroit Lions, 11

• Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, 11

For the record: The Pittsburgh Steelers have won five or fewer games once in the last 50 years.

So, yeah, this is all familiar territory. And probably my least favorite part of this—my least favorite part of rooting for a terrible football team that is so obviously going nowhere for the foreseeable future—is the gaslighting that goes on. This is the time when Browns owner Jimmy Haslam says he believes the team has the right people in place for future success. This is the time when Stefanski talks about how the effort of the players is off-the-charts high. This is the time when announcers point out that the Browns have just been unlucky in close games, even though they haven’t really lost any close games in a couple of months.

This is the time when it starts leaking out that, hey, it looks like he-who-shall-not-be-named is recovering faster than expected and should be ready to play quarterback with a whole new attitude at next year’s training camp.

This is the time when everybody keeps telling us that it ain’t so bad.

“To go wholesale and blow things up after one bad, albeit very bad one at that, season feels very rash,” one Cleveland reporter opines.

Yep, this is what it’s like being a Cleveland Browns fan. Every 20 or 25 years, they’ll give us a miracle season, like last year, when the defense comes together and plays out of its mind and a 38-year-old Joe Flacco wanders onto the scene and leads the team to all sorts of thrilling and unexpected wins. That was fun, right?

The Browns at least made one guy happy on Sunday. (Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

Was it sustainable? Well, the Browns got rid of Flacco, and they enthusiastically gave the quarterback job back to he who shall not be named, and they hired a new offensive coordinator who had just been first midseason by Buffalo, and they didn’t have a first-round pick for the third year in a row (though this year they did have a second-round pick for the first time in a while), and they kind of expected things to just pick right up where they left off.

Why hasn’t that happened? Why are the Browns now, perhaps, the worst team in football while nobody seems to have any idea how to fix it? I wish there was an answer to that, but all we can really do now is eliminate the non-reasons, thanks to our guy Kevin Stefanski.

• It’s not because of a lack of effort.

• It’s not because of a lack of talent.

• It’s not because of poor practice habits.

• It’s not because of poor practice management.

• It’s not because of a lack of discipline.

• It’s not because of the quarterback.

• It’s not because of any one player.

• It’s not because of the offensive or defensive schemes.

• It’s also not because of any one coach.

• It’s also not because of the front office.

• It’s definitely not because of the owners.

So what’s left? What could it be? Who can really say? It’s a mystery.

It’s disappointing, that’s what it is.