Don't Want to Say I Told You So

Do I know my Browns, or do I know my Browns?

There is something kind of wonderful about being so in sync with your incomprehensible team that you can actually FEEL IT IN YOUR BONES when they’re going to do something ridiculous. I know some Jets fans out there feel me on this.

Let’s go over this again just so we can fully appreciate what happened here.

The Browns, in an effort to get the final piece for their Super Bowl glory run, made the worst deal in NFL history — trading off every future draft pick they could find for He Who Shall Not Be Named and then gave him the biggest contract in NFL history, taking extra care to be sure that when the NFL suspended him for chronic sexual harassment that he would get all all the money anyway.

HWSNBN was terrible and injured, injured and terrible, the Browns’ Super Bowl run collapsed into despair. Fans in every other NFL city couldn’t stop laughing. It got so bad that, long after the house had burned down, the Browns’ owner admitted, yeah, that deal might have been a mistake.

That mistake, by the way, is still with the club, and he is guaranteed to earn $92 million over the next two years, and he’s telling anyone who will listen that he will shut up the critics.

But nobody thinks the Browns will actually play him.

Unless, you know, they do. They’re the Browns.

Anyway, Cleveland came into this draft with the second overall pick because they tied for the worst record in pro football (which is not the same as going to the Super Bowl, in case you’re wondering).

The early line was that the second-best quarterback in the draft was Shedeur Sanders, son of Deion Sanders, the Big 12 Player of the Year and a flamboyant personality like his dad. Shedeur promised that he would turn around the team lucky enough to draft him.

The Browns tried to play it cool, but the closer it got to draft time, the clearer it became that they just weren’t that into Shedeur.

Cleveland made four picks on Thursday and Friday. None of them was Shedeur Sanders. One of them was Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who almost nobody expected to go that high in the draft. Taking Gabriel way above his expected slot (and with no fourth-round pick) the Browns were sending a crystal-clear message:

We are NOT drafting Shedeur Sanders.

That’s when I knew — as I have known very few things — that the Browns were absolutely going to find a way to draft Shedeur Sanders.

How did I know? Look, I’m sure other Browns fans knew too. We know this team. We know their particular kind of dysfunction. Nobody in the front office agrees on anything. It’s obvious. The Dillon Gabriel pick? That feels like the choice of our guy Kevin Stefanski — you know, his arm strength is questionable and he’s probably too small, but by gosh, he finds a way to get the job done. He’s a coach’s dream. He’s someone you can trust with the keys to your car. That’s a Stef guy.

And Shedeur? Oh yeah, that’s owner Jimmy Haslam all over. Look, every single team in the NFL made clear they don’t want to deal with the headaches of drafting Shedeur Sanders. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not, but I can tell you that Jimmy Haslam doesn’t care about any of that. This is the guy who had the Browns take Johnny Football on the advice of a homeless person. This is the guy — I refuse to believe anything else — who pushed hard on the He Who Shall Not Be Named deal.

My best guess is that Haslam saw all the stuff about Shedeur dropping in the draft, undoubtedly saw the tweet from the President of the United States, and told himself: “OK, look, we don’t have a fourth-round pick, and I’ll bet Shedeur will get drafted in the fourth round. OK. Breathe. We’ll stay out of this.”

Then when Sanders didn’t get drafted in the fourth round, I’ll bet Haslam absolutely lost his mind, and made a frantic call to general manager Andrew Berry shouting, “Ahhh! It’s the fifth round! He’s still there! We can’t wait any longer! We’ve got to get Shedeur! Get me Shedeur!”

You can tell it was panic because Browns didn’t even wait for their fifth-round pick. They immediately traded TWO picks to move up a few spots to get Sanders.

The Browns come into the season now with He Who Shall Not Be Named, Kenny Pickett, Joe Flacco, Dillon Gabriel, Shane Falco, Joe Pendleton, Paul Blake, Paul Crewe, Paul McDonald, Jake Paul and Shedeur Sanders fighting for the quarterback spot.

It’s a perfect storm of chaos for the most chaotic team in sports.

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