Just as I have my most favorite Browns players, as you read on Sunday, I also have my least favorite players.
There’s not a least favorite list of 20, as with the most favorite players (I could have put together a list of 100), because I try not to concentrate on the negative as much, especially when it comers to people. It can eat you up and make you a curmudgeon if you let it. And life’s too short for that.
But to present some balance and not make everything so Pollyanna, the following is a list of My 10 Least Favorite Browns Players:
- Steve Zahursky – When he first came to the new Browns, he was a great story in being a guy from Euclid High School and Kent State who had beaten the tremendous odds and made it to the big time. Then he became a conceited knucklehead. That was a bad story.
2. Brian Kinchen – In 1995, I asked him about the Browns moving and if he could relate to how the fans felt. He looked at me incredulously and talked about the club leaving town as if it were no big deal. Really? His career with the Browns was the only thing that was no big deal.
3. Seneca Wallace – Somewhere along the way, he got it in his head that he was a great quarterback. He was misinformed. When he didn’t play, he added malcontent to his list of problems.
4. Kevin Bentley – He got upset when I wrote in 2003 that the Browns linebackers were the worst in the NFL. Then he went out and proved me right. Never let the truth stand in the way of what you think.
5. Michael Jackson – He came out of nowhere to make the team in 1991. He was a grounded young man, and it was the best story of the year. But when he kept getting better, his ego soon became his calling card. Perhaps he thought he was the other Michael Jackson.
6. Jim McMahon – In 1995, he became the first Browns player in history – and still the only one – to wear sunglasses in the team photo. He recently called Bill Belichick, his head coach that year, a cheater. People here would probably take his comments more seriously in it had not been for his “too cool for school attitude” way back when.
7. Johnny Manziel – He lacked not only size, but character. I know he’s troubled, but his determination to taunt the organization with his illicit behavior leads me to believe that he could have consciously controlled at least some of those bad actions if he had really wanted to do so.
8. Braylon Edwards – He was about as trustworthy as a snake. His father had the audacity to say that Browns fans didn’t warm up to him because he was a University of Michigan product. No, it was because he was arrogant and selfish. And he had more drops than an elevator.
9. Kelley Winslow II – See No. 8.
10. Trent Dilfer – He couldn’t figure out why head coach Romeo Crennel benched him in 2005. Perhaps it was because he couldn’t play. Then he went off and sulked like a little kid, refusing to do anything to help his replacement, rookie Charlie Frye. Frye couldn’t play, either, but he was much younger and wasn’t a cancer in the locker room. I’d like to see him analyze all that sometime on the air.
By Steve King
