By STEVE KING
The Browns have made such a mess of this, their 75th anniversary season.
It’s bad enough to do this in any season, but to do so in one during which the birth of the team in 1946, and all the good things that have occurred since then, were being celebrated, is egregious, sinful, disrespectful and just plain wrong.
More specifically and more importantly, it is completely unacceptable. It is a train wreck, second to none when it comes to sports seasons and celebrations overall.
Whose fault is it?
That of everyone on the football side of the organization — that is, the players. coaches, personnel people and, yes, even the owners, Dee and Jimmy Haslam.
This season, with the expectations of making it to the Super Bowl to go along with the 75th anniversary celebration, was so highly anticipated. It was on everyone’s hearts and minds ever since the gun sounded ending the 2022 AFC divisional playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. People couldn’t wait to get to 2021 and build on what happened in 2020. The excitement was so thick you could almost cut it with a knife.
After a 3-1 start that served only to whet that appetite even more, disaster set in. Things went completely sideways. Seemingly everything that could possibly go wrong, did. What resulted was a 4-8 record since, leaving the Browns at 7-9 and out of the playoff chase altogether as they get ready to host the division champion Cincinnati Bengals — a team they walloped 41-16 at Paul Brown Stadium earlier in the season, back when things were going a lot more swimmingly on Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium in the regular-season finale
Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, who excelled against the Bengals that day, won’t play after getting all beaten up and being placed onto the Injured Reserve List, and Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, who struggled against the Browns, won’t play, either, so he can rest a sore knee and get ready for the playoffs. Yes, that’s how much things have changed.
And there’s absolutely no excuse for the Browns — from top to bottom on that football side of things — allowing that to happen, especially in this very special and historic season.
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