You can’t make this stuff up.

You really can’t.

No one – absolutely no one – would believe it.

And so it is with the Browns.

Still.

The Browns have a capable quarterback in Baker Mayfield they don’t want, and who doesn’t want them. The chances of him ever donning a Browns uniform again – let alone actually playing for them – are the same as McDonald’s and Burger King merging.

They have another quarterback in Deshaun Watson they desperately want, and who wants them. But there is no guarantee that he will play at all this season as he waits to see how long the NFL will suspend him for sexual misconduct.

They have a third quarterback in Jacoby Brissett who no one in Cleveland could pick out of a lineup. Yet he may end up being the starter when Watson is suspended. And if he does, then the Browns are in big trouble. This guy is a career backup for a reason.

There are so many moving parts on the Browns right now, and so much dysfunction. All this controversy has created the granddaddy of all distractions.

Indeed, at a time when, a month before the opening of training camp, fans everywhere around the NFL are beginning to whet their appetite for the return of football, football is the farthest thing from anyone’s mind in Northeast Ohio. This is so much drama – so much of a sideshow and a circus.

To be sure, this is already a season like no other in Browns history, and likely also in pro football history – in an incredibly negative way.

But the Browns have no one to blame but themselves for this mess. They actively chose this path.

And the fans have no alternative but to watch it play out right before their eyes like the nightmare that it is.

Steve King