Let’s say you’ve built your dream home on the Atlantic Ocean coastline in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, one of my favorite places in the world.
You’ve done everything exactly right – except for just one thing.
But it’s a big thing.
In the building plans, you and your contractor gave absolutely no consideration to the almost unavoidable reality that, sooner or later, the area in which the house sets will be hit with a hurricane. That’s an unfortunate part of life in that beautiful area.
As such, your house will be damaged – perhaps even severely – and you don’t have a plan B to deal with it.
That’s kind of what’s been happening to the Browns in every year, especially the last several ones, of the expansion era.
For months on end every offseason, there is all kinds of conversation about the Browns’ quarterback situation as they have looked high and low to try to find their franchise guy. Should this guy start? Or that guy? Or how about the rookie?
The topic is discussed so much because it means so much. Indeed, until the Browns find their face-of-the-franchise quarterback, they have no chance to be a consistent winner.
Then, two or three games into the season – or maybe even sooner – the opening-day starter has already gotten hurt and the Browns’ grand plan for their quarterback position, which took so long to put together, is toast. It is completely destroyed. They have to crumble it up and throw it away.
Not long thereafter, the backup gets hurt, and eventually, so, too, does his backup. By the end of the season, it’s hard to remember who the opening-day starter was.
With all this talk about who should be given the quarterback job, what no one really talked about was what the plan was when the starter suffered a season-ending injury.
With the beginning of training camp – July 27 — about five weeks away, the Browns are right back where they’ve been at this point every year since 1999, trying to find their quarterback.
Should it be Cody Kessler, who played a lot last year as a rookie and is the leader right now?
Should it be Brock Osweiler, who was acquired in an offseason trade after he failed miserably with the Houston Texans?
Should it be rookie DeShone Kizer, the Toledo native who was taken in the second round, at No. 52 overall, in the 2017 NFL Draft? When you draft a guy that high, he’s going to get a chance at some point this season to be the guy? Will the Browns be at the point when they meet the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sept. 10 in the regular-season opener?
Or should we just wait for the inevitable injury, which always blows all those best-laid plans out to sea?
