The Browns fans who cheered on Sunday when quarterback Deshaun Watson went down with what we now know is a ruptured Achilles tendon ought to be ashamed of themselves.

What a horrible look for them, and a horrible look for Browns fans in general. People see this, and they think all Browns fans are like this. They are not. But like everything else, the loudest people get noticed, and that is what happened at Huntington Bank Field during the 21–14 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

But at the same time, if you trace everything back to the beginning, this all can be laid at the feet of the Browns organization. The organization went out and bought an unpopular player with a seedy past and paid him a fully guaranteed contract of $230 million. They didn’t research him, they didn’t think this thing through, they didn’t coach him up and they didn’t surround him with enough talent to make him successful. Other than that, they did everything right.

Yes, blame the Browns, especially owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, holier-than-thou General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski, so what happened on Sunday with the reaction of these frustrated fans. Nobody wanted them to do this, except them. Even the most casual fans saw that this wasn’t going to work, but the Browns pushed forward anyway and put themselves and the organization into this precarious situation not for the last three years, but going forward. When you miss that badly on a franchise quarterback, you set the franchise back years.

Indeed, if you want to boo anyone, boo those guys.

In a way, though, it’s liberating for the Browns because now they can identify a quarterback who has a chance of succeeding. But with the fact they missed so badly on Watson, can really expect these guys to do it right?

I don’t know. What do you think?

Steve King