For years, these expansion-era Browns were licking their chops, chomping at the bit to change what they thought were the boring and staid uniforms left over from the original franchise.
 
You remember the original franchise, don’t you? The one with the eight league championships and the 16 Pro Football Hall of Famers? Yeah, that one. Gee whiz, who in their right mind would want to be associated with those bums?
 
Now we get back to these new Browns, the ones with just two winning records – and but one playoff appearance – in their 16 previous seasons. Other than Joe Thomas, nobody from this bunch will ever get into the Hall of Fame unless they buy a ticket.
 
But I digress.
 
Once the decision was made to design new uniforms and they got approval from the NFL, these new Browns really went to work. For three years, they attacked this project with the same enthusiasm and work-ethic as a hungry Dawg – er, dog – goes after raw meat.
 
They talked to this person and that person, this organization and that organization, these design experts and those design experts, that focus group and this focus group. It was an exhaustive effort.
 
Indeed, aside from talking to Mike Tomlin and the Rooneys with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Marvin Lewis and Mike Brown with the Cincinnati Bengals, John Harbaugh and former Browns PR director Kevin Byrne with the Baltimore Ravens, Syrian refugees, Pope Francis, Vladmir Putin, Hillary Clinton, John Madden, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, the Pointer Sisters, Jimmy Fallon, Tom Hamilton, Prince Charles, George Clooney, The Three Stooges, Archie Bunker, Meathead, Meat Loaf, all the actors in the movie, Meet the Fockers, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Gore, Dick Goddard, Miley Cyrus, Mr. Rogers, Roy Rogers, Kenny Rogers, Mimi Rogers, Ginger Rogers, Roger Staubach and the homeless guy who told Jimmy Haslam to draft Johnny Manziel, the Browns talked to just about every human being on the face of the earth.
 
Whew!
 
Whether or not you like those new uniforms they finally came up with, you’ve got to hand it to the Browns that they did their due diligence and covered all the bases – and then some. There wasn’t this much planning put into the D-Day invasion, Madonna’s wardrobe and Donald Trump’s comb-over.
 
If only the Browns all these years would have put that much work into finding their franchise quarterback. The search, which started in that expansion season of 1999 and continues to this day, by the way, has had all the organization and deep thought of two guys haphazardly throwing all kinds of stuff against the wall and then going simply with whatever sticks.
 
I read somewhere recently – and I had to laugh – that if you do a lot of other things right, there is a way to win consistently in the NFL without having a super-duper quarterback. Do not believe that for a second.
 
Quarterback is the most important position in team sports. If a team has a good one, then it has a chance. And if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t.
 
A great quarterback can lift up average players at the 21 other positions on offense and defense and make them great, and the team great. Ladies and gentlemen, we introduce you to Tom Brady.
 
And 21 great players on offense and defense have absolutely, positively no chance to lift up a bad quarterback, say, like Josh McCown. Whoops! Did I just say that?
 
Well, yeah, I did.
 
I just wish the Browns would please – pretty, pretty please – spend merely half as much time and effort finding Mr. Right at quarterback as they did in finding new uniforms. If they did, then they would be contenders every year.
 
But they haven’t, so what you get is a 1-2 record as the team heads into the Meat Loaf of its schedule, a quarterback who can’t make plays at the end of the game to save his soul, a head coach who is going to play that quarterback regardless of what the facts indicate and a general manager who can’t pick the right quarterback and then refuses in the top rounds of the NFL Draft to surround the quarterback he does take with quality skill players.  
 
In short, what you get is a team without a plan – unless, of course, it is designing new uniforms.