There is chaos in Berea.

It is apparent everywhere in and around 76 Lou Groza Boulevard, the location of Browns Headquarters.
 
We don’t need to re-hash all of the reasons why that is so, do we?
 
Thanks. It hurts too much just to think about it, let alone explain all of it.
 
But why should we be surprised? After all, the chaos has been there – and at FirstEnergy Stadium and its former name, Cleveland Browns Stadium – ever since the expansion era began in 1999 when the re-born Browns took the field.
 
Again, do we need to explain why this is so?
 
Again, thanks. This also hurts too much just to think about it, let alone explain all of it.
 
Part of the purpose of this piece is simply to point out that the struggles of the present regime aren’t new. There’s a long, long history of this kind of behavior in Berea.
 
But the much bigger purpose is to point out that until the chaos and craziness in Berea stops – until the focus is squarely, completely and continually on football, picking good players, especially at quarterback, and getting a great head coach and a great general manager who are selfless and on the very same page as they work together for the good of the team, not for their own individual good – the Browns are going to be stuck in the mud. They will fail not just to be contenders, but they will also fail to win much at all. And they will look bad doing it.
 
Chaos happens everywhere in the NFL from time to time. It just goes. You can’t avoid it.
 
But the good organizations snuff it out immediately and just keep doing what they should be doing, and that is to do everything they can to win games and ultimately, Super Bowl championships.
 
The defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, especially quarterback Tom Brady, were attacked by Deflategate in the offseason, but now Brady is playing at one of his highest levels ever and the club is looking like a juggernaut again at 4-0. So that – and not how much air is in the footballs, and who is in charge of making sure it is correct – is what everybody is talking about now.
 
Problem solved. Chaos sent packing.
 
But in Berea, the chaos just never goes away because the people running the team invite it by what they do and the way they do it. There are so many personal agendas being pursued in that building that it appears there is some kind of job fair going on.
 
And in a way, perhaps there is, and always has been.
 
It’s good for sports talk radio in that it provides an endless list of hot topics of dysfunction to rail about, but it’s not good for winning. It creates a negative, even poisonous, atmosphere that swallows up the team and everybody involved with it, and spits them out.
 
In Baltimore, where the Browns play the Ravens on Sunday, there is no chaos, only a focus on putting some wins together to get back into the AFC North race and catch the Pittsburgh Steelers (2-2) and eventually the front-running Cincinnati Bengals (4-0).
 
Remember, the Ravens, at just 1-3, are the same as the Browns record-wise. But whereas all week, the Ravens have been getting ready to play the Browns, the Browns will begin getting ready to play the Ravens just as soon as they deal with all the chaos. That has not happened yet, so the smart money says take Baltimore and give the points.
 
Indeed, if the main goal of NFL teams was to provide tabloid-quality news, then the Browns would always be right there near the top, if not at it. But it is not.
 
And therein lies the problem, not just now, but also for the previous 16 seasons.