The tenure of former Browns CEO Joe Banner is like a stain in your carpet.

You work and you work and you work to get the stain out, trying high-priced chemicals, bargain cleaners from the dollar store and your Great Aunt Marybelle’s sure-fire homemade concoction for even the toughest problems, yet it remains.

It won’t go away. It’s a reminder of that night when you carried that chocolate sundae with just a pinch of vodka on it into the living room to enjoy while you watched The Three Stooges marathon when you tripped over your sleeping basset hound, Cole, and you, your treat and your buddy went sprawling, all in different directions.

Cole yelped and then you yelped when you saw chocolate brown on your new white carpet.

That was four years ago.

The stain remains.

Poor Cole is being blamed for having an accident inside the house, and he isn’t happy.

You’re being laughed at by all your friends for being a klutz, and you’re not happy, either.

Following the 2012 season, Banner, who always thought he was the smartest guy in the room but in fact was always just the opposite, decided to let Phil Dawson walk away in free agency without ever offering him a contract.

He was bound and determined he wasn’t going to pay top dollar – or any dollar, really – for Dawson. He was too smart to do that. You NEVER spend much to get a kicker, he believed. And to spend it on an old kicker would be even more ignorant.

Nobody knew ignorant better that Little Joe Banner, whose football intellect always came up short, just like his diminutive stature.

Forget the fact that Dawson was one of the best kickers in the game, and THE best kicker in Browns history, even better than the great Lou Groza, considered “The Father of Modern Kicking” and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Forget the fact that with all of the things that the Browns had screwed up in the expansion era, keeping Dawson was the one thing they kept doing right.

Forget all of that.

Banner knew better. He was a genius. Just ask him. He’ll tell you – and then his nose will grow.

Dawson is still kicking – and kicking well – with the San Francisco 49ers, the team with which he signed after he left Cleveland.

And the Browns are still kicking themselves for letting Dawson go, for they continue to struggle to find a replacement. They are shuffling kickers in and out of town trying to find someone – anyone – who can do the job right, someone who can do the job like … well, Dawson.

Didn’t they lose a game last year to the Baltimore Ravens because Travis Coon’s potential game-winning field goal as time expired became the definite game-loser when it was blocked and returned for a touchdown? Yes, I do seem to remember that.

It’s just another big problem that Sashi Brown and Hue Jackson have to fix before this team can start taking legitimate steps toward getting to where it ultimately wants to be.

Thanks, “Little Joe.

Thanks a whole heckuva lot.