If detonators had been available immediately after Cleveland’s 31-7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium, there would have been plenty of fans eager to push down the plungers to “blow this thing up,” as Browns owner Jimmy Haslam referred to it a couple years ago.
Yes, blow it up, clear-cut it. Fire anybody and everybody in the organization, and start over.
Yet again.
Ugghhh!
That’s understandable. It was that kind of defeat.
All defeats are bad. Some are worse than others.
Then there was that one on Sunday, making fans want to get sick to their stomachs.
Losses like that spur lots of emotion. It causes people to act first and think later.
Thankfully, there were no detonators. With that, then, cooler heads prevailed. The world didn’t end. The sun came up on Monday morning and everybody headed back to work and school.
What’s worse than a Monday?
A Monday after a loss like that, one that tears at your guts, pierces you right down to your core and makes you mutter words you shouldn’t say.
A couple days removed from that obscene defeat, the stench is still there. It doesn’t just stink. It reeks like nothing else you’ve ever smelled before in your life.
And it’s not going away anytime soon.
So what should Haslam do? Should he indeed blow this thing up?
Absolutely, positively not!
As bad as that loss – this after-effect – is, firing them all and starting over would be far worse.
Really.
This total rebuild, in which the Browns have stripped the team down to the bare walls and started over, was never going to be easy or quick or pretty or painless.
Granted, it was never supposed to be as bad as this, but at the same time, in our heart of hearts, we all know that something like what happened Sunday was possible, perhaps even probable, because this team has been mismanaged for a long time. It didn’t get messed up like this in a New York minute, and it also won’t get cleaned up the way it needs to be cleaned up, in a jiffy.
If Haslam believes that, with Sashi Brown, Hue Jackson, Paul DePodesta, Andrew Berry and the rest, he has the right people for the job – and he must, for he hired them all – then he has to grit his teeth, take a deep breath, or two or three or four, step back and let them see the plan to its conclusion. Haslam has to remember that he signed off on the plan as well.
So the people and the plan are indelibly linked. And they have to stay that way.
Losses like the ones to Cincinnati test people’s resolve.
For everybody involved, especially the greatest fans in the world, who deserve so much better than this, I hope Jimmy Haslam passes this test, and all the others he will almost certainly face going forward.
