CORONAVIRUS AND BROWNS – THIS IS NO ROUTINE VIRUS

By STEVE KING

NFL head coaches, including the Browns’ new man, Kevin Stefanski, absolutely love routine.

And they absolutely hate any disruption to it.

So, then, with coronavirus and Browns having the huge disruption that it already is, with the potential to get a whole heckuva lot worse before it begins to get better, these guys must be losing their minds.

It has already messed up their preparation for the NFL Draft. It has already messed up their preparation for the beginning of the free-agency signing period. And, again, it threatens to mess up a lot more.

NFL head coaches know what they’re going to be doing at 1 p.m. two Tuesdays from now, at 4 p.m. next Friday and at 10 a.m. three Mondays from now. Just look at their appointment book. It’s all there written down in ink, not pencil, so it can’t be erased, or changed, without making a mess. And coaches despise making a mess to their appointment book. Neatness counts – it really, truly counts – for these guys.

Things must be not just pretty good, but very good, even essentially perfect. Football is, after all, a game of inches, as they say, so the more precise things are, the fewer the inches to the target’s bullseye. That is, the closer to victory you and your team get. That’s just the way it is in their eyes.

That the coronavirus and all the commotion it has caused, stepping right in and pushing all that well-intentioned planning aside like a piece of trash, is unnerving. It sets everything on its side and makes all that hard work go right down the drain.

In essence, then, the head coaches have wasted their time, and they don’t like to – and in their minds, certainly can’t afford to – do that. Every minute has to be accounted for – it has to be productive – and yet the coronavirus has rendered all that meaningless. It has made that time as unproductive as it can possibly be.

Ladies and gentlemen, those are fighting words to these men.

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