This is a story about Browns rookie mini camps through the years and bad ideas.

 

Those two things are indelibly linked.

 

The Browns will hold their 2017 rookie mini camp Friday through Sunday at team headquarters in Berea.

 

Hmmm. Sunday is Mother’s Day, isn’t it? Why, yes, it is. And holding the mini camp on Mother’s Day weekend is a bad idea – a really bad idea.

 

The NFL has tromped through nearly every holiday on the calendar – even all the big ones such as Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, along with a lesser one, Labor Day. The league doesn’t care if it’s a holiday, because if there’s money to be made, the games(s) will go on.

 

But the one holiday even the mighty NFL has rarely messed with is Mother’s Day. Don’t try to rile up Mom. Indeed, the way it works is that if Mama is happy, then everybody is happy. And the mamas of all the people working all through Mother’s Day weekend at Browns Headquarters are not going to be happy campers.

 

The Browns usually hold their rookie mini camp the weekend after the NFL Draft, which this year would have been last weekend. Why they didn’t do it then, especially with Mother’s Day looming on the horizon, is anyone’s guess.

 

The person who came up with that brainstorm may just end getting grounded by Mom.

 

Here’s another bad idea when it comes to Browns rookie mini camps: hitting the quarterback. Quarterbacks are like heirlooms. You don’t touch them if you’re a defensive player. That’s why the quarterbacks wear red jerseys, so as to warn pass rushers to put on the brakes and keep their hands to themselves.

 

In the re-born Browns’ first rookie mini camp in 1999, they had a quarterback by the name of Tim Couch. He was the No. 1 overall draft pick that year. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

 

Anyway, there was a tryout linebacker – he was trying out to see if the Browns might want to sign him — who, in an effort to impress the coaches, purposely ran into Couch on one play. Head coach Chris Palmer about lost his mind, screaming at the kid.

 

Not long thereafter, the linebacker hit Couch again. Palmer unloaded on the kid even harder, ordering him to get off the field and out of the facility as soon as possible, and never to return again.

 

Then there’s the bad idea Mike Miller had in the original Browns’ last rookie mini camp in 1995. Miller was a short, skinny, lightning-quick  wide receiver/returner from Notre Dame who was selected with the latter of the team’s two fifth-round draft picks, at No. 147 overall, that year.

 

Miller showed up at camp and, after the first day, left without telling anyone and bolted for home – with his signing bonus in hand. He was trying to pick the Browns’ pockets by taking the money and running.

 

But as fast as he was, he wasn’t fast enough to get away with it. He got caught.

 

Head coach Bill Belichick, who wasn’t about to let a rookie try to show him up, was incensed. So was owner Art Modell.

 

The Browns tracked down Miller and got their money back.

 

But it wasn’t enough cash to solve Modell’s financial woes and keep him from announcing in November 1995 that he was moving the club to Baltimore at the end of that season.

 

Now, when it comes to bad ideas, stealing the Browns from Cleveland was the granddaddy of them all.