Let’s give Sashi Brown the benefit of the doubt.

 

Let’s say that he did not mean to mess up the trade of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron to the Browns on Tuesday. Let’s say that it just happened by accident.

 

OK.

 

So Brown was just incompetent, not deceitful?

 

Yeah, incompetent.

 

Is that better than being deceitful?

 

No, it isn’t.

 

Being incompetent – messing up while trying to get the paperwork to the NFL – might seem innocent. It might seem like something that Browns owner Jimmy Haslam could look past and move on.

 

But it isn’t. He can’t look past it.

 

For being incompetent is, at the end of the day, the same thing as being dishonest. That is, neither one is a trait you want your top football guy to have.

 

So either way, Sashi has to go.

 

And this isn’t hard to understand. You can be mad at Sashi for being dishonest and selfish, or you can feel sorry for him for being a knucklehead.

 

It doesn’t matter.

 

But you need a football guy who’s smart, savvy, all in for what’s best for the team and a tireless worker who doesn’t care who gets credit for doing something that benefits the club.

 

Sashi is none of that.

 

More than anything since he’s been the football guy for the Browns, we’ve heard how smart and clever Sashi is – how cerebrally creative he is in finding these new, different and better ways to do the same old things. It would put the Browns so far ahead of the curve, right?

 

In theory, it might have, if only Sashi were those things.

 

But he’s not, not even close.

 

He’s either a klutz or a crook. The only thing he produces is drama, like some little schoolgirl who is a social diva and believes that it’s all about her – er, him.

 

All the while, the other teams – especially the ones at the top of the food chain – are quietly and effectively going about their business. They have no one in their hierarchy who can even conceive of being like Sashi, let alone doing it.

 

And we wonder why those teams keep winning and the Browns keep losing.