The alignment at Browns headquarters in Berea is being touted as a bright light in all the darkness of a 3-14 season in which offensive ineptitude was on steroids.

And that is as it should be, because when the powers to be in any organization — in the case of the Browns, owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski — all get along in a professional and selfless, team-first manner, then things will get done. Indeed, that’s the only way it will happen.

Add to that the fact that these new Browns — the ones in the expansion era that began in 1999 — have way too often not handled their business in that manner, and the importance of what’s going on now becomes even greater.

But there’s something that everyone seems to be forgetting. That is, what if the unified decisions that are spawned from all this are downright horrible?

I give you as evidence the way the current Browns deep thinkers have totally and even historically screwed up the quarterback position, the most important roster spot in all of team sports, in the last five years:

* Getting rid of Baker Mayfield and Joe Flacco.

*Trading three first-round NFL Draft picks to get Deshaun Watson, then signing him to a fully-guaranteed $230 million contract and, finally, continuing to start him when it was crystal-clear to everybody other than the Browns that he couldn’t play.

This is why the Browns are in such a hole. Without it, then they are competing for the playoffs on a regular basis because the rest of their roster has been that good.

Yes.

Really.

Truly.

And now we’re asking these same people to lead the way forward in finding the next qyarterback(s).

Why?

Like the old saying goes, if you don’t learn from history in the mistakes that were made, then you are doomed to repeat them.

The Browns certainly haven’t learned from theirs, so . . . 

And that’s the scariest, most disappointing, most sobering and most hopeless part of all this.

Steve King