Everybody gets a participation trophy, right?

Sure! 

It’s the modern-era way of saying, “OK, so you didn’t win, but you showed up and gave it your best shot. You participated. Perhaps we can’t term what you did as having actually competed, but you participated. And as we all know, your ability is your availability.”

But, once again, the Browns on Thursday night will not get even a participation trophy, let alone a player who can actually help them, and perhaps in a big way, for the first round of the NFL Draft in Detroit. This is the third straight year that has happened, as this is the third time in a row that the Browns have not had a first-round choice. They were swindled out of those picks by  — er, I mean they surrendered those picks to — the Houston Texans in the 2022 trade for quarterback Deshaun Watson, he of the abbreviated seasons.

The Browns will not be participating — at all — in the first day of the draft, thank you very much. They should be pretty darn good at it by now.

Like the late, great Ernie Harwell, the iconic radio play-by-play announcer for Detroit’s baseball team, the Tigers, used to say when a batter took a called third strike, “He stood there like the house at the side of the road and watched it go by.”

By late Thursday night, Cleveland will have watched 96 first-round, prime-time, big-time picks — 32 a year, over three years — go by.

Ugh.

Double-ugh.

So, then, that is indeed Browns General Manager Andrew Berry who will be standing there in the shadows Thursday night with the bat on his shoulders. And if this Watson trade continues to fizzle instead of sizzle, Berry, who has come up with some silly remark that he doesn’t like first-round draft choices, might eventually be sent down to the NFL’s version of Toledo and Erie, the Tigers’ top two farm clubs. They like first-round picks in those towns. They draw fans to the ballpark.

Whatever the case, the Browns are still eligible to make their 2024 draft debut on Friday evening when the second and third rounds are held in Downtown Detroit’s Campus Martius area. That is, if wheeler-dealer Berry doesn’t squander — er, I mean deal — those picks too.

Steve King