With all the crazy things that have happened to the Browns this year, we had almost forgotten the fiasco involving wide receiver/emergency quarterback Terrelle Pryor way back when, just as the regular season was starting.
But now he’s back and may well play tomorrow against the Cincinnati Bengals at FirstEnergy Stadium.
As they say, what goes around, comes around.
Pryor, the former Ohio State quarterback whose involvement in Tattogate helped bring down Buckeyes head coach Jim Tressel, is the poster child – or at least one of them – for the Browns’ dysfunction as an organization.
Despite missing most of training camp and the preseason with the same hamstring issues that sidelined a lot of his teammates (a result of bad trainers, doctors and strength and conditioning coaches and lazy players), Pryor was kept on the roster as the Browns made their final cutdowns. It made sense. It was encouraging. After all, his rare combination of versatility and athleticism was something the Cleveland offense sorely lacked.
Then he was summarily cut a few days later and was replaced by a former Seattle Seahawks running back named Robert Turbin the Browns just had to have. But Turbin was injured and couldn’t play for a long time. When he finally returned to action, he couldn’t hold onto the ball and, exactly two months from the day he was signed, he was summarily released.
It’s too late to save General Manager Ray Farmer and Mike Pettine, for they will be summarily fired as sound as the final gun sounds in the regular-season finale against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Jan. 3. But their replacements had better understand fully, completely and emphatically that the decisions involving personnel are the most important ones a team can make.
A club can mess up a lot of other things – and goodness knows the Browns have done just that this season, and for almost all of the seasons since they returned to the field in 1999 – but they can’t afford to mess up when it comes to personnel. It is the lifeblood of the team, and Pettine and Farmer have damaged it, choked it off and nearly broken it altogether with a long series of moves that defy logic.
It is a big part of the reason why the Browns are 2-9 and have lost six in a row.
Think of it this way: If a tire store couldn’t figure how to acquire quality tires and install them properly onto their customers’ vehicles, then the business would soon be out of business.
Farmer and Pettine have put the Browns out of business. They haven’t gotten quality stuff. And when they do get it, they don’t realize it and quickly get rid of it, replacing it with junk. As such, they can’t compete in the marketplace.
