Time for Jimmy Haslam to come to Hue Jackson’s Rescue.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for the Browns, it does.

Sunday’s 23-10 loss to Cincinnati at FirstEnergy Stadium, which was that close only because the Bengals put it into cruise-control after building a 20-0 halftime lead, proves that.

But on the other hand, nothing happened in the game that all of us didn’t see coming – weeks ago. This is what happens when you go through a total rebuild, putting the team back together from the ground up.

It’s painful. It hurts. It’s ugly. It’s disappointing. It’s distressing. It’s demoralizing. It’s depressing. It’s humiliating. It’s embarrassing. It’s hard to watch.

But more than all that, it’s necessary.

The only way this thing has a chance to get better – the only way it has a shot to get to where the Browns and their fans want them to go – is to first tear it down like this.

We all knew that months and months ago. We know it even more convincingly now.

As part of that, then, it’s time – it way past time, actually – for Browns owner Jimmy Haslam to come out with a big, all-the-bells-and-whistles press conference and pledge his full support to his first-year head coach, Hue Jackson.

Apparently, he has fully backed Jackson and everyone else heading up the football part of this regime in an organizational meeting. That’s great. Now Haslam has to do the same thing for the whole world to see, and because there will be a number of doubters listening in, he will have to do so with all the gusto and force he can muster so as to make it convincing even to them.

Jackson is the face of the franchise. He’s the guy trotting out there every Sunday and taking the bullets as the Browns speed their way to a winless season. He needs all the support he can get, and there is no better support than the kind that comes from the man signing everyone’s paychecks in the organization.

Haslam needs to do it now – right now, this second, this moment, this minute, this hours, this day – so that everyone understands that the Browns, from the very top of the organization to the very bottom and everywhere in between, are all in, all the time, on what’s going on, and that no one – no one – is bailing out and jumping ship, unless they do so of their own volition.

This type of we’re-all-on-the-same-page move is all the Browns have at this time, and they need to take full advantage of it.

And when they do, everybody everywhere can heave a sigh of relief and the Browns can get back to work on this monumental – but again, necessary – rebuilding task along with Hue Jackson’s rescue.