By STEVE KING
Somewhere, my friend Valerie is steaming.

She is just spitting mad.

Because of her, I know that I am steaming, and just spitting mad as well.

Also — and the Browns had better fully understand this — a lot of Browns fans are steaming, and just spitting mad.

It’s because of the team giving away its soul — plus a king’s ransom worth of NFL Draft picks, including no fewer than three first-rounders — in a trade with the Houston Texans for quarterback Deshaun Watson.

Valerie, a friend since high school, passed away of cancer in April, just as COVID-19 was beginning to spread like wildfire. She was a huge Browns fan — and a huge sports fan overall — and she would rail every time a team in any sport would have anything to do with a player or coach who had been convicted of abusing women in any way, shape or form, or even had just been charged with it.

That’s because she had been abused by a guy who picked her up by her throat and shoved her against a wall at his home, her feet dangling, telling her he would not let her down until she apologized to him for some make-believe transgression. She quickly realized that unless she could escape his grasp, she would be choked to death. A great athlete way back when, she mustered up all of that she had left from those days and, with one swift kick to the most vulnerable part of his body, managed to free herself. She then ran out of the house and to her car in the drive where, after locking her doors, she called police.

He was convicted of assault, but all that did was make her fear that, when he got out of jail, he would return to finish the job. She lived the remainder of her life with her head on a swivel.

If, in her lifetime, her beloved Browns had jumped through hoops to acquire a quarterback — a face of the franchise — who is staring at as many as 24 civil lawsuits from women who claim he sexually assaulted them, she would be beside herself.

I can almost hear her screaming while steaming.

I wonder if the Browns can.

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