How much is too much?

 
How little is too little?
 
Would it be worth all the hassle?
 
Or would doing nothing be, in essence, doing a lot? That is, would less be more?
 
These are the basic questions Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is already asking himself, and will be asking himself even more as the final 10 games of this season play out.
 
Following last Sunday’s 26-23 loss in overtime to Denver Broncos in which the they couldn’t gain just nine yards early in OT to have a good shot at kicking the game-winning field goal, the Browns are a mediocre 2-4 and, with the schedule coming up, may be on the verge of nosediving quickly into obscurity.
 
After going to St. Louis to play the 2-3 Rams on Sunday, the Browns, in order, host the 4-2 Arizona Cardinals, visit the 6-0 Cincinnati Bengals and then the 4-2 Pittsburgh Steelers 10 days apart in back-to-back weeks, enjoy their bye, then host, again in order, the Baltimore Ravens (1-5), Bengals and Phil Dawson’s San Francisco 49ers (2-4).
 
That gets the Browns to within two weeks of the end of the year. But at their current rate, they may be finished long before the season is. At least on paper with what we know now, there don’t appear to be too many winnable games left on the schedule.
 
Haslam is a smart man – an extraordinarily smart man, as evidenced by the way he has built his Pilot Flying J travel center business, so he has no doubt started thinking about the decision that ultimately lies ahead. That is, he will have to determine what the Browns have to do the rest of the season for head coach Mike Pettine and General Manager Ray Farmer to keep their jobs.
 
Is it merely a black-and-white decision? Or is it a heckuva lot more complicated than that, involving all the colors of the rainbow with all the different factors that will be considered?
 
Just answering those questions is … well, complicated.
 
Haslam has boxed himself into a corner to some extent at least by saying emphatically as training camp began that he wasn’t going “to blow this thing up again.” Will he remain firm in that contention? Or is there some wiggle room?
 
If there is some wiggle room, then how much is there? That is, do the Browns have to win a certain amount of games for there to be the status-quo with his top twp football lieutenants in Pettine and Farmer? If so, then how many?
 
Or will Haslam, in coming to his decision, combine the number of wins with how well the Browns play overall – how close they are in their losses and how they look in their victories? Can the Browns “luck out” a couple of victories when they scuffle and deserve to lose, and have them count for something? Or would really balling out but losing, count for more?
 
And how much, if at all, do all of the ever-present dysfunctional things with this franchise – Johnny Manziel’s continuing problems, Dwayne Bowe’s continued activity while being paid millions of dollars, etc. – figure into the equation?
 
Sure, it’s easy right now to say that Haslam should blow it up, regardless of what he said, and just start over, even though the expansion-era Browns have blown it up so many times already that the smoke from two times ago hasn’t totally dissipated yet. And perhaps that’s what Haslam should do and, in the end, ultimately will do. After all the NFL is a bottom-line business, and the overall bottom line with Farmer and Pettine isn’t very good – at least to this point, but it still could change.
 
Then again, Haslam might be principled enough to want to be judged as a man of his word, to stand firm and to simply hold on tighter when the boat rocks a little, or even a lot, harder. That kind of commitment to stability through difficult times is what he saw with the ride-out-the-storm Rooneys when he was a minority owner in Pittsburgh.
 
So as we watch the rest of the season, to be on the safe side, we probably need to look at every last detail – from wins and losses to style points to simply getting the little things right to trying to judge Haslam’s mood and if, when, how and how much it changes, good and bad – to have even the slightest idea what’s going to happen when it’s all said and done.
 
And perhaps even then we may still all be totally in the dark – except, of course, for those people who, in always trying to look like they’re right and the smartest ones in the room, whether they are or not, will tell everybody that they knew it all along no matter what end result is.
 
But of this much we can be sure: The process, whatever it is, however long it plays out, what it all entails and what the ultimate resolution is, has already started in the mind, heart and soul of Haslam.
 
For keep this in mind: Whatever he decides to do, Haslam has to be right. This is the third full season that he has owned the team, and, as we can all plainly see, nothing has changed to this point. The Browns are still a fixer-upper, with the have-nots of the NFL who are on the outside looking in.
 
Haslam is used to succeeding. Fiercely proud and always aware of his legacy, he doesn’t like to lose. He’s losing now, though, and he knows in his heart of hearts that he has to reverse that trend – and quickly.
 
As such, then, these next 10 games, covering 11 weeks heading into the Jan. 3 finale at Pittsburgh, could well mark the most important stretch in the history of the re-born Browns.
 
Of course, we’ve said this any number of times since 1999, especially in recent seasons, as the Browns have come to a point where it seems the long-term well-being of the franchise is hanging in the balance.
 
But you can get to that point and keep making the wrong decisions only so many times until it finally becomes a get-it-right-or-else proposition, in which the “or else” is some kind of bottomless pit from which there is no return, at least not for a long, long time, which is too long for today’s fans with the win-now mindset.
 
Have the Browns reached that point? Probably not. But make no mistake about it, they’re precariously close.
 
With that, then, Haslam, if he has done his homework and talked to enough people who have been around these parts for decades and watched both the original franchise and this one, and have thus made it clear to him how far removed the two eras are from one another, certainly understands the seriousness of the situation and the fact he doesn’t have many do-over opportunities left.       
 
How many, specifically?
 
Who knows?
 
The only people who care about the answer to that question have already thrown in the towel and concluded that the Browns won’t get it right again this time.
 
Perhaps that’s part of the problem, a fatalistic, defeated attitude, generated – understandably so — with all the negativity that has pervaded the franchise since 1999.
 
Somehow, Jimmy Haslam has to fight through that and hit the target squarely in the middle, for his sake and also for that of the franchise and the fans, both those who still believe and those who don’t. We all know that those who don’t, want very much so to be as wrong as wrong can be.