When you look at the Browns roster, do you recognize many of the names on it?
Of course you don’t.
I’ve been following this team for over 50 years and I can never remember a time when the roster – the “final” roster, or at least the one heading into the regular-season opener – looked this strange.
Other than Joe Thomas, Joe Haden, Robert Griffin III, Gary Barnidge, Terrelle Pryor, Joel Bitonio, John Greco, Josh McCown, Isaiah Crowell, Duke Johnson, Andrew Hawkins, Cam Erving and Danny Shelton, there aren’t a lot of names that are familiar.
There used to be saying at baseball parks that you needed to buy a scorecard – and its accompanying rosters – to tell the players. Never has that been truer in Browns history than right now.
Who the heck are these guys? What position do they play? What’s their jersey number? Where were they before they came to the Browns? Where did they play in college? How much do they weigh? How tall are they? What do they look like?
Is that the new defensive tackle for the Browns, or is it your next-door neighbor’s brother-in-law who works as a meat-cutter?
Is that the new cornerback for the Browns, or is it the kid who bags groceries at the supermarket?
Is that the new tight end for the Browns, or is the valedictorian from the local high school’s graduating class last spring?
Does the new offensive guard really spell his last name like that, or is it a typographical error?
Is the new running back from South Dakota, or did he just play at South Dakota State, or both?
Who’s going to drive all these guys to practice? They don’t look old enough to have driver’s licenses.
Check out all the 22-year-old players on the Browns. My uncle Willard used to drive a 22-year-old pickup truck back and forth to work at the plant until it died on him on the state route.
This roster isn’t really a trivia lover’s dream. It is trivia.
What can you name more of, Browns players or roads in Scotland, Browns players or types of ferns in Manitoba, Browns players or languages in Serbia?
This could be the football version of that famous Abbott and Costello baseball skit, “Who’s on First?” Who’s at safety, What’s at end and I Don’t Know is at tackle.
Let’s hope that Browns Radio Network announcers Jim Donovan and Doug Dieken do their homework this week in memorizing the names of all these new players. It would be easier to memorize all the counties in Tennessee.
