WOULD RANDY LERNER HAVE MADE THE DEAL FOR WATSON?

By STEVE KING

Here’s another of those “what if” stories, but it’s one like, with almost everything else on Browns Daily Dose, you’ve not seen anywhere else, or at least have not seen this perspective, or angle.
Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam signed off on the club’s controversial trade with the Houston Texans to acquire embattled quarterback Deshaun Watson. The Haslams, as we reminded you in our last post, bought the Browns from Randy Lerner, who was bequeathed the club when his father, Al Lerner, the founding owner of the expansion-era franchise, died of brain cancer on Oct. 23, 2002.
Randy Lerner didn’t have the passion for owning the Browns that his father did and went forth as the owner only because he felt it was his responsibility to the community. He eventually started looking seriously for a buyer and found a willing partner in the Haslams.
But — and here’s the question that is begging to be asked — what if Randy Lerner had never sold the team to the Haslams and he was still the owner now? Would he have allowed the consummation of the trade for Watson, giving up three first-round picks in the NFL Draft to get someone facing a barrage of accusations of sexual misconduct from women?
I just don’t think so.
I worked for the Browns for 10 years, the first eight of which with Randy Lerner as the owner. I don’t pretend to have known him well, but I would see him in and around Browns Headquarters in Berea and he would always greet me — by name — every time our paths crossed. With that, then, and with the interaction I saw him have with his wife and children when they visited training camp, I was able to get a good read on the man.
From that, and with the fact that his parents — his mother, Norma, is still living — were pretty clean-living people, I just can’t picture him doing something like that. I think he would have felt like he had disrespected his mother and the legacy of his father.
I would almost bet on it.
But we’ll never know for sure, will we?