It happened. It finally fucking happened. After eighteen long, arduous, and frankly abhorrent years, the Cleveland Browns have made the NFL postseason. Honestly, I’m still in shock. This doesn’t feel real. It feels like I’m going to wake up tomorrow and the league is going to announce “Oops, we all forgot that we still had to play Week Eighteen, and since Cleveland drew the short straw, they have to face this year’s AFC All-Pro team.” That’s the level of distrust I have right now. But empirically, I know that the Browns, indeed, made the playoffs. Hell, they didn’t even luck into this one. They won eleven games, and were really only blown out in two of them. They beat several playoff teams in the Colts, Titans, and even the Steelers kinda sorta. Their offensive attack looks incredibly potent, and their defense is still fighting despite an unreal number of injuries. This is an actual football team, and I feel alright.

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(inhale)

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AT LEAST I DID FEEL ALRIGHT WHEN I TYPED THIS MONDAY NIGHT BEFORE A MASSIVE FUCKING COVID OUTBREAK HAS FUCKED THIS WONDERFUL MOMENT OF FUCKING MENTAL SERENITY WITH THAT MASSIVE FUCK OFF STRAP-ON MADE OF FUCKING BLADES FROM SE7EN LEAVING IT TO DIE IN A DANK FUCKING BASEMENT.

I should have known better. I really should have known better. I feel like I’m stuck in Far Cry 3, and Vaas Montenegro is standing over me asking if I know the definition of insanity. This good feeling is almost completely absent throughout the history of the Browns. Well, it’s actually almost completely absent throughout the history of the “Zombie Browns”, the macabre entity that has been masquerading as the “Cleveland Browns” for decades. This vile doppelganger has sauntered around the Greater Berea area for twenty years in a Buffalo Bill-esque skin suit fashioned from the flayed flesh of Jim Brown, Otto Graham, Brian Sipe, Earnest Byner, and countless other Cleveland greats trying to convince Northeast Ohioans that they are one in the same. But we know better. Our Browns were stolen by the asshole Art Modell, shipped to the cosmopolitan mecca of Baltimore, and renamed after a dumb bird for goths. They went on to win multiple Super Bowls. In return, Cleveland got a fucking rock, Charlie Brown.

The Sixth City has grown to embrace their athletic tormentors like an entire metroplex of Patty Dukes, but the Browns’ wanton cruelty to their lavishers would be exquisite to a fucking Cenobite. Again, none of this is new. Every year of being a Browns fan is like the scene in Midsommar where Dani is scream crying with twenty other women with a garland of flowers around her head, except we don’t have the luxury of shoving this god-forsaken organization into a hollowed-out bear and setting it on fire while we intermittently howl and smile.

Let’s just review what this organization has done since its return in 1999. Take “The Fumble”, “The Drive”, and “Red Right 88” out of the equation. Those Browns have been dead since 1995. Let’s just focus on the past twenty-one years:

• This fucking team currently holds a 112-239-1 record since its return. That is an abysmal .318 winning percentage, which for all of the math majors out there means that they have lost more than two-thirds of their games since 1999, and yes, this includes the 2020 season.
• This fucking team has had TWELVE Head Coaches in twenty-one years. That includes the likes of flaming erection Eric Mangini, human wad of wet tissue paper Pat Shurmur, Mr. “Oh Fuck, There’s a Trap Door at the Bottom of this Barrel” Hue Jackson, and actual criminal with a Star Trek villain bad dye job goatee Gregggggggggggg Williams, just to name a few.
• This fucking team has started THIRTY Quarterbacks over this time frame. We’ve seen the jersey meme, but that really lets some of these dudes off light. For instance:
  • Spergon Wynn. A man who completed only 50% of his passes in his senior year at (checks notes) Southwest Texas State. In his one start with the Browns in 2000 against the Jags, he went 5-16 for SEVENTEEN YARDS passing, only to lose thirty-five on five sacks. The Jags won 48-0. This moved them up to 6-7 on the season. Deadspin went on to name him the 38^th Worst NFL Player of All-Time. Also, he was drafted sixteen spots ahead of Tom Brady.
  • Tim Couch. A man ruined by the fact that the two-headed monster of Dwight Clark and Carmine Policy believed that you could find passable linemen anywhere. This dog ass approach to team construction got Couch sacked fifty-six times in 1999, which is tied for the 15^th most in NFL history. This got him hurt a lot, but he came back for the 2001 season and started all sixteen games… only to get sacked fifty-one times. The Cleveland faithful responded in kind by booing him when he got injured.
  • Jeff Garcia. One of several broken free agents the Browns have brought in to fix things (see also: Jake Delhomme, Trent Dilfer, Jason Campbell, Robert Griffin III, Tyrod Taylor). He didn’t. He was gone after one year. After leaving Cleveland, he made the Pro Bowl with the Buccaneers because Cleveland cannot have nice things.
  • Brady Quinn. One of many first-round quarterback busts for the Browns. This doe-eyed Diesel Jeans model had the arm of a windsock. I’ve never seen someone flick a ball five yards in the dirt behind a receiver more than this dude.  
  • Brandon Weeden. One of many first-round quarterback busts for the Browns. When this goober wasn’t getting caught under a giant American flag, he was fucking SAILING passes to nowhere. I’ve never despised watching the Browns play more than watching Brandon Weeden trying to throw to Mohammed Massaquoi.
  • Johnny Manziel. One of the many first-round quarterback busts for the Browns. Son of a family built from cock fighting money that acted as you would expect someone of that lineage to act.
  • DeShone Kizer. Hue Jackson sent this child out to die, and considering they went 0-16 the one year he started, I’d say he did an admirable job.

• The quarterbacks are heinous, but let’s not forget about the rest of their illustrious skill guys, which included a sumptuous display of garbage of many stripes. We have massive first round busts like William Green, Corey Coleman, and Kellen Winslow Jr. We have an insane slew of expired free-agent running backs like Reuben Droughns, Jamal Lewis, Willis McGahee, and Ben Tate. We have utterly useless mid-round wide receivers like Greg Little, Mohammed Massaquoi, and Brian Robiskie. We have somehow even worse free-agent wide receivers like Davone Bess, Kenny Britt, Dwayne Bowe, Donte Stallworth, Chansi Stuckey, and Brian Hartline. Take your fucking pick.
• This fucking team also couldn’t draft for shit for about eighteen years. We all know the BIG fuckups: Gerard Warren, Courtney Brown, Justin Gilbert, Money Manziel, Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden, William Green, Trent Richardson, Tim Couch (who honestly gets a bad rap). But in reality, there’s SO MANY MORE. Do you even remember Jeff Faine? What about Danny Shelton? Cam Erving? Phil Taylor? Corey Coleman? Barkevious Mingo? These are all FIRST-ROUND picks. They took Nate Orchard in the second round. And Monterio Hardesty. And the hell duo of Robiskie and Massaquoi. And Chaun Thompson, who my brother made an excellent case for being the worst Browns linebacker in history. Fuck.
• This team also didn’t invest in linebacker until they drafted Joe Schobert and Christian Kirksey, and God Almighty does it show.
• But beyond these issues, it’s the moments that really stick with you. The things that make you use “Browns” as a verb. As in, “Wow, the Browns really Brownsed it up there, huh?”. This is the fucking team of Bottlegate. This is the fucking team that gave us Dwayne Ruud’s absurd penalty against the Chiefs. This is the fucking team that saw LeCharles Bentley end his career there without taking a snap. This is the fucking team that went on to give Bentley and chonk hometown hero receiver Joe Jurevicius MRSA. This is the fucking team that saw their first-round pick ruin his career in a motorcycle accident. This is the fucking team that lost a game because they shuffled a massively concussed Colt McCoy out on the final drive to shake off a swollen brain and bring home a W. This is the fucking team that projected hardcore porn at a staff meeting. This is the fucking team that had its star defensive lineman lose vision in his eye after he got a penalty flag chucked into it. This is the fucking team that lost that Will Hill game that I’ll never be able to excise from my memory. This is the fucking team of the Osweiller and McCarron contract bullshit. This is the fucking team that blew a twelve-point lead to the Patriots with 1:04 left in the game. This is the fucking team that called an intentional false start on fourth fucking down. This is the fucking team that lost a 13-12 game against the Rams because their Pro Bowl long snapper (fucking lol at that) botched a snap to their Pro Bowl kicker. This is the fucking team that saw their greatest defender ever try and break noted dipshit Mason Rudolph’s head open like a casaba melon with his own helmet. This is the fucking team that got their top wideout kicked out of the city for starting a fight with LeBron James’ crew. This is the fucking team that started Tony Motherfucking Pashos for fifteen games. This is the fucking team that allowed Eric Mangini to come in, paint over their murals dedicated to the organization’s celebrated past, and stockpile the roster with the New York Jets’ backwash. This is the fucking team that went 0-16 AND DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE COMMON FUCKING DECENCY TO DO IT FIRST. Shaun Rogers, Donte Stallworth, Ray Farmer, George Kokinis, Mike Holmgren, Billy Cundiff, Gregggggg Williams, Todd Haley, Roman Fucking Oben, Jamir Miller’s ACL, Jabril Peppers playing forty-five yards off the fucking ball EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. PLAY.

Why do I think it is ever going to be different?

(sigh)

This is what this team does. It hurts you. Even when they surpass your wildest expectations, they find a way to ruin things. It is absolutely not a shock that this is their first playoff appearance since 2002, and they have to face the same team all these years later: The Pittsburgh Steelers. It is a truly poetic set of circumstances. Like then, the Browns will lose this game. Early prediction? 45-21. The Browns defense is fucked beyond repair right now, and the loss of Bitonio is going to be too much. How fucked up is it that Bitonio, the one stalwart of the Hue Jackson era that excelled so much, is the guy who has to miss this game? Criminal. Simply criminal.

But I am left with something at the end of all of this that I’ve not had before: hope for the future. This is still a rather young team, and with a year to recover and fully understand their new system, it feels like this is actually the start of something good. Of course, as I type this, all I can hear in my mind is a twisted voice, dripping with malice, relishing his next sentence: “Do you know the definition of insanity?”

Yes, Vaas, I think I do.