How does a team allow points with no time on the clock? Well there is only one team capable of doing that. Wanna guess who that team is? They were really good in the early days. They dominated the league from mid 1940s to most of the 1960s. Then they let the man, who formed the team and was responsible for its early success go, because they basically got tired of his strategies and wanted to move on. The team is actually named after that man. Paul Brown is the man who co-founded the Cleveland Browns and whose name was chosen for the franchise. He coached the Browns from 1946 to 1962. In that span he helped the Browns win seven championships, four All American Football Conference (AAFC) championships and three National Football League (NFL) championships. To win that many championships in less than twenty years is very difficult. Not even the almighty New England Patriots of 2000s and of today, got to win that many championships in a seventeen year span. Pats won five championships in seventeen years. Although, one could argue the Patriots winning five championships in seventeen years is more impressive than the Browns winning seven in seventeen as, the Browns accomplished that achievement in a non salary-cap era. Still what Paul Brown accomplished with the Browns in the NFL during his time was simply incredible. What he did for the city of Cleveland with the football team, hasn't been matched by any other coach or general manager of the Browns since then. Do we know how many coaches and general mangers have come and gone for the Browns since 1962? Too many! Do we know how many games the Cleveland Browns have won since then? Not so many. Still the Cleveland Browns respect and are thankful for what Paul Brown did for them, as they still use his name to represent the franchise. I believe its time for the Cleveland's professional football team to change their franchise name. No, it isn't that I don't admire what Paul Brown did for the Cleveland Browns, but it has been more than half a century now since he did what he did for the team. It is time to change every single little thing related to Cleveland's football team.
Following the departure of Paul Brown, the Cleveland Browns didn't start losing right away. In fact, they actually got to win a title for the first time in ten years in the 1964 season, which was just two seasons after Brown was let go by the owner Art Modell. Under head coach Blanton Collier (who was initially hired by Paul Brown as an assistant coach), the Cleveland Browns had some decent success, as they had five double digit winning seasons and appeared in four NFL championship games while winning one of them. So yes, the Browns didn't make a bad move by letting go of Paul Brown, however, the success with Blanton Collier didn't last that long. Collier started having hearing problems during the 1970 season and then retired before the end of the year. Since then, the Browns have won a total of 275 regular season games in forty-three years. If you do the math, that is about 6.40 wins for a year (Note: For the average, I also included the four years in which the Browns didn't participate from 1995-1999). In twenty-five years (1946-70), when the Cleveland Browns were either coached by Paul Brown or Blanton Collier, the team had only one season in which they won less than 6.40 games. That season was a five win season for the Browns and it took place in 1956, when teams in the NFL, played only twelve games a year. By the way if you are wondering about the number of games the Browns won per year from 1946-1970, it was 9.36 games per year. Besides not doing so well in the regular season from the 1970s till now, Cleveland Browns have also failed to have any success in the playoffs. In the last forty-three years, the Browns have appeared in the playoffs eleven times and won a total of only four playoff games. Although the Browns have lost more than they have won since the 70s, their overall record since 1999, when they came back to the league after a four year break, has been simply awful. Back in the seventies, eighties, and the first five years of the nineties, the Browns were at least competitive. In the last eighteen years, the Browns haven't been close to being competitive. Only in the 2007 season, the browns finished the year with double digit wins and it was in the 2002 season when they last appeared in the playoffs. Considering the record of the current season so far, the Cleveland Browns overall record since 1999 is 88-211. The browns are 0-11 this season after twelve weeks of action.It isn't the Browns haven't been able to find talent for their roster since their days of Paul Brown and Blanton Collier. A lot of great players have come and gone for the Browns. Some of them came as free agents, some as part of the trade, and many were drafted. Players such as Clay Matthews Jr, Brian Sipe, Bernie Kosar, Hanford Dixon, Kevin Mack, Gregg Pruitt, Mike Pruitt, Doug Dieken, Tom DeLeone, Joe DeLamielleure, Joe Thomas, Joe Haden, and so many more. All of these players were very talented and productive for their teams. Clay Matthews Jr was drafted in the first round of the 1978 draft by the Cleveland Browns. He went to four pro-bowls as a member of the Browns and was their key player at the linebacker position for over fifteen years. He wasn't just a good linebacker, he was a great one. In sixteen years as a member of the Browns, he recorded over 1400 plus tackles, 62.5 sacks, and 14 ints. In the 1980s, he was part of the seven Browns playoff teams. The furthest he got into the playoffs was the AFC championship game where he suffered close losses with the team. Otto Graham is the greatest quarterback of the Cleveland Browns' franchise without a question. One could argue that Brian Sipe is the second greatest quarterback in Browns' franchise history. He is the Brown's all-time passing leader with 23,713 passing yards and their last player to win the league's Most Valuable Player award in 1980. I know as a quarterback his career passing yards aren't that many, but it is the most in the franchise's history. His career touchdown to interception ratio isn't that good, but he is second on the team's all time list for passing touchdowns with 154 of them. His MVP season was very impressive considering the fact, that he tossed 30 touchdowns and passed for 4,132 yards in an era when, passing the ball wasn't as common as it has been since the 2000s. That year he led the Browns to an 11-5 record and to a playoff game where, he didn't have a good game. Well at least he made it to the playoffs. His overall record with the Cleveland Browns was 57-55, two games over the 500 mark. Bernie Kosar for some, is the second best or the third best quarterback in the franchise history. He is third on the team's all-time list for passing yards with 21,904. Like Brian Sipe, his overall record as a Browns' quarterback is over 500 mark with 53-51-1. Why are these overall records so important when it didn't turn out to be playoff success or championships? Since 1999, the franchise have started almost thirty different quarterbacks and they have all failed to come up with a combined 500 record for the Cleveland Browns. The man who came up with the name 'Dawg Pound' for the Cleveland Browns was a tremendous cornerback. He played nine seasons with the Browns and in those nine seasons, he was selected to three pro-bowls and two All-Pros. In that same time he formed a scary cornerback tandem with Frank Minnifield. According to many, the tandem of Dixon and Minnifield is one of the best tandems of all time. Of the two, Minnifield was a better defensiveback, as it was him who was selected by the NFL for the 1980s All-Decade Team. However, both of them were really good. Kevin Mack may not be Jim Brown and his numbers weren't so amazing, but he was a very solid running back for the 'Dawg Pound.' In nine seasons for the Browns, Mack rushed for 5,123 yards while averaging four yards per carry, and he ran in for forty-six touchdowns. The reason why Mack didn't gain as many yards in nine years as one all-time running back would, was because he shared the backfield with Earnest Byner, who played for the Browns from 1984-1988 and then from 1994-95. Both Mack and Byner rushed for over 1,000 yards in the 1985 season. At the time, Mack and Byner were only the third pair to rush for over 1,000 yards for the same team in the same season. We can talk all day about the Browns' greats who didn't get to win much in the regular season and post season, but there is one player who has been absolutely a stud for many of the awful Browns teams. He is on the active 0-11 Browns' Roster. His name is Joe Thomas. The Browns with the third overall pick in the 2007 draft, selected Joe Thomas out of Wisconsin. He is one of the few good draft selections of the Browns in the last ten years. Joe Thomas has played ten full seasons for the Browns and in the ten years he has appeared in ten straight pro-bowls. Also, he is a seven time first team all-pro. It isn't easy to be a seven time all-pro. He is already done enough to be a first-ballot hall of famer. The only problem with his career is that, he hasn't played a single meaningful game. If he retires after this season, he will easily be the greatest player ever to never play a post-season game. This dude never missed a snap until week seven of the 2017 season, in a game against the Tennesse Titans. His streak of playing 10,363 consecutive snaps ended that week. His legendary streak of playing consecutive snaps is the longest streak since 1999 (when NFL started recording snap counts). The stat which is even more staggering than his legendary streak is that he has protected twenty different starting quarterbacks for the Cleveland Browns since the day when he played his first career NFL snap. Joe Thomas has been an amazing player all of his career, but the Browns completely wasted his career.
Besides struggling with finding franchise quarterbacks and good players at other positions, the Cleveland Browns have also struggled with finding a great coach. They never got a Paul Brown. Never got to find a Blanton Collier. However, the Browns did once hire Bill Belichick, who is arguably the greatest coach of all time. He got to coach the Cleveland Browns from 1991-95. In one of the five years, he was able to lead the Browns to the playoffs, where he won a playoff game against the um New England Patriots. In five years, his record with the Browns wasn't so good. He finished with a 36-44 record and after a 5-11 season in 1995, before Art Modell decided to move his franchise to Baltimore, the Browns let go of Belichick. Five years after being fired by the Browns, Belichick went to New England and turned one of the worst NFL franchises at the time, into one of the most successful franchises of all time. Of course he had a quarterback with Tom Brady, but had the Browns been more patient with him and didn't rush for a transfer to Baltimore, maybe Belichick could have continued Paul Brown's legacy in Cleveland. I mentioned how Joe Thomas is one of the rare good draft selection by the Cleveland Browns in the last ten years, but at least they were able to find a good left tackle, who got to stay for more than five years (still with the team). Since 1999, they haven't been to find a decent quarterback. Not that they didn't have the opportunity, it's just they made flat-out bad decisions with their high draft picks. With their draft picks in the first two to three rounds since the year 2007, when Joe Thomas was drafted third overall, the Browns have selected guys like Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden, Colt McCoy, Johnny Manziel, Cody Kessler and Desean Kizer as their quarterbacks.
Yes it is the management that have made mistakes with the draft selections, but management of the Browns have changed over the years several times. They have changed their coaches several times over the years. Even the ownership has changed few times in the last eighteen years. What hasn't changed? Losing! The Cleveland Browns have been losing again and again since 1999. They have had only two winning seasons in the last eighteen years. Over the past two seasons, they are 1-26 in twenty-seven regular season games. The Cleveland Browns need a complete change of staff. They need to clean house and start from the very bottom. It is time to even change their franchise name. Yes, everyone knows that the Browns pay respect to Paul Brown, the founder of the team, by carrying his name for their professional football team, but they are not honoring him. They are actually doing him a disservice by losing consistently, while keeping his name. Paul Brown himself didn't want the team to be named after him at the first place. Plus, he was let go by the Browns and got a chance to build a new team with the Cincinnati Bengals. Browns didn't honor him back then when they fired him because he wasn't in good terms with their best player at the time, Jim Brown. What's the point of keeping the same name? Yes, Vince Lombardi did not discover the Green Bay Packers, but just like how Paul Brown was to the Browns, he is the greatest coach of all time for the Packers. The Green Bay Packers didn't change the name of the team to Green Bay Lombardies? Instead, the NFL honored him rightly by naming their biggest game, 'Super Bowl' after him. Winners get to hold the trophy named after a man who was a winner. The Cleveland Browns absolutely need to start from ground zero. Please change the name. Maybe then, an opponent won't get to score against you with no time on the clock!
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