In every state, there is one town where opposing high school sports teams love to play. It’s usually a rich suburb, with high property taxes. The tax dollars go to local education, which ends up yielding state-of-the-art sports complexes. NBA quality courts for basketball and Division I football fields. The best part is, that the rich kids in these towns are nowhere near good enough to compete in sports outside of country clubs (they usually have great tennis and golf teams).
The NFL’s rich suburb is about to become Cleveland, Ohio. The team decided to scrap the idea of $1.2 billion in renovations to Huntington Bank Field and chose to build a brand new facility in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park. The dome will reportedly cost $2.4 billion and make the Dallas Cowboys home of AT&T Stadium look like an old patch of dirt. Just like the high school football teams of affluent neighborhoods, this Stadium will definitely be home to perennial losers.
There’s no need to mention the years that Bernie Kosar or Jim Brown led the now-Ravens to playoff success. The Cleveland Browns as we know them did not exist until 1999. From their inception until last season, the NFL’s most embarrassing franchise has accumulated a record of 139-267-1. That’s a winning percentage of 34.2% (rounded up). They’ve had 4 winning seasons in 25 years. In fact, in 14 of those seasons (way more than half), the Browns have had five or fewer wins.
The Browns have made 28 first-round selections in the NFL Draft, and many of those players were cut or traded before the end of their rookie contracts. They’ve taken every position on the field except for Guard, Punter, and Kicker. Their draft wall of shame consists of names like Braylon Edwards (2005), Kellen Winslow Jr (2004), Kamerion Wimbley (2006), and Phil Taylor (2011).
Five times in Browns history, the team has selected a quarterback in round one. That’s 20% of all the drafts they’ve ever been part of, and they haven’t had a first-round pick in the last three years. It started with Tim Couch in 1999. The Kentucky signal-caller was the number one overall pick, and the first pick in franchise history back in 1999.
Couch started 59 games in 5 years for Cleveland. He had a career record of 22-37 in those games, threw for 179.5 yards per game, and threw more interceptions (67) than touchdowns (64). After his rookie contract expired, he would never play in the NFL again. Couch would look like Dan Marino compared to the 3 quarterbacks taken by the Browns after him.
Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden, and Johnny Manziel were a combined 10-30, completing 55.1% of their passes, for 40 touchdowns and 42 interceptions. That is the total sum of three first-round quarterbacks for the team that drafted them. Even their most successful pick of the five, Baker Mayfield, didn’t shine until he was able to get out of Cleveland.
Baker Mayfield completed 61.6% of his passes for the Browns and threw 1.6 touchdowns for every interception he tossed (92:56). Since leaving, Mayfield has a career completion percentage of 64.1% and has thrown 2.3 touchdowns per interception (53:23). The kryptonite is evident for incoming quarterbacks as well. Before coming to town, Deshaun Watson was completing 67.8% of bis passes and throwing 2.89 touchdowns per interception (104:36). His career so far in Cleveland has yielded a 60.4% completion percentage, and 1.58 touchdowns per interception (19:12).
There’s no reason to believe the next 25 years won’t produce similar garbage in terms of wins and quarterbacks. The perennial draft futility is sure to continue, and every season from now until eternity, expect the Cleveland Browns to be the doormats of the NFL. At least they will be pitiful in a beautiful stadium starting in 2029.
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