Are Cleveland Browns fans delusional? They absolutely are!
And why wouldn’t they (we) be. Every year for the past 20 seasons, Browns fans have shown up, faces painted orange, populating the Dog Pound in all kinds of weather, wishing, hoping, praying that their team would finally turn the corner.
Since the expansion version of the Browns reappeared on the NFL landscape, Cleveland has not exactly been a place where opponents dreaded coming.
Our heroes have had just two winning seasons (last one in 2007) and one playoff appearance (2002) since coming back from a three-year hiatus after Art Modell abruptly and unceremoniously moved the original franchise to Baltimore following the 1995 season.
In the intervening 20 years since the return in 1999, the Browns have had 11 head coaches (including two interims) and 30 starting quarterbacks. Only one year did the same quarterback start all 16 games — Tim Couch in 2001.
In the first 50 years of the original franchise, there were 10 coaches including interims. The founding father, Paul Brown, won four All-America Football Conference championships before moving to the NFL in 1950. From there, Brown was in seven title games, winning three times, in his 13 years in the NFL.
In the years after Brown was fired, the Browns made playoff appearances in 15 seasons, including their last football title in 1964. They lost in the championship game in 1965.
For old-timers, history was all that kept them going. But with the change in management to John Dorsey, drafting Baker Mayfield and Myles Garrett and trading for Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham, the groundwork was laid for the Browns’ return to NFL greatness.
This time, it wasn’t only desperate Browns’ fans who thought so. Preseason odds to win — not just appear in — the Super Bowl had the Browns tied for sixth with the Los Angeles Chargers at 15-1.
Las Vegas — with money rather than emotion driving everything — had the Browns ranked higher than Green Bay and Pittsburgh (19-1), Dallas (25-1), Minnesota and Houston (30-1), Seattle and Baltimore (32-1) and San Francisco (36-1).
The talking heads on many sports shows now pan Browns fans for their being ridiculously optimistic after so many years of futility. Shouldn’t part of the blame go to the so-called experts who drove the expectation sky high?
Browns fans are like the man lost in the desert who continues to see an oasis in the distance. It’s just a mirage, of course, but he continues his pursuit of it because it is his only hope.
Did the sports world expect this desperate bunch to take a wait-and-see attitude after decades of losing? Put fans of the Patriots, Steelers, Cowboys or any other perennially successful team in the same situation Browns’ fans have been in and their reaction would likely be similar.
Without a doubt Browns’ fans, fiercely loyal, are delusional. That’s what 20 years of disappointment can do to you.
Trust me. I know.