Hope, Misery, and Mediocrity: Why the Browns will go 5-12 in 2024

Part I: Hope

Hope is a dangerous drug. 2 in 3 football fans report having a hopium addiction at some point in their miserable lives while rooting for their miserable franchises. The other fan is either from Boston or Kansas City. Hope is what breaks a fan, it sinks its teeth in and kills you slowly, week by week, quarter by quarter, noodle arm throw by noodle arm throw. That is why this season I’m absolving myself of any and all hope. Think of what Tim Allen did in Christmas with the Kranks when his character decided to skip Christmas. That is what I am doing this football season. I am removing hope from the equation.

Without the shackles of hope, I can correctly predict that the Cleveland Browns are finishing the 2024 campaign with a 5-12 record. I cannot and will not be talked out of this take. Why am I so down on the most poverty and snake bitten sports franchise in the history of the known universe? Let me walk you through a few facts:

1.    The defense fucking sucks on the road.

The Browns defense looked unstoppable at times during the 2023 season. Some of those times included at home against the Titans, Cardinals, Steelers, Bears, and Jets. Really impressive stuff right there. This defense gave up 29 points to Russell Wilson in Denver and 39 points to Garner Minshew in Indy. I expect the trend to continue.

2.    Our Quarterback has a noodle arm.

Have you ever seen Noodle Arm Watson hit a receiver in stride? I mean really hit a receiver in full stride at the top of the route. Not just get the ball down the field to a wide-open Amari Cooper. No? Didn’t think so. I want my $230 million dollars back. Next.

3.    We Played in 8 one possession games in 2023, winning 6 of them.

If you don’t think this is a sign of what’s to come just take a look at how the Vikings did last season after winning 11 one score games in 2022. Turnover luck, a couple missed field goals, and some questionable calls by the men and women in black and white won the Browns a lot of games last year. History tells us the league is not kind to previously lucky teams, unless you play in Kansas City or Foxborough.

This is why I will remain vigilant, focused, and steadfast in my convictions to not allow hope to creep into my tormented and polluted mind. Hope is a drug. Just Say No.

Part II: Misery

I am not a stranger to misery. Misery is the comedown after a long week of going on a hopium bender. You’ve spent way too many hours at work listening to podcasts and watching national media in hopes they talk about the big win your team had the previous Sunday. You even steep as low as watching The Herd or First Take, squeezing one last drop out of the hopium needle before your team implodes the following weekend. This is how the misery creeps in.

The Browns just might pull off a win on Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys, they might even start 2-0 for the first time in my lifetime with a win against the Jaguars the next week. But the latter half of the schedule screams 4 game losing streaks and putrid performances. If you look at that schedule after week 5 and think anything but disaster, you need to pull the needle out of your arm and go to rehab.

The misery will hurt. It’s supposed to. We were not born super bowl winners, and we will not die super bowl winners. It’s how life works. It’s like in Moneyball when Billy Beane says, “There are rich teams, and there are poor teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap….and then there’s us”. We will never win anything. And that’s OK. We are lying under 50 feet of crap and a lot of years of mediocrity.

Part III: Mediocrity

I believe two things as a Browns fan:

1.    We will never win a Super Bowl, let alone ever appear in one

2.    The worst days of being a fan are over

And yes, both can be true.

We will never again go 1-15 in a season, where afterwards our head coach vows to be better, and then promises to jump into Lake Erie in the middle of January if we are not. And then turns around the next season and shits out an 0-16 record. And still not fire that coach. That level of failure is too great to be topped or even matched.

We will never win a Super Bowl. We will never even make a Super Bowl. I am not entirely convinced we will ever even make an AFC championship game. We don’t play the same sport as the top contenders in the AFC and NFC, so why would I ever expect to beat them at their game when the chips are down?

So where does that leave us? Mediocrity. We are destined to be at-best a punching bag for the eventual Super Bowl winner in the wild card or divisional round, and at our worst a 4-win team. And like I said before, that’s OK. I am a proud loser.

My week-by-week prediction: