Now might be a good time for ownership to step forward and publicly explain to its customers why the current quarterback of their football team is the current quarterback of their football team.
That won’t happen, of course, because the last time ownership should have stepped forward to publicly, and personally, explain the most controversial decision in franchise history — the trade for Deshaun Watson — ownership not only passed on attending the introductory news conference, ownership instead left the country.
Welcome back to Dysfunction Junction.
There is a lot wrong with this football team and football organization right now, and a lot of it was on display Sunday in a humiliating, embarrassing 34-13 beatdown by the young and hungry and extremely well-organized and -constructed Washington Commanders.
On the other side of the field were the Browns, who Sunday kept alive their streak this year of never having scored more than 18 points in a game, which is a surefire way to lose most of them. But at least in this game, unlike their other four games, the Browns played a good team.
On the plus side, the Browns are finally out of the Watson penalty box. Next year, for the first time in three years, they will get to make a pick in the first round of the NFL Draft.
As for this year, the loss to Washington on Sunday looked a lot like the Browns’ other three losses this season (so far).
Anybody got Joe Flacco’s phone number?
On Sunday, ownership’s favorite quarterback averaged 4.1 yards per completion in his spotty 12-for-25 day at the office. He was sacked seven times for 33 yards and posted a not-so-rousing 77.2 passer rating.
Watson and his presumed No. 1 receiver, Amari Cooper, continue to look like total strangers on the field. That’s not to say that the Browns’ other receivers are lockdown, go-to guys for ownership’s favorite quarterback. But even against a previously struggling defense like Washington’s, the flaws and weaknesses of The Watson Passing Game — presumably there is one — really stand out.
There is also the matter of chemistry. Team chemistry. One wonders, after one has seen what one has seen to this point in the season, whether there is any chemistry at all between Watson and his receivers, or, for that matter, Watson and the other players on the team.
Many of them play and perform as though they are total strangers to Watson, and vice versa. The expected Watson-to-Cooper gravy train that everyone anticipated at the start of the season has been a total bust so far. For the most part, the two principals appear to not only be on different pages, but in different books.
Poor Kevin Stefanski. At one point in Sunday, bloody Sunday’s proceedings, he again sent in quarterback/hood ornament Jameis Winston on fourth-and-1, and — spoiler alert — it didn’t work.
Nothing worked Sunday, and it wasn’t because the Browns didn’t try. Beating, or even just trying to keep up with the sleek, new Commanders, who look like they are the real deal, is no small task.
The Browns, on the other hand, are a very small task. They are not only unwatchable at times, but at others, undecipherable. They are five games, and four losses, into a season in which almost nothing has gone right, especially at the quarterback position.
If this is all they are going to get from Watson this year, and in the next two, somebody has some explaining to do. As Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, California: “There is no there there.”
It doesn’t take a lot of detective work to deduce that what the Browns acquired in their ill-fated trade with Houston was lower case Watson, when what they were hoping for was uppercase Watson.
To circle back, in that vein, to the team chemistry question, is it not fair to ask, based on what we have seen so far, whether the Browns players themselves, as reflected by their performance to date, may have quickly deduced that their $230 million quarterback is grossly overpriced?
Let’s not forget that it was ownership, not the players, who bought this bag of groceries. But it’s the players, not ownership, who must play with and for a quarterback who so far this season has given no indication that he is any more special than was Brandon Weeden.
Pity to those quarterbacks, and those teams, moreover, who lose the trust, or appear to lack the commitment to lead an NFL team. This is big-boy football. There is nothing more useless than a quarterback unable to rally his troops or inspire their commitment.
A quarterback with no followers is no quarterback at all.
That is where the Browns better hope they aren’t.
When it comes to quarterbacks, there are no mulligans. He’s either the guy or he isn’t.
Same thing with owners.