Hi, it’s me. I’m sure you don’t remember me, I’m the chick who likes sports but doesn’t blog anymore. Life has been busy, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Mostly, I don’t like blogging unless I have a story to tell. I wait for inspiration, like a good artist. Luckily, football season is upon us again so I have plenty to say now. Forgive me?
So, the big news of the week was that a big trade went down. Trent Richardson, young RB on the Browns was traded to the Colts the other day for the Colts first round draft pick in 2014. You might remember Mr. Richardson as the player the Browns gave up four draft picks for to move up one spot in 2012 to fill in their gaps on offense. He was supposed to fix all the Browns’ problems, right? I hope you’re laughing with me right now.
The other day, I was sitting around talking football with a friend of a friend who was watching the Niners lose painfully to the Seahawks, and she (yes, she) brought up a good point. Do you know who the Browns’ quarterback is? I didn’t. I listen to sports radio, I have the NFL ticket which shows all the games, yet the Browns have become so irrelevant to the masses that even I don’t know who is at they helm. I said, “well, it’s not Brady Quinn… Is it?”. I stopped to think for a moment and realized it must still be Weeden, that guy they drafted in 2012 along with Richardson to solve their offensive woes. Weeden is only a couple years younger than me if memory serves me right and I start to feel joint pain when it rains now, so there’s that. But the proof is in the pudding that the Browns are drowning and it’s not JUST their QB or a lackluster RB squad that’s doing it. The Browns only managed to eek out 5 wins last year. Their most impressive win came against their rival Steelers in week 12 and that’s only because Charlie Batch was in for Pittsburgh. I guess they beat the Raiders, but that’s not that impressive. To cut to the chase, in 2012, the Browns thought they were doing everything right, and then both their QB and RB fell flat. So they’re bailing. Like any good team in trouble, they’re cutting their losses. Sayonara player-we-thought-could-make-us-better, we think we can do better in 2014. And this seems to be part of the Browns’ plan seeing that they’ve already made moves to start hoarding 2014 picks, giving them seven in the first four rounds. But by hitting reset now, in week 2 (albeit after two miserable losses), they’re saying, goodbye 2013-2014 season, if a win comes our way, great, but we ain’t planning on it. So what’s the harm in hitting the reset button yet again on this suffering franchise? Will the fans respond with respect, seeing it as a bold move needed to be a better team in the future, or will they just roll their eyes and shake their heads and say, “well, that’s the Browns for ya”. At what point is hitting reset too many times a little like the boy who cried wolf?
The other day, I had beers with an ex-boyfriend (you may actually remember him as a boyfriend-boyfriend from my 2011 posts). We had a great relationship, he broke up with me for unknown reasons (the likely ones I’ve come up with only depress me more), and we basically didn’t speak or have any contact for almost a year. He went on to date someone that, I swear, is my doppelgänger, and I went on to date and “not-date” various men who were all wrong for me. We got back in touch September of last year and decided that we would try something new…friends with benefits, or, since we weren’t really friends, just exes with benefits. This turned out to be a bad idea…shocker. So after a painfully drawn out tapering off of whatever it was that was, we cut off all communication last July. That lasted a whole month and a half or something. This time, we were going to hit reset and hope that it landed on genuine friendship (no whammy, no whammy…). I told a friend this was happening. He rolled his eyes and shook his head and said, “well, that’s Jenny for you”. And suddenly, I felt like I was an 0-2 team trying to figure out if it’s ok to just start over again. The pro is that, well, you might get something better out of it. Whatever we had never worked. We didn’t FIT as any of those things, couple, exes who hook up occasionally. And I didn’t do very well with all of it mentally knowing there was an ex of HIS out there who basically thought I was the devil even though, well, I’m not (but refer to a past post on female-on-female hate crimes for more on that). You get to be forward looking, start fresh. The con is that, you have no idea what you’re getting. You could have just given up something good (in my case, peace and serenity that came with having that drama out of my life for a while) and opened the door to yet another season of disappointment.
I think when making this decision, it doesn’t lie in how much you trust the decision makers or even the play makers. I think it’s a bold move that could pay off. I also think it reeks of desperation. How bad is your situation that you HAVE to make a bold move like this in order to save face? No comment on my own situation, but in the Browns case, it’s bad. It’s also possible that they may not have even won very many games this season WITH Richardson (who hasn’t proven to be all they hoped he would be). Hopefully, Richardson finds a home with the Colts. He’s only 23 and has the potential to be an elite franchise RB. Hopefully the Browns’ draft pick they get from the Colts is a high one (in the top 5, I’d consider that a win for the Browns), and they make a smart decision on how to proceed. We don’t even know who will be in the draft yet, but after you’ve made the decision to hit that reset button, it’s at that point that you have to trust the process, trust that you did the right thing. Everyone (including me) was all a buzz about this move. Well here is my takeaway: It doesn’t matter. The Browns were going to suck this year no matter what. Yes they “lost” Richardson (you have to totally turn your blinders on in a “cut your losses” “Redskins deal for-then-with McNabb” to ignore what they gave up to get him only a short time ago), but what was he but just another wasted talent which is no good if your supporting cast disappoints every week. He was drowning in Cleveland. Now the Browns get a chance to do it right, with an arsenal of picks, they can REALLY rebuild and not just use “rebuilding year” as a euphemism for “sorry we suck”. They have a chance to really build something new, something fresh, something that has potential for the long term. They have a chance to reincarnate themselves much like we’ve seen other teams do with great trade moves for draft picks. They have a chance to prove those naysayers wrong. But will we?
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