Browns need to clean house after McCarron debacle

The Cleveland Browns play in the National Football League, but they aren’t a professional franchise. They might be able to sow an NFL patch on the neck of their jerseys and call themselves one of the 32 teams in the best league on earth, but that’s only in name.

Since hiring general manager Sashi Brown and head coach Hue Jackson, the Browns have a robust 1-23 record, easily the worst in the NFL over that stretch. This spring, Cleveland tried to give its fans a dose of hope by drafting Notre Dame Fighting Irish quarterback DeShone Kizer in the second round, and then over the summer paraded him through preseason games as a savior.

By late August, Kizer had been proclaimed the starter by Jackson. Then, by the middle of his fifth game, Kizer was benched for Kevin Hogan. Hogan then started a game before Cody Kessler was trotted out. Now we are back to Kizer, a young man with shattered confidence and a stat line that reads three touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

But we aren’t to the best part of the story. On Tuesday, the NFL trade deadline, the Browns and interstate rival Cincinnati Bengals agreed on an absurd trade that reportedly had Cleveland sending second and third-round picks to the Bengals for backup quarterback A.J. McCarron.

McCarron, 27, has 119 pass attempts in his four-year career behind Andy Dalton, and yet somehow was fetching more than Jimmy Gar0ppolo, who was traded to the San Francisco 49ers for a second round choice. While taro-polo has fewer pass attempts, he was wildly more impressive in his spot starts, and was brought up in the New England Patriots’ program.

Then, the Browns failed to do the trade paperwork correctly and missed the deadline, according to multiple reports. On one hand, the blunder saved Cleveland from itself, allowing it to keep multiple picks that never should have been offered. On the other, it shows the sheer incompetence of the front office, which can’t execute the simplest of tasks, all while the coaching staff screws up one future after the next.

There is no excuse for either Brown or Jackson. This was a team that many believed could win five or six games this year. Instead, there’s a real chance they become the second franchise in history to go 0-16, something they came within an eyelash of doing a year ago.

At some juncture, Cleveland has to demand better from owner Jimmy Haslam and his minions. If the Browns are going to put this product both on the field and in the luxury boxes, it’s time to stop showing up. Stop watching. Stop caring. Treat the Browns the way they treated you in 1995. Drop them publicly and shamefully.

The Browns might play in the NFL, but they certainly don’t belong in it.