Browns find way to lose even in off week

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

Bad may not suffice anymore. Horrid hardly scratches the surface. Miserable doesn’t tell the whole story.

Embarrassing? At so many levels.

The Cleveland Browns are a complete calamity. One of the NFL’s most storied franchises has fallen so far, and the team appears so disconnected and constrained by dysfunction, that the Browns almost defy description.

For the second straight year they’ve reached the midway point of the season 0-8. They’re now 1-23 under coach Hue Jackson and a numbers-crunching front office led by Sashi Brown, whose decision to tear down a roster to its foundation has to this point proven foolish.

The three- or four- or five-year plan — the club has never publicly explained its long-term game plan— isn’t working and more change seems inevitable despite vows by owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam to be patient during a painstaking rebuilding process.

“I think we know where we are headed,” Jackson said this week, trying to put a positive spin on a negative situation.

The truth is, the Browns remain critically broken, damaged goods. They’re 88-208 since their 1999 expansion return, with a single playoff appearance that seems light years ago. They’re 19-63 since the Haslam’s $1.05 billion purchase was approved by the NFL in 2012.

A minor-league franchise in a major-league world.

But even by their low standards, this week — the Browns’ off week — presented another stage of clumsiness and chaos for Cleveland’s woebegone franchise. Fittingly, the shocking scenario unfolded on Halloween.

With the Browns’ perpetual search for a long-term quarterback — they’ve started 28 QBs since ’99 — stalled, they were undone by a paperwork glitch that perhaps illustrates the team’s desperation to win, and a divide between Jackson, his staff and the team’s decision makers.

One day after New England traded Jimmy Garoppolo, Tom Brady’s backup and a quarterback Jackson had coveted for months, to San Francisco for a second-round pick, the Browns, who had previous talks with the Patriots and are armed with three second-round picks in 2018, bungled a deal with Cincinnati just before Tuesday’s deadline.

The Browns reached agreement on a trade for Bengals backup AJ McCarron, sending one of their AFC North rivals a second- and third-round pick in next year’s draft.

But the clubs failed to file the appropriate documentation to the league office before the 4 p.m. deadline and the transaction was nullified.

In the aftermath, the Bengals insisted they followed standard procedure, while the Browns, who have executed 17 trades since April 2016, declined comment as they entered their week off.

So while the winless 49ers may have found their franchise quarterback, the Browns stood pat.

Only the Browns lose in their off week. Orange helmets, red faces.