Ed Puskas: Browns found a way to lose bye week

So much for the idea that while the Cleveland Browns are winless, at least they couldn’t lose during their bye week.

That was a theme that kept popping up after the Browns arrived at the halfway point of their season 0-8 for the second consecutive year.

But those who have spent any time living and dying with the Browns (God bless their souls) or tasked with the unenviable job of covering them as professional journalists (at least they’re being paid to watch) knew that if any team could blow it against “Idle,” it was this moribund franchise.

You could almost hear Jimmy Haslam responding with the three scariest words of all time:

Hold my beer.

First, the New England Patriots traded backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, a player the Browns openly coveted for two years, to the San Francisco 49ers for a second-round draft pick after reportedly turning down better offers from Cleveland.

Browns fans were apoplectic. It was a week after they had watched Carson Wentz, a QB Cleveland could have drafted, play like the second coming of Tom Brady for the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday Night Football.

A day later, the Browns negotiated a trade for yet another QB they’ve eyed for a long time — Cincinnati Bengals backup AJ McCarron. But in a stunning — even for the Browns — example of the utter incompetence this franchise has come to symbolize, the front office failed to get paperwork to the NFL by the 4 p.m. Tuesday deadline and the trade was voided.

And it gets worse.

Some reports suggested the Browns’ front office didn’t really want to make the deal — McCarron was known to be a favorite of Browns head coach Hue Jackson — and fouled it up on purpose.

There has been speculation for weeks inside and outside the team’s Berea headquarters that the front office, particular Harvard-educated executive vice president Sashi Brown and chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta, are at odds with Jackson and the rest of the coaching staff about, well, pretty much everything.

But could the relationship between two entities tasked with rebuilding the Browns could be so dysfunctional that self-sabotage could be at play?

It is mind-boggling.

So is the idea that Dee and Jimmy Haslam would allow this to fester unchecked in the belly of the organization they spent $1.05 billion to acquire.

But the Browns are 19-63 on their watch and the dysfunction at FirstEnergy Stadium has been rivaled or exceeded only by what happens in the halls and offices in Berea.

Maybe “Hold my beer” should be emblazoned on the team’s pants or jerseys, instead of “Browns” or “Cleveland.”

Dee Haslam reportedly went “nuclear” on the front office after the McCarron mess, but Jimmy and his wife have been otherwise silent.

So what’s next? Well, you know they’re not going to fire themselves as part of the next reset that is obviously coming.

But maybe what the Browns need is an owner who will take more pride in — and care of — this once-storied franchise than the Haslams have.

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.