MCLAIN: Current Browns offer fans no hope

I remember vividly my parents taking me to my first Browns game at Municipal Stadium – Oct. 27, 1963 versus the New York (football) Giants.

My memory of that day was of the late Y.A. Tittle quarterbacking the Giants to a 33-6 win, which undoubtedly led me into a funk that made the ride on the rapid transit to our car a thrill for mom and dad.

The Browns had a 6-0 record leading up to the game, including a 35-24 win over the Giants two weeks earlier at Yankee Stadium. I was shocked by the domination the Giants showed, but I’m guessing I wasn’t discouraged. The Browns, after all, were always good back then. They would surely bounce back, which they did in finishing with a 10-4 record before losing to the Green Bay Packers, 40-23, in the Playoff Bowl (a meaningless battle for third place).

I took the successes of the Browns during the 1960s for granted, assuming it would never end and having no idea a freight train in Pittsburgh was about to roll into town the next decade. Fifty-four years later the Browns trotted out Kevin Hogan at quarterback in an embarrassing loss to the Houston Texans.

The difference between the loss to the Texans and the one I witnessed in 1963 is that there was still hope back in the day that Frank Ryan, Jim Brown and other great players would be okay. You can’t say the same about the 2017 version of the Browns.

This is a team without an identity, on or off the field. If you’ve been to FirstEnergy Stadium lately, you might have noticed that the atmosphere lacks anything close to enthusiasm. They run a dog named Swagger on the field in an attempt to get the crowd going. For some reason there’s a drumline that makes annoying sounds similar to the neighbor’s party at 2 a.m. There are the hideous uniforms and all the “wonderful” combinations that can be coordinated.

Then there’s the Dawg Pound, a contrived rallying point whose time has long since passed. This franchise needs a major makeover, starting with the tradition of humans barking like animals without the need of an alcoholic beverage. It’s an image that represent one small era in the 1980s, not the entirety of the organization dating to 1946.

The Browns need to cultivate new fans instead of continually courting fans that wear worn out Bernie Kosar jerseys to games. The uniforms hopefully will improve when the league allows another change in a couple years. Anything without the city name on the chest and the nickname along the legs will be better.

As for the product on the field, something drastic has to happen. They’ve tried a NFL-promoted executive (Joe Banner) and his tag-teammate Mike Lombardi, who made a career of antagonizing front offices from coast to coast. They tried a once-great coach as president (Mike Holmgren), who unwisely gave Eric Mangini an extra year and then hired the nephew of good buddy Fritz Shurmur, Pat, as coach. To say Pat isn’t head-coach material is being kind.

All I can say about Ray Farmer as GM is that he drafted Justin Gilbert and Johnny Manziel. Coach Mike Pettine might have wanted Gilbert, and Farmer might have been coaxed by owner Jimmy Haslam into picking Manziel, but the bottom line is that those picks are on Farmer.

It would be nice if Haslam took the haul of cash he pocketed when Warren Buffet purchased control of Pilot Flying J and looked for another hobby, but that doesn’t appear likely. If Haslam is in for the long haul, he has to realize that the analytics approach isn’t working. Passing on Carson Wentz and DeShaun Watson in the last two drafts would qualify as job insubordination if I didn’t think Ivy Leaguers Sashi Brown and Paul DePodesta were serious about turning around this mess.

There’s an urgency for a “football man” that knows what the best available player looks like standing in front of him in his underwear without calculating his wins above replacement (WAR) stat — sorry, I’ve got my advanced stats confused. That’s a baseball number, something of which former Oakland Athletics executive DePodesta is well aware.

Haslam also needs to hire a president that knows the inner workings of the NFL beyond ribbon-cutting ceremonies and let the GM and coach answer to him. In other words Haslam needs to keep Haslam out of the mix other than a once-a-week meeting when they decide which of those beautiful nine uniform ensembles would look dashing next Sunday.

I left the Browns beat after the 2015 season, which I thought meant no more lengthy diatribes after another miserable performance by the Browns, but Sunday’s debacle had me sprinting to my laptop. I just had to vent.

I am the 10-year-old that went to a Browns game in 1963 with mom and dad, never knowing he would one day cover the team for a newspaper. That kid has lost interest in the team he once idolized and was certain would make things better when he turned on the black-and-white TV on Sundays.

Sadly, I think there are plenty of fans like me, which should worry the front office. I assume the executives are awaiting word from analytics to determine if it’s okay to be concerned.

Mike McLain is a sports correspondent for The Vindicator.