Suffering Browns Fans Won't Wait For Mangini

With the 5th pick in the 2009 NFL Draft the Cleveland Browns traded any chance of competing this season.

On Draft day last April when a desperately needed talent upgrade was there for the taking Eric Mangini decided it was worth it to cash in all of 2008's losses - and there were plenty - for even more losses in 2009. Trading down again and again, all the way down to pick 22 only to take a center? Wouldn't there be a talented center available sometime after the first round?

I didn't want to have to remind myself about the Browns 2009 Draft but I think it's important to realize that the Draft was actually the beginning of this self-funded tank job that has become the 2009-2010 Browns season.

This brings us to today: October 28, 2009.

The fact that the Eric Mangini Cleveland Browns are worse statistically than the Chris Palmer 1999 expansion Cleveland Browns completely defies all sensible logic and blows my mind. If you recall, the Browns were screwed by the NFL in 1998 when they were given a fraction of the time needed to put together a respectable NFL roster heading into the 1999 season. So a team that was mostly made up of rag-tag castoffs that nobody else wanted played with more heart and determination than a team of supposedly legitimate NFL-caliber players making millions more than those 1999 expansion players? Hate to say it, but yes.

It's not hard to realize that much of the 2009 Browns roster is made up of players who were hand-picked by Mangini because they either played for him in New York and bought into his "system" or are guys who he believes will buy into his system eventually. Throughout all of the dismantling of an already talent starved roster, Mangini seems to have already forgotten what makes the Cleveland Browns a semi-relevant NFL franchise in the first place:

The fans.

We've been dragged through the mud for the better part of the last decade and it's safe to say that many of us have become completely numb to most things Browns. Randy Lerner had a golden opportunity to hire somebody with the vision and passion to turn this thing around and give the fans a renewed hope that respectability would be restored and the sun would once again shine on this struggling franchise.

Instead he picked Mangini.

I can't figure out why it made sense to standby and watch his own tenure with the Browns get off to such a bad start. Then again, maybe Eric Mangini didn't do this on purpose. Maybe he actually thought the moves he made during the draft and his antics leading up to the season opener would actually result in some kind of success. I just can't believe that. No way, no how. He never cared about this season or what it meant to the fans and he set the 2009 Browns up to fail with the sole intention of collecting draft picks and "system guys" while torturing the fans with a product that is not NFL caliber by any means.

The only thing more questionable than Eric Mangini's antics is the assumption in Berea that the fans would be willing to suffer through this any longer. We've suffered enough. Thanks, but no thanks.