Cleveland, Ohio is a wonderful city, bursting with many shining examples of culture, fine dining and friendly people.

Every single word of that sentence is a filthy lie, except for “Cleveland,” “Ohio” and “City.”  And frankly, “city” is being generous.  I would have gone with “penal colony,” except that usually requires geographical isolation to keep the inmates there instead of an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

I am giving Cleveland a hard time, because it thoroughly deserves it.   Chicago is the City of Big Shoulders.  St. Louis is the Gateway to the West.  Cleveland is the Mistake by the Lake, and the title is undisputed.  Change your fucking baseball team’s name and mascot, cocktwiddlers- being behind Dan Snyder on the social consciousness scale will be grounds for summary execution in Mayhem’s America, although you should probably die of embarrassment and save us the bullets.

However, I do have some fondness for Cleveland.  Out of the squalor came one of the premier medical institutions on the planet- the Cleveland Clinic.  Fred Willard was from Cleveland.  So was Monica Potter.

But mostly, I like Cleveland because its very existence will forever ensure that Buffalonians have someone to look down on.  Seriously, it’s like Buffalo but with no charm, more miserable people and no native food worth talking about. Factory of Sadness indeed.

Dad Joke from one of my friends who grew up in Shaker Heights: “Why do they call the region ‘Greater Cleveland’? Because ‘Worse Cleveland’ is a literally impossibility.”

Since this is ostensibly a Football Website, I suppose I should talk about The Cleveland Browns a bit.  They suck. They suck hard.  They are famous for sucking, both in the absolute sense of utter futility and for losing in humiliating ways on the few occasions they are good.  And I really, really enjoyed them sucking last year, because everyone was fellating them from the word “Go”.  And few things get me madder than undeserved fellatio.

Which is…I mean…shit, I lost the thread…

ANYWAY: The Browns suddenly everyone’s pseudodarkhorse pick for the Superb Owl, constantly featured on ESPN coverage and prime time games.  You literally couldn’t watch more than 10 minutes of any NFL game without seeing Baker Fucking Mayfield in an idiotic insurance commercial.  And what had Cleveland done to earn this Baby-Patriots level of hype?

7-8-1.

Sub-.500.  Less than mediocre.  We, as football fans, had gotten so used to Cleveland being the perpetual doormat since their ill-advised resurrection in 1999 that this seemed like a meteoric rise.  And yes, the rate of improvement was literally incalculable, since they had gone 0-16 the year before.  But we all forgot several Very Important Facts:

1. The team was still owned by Jimmy Haslam, a Cheap Trump Knockoff who wants to be a Cheap Jerry Jones Knockoff.  He cannot help but sabotage any competent employee by surrounding him with Stooges of the Highest Order;

2. The team was coached by Freddie Kitchens, whose sole qualification was that Baker Mayfield improved around the same time he wandered into the stadium off the turnip truck.

3. It’s fucking Cleveland.  They don’t get to have nice things except LeBron, who basically turned the city into a pathetic Third Choice Midnight Booty Call, grateful whatever scraps of attention it can get.

So Cleveland struggled mightily to a 6-10 humiliation.  It was so sweet I had to check my blood sugar every time the camera cut from Baker Mayfield Just Threw Another Interception to Baker Mayfield Says Switch to Progressive!

They had gotten consensus-top-5 wideout Odell Beckham Jr. to go along with perpetually-underrated Jarvis Landry, “Any minute now, you’ll see” superstar tight end David Njoku, Nick Chubb (heheh) and noted woman-kicker Kareem Hunt.  And yet Baker regressed.  In two additional games, he had about the same yardage as his rookie season, while throwing six fewer touchdowns and seven more interceptions (22-21).  After all the sound and fury about Baker and Odell, they would have been 2-14 if second-year running back Chubb (heheh) hadn’t almost literally carried the offense.

And then of course there was Myles Garrett’s Racist Whack-a-Mole.  I won’t belabor the story any more than I did at the time.  Suffice it to say that Garrett was mostly exonerated in the eyes of the public and the team, to the tune of a $125ish million contract extension.  Shit, I’d have brained Mason Rudolph with his own helmet for $500 and a hot dog.  This is why the Browns will always be a lowest-tier football power.

ANYWAY: enough dwelling on the past, no matter how delectable.  This year, the Browns did what the Browns pretty much always do: wrench the wheel the opposite direction as hard as possible, hoping that the skidding, swerving, fishtailing franchise will magically right itself and start cruising on down the highway.  Last year they went hard after “skill” position players on offense.*  This year, they realized that their only decent offensive lineman was Joel Bitonio after neglecting the position in the draft for the prior five years.  So their two big offseason moves were along the offensive line, drafting Jedrick Willis Jr. at number 10 and signing Not Taylor Lewan from the Titans.  By the way, “Not Taylor Lewan” is a compliment– that guy is a shithead.  No clue how this is going to turn out; Top 10 linemen have the same bust rate as any other position, and Jack Conklin strikes me as a player who could either blossom or wilt when changing teams.

They did win the Austin Hooper sweepstakes, but this in turn caused David Njoku to demand a ticket out of town.  Why it took a big free-agent signing at his position for Njoku to realize he needed to get the fuck out of Cleveland is unclear.  Cleveland has thusfar resisted his request, but if they start 1-3 I anticipate they will ship him out to the Patriots for an old can of tennis balls with one missing.

*Fuck the nomenclature. Holding off 300 pounds of charging defensive lineman so that your quarterback doesn’t get his head crushed into paste on every single snap is at least as much of a skill as anything else on the football field.

The defense, which was league-average in almost every category last year, got more average.  Adrian Clayborn can’t be your big acquisition.  They also added a bunch of safeties, including strong safeties Andrew Sendejo and Archduke Karl Joseph.  Guess they miss Jabril Peppers after all.

Overall, the biggest changes were on the sidelines.  After Farmer Freddie became the latest Browns One Year Wonder and John Dorsey packed up, Haslam brought in a new crop of victims for his Sideline Snuff Film series.  The Browns hired Kevin Stefanski from the Vikings, whose sole outward accomplishment was making Case Keenum look like an NFL starter for 15 games as quarterbacks coach.

Which, I admit, is a hell of a trick.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Keenum is now QB2 in CLE.  Stefanski brought on Alex Van Pelt as offensive coordinator, in an apparent bid to recreate the Buffalo Bills Backup Quarterback magic that Philly and Indianapolis found with Frank Reich.  Van Pelt previously served as the Bills offensive coordinator in 2009, not coincidentally Dick Jauron’s final ignominious season.  Joe Woods, who managed to not completely fuck up Denver’s defense after Wade Phillips left, is their defensive coordinator.

Finally, they brought in 32 year old Andrew Berry as their GM.  Berry is presumably a Numbers Person, having graduated from Harvard with a bachelors in economics and a masters in computer science.  At age 32, he is the youngest NFL GM in history.  He is also a minority, representing the sole gain in diversity among the Important Positions (Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, Defensive Coordinator and General Manager).  On the downside, he was Cleveland’s vice president of player personnel from 2016-2018. On a resume, that has about the same cachet as being the iceberg spotter on the Titanic.  Also, Berry (Harvard) and Stefanski (UPenn) are almost certain to bring in Ryan Fitzpatrick, because that’s how these fucking Ivy Leaguers work.

So what’s going to happen this season?  Who the fuck knows.  And that’s not my usual semi-nihilist Life is a Series of Random and Meaningless Coincidences approach talking.  The Football Talking Heads keep saying that with the lack of a normal training camp and no preseason games, teams with continuity will have a big advantage.  If that’s true, Cleveland is well and truly screwed.  The coaching staff turned over more than a 7-11 rollerdog. The offensive line has at least two new starters.  The one area where there is continuity– Mayfield and the wideouts– couldn’t jell during an entire season last year, which suggests that they are not going to spontaneously figure it out over Zoom.

PREDICTION:

Frankly, anyone who tells you they have a good prediction for this season is selling something.  If this was a normal season, I would call it 7-9, with Baker starting to look like the face of another lost era.  But hell, no one knows what kind of shitshow these other teams will be.  Their schedule includes the flaming clown car that is the NFC East and an AFC South stretch that could be deadly or a laugher.  I’ll put it at a provisional 7-6-3, because it’s gonna be a fucking weird season.