The Browns have five more chances to avoid matching the 2008 Lions as the only teams to lose every game of a 16-game season. Browns cornerback Joe Haden guarantees that, at some point, a victory will occur.
“We have five weeks left and we’re not going winless,” Haden said Friday, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The next opportunity comes on Sunday at home against the Giants. Then comes a very late bye week, followed by a visit from the Bengals. The Browns then travel to Buffalo, host the Chargers, and finish the year with a trip to Pittsburgh.
It had seemed as if the best chance to win would come on Christmas Eve, when the Chargers come to town for a game that will have little meaning to the road team. The fact that it’s the next-to-last game for the Browns, however, could put the Chargers on extra alert, as they strive to avoid the embarrassment of being the first, and perhaps only, team to lose to the Browns.
As a result, the better opportunity may come in Week 14, when the Browns get a visit from a Bengals team that is slumping badly at 3-6-1, and that may not have receiver A.J. Green. Browns coach Hue Jackson knows the Cincinnati personnel and coaching staff very well, and the possibility that it will be the last, best chance to avoid 0-16 could be all the motivation the team needs.
How important will it be for Jackson to get a win? The Browns have said nothing to suggest that Jackson would be fired if the team doesn’t win a game, but the Browns also haven’t said with certainty and clarity that he won’t be. The reality is that it will be impossible to know how ownership will react to 0-16 until 0-16 happens.
And if 0-16 happens, the next question becomes whether the Browns will match the 1976-77 Buccaneers for post-merger futility of 26 straight losses. If that happens, the Browns would be only three games away from the 1942-45 Chicago Cardinals, who lost 29 in a row.
Five more losses in 2016 would move the Browns to 19 straight losses. The Browns then would be at the mercy of Howard Katz and his farm of supercomputers that generate the schedule. If it’s frontloaded with tough tests, Haden may eventually be guaranteeing that the Browns won’t lose 26 in a row. And then that they won’t lose 29 in a row.