The ‘76 Seahawks had it easy. An expansion pool full of experienced veterans, no salary cap to manage and less competition from the rest of the league.
If only the 1999 Browns could have been so lucky.
Despite having top-three picks in five of their first eight drafts after the 1999 expansion, the new-school Browns have been buried at the bottom of the NFL for almost their entire existence. The only team that has won less games than Cleveland’s 33 over the past seven seasons is Houston, which came into the league in 2001 and has just 24 wins.
Cleveland and Houston have a combined record of 64-143 — good for a .309 winning percentage — and one postseason appearance since coming in as expansion teams.
Expansion just ain’t as much fun as it used to be. The Seahawks had a winning record by their third season, while fellow ‘76 expansion team Tampa Bay won the NFC Central that year. Heck, it took 1995 expansion teams Carolina and Jacksonville just two seasons to get to their respective conference championship games.
The most obvious reasons for the slow boats out of Cleveland and Houston have been rule changes. The success of the Panthers and Jaguars caused the league to make some alterations, the most notable of which was a rule that forbid the 1999 Browns from using more than 38 percent of their overall salary cap on veterans taken in the expansion draft.
So while Jacksonville came out of its expansion draft with players like quarterback Steve Beuerlein and wide receiver Willie Jackson, Cleveland’s top three picks were Jim Pyne, Hurvin McCormack and Scott Rehberg. Houston went a different route in spending $14 million of its allotted money on lineman Tony Boselli and cornerback Aaron Glenn, while using whatever was left over for guys like Matt Stevens, Sean McDermott and former Washington Husky Jabari Issa.
Of course, most of the Browns’ problems have been their own doing. Twice, they’ve had the No. 1 overall draft pick. Those selections resulted in two busts: quarterback Tim Couch and defensive end Courtney Brown. Defensive tackle Gerard Warren was the third overall pick in 2001, but he lasted just four seasons in Cleveland. No. 16 overall pick William Green, a running back who was taken ahead of T.J. Duckett, Clinton Portis and Brian Westbrook in 2002, is already out of the league.
As Browns coach Romeo Crennel said this week: “It’s hard to build when you don’t have any players.”
Of course, things are looking up for the Browns these days. With a 4-3 record — and back-to-back wins for the first time since 2003 — Cleveland has the rare opportunity to get back to the postseason. The Browns, who play the Seahawks on Sunday, are one game behind Pittsburgh in the AFC North and in the thick of the race for a wild-card berth.
“For the media people and the fans, they’re all excited,” Crennel said this week. “But I know that, hey, you’re 4-3, you haven’t really done anything yet. You still have nine games to play.”
That cautious nature is typical of football coaches, but it’s also got something to do with the town’s recent history. The Browns have played just one playoff game since the original franchise moved to Baltimore in 1996, so people have had their hearts broken before. Even the city’s other teams, the successful ones like the NBA’s Cavaliers and baseball’s Indians, haven’t been able to bring home the hardware.
The city has one of the longest championship droughts in sports, with the Browns’ 1964 NFL title marking the last time a major professional team won the whole shebang.
But lately, Browns fans aren’t as interested in championships as they are in progress.
Maybe one day, the Cleveland Browns will stop looking like an expansion team and start looking like a contender. The NFL made darned sure that the Browns wouldn’t be a contender anytime soon.
Scott Johnson is The Herald’s pro football writer.
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