Dawgs By Nature
The Cleveland Browns will close out the 2025 regular season this weekend and then will enter another offseason dominated by change.
Change is inevitable in the NFL, of course, as players retire, free agents leave and arrive, coaches move on, sometimes by their own choice, sometimes not, and a new crop of rookies come to town full of promise.
The mob is now once again screaming for change once the curtain falls on the season – change at head coach, change at general manager, change at the quarterback position. (Actually, that last one may not be happening, no matter how much it should.) And, why, oh why, won’t they change the owner?
But, as it relates to the Browns, like just about everything the franchise touches, change has not always worked out the way that team officials and fans believed it would.
Almost from the moment Randy Lerner took over as owner from his late father, fans were demanding that he sell the team. Lerner had the audacity to have a strong philanthropic side, was “distracted” by his ownership of Aston Villa in the Premier League, and “did not care” about winning.
In the fall of 2012, salvation was found when Jimmy and Dee Haslam closed on the purchase of the Browns from Lerner. A savvy businessman who knew what it took to win after spending time as a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Haslam was everything that Lerner was not, and on-field glory would soon follow.
The signs that things were not going to improve anytime soon came quickly, with the announcement that Joe Banner was coming in as CEO and, for reasons no one to this day understands, Michael Lombardi was back for a second tour of duty as general manager.
It has been mostly downhill from there:
Ownership has been the one constant in 2012, but with the Browns among the world’s most valuable franchises and a new stadium on the way in 2029, ownership is the one thing that will not change for a long time.
Fans were ready to throw a parade when the Browns replaced Sashi Brown with John Dorsey near the end of the 2017 season. Out was Brown and his “voodoo” analytics, never mind that NFL teams have run on analytics for decades; in was “football guy” Dorsey to restore an old-school grit to the modern NFL.
Not everything went as expected, however, as Dorsey:
Even though he was celebrated for his football acumen, Dorsey...
