Inferno (Or, Your 2017 Browns Preview)

O, speak to me, o Muse! Please take my mind
And offer me assistance for this tale.
Through you, I hope to join ven’rable kind.

I tell of city not of fair, but fail,
And cursed, it seemed, ’til King reclaimed his throne
And for a shining moment, did prevail.

With title claimed, then lost, the town was shown
They could actually have teams that were nice
And not just the one that has always blown.

Though they play based- and baskets-, they suffice,
These Cavalier men and the still-named Tribe,
But their distraction still comes at a price.

…I’ve digressed just a bit. What kind of scribe
Am I to veer off from my topic? It
Seems I’m stalling from what I must describe.

I came across a sad-sacked camp, snakebit
From years, nay, decades of incompetence,
With naught improving—Know what? Fuck this shit.

It’s the Browns, for Christ’s sake. The Cleveland Browns. They don’t deserve poetry, let alone terza freakin’ rima a la Dante, because they’re the Cleveland Browns. They haven’t made the playoffs in 14 years, haven’t won a playoff game since the ’94 season, which was the previous iteration of the Browns. So this Browns incarnation is 0-for-their-re-existence.

Yeah, the Cavs won the first championship in the city since 1964 two summers ago, and the [Logo Redacted by MLB]s went to extra innings of Game 7 in the World Series last year before unlocking the Seventh Seal and setting humanity’s demise into motion by losing to the Small Bears, but that doesn’t mean that the Browns will magically become good. If it does, Apocalypse and Ragnarok will point fingers at the other and say it wasn’t them.

Their quarterback is the one and only Brock Lobster Osweiler—well, for now, unless they make good on their original intentions to release him, which they said they were going to do when they traded for him, a 2nd-rounder, and a 6th-round for a 4th-rounder (no, I didn’t understand any part of that deal either)—with fewer offensive weapons than he had in either Denver or… Houston (that’s what the news says), because Josh Gordon is still suspended (he’s going to be permanently suspended, right?) for his relationship with the stickiest of the icky. Even when (if) he’s reinstated he’s gonna be so behind from being out of the game for so long, right? Also from being on the Browns. Hell, fewer weapons than last year on the Browns, considering Terrelle Pryor is in Washington and Gary Barnidge is… nowhere, actually, he remains a free agent. Maybe eventually the QB’ll be Kizer Soze? If that makes anyone who roots for the Browns feel better. Probably not, though.

The defense looks a little better than the offense with the drafting of Myles Garrett and Jabrill Peppers in the first round and picking up Jets safety Calvin Pryor via trade, but is doomed to have nothing nice ever happened to them because the coordinator is Gregggggggg…ggg Williams, he of the Bountygate scandal. So it’s like saying Chernobyl now looks better than Dresden at the end of the Second World War because at least they’ve almost finished the dome over the reactor, and shit’s not currently on fire. Although considering the stadium, I may have spoke too soon about things not currently on fire.

Either way, I apologize to the cities of Chernobyl and Dresden, at least one of which is a lovely place to visit nowadays, or so I’ve heard. Anyway, where was I?

…A predilection for the campaign hence?
I came upon the training field and peered,
Then saw the words upon the entrance fence:

ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

(Prediction: 2-14. Possibly 1-15. Not 0-16, because like last year the Browns would find a way to not have that ignominy [like winning your only game after fans already have started planning an 0-16 parade] and have this year just be bad but not historically bad. I’d go over the schedule, but it doesn’t really matter.)