The Browns’ decade of sadness, a year-by-year breakdown of the 2010s

Ten years, 117 losses, 17 starting quarterbacks, zero winning seasons.

Welcome to the Browns’ decade of sadness. Cleveland played host to the league’s most miserable franchise, one that managed to shatter expectations both low and high.

But while the Browns were terrible, each season was a unique snowflake in the 2010s crap blizzard that descended upon northeastern Ohio. Cleveland was subject to a decade in which even its peaks became woefully depressing. And just when the Browns appeared to be turning a corner, the football gods led them off the cliff again like a state full of Wile E. Coyotes.

How did we get here? Let’s examine every straight line and gently listing curve that led the Browns from very bad to awful and then back to very bad over the past decade, year by year.

Starting quarterbacks added to the jersey of shame (and their record as a starter): Colt McCoy (2-6), Jake Delhomme (2-2), Seneca Wallace (1-3)

Eric Mangini, who once parlayed his wunderkind head coaching success into a cameo role on The Sopranos, plummeted out of the NFL’s coaching stratosphere after getting fired by Cleveland. He spent just three of the last nine years on an NFL sideline. A stint in San Francisco ended with his dismissal from a club eager to hand the reins to Chip Kelly, which, eeeesh.

There’s no evidence to suggest coaching the Browns sapped his will to coach ... but that certainly seems like the most likely scenario. Several coaches have taken the risk of helming the Browns. Few have ever been as irreparably damaged as Mangini was. And he might be the best coach Cleveland had this decade.

Starting quarterbacks: McCoy (4-9), Wallace (0-3)

Hillis was a surprising high point in Cleveland’s 2010. The 2008 seventh-round pick, a throw-in to Denver’s trade offer for Brady Quinn (ew), emerged as the Browns’ top runner in an 1,177-yard, 11-touchdown campaign. That led him to the top of EA’s fan vote for the following year’s Madden cover, and the Cleveland back immediately lent credence to the game’s vaunted curse.

Hillis and his 4.64 40 time couldn’t baffle defenses for long. He ran for just 587 yards and 3.6 yards per carry for a four-win Browns team in 2011. Cleveland declined to offer him a contract for 2012. It had better (read: much worse) plans in mind for its tailback spot.

Starting quarterbacks: Weeden (5-10), Thaddeus Lewis (0-1)

Richardson quickly became Exhibit A in the case against taking running backs in the first five picks of the NFL Draft. While he ran for 11 touchdowns as a rookie, he averaged just 3.5 yards per carry as a Brown before being traded to the Colts, somehow in exchange for a first-round pick (which was quickly squandered, keep reading). He averaged 3.1 yards per carry in 1.5 seasons in Indianapolis and was out of the league by 2015.

Weeden, a sprightly 29-year-old rookie, was drafted before quarterbacks Russell Wilson, Nick Foles, and Kirk Cousins. He was selected with a pick Cleveland acquired when it traded down in the 2011 draft to allow the Falcons to select Julio Jones. This turned out to be a wise decision for Atlanta.

Weeden rolled up a career 31:30 TD:INT ratio and a 6-19 record as a starter. Like Richardson, he was wiped clean from the Browns’ roster before the 2014 season.

Mitchell Schwartz, the best player from the 2012 draft class, played four forgettable seasons as a starter at right tackle in Cleveland. The Browns made no discernible effort to re-sign him in 2016 and he’s since gone on to have three straight All-Pro seasons with the Chiefs.

Starting quarterbacks: Weeden (0-5), Jason Campbell (1-7), Brian Hoyer (3-0)

Here are all six quarterbacks who’ve started at least 10 games for the Browns since 2010.

Hoyer is the only one with a winning record. He’s the only one who isn’t at least five games under .500 as a starter. He started 13 fewer games than Mayfield and still had one more fourth-quarter comeback than the franchise’s No. 1 pick of 2018.

The stats only tell part of the story, but from a purely win/loss scenario Hoyer was the most successful passer the Browns had this decade. This is especially notable, because he wasn’t a very good quarterback in any typical definition of the word. Also, good lord, this table. If QB stats were wines, this would be a warm bottle of Night Train Express.

Starting quarterbacks: Hoyer (7-6), Manziel (0-2), Connor Shaw (0-1)

Holy crap holy crap holy crap it happened again! Cleveland’s two first-round players in 2014 would be out of the league by the end of 2016. The Browns traded up one spot from No. 9 to No. 8 in order to select Gilbert. He lasted two years in Ohio before being traded to the Steelers and would make three starts in three years as a pro. Anthony Barr, the player Minnesota chose one selection later, made four straight Pro Bowls between 2015 and 2018.

Gilbert’s fading star is nothing compared to Manziel’s, however. The Heisman Trophy winner, drafted using the assets acquired in the aforementioned Richardson deal, was out of Cleveland after two seasons and two wins as a starting QB. Off-field issues swirled around the mercurial dual-threat passer, who was released by the team in 2016.

He’d take his talents up north to Canada before being effectively barred by the CFL. No one’s quite sure if he’ll show up in Vince McMahon’s XFL reboot in 2020, but given Oliver Luck’s public trashing of the former Aggie, (and McMahon’s “no arrests” rule for active players) it appears unlikely.

Starting quarterbacks: Manziel (2-4), Josh McCown (1-7), Austin Davis (0-2)

The Browns won three games, ranked 29th in the league in points allowed and 30th in points scored. Despite all that, there was only one truly disappointing loss on the team’s resume (to the 5-11 Ravens).

Instead, this year’s sigil of Browns misery was the team’s top skill player. Barnidge, a not-especially-athletic 6’6 tight end, had just 44 career receptions in his seven seasons in the league prior to 2015. Then, thanks to a WR/TE corps led by Travis Benjamin, Brian Hartline, and, uh, Jim Dray, Barnidge shot up to the top of the progression tree for whichever underwhelming quarterback happened to be in charge that week.

Barnidge tied for the team lead in targets (alongside Benjamin at 125) and led the team in receptions (79), receiving yards (1,043), and touchdowns (nine). His touchdown count would drop down to two the following year, and then he’d be released in 2017. He hasn’t played an NFL game since.

Starting quarterbacks: McCown (0-3), Cody Kessler (0-8), Robert Griffin III (1-4)

Jimmy Haslam, who purchased the Browns in 2012, fired Mike Pettine after the 2015 season (his 10 wins in Cleveland tie him for the franchise lead since 2008 with Mangini). He proved he was capable of making extremely Browns decisions by hiring away Marvin Lewis’ — the Bengals coach with the 0-7 postseason record — top assistant, Hue Jackson.

The former Cincinnati offensive coordinator oversaw a unit that scored 13 points or fewer eight times in his debut season. His offense had only three more touchdowns (28) than turnovers (25). He went 1-15 in 2016 and somehow got WORSE the following year.

Starting quarterbacks: DeShone Kizer (0-15), Kevin Hogan (0-1)

Only two teams in NFL history have ever gone 0-16. Jackson’s Browns joined the 2008 Lions by virtue of losses to the five-win Jets, four-win Colts, four-win Texans, and five-win Bears. Cleveland’s offense scored just 14.6 points per game.

That group had 15 more turnovers than touchdowns. Ricardo Louis was the team’s most accomplished wide receiver; he finished the year with 27 catches, 357 yards and, fittingly, zero touchdowns.

Browns fans, acutely aware this may be the closest they’d get to an accomplishment in their lifetimes, threw a parade to immortalize their epic dive into failure. Jackson, retained after the season despite his 1-31 record, did not attend.

During all this, Joe Thomas — future Hall of Famer and 10-time All-Pro — played his 10,000th consecutive snap. He’d suffer a season-ending triceps injury 363 snaps later. Having seen both the alpha (10 wins as a rookie) and omega (the aforementioned zero wins of 2017) of the Browns, he opted for retirement at age 33.

Starting quarterbacks: Tyrod Taylor (1-1-1), Baker Mayfield (6-7)

Jackson’s firing — after 2.5 seasons and a 3-36-1 record — gave way for Kitchens’ rapid ascension. He had never held down a job higher than quarterbacks coach in nearly two decades as an assistant, but his promotion to interim offensive coordinator helped Baker Mayfield realize his potential. A 5-3 finish had the Browns scraping a .500 record for the first time since 2007 (they’d fall just short at 7-8-1).

That was enough to convince Haslam to roll the dice and promote Kitchens to the top spot based on eight solid weeks of temporary coordinator excellence. All this created just enough hope to get Browns fans stuck in a vortex of their own (finally well-placed!) hype. Kitchens would spend the next season overseeing the league’s least disciplined team (see below) while crushing the hopes and dreams of any Cleveland fan foolish enough to have them in the first place.

He’d be fired after 2019’s disappointing campaign. The Browns went through seven coaches in the 2010s, including two that lasted only a single year (Kitchens, Rob Chudzinski) and interim coach Gregg Williams. None finished with more than 10 wins.

Starting quarterbacks: Mayfield (6-10)

Mayfield came into 2019 with MVP hype and suddenly devolved into late-stage Philip Rivers. Kitchens’ team averaged more than eight penalties per home game before he was fired. Both Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry publicly questioned the team’s decision-making on the sideline.

The Browns went from AFC North frontrunner to a spot in the draft’s top 10. That’s not what you’re going to remember from this season, however. Garrett’s primetime bashing of Rudolph is.

There it is. There’s your decade of Browns football in one clip. An act of ugliness ultimately rendered pointless. The team’s best defensive player, in the midst of a possible (but unlikely) postseason run, hanging up his cleats for the season because he attacked a rival quarterback with his own helmet.

In terms of Cleveland schadenfreude, that might be considered a high note. And, in case that wasn’t enough, here’s your final quarterback count.

Mayfield will return for year three with Beckham, Landry, an eventually reinstated Garrett, and a brand new head coach in 2020.

Go Browns.