The next person who asks me if I’m disappointed that Mike Holmgren was run out of town on a rail by Jimmy Haslam before Holmgren could ‘finish the job he was hired to do’ runs a pretty solid chance of getting punched in the face. I’m not disappointed in anything other than the fact that Mike Holmgren didn’t have the class or decency to quit accepting a salary when he quit actually giving a damn about his job which, as far as I can tell, was before he actually took it.

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The Jimmy Haslam era as Cleveland Browns owner officially began this week with a unanimous vote by the rest of the NFL owners to approve Haslam’s purchase of the team from Randy Lerner.

“It’s obviously, a very exciting day for our family and I guess like a lot of families, it’s one that we have dreamed about for a long, long time,” Haslam said in his first press conference as owner. “What we’ve come to understand since Aug. 3 when we were introduced in Berea is that’s it’s made even more special by the fact that it’s the Cleveland Browns.

“I had always heard what a great football town and football area Cleveland and Northeast Ohio is, but what we’ve experienced since Aug. 3 has been nothing short of phenomenal. This is truly one of the great, iconic NFL brands and if you think back to Paul Brown and of course arguably the greatest NFL player of all time, Jim Brown, it’s a very special place.

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As we struggle to survive another season with the new-era Browns, one way we can try to get through it (besides alcohol or heavy medication) is to look back at the best individual weeks of the Browns’ new era to remember times in recent memory when this particular week didn’t suck.

Occasionally, from the outer reaches of the cosmos, there comes an NFL game so illogical it physically hurts to try to make sense of it.

Week 7 of the 2010 season provided one of these instances. And not surprisingly, the Cleveland Browns were involved.

True, there’s a high level of absurdity in any Browns’ win, but this one stands out as peculiar enough to warrant a congressional investigation. For on this particular Sunday, the Browns took a break from tumbling further into their do-it-yourself abyss to stand up and slobberknock the Super Bowl champs.

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It was definitely in play longer than it needed to be.  We wondered if the next victory would come courtesy of the Cavaliers or the Browns, and that’s certainly a question that we can entertain again since the NBA season tips off in Cleveland in a few weeks.  What’s worse than that is considering whether Terry Francona would lead a Cleveland team to victory before Pat Shurmur.  No one expected much from the Browns this year; we all hoped for a few wins, but I doubt anyone would have bet their life on the Browns winning at least one.

For those who did bet their lives, the governor called in with a reprieve for them by sending reinforcements from the southern part of the state to spare the NFL’s Northeast Ohio chapter the type of futility that was seen on other shores of Lake Erie not long ago.  This was not the closest call the Browns have had with the infamy of a Blutarsky, but we almost would have been more willing to accept it from the 1999 team in their inaugural Expansion year.  John McKay’s 1976 Bucs had that going for them; Rod Marinelli’s 2008 Detroit Lions did not.

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