As we struggle to survive another season with the new-era Browns, one way we can try to get through it (besides alcohol and 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.

Oftentimes, in the aftermath of complete disaster brought on by a series of massive miscalculations, it’s fascinating to look back at those fleeting moments just before everything began to fall apart and try to understand why it was expected to work.

You can envision the optimism and energy of the Confederate army at Gettysburg right before storming out of the woods for Pickett’s Charge. Or exactly what John McCain’s campaign staffers were thinking when they advised him to go with Sarah Palin.

For the new Browns, that moment was Week 3 of the 2000 season. For that one afternoon, drunk off their asses with false optimism, they could see a bright future lying just over the horizon. As it turned out, in the history of wrongness, this expectation remains legendary.

But even still, that one moment prior to the shit hitting the fan was pretty spectacular.

It was clear in the first two weeks of the season that notable progress had been made following the 2-14 campaign of 1999. The Browns had hung in with a powerful Jacksonville team on opening day before running out of gas, then dominated the Bengals the following week in the first-ever game at Paul Brown Stadium. Step-by-step, it appeared the Browns were getting there. 

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So it’s after the latest Browns- Bengals game, and I am sitting here with a slight hangover.

Nah, I haven’t had a drop of alcohol. Back in the day, I sure did. I dialed it down on Browns’ game day to about one beer per quarter once the kids were born (sitting here on the north side of 50, that sounds like a lot). But after a Browns loss, the early onset hangovers on Sunday night just crushed me. The most relaxing portion of many of my weekends was wrecked.

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These damn kids.  If it's not one thing, it's another.

Your rookie QB and RB play a zillion times better, but your pass defense goes straight to H-E-double hockey sticks, so the team loses another close one for completely polar opposite reasons.

In the entire Paddy O'Shurmur era, it is difficult to recall a game where all 3 phases of the team played well at the same time.  Generally, one or two play well enough to keep the game from being a blowout, but they seldom play well enough as a Team to even get a win, much less impress.

However, this loss is being viewed in a MUCH more positive light than last week's, likely due to the incredibly improved play from the two 1st Round (hopefully) "Franchise" players, Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden.

So what if our #3 and #4 CB's got burned repeatedly?  So what if the punt team was left flailing about like a bunch of eels on blacktop?  Maybe we FINALLY have answers at KEY offensive positions!

That, at least, is the general thinking behind the general positivism.

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The Cleveland Browns 2.0 haven't exactly been a NFL franchise as much as a NFL experiment. Like the L.A. Clippers in the NBA or the Kansas City Royals in Major League Baseball, the Browns have become that team, the one where we see how many times it can change every ingredient in the recipe and still produce the same miserable stew week after week, year after year.

It's worked pretty well for the last 13 years. The Browns have had more starts and restarts, system failures and reboots, new blood and tired blood in the last 13 or so years then most franchises go through in 50 years, no discernible progress being the given. The last time the Pittsburgh Steelers, for example, had a major change in course was when Bill Cowher retired (after winning a Super Bowl) and the Rooney family hired Mike Tomlin to fill his shoes 7 years ago. As a measure of the distance between the two franchises, Browns fans still dream of hiring Cowher.

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