Why do things so often go so wrong for the Cleveland Browns?

A veteran sports columnist explain 25 years of disappointment with rare insight and insider details: Losing seasons, draft busts, injuries, and an endless search for a starting quarterback (40 in all!)—including Deshaun Watson, the most divisive and disastrous deal in the team’s history.

Being a Cleveland Browns fan means always having more questions than answers. For 25 years — since the return of the franchise in 1999 — Browns fans have been more consistently frustrated, befuddled, and disappointed by their team than any other fans in pro sports.

Why do things so often go so wrong for the Browns?

Sports columnist Terry Pluto (cleveland.com / The Plain Dealer) provides answers in this sequel to his previous books False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail and Browns Blues.

With insight and insider details gained from decades covering the team, Pluto focuses here on 2014 to 2024 but also looks back with fresh insight on earlier years of the new franchise: The drafts, the deals, the coaching and front-office changes … the onfield disappointments … rare bright spots and moments of optimism. Above all there was the ongoing, fruitless, endless search for the right starting quarterback — from Tim Couch to Johnny Manziel to Baker Mayfield (and so many others!) …

And then Deshaun Watson came to town — in one of the most disruptive and disastrous deals in the team’s history …

This book explains what happened.

“Browns fans deserved better,” Pluto says.

Terry Pluto is a sports columnist for The Plain Dealer / Cleveland.com and author of more than 30 books. He was named Best Sports Columnist in the National Headliner Awards in 2020 and has been Ohio Sportswriter of the Year 11 times. He broadcasts weekly sports commentaries with Amanda Rabinowitz on WKSU and other Northeast Ohio NPR stations. He also is heard a few times each week on WTAM, including Browns pregame shows.