The first rule of Tank Club is don’t talk about Tank Club. And the Browns never talk about Tank Club.
But they seem to know how to tank.
Last decade, they had a four-year plan that paid bonuses based on the stockpiling of future draft picks and the carryover of cap dollars. Former Browns coach Hue Jackson filed a grievance over it, because he was fired when the plan to de-prioritizing winning, you know, worked.
Indeed it did. In 2017 and 2018, the Browns had the first overall pick in the draft.
In resolving Jackson’s grievance, Commissioner Roger Goodell found no evidence that the four-year plan “encouraged losses or discouraged winning to improve the club’s draft position.”
As we said at the time, Goodell very easily could have found otherwise. Obviously, paying bonuses based on not spending cap dollars and/or trading good players or future draft picks incentivizes something other than winning in the current year. But it wouldn’t be good for the league to admit that teams are trying not to win games in an age of legalized gambling, where wagers presume that all teams are trying to win.
Fast forward to right now, and the Browns seem to be doing it again. Not by trading as many current players as possible for future picks (which they absolutely should have done, given the cash and cap commitment to quarterback Deshaun Watson) but by losing games in an effort to get the highest picks in the seven rounds of the 2025 draft. (They ultimately traded only linebacker Za’Darius Smith to the Lions and receiver Amari Cooper to the Bills.)
With another $92 million owed to Watson, they need young, good, and cheap players. The higher the draft picks in 2025, the better the player. In theory.
That’s the only way to explain the decision to stubbornly stick with Watson until his Achilles tendon snapped — or to bench Jameis Winston for Dorian Thompson-Robinson and, more recently, Bailey Zappe.
If the goal is to win, the quarterback should be Winston.
But the Browns seemingly don’t want to win. Not in the usual way. For them, losing now leads to winning later, with better and cheaper ingredients for two more years of chicken salad, thanks to the worst trade-and-sign in NFL history.
Again, they’ll never admit it. And they’ll never provide hard facts to support it.
Unless, of course, they bring back the plan that pays bonuses for stockpiling draft picks and pushing cap dollars into future years.
