When it comes to long-suffering professional sports fan bases, it’s hard to beat out the Cleveland Browns faithful.
The Browns, who have dropped their first 12 games of the NFL season, are the only winless club in the league. Cleveland's annual quarterback carousel has been kicked into overdrive in 2016, as Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown, Kevin Hogan, Charlie Whitehurst, Terrelle Pryor and Cody Kessler have all taken snaps under center.
Since the franchise returned in 1999, 26 different quarterbacks have now started for Cleveland. Yikes.
Just how bad could this Browns season be? Online sportsbook Sportsbook is offering odds on Cleveland going winless this year, as oddsmakers have tabbed the Browns with a +105 chance of finishing 0-16. Entering Week 4, those odds were available at +2000. With another setback against the Bengals in Week 14, those odds will surely shrink into minus-money.
The embarrassing 2008 Detroit Lions are the only squad to go winless in the 16-game regular season era.
With the Bengals, Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers and Pittsburgh Steelers left on the schedule, the Browns are in tough to collect a victory.
Unfortunately, the Browns’ failures are all too familiar for football fans in Northeast Ohio. The Browns have only posted two winning seasons to go along with one playoff appearance (a wild-card loss to archrival Pittsburgh in 2002) since the 1999 campaign.
Cleveland revamped its front office in the summer, bringing in analytics guru Paul DePodesta as president. Hue Jackson is a well-respected head coach, and the Browns finally have the pieces in place to properly rebuild. They aren’t reaching the light at the end of the tunnel any time soon, however, as the 2016 campaign is yet another rough one in the Factory of Sadness.
- YES +105
