The Browns, being the Browns

 I don't know what the good Lord has against Paul Brown. I truly don't.

Maybe Paul declined to doff his signature fedora at the pearly gates, thinking it was beneath his station.

 Maybe God thought he was Paul Brown, and was bummed when the genuine article showed up.

Something, anyway, must explain why the football team Brown founded, the Cleveland Browns, have such a talent for tripping over their own feet there's even a name for it now -- i.e., the Browns, eternally Brownsing it up.

Which brings us to their latest whatever-this-is.

It's not so much that the Browns decided to give a man facing 22 civil suits for sexual assault $230 million for the next five years. Lots of other folks were lining up to give Deshaun Watson that sort of mad money, too. This is because Deshaun Watson, in addition to allegedly being good at fondling massage therapists, is a damn good quarterback -- maybe good enough to get a team to the Super Bowl.

In the NFL, that supersedes everything, despite all the league's fancy words about how much they respect women and blah-blah-blah. Then, in mid-declaration, a Deshaun Watson becomes available, and suddenly it's "We stand by women who've been assaul- Ooh, look! A quarterback!"

Signing that quarterback isn't what makes the Browns, the Browns, in other words. It's what led up to it.

See, the Browns were all in on Watson and ready to deal their incumbent quarterback, Baker Mayfield, who was fine with that. Then Watson suddenly cooled on Cleveland, and the Browns said, "Nah, sorry, Baker, we're keeping you here." 

After which Watson changed his mind, for the aforementioned 230 million reasons. And the Browns changed their minds, again, vis-a-vis Mayfield.

If you're having trouble keeping all of that straight, here's the basic transcript:

BROWNS: "Baker, we don't want you anymore, 'cause we're getting someone better. So we're gonna trade you."

MAYFIELD: "OK."

BROWNS: "Wait, what? We're not getting someone better?"

(Long pause)

BROWNS: "Baker, it turns out we're NOT gonna trade you after all."

MAYFIELD (no doubt rolling his eyes): "Whatever."

BROWNS: "Wait, now we are getting someone better? Baker, it looks like we're gonna trade you after all."

MAYFIELD: "The hell?? What kind of circus are you people running here?"

A rhetorical question, no doubt, because Mayfield already knows what kind of circus they're running.

A very Browns circus.