The Top Five Reasons Cleveland Browns Fans Are in Full Meltdown Mode

Cleveland fans are an interesting lot. We are fiercely loyal and completely unforgiving at the same time.

If a team and/or coach gives us something to believe in, we'll latch onto them and elevate them to God-like status. Spit in our face or talk down to us, you have no chance. The offender may as well get out while the gettin' is good.

The decision to start Derek Anderson over Brady Quinn elicited knee-jerk responses from the collective fanbase. Of course, a lot of the decisions made by head coach Eric Mangini have elicited knee-jerk reactions from the fans.

The last week has been particularly drama-filled as the Browns were absolutely crushed by Baltimore in a game so devoid of passion from the Cleveland players, it's created an onslaught of columns around the Internet about how bad a coach Mangini is, and whether or not the team quit.

But before anyone decides to call Cleveland fans "bad," remember two things: This fanbase is completely frustrated by the present situation due to the recent multiple failures of the past, and we see no hope in sight of this rudderless stink ending any time soon.

So here are five good reasons why Cleveland Browns fans already have gone into full meltdown mode.

5. The Browns Can't Find the End Zone

You know why I have a picture of the Ohio State Buckeyes scoring a touchdown in Cleveland Browns Stadium?

Because the Buckeyes have had an easier time of finding it than the Browns have had.

Other than a garbage time touchdown versus the Vikings in Week One, the Browns haven't scored a meaningful touchdown since the Bush Administration.

The carousel of quarterbacks last season, which appears to be continuing this season, hasn't helped, but neither has Brady Quinn's increasingly cautious play, or Derek Anderson's "throw it into triple coverage and hope for the best" mentality.

Scoring a touchdown is something even bad teams are able to do, even if it's by accident, yet the Browns always seem to settle for the field goal.

When the Browns are down by 30 in the fourth quarter and settle for the field goal as some sort of "moral victory" or to make it a "three-score game" with four minutes left, the average Browns fan wants to march down on the field and punch a coach in the face.

I'm not advocating that, but I would purchase tickets if the team had a raffle.

Fans know some of the burden for this failure is on coaching, which makes it all that much more frustrating, because we're all armchair coaches on Sunday.

4. Our Offensive Coordinator Does Not Understand His Job Description

This picture seems to say, "We only need to go three yards."

Of course, the problem is it's 3rd-and-27.

During offensive coordinator Brian Daboll's short tenure with the Browns, he's called for a backwards pass on 3rd-and-long, run the Wildcat formation on the two-yard line twice with the exact same negative result, and gone for the quarterback sneak on 1st-and-10 after his running back had just gained 17 yards.

While Brady Quinn's play has been awful, Daboll's play calling has been just as bad and is very much part of the reason Quinn is on the sidelines right now. His lack of creativity has resulted in Quinn being unable to realize his talent.

For anyone who thinks Derek Anderson is going to somehow magically change this, good luck with that. I really hope I eat those words on Sunday, but since the offense didn't really look all that different when Anderson came in last week, I doubt it.

I know Daboll is a rookie coordinator, but his offense is so bad, I'm not sure opposing teams will even bother to watch tape anymore this season.

When Quinn is in, they cover Edwards and pressure the line, resulting in a sack or a checkdown throw for minimal gain.

With Anderson in, you cover Edwards and wait to intercept the ball.

Daboll and Mangini have not used Joshua Cribbs for anything more than short, inside routes. Rookies Mohamed Massaquoi and Brian Robiskie have barely seen the field, with Robiskie inactive the last two weeks.

If I were an opposing defensive coordinator, I've got nothing to do all week because I could plug in high school kids to do the job, and they'd probably succeed just as well.

Since most Browns fans understand you have to score touchdowns to win, it's incredibly frustrating to watch the guy in charge of our offense seemingly do everything in his power to not score.

3. A Roster Turnover that Only Made the Team Worse

Mangini turned over about half the roster going into this season. Last year's team went 4-12. So you'd think the team would look different and show some progress, right?

Wrong.

Through three weeks this year, this team, if anything, has looked even worse than last year's team. That team quit halfway through the season and limped into the offseason hoping for a new direction.

Well, the new direction already appears to be turning around and heading back where it came from because this team definitely quit last Sunday in Baltimore.

Mangini is dangerously close to losing this team, if he hasn't already. Whatever he's selling, this team quit buying about halftime in Baltimore.

Sudden quarterback changes that defy earlier public statements can do that to a team.

It's been said before but I'll repeat it here because it's one of the most important aspects of being a head coach: The team does not have to like you, but they do HAVE to respect you.

This team not only doesn't like Mangini, but it now appears they have zero respect for him in the wake of the flip-flop quarterback situation, and that's dangerous.

It doesn't matter if you have a well-disciplined team if it goes 0-16. You can't build continuity if the best players are hitting free agency and are telling their agents, "Anywhere but here."

Once again, Browns fans see this and are completely bent out of shape about it. Mangini was an unlikeable scumbag in New York. So far, it's no different here.

I'm not actually on the "Fire Mangini" bandwagon yet, but I am looking at the brochures and considering booking a seat if things don't change significantly by the Bye Week.

All his roster decisions seem to have backfired as his free agent signings on the offensive line made it worse, his defensive signings and tradings have produced nothing, and his draft decisions three weeks in look like a complete bust.

Mangini needs more time, but the results speak for themselves. Cleveland fans know what bad looks like, and this team looks very bad.

2. An Owner Who Doesn't Appear to Care

Owner Randy Lerner inherited the Cleveland Browns from his father, Al, upon Al's death in 2004.

Prior to his father's death, Randy never expressed any interest in the team, having become enamored of English Premier League Football (Soccer to us Americans).

Actions speak louder than words, and since Lerner rarely speaks in public, his actions, or lack thereof, speak volumes.

While Lerner has said at various points how devoid of talent the organization was in the front office area when he took over, he doesn't appear to have done much to correct that. He let former general manager Phil Savage and head coach Romeo Crennel run the franchise into the ground before he bothered to do anything about it.

He doesn't attend most games and does most of his "work" from his home in Long Island, New York.

Now, I know this is just me speaking for myself, but if I own an NFL franchise, you can bet I'm going to park myself right next to the facility and keep a personal eye on the situation.

Most everyone is glad Lerner is not a Jerry Jones-type owner, but the fans would be a lot less likely to melt down and do things like create an online petition asking Lerner to sell the team if he would just poke his head in the room every once in a while and at least LOOK like he cared.

As of right now, Cleveland fans have every reason to believe that if this failure continues for the rest of the season, Lerner will stick with this crew for at least another year because he seems to detest doing the messy little things like searching for competent front office personnel.

Last year's search lasted all of about 10 minutes, and then he was back on a plane to England to manage Aston Villa.

This lack of due diligence is a major reason why Browns fans, many of whom would lose their jobs for being so slapdash about things, lose their collective tempers very quickly.

1. A Head Coach Who Appears More Interested in Breaking Players Down than Winning Games

Head Coach Eric Mangini was hired, partly, because he promised to instill more discipline on a team so devoid of it one of its quarterbacks got decked in the face by a defensive lineman last year.

However, Mangini has been so brutal and so exacting on the little things that it appears he forgot part of his job description is to win football games.

There's no doubt this roster needed to be completely broken down and built up again. But nobody seemed to tell Mangini that the breaking down portion of his program should have stopped in Week One, when focus turns to winning games.

What has taken the field so far this season is a group of players so beaten down, they're going through the motions and playing not to get hurt by the end of the third quarter.

The defense, in particular, tends to come out of the gate strong, but is barely playing patty-cake with the running backs and wide receivers by the fourth quarter. Just watch some of those second half runs for touchdowns.

Listening to a Mangini press conference is about as mind-numbing as a ninth-grade algebra lecture. You start to wonder if Mangini even considers that the people he's dealing with are human beings.

Most head coaches who fail in their first jobs spend a few years back in the ranks of the coordinators and assistants before getting their second chance at the big chair.

Mangini didn't. He had barely a day between his firing and interview with Randy Lerner. That's not enough time to reflect on what went wrong with the first job.

And now, three weeks in, it's starting to look like he didn't learn anything.

He made one public relations blunder after another, never bothered to show contrition, and only pays lip service to the fanbase.

Note to anyone considering a head coaching job in Cleveland: We have a very smart fanbase that hates, Hates, HATES being talked down to.

Now, there's an old saying that winning cures everything, and that's true. But Mangini hasn't won anything as a head coach, and therefore hasn't earned the right to stand in judgment of all beneath him.

What Cleveland Browns fans see right now is an arrogant jerk who appears to want to instill discipline more than he wants to win games. That, more than anything else, insults and angers them.

Yet in three games, he's showed no discipline himself, going back on his quarterback choice and showing no consistency to his gametime decisions. Maybe it's time Mangini started running a few laps with everyone else.

The only way Mangini can hope to be successful in Cleveland is to apply some of his teaching techniques to himself.

And, since Derek Anderson is the starter for this week, I've got the over/under on interceptions at five. Give me your number in the comments.