Browns-Lions: The Worst Game of the Year

Right now, there are teams of interns at ESPN crawling through stat books and old footage to try and come up with games as bad as this contest is going to be.

Not to say this matchup can’t be a good game, but the possibility of that is narrow at best. Both teams have exactly one win a piece, and the only winner will be the loser because they’ll probably end up with the higher draft pick.

Look for lots of packages on pre-game tomorrow about games played between winless or one-win teams over the past few decades. It should make for great television.

This week of football has been so dreadful to think about, I speculated about LeBron James and other athletes switching sports .

If someone really wants to sit down and compare statistics between the two teams, the word “futility” probably doesn’t mean much to that person. Or, at the very least, that person has a masochistic streak a mile wide.

The only stat worth looking at between the two teams is the number of offensive touchdowns each unit has scored. The Browns have scored three whole touchdowns on offense this year, while Detroit’s offense has 13, according to NFL.com.

By that math alone, Detroit will win just because their offense appears capable of putting points on the board. So even though the Lions have just as many losses this year as the Browns, they actually cross the goal line every now and then in the process.

Defensively, Rob Ryan has put some interesting formations on the field and the unit has played some good football. However, the unit can’t seem to string together four good quarters in a row, and thus they’re ranked last in the league.

Rookie quarterback Matthew Stafford should be easier to handle than Brett Favre, so don’t expect an offensive explosion. However, touchdowns will be scored, this won’t be a 6-3 repeat of the Buffalo game.

Once again, the only real hope the Browns have of putting any kind of points on the board is Joshua Cribbs. According to Cribbs’ agent, he’ll be suiting up and playing. That’s a welcome relief after the hit he took on Monday night.

As for head coach Eric Mangini, losing to Detroit could be the final nail in his coffin. Owner Randy Lerner doesn’t like firing coaches in the middle of the season, but if the Browns lose, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Mangini is shown the door.

If Mangini goes, good riddance to him. It’s become apparent over the last few weeks that all his talk of “the process” has been just that–talk.

To Mangini's credit, he talks a real good game plan and lays out a good framework for building a successful organization. However, he’s proven that all that talk means nothing if you can’t execute the plan, and he hasn't executed that plan well at all.

Instead, it seems that all Mangini really did is bring all the bad aspects of the Bill Belichik coaching experience back to Cleveland with none of the winning.

As talentless as this team may be, it shouldn’t be this bad. It takes effort to be this terrible and to be blown out of games week after week. Losing like this doesn’t happen by accident.

With that in mind, look for a Detroit win: Lions 24, Browns 6