Super Bowl Era. Franchise with closest resemblance to Browns

[LakeErieWarriors]

The season is over. Like last year and the years before that, it sucked. Now it's time for a gripping, thought provoking Cleveland Browns offseason topic. What NFL franchise has displayed a level of suck most comparable to Cleveland's own "NFL Team": The Browns? This has to be teams that began pre-1995 (sorry Jaguars), and if they were around before the Super Bowl, their pre-Super Bowl history cannot be counted. Same with the Browns. Whattya think?

[GodHatesClevelandSport]

Bengals have made the playoffs for the fourth time since 1990.

Browns have been there three times since 1989 despite not playing for three years.

[Hikohadon]

The Cleveland Browns are the only team in football, nay, all of professional sports, to ever endure a streak as hideous as only 2 winning seasons in 13 years. They should just disassemble the franchise.

[bac5665]

The Cleveland Browns are the only team in football, nay, all of professional sports, to ever endure a streak as hideous as only 2 winning seasons in 13 years. They should just disassemble the franchise.

The Pittsburgh Pirates?

The Bengals Comp is shockingly good.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

Burn it down!

[Hikohadon]

The Cleveland Browns are the only team in football, nay, all of professional sports, to ever endure a streak as hideous as only 2 winning seasons in 13 years. They should just disassemble the franchise.

The Pittsburgh Pirates?

The Bengals Comp is shockingly good.

The Bills have only 1 winning season in the last 12 and haven't been to the playoffs since the 90's, but the Browns are clearly worse.

When I was growing up (70's, 80's), there was a pretty bad team in Tampa and a pretty bad team in New Orleans. The Bucs had only 2 winning seasons in their first 21, and the Saints didn't have a winning record for their first 20 seasons. But both those situations clearly weren't as bad as what we're witnessing here.

The Lions just got done with 10 losing seasons in a row, including the 0-16 infamy, but because they're winning now it means those bad times never happened. Same with the Bengals only having one winning record in 18 seasons between '91 and '08.

The Cardinals went to the playoffs just 4 times in 60 years, going 26 years in between playoff appearances at one point and going 51 years in between playoff wins, but that was over 3 cities, so it doesn't really count because moving a team washes the local fans' memories clean.

We could of course discuss the Steelers of the 50's and 60's, but as Steeler fans would like us to believe, those seasons don't count.

[LakeErieWarriors]

Yeah, I'm gonna hafta go with the Lions because they're the only team other than the Browns to have never even made it to the Super Bowl.

[Govbarney]

If you look at the lions records since 1965 its truly disturbing.

The only really decent run they have ever had was 91-97 ( The Barry Sanders Years ) and even in that span they had two 5 win seasons.
Aside from that they average a winning season twice a decade.

As of right now if you look at the Browns since the return in 99 they are on par for a Lions esq half century.

[LakeErieWarriors]

As far as level of fanhood/team history though, I have a different team, and that is the Eagles. Philly has had alot of success in the past decade, minus the misery they endured this year; a year they were supposed to waltz into the playoffs. I don't think there are any non-Super Bowl winning teams that have the passionate fans like Cleveland and Philadelphia do. I also think that the Browns level of success during the 80s was pretty similar to the Andy Reid years.

[Hikohadon]

List of how many winning seasons each team has had in the last 25 years (since 1987). Take it how you will, but even most of the bad teams have had more runs over that time span...


PIT 19
GB 17
NE 17
IND 16
PHI 16
MIA 15
MIN 15
SF 15
KC 14
TEN 14
DAL 13
DEN 13
NYG 13
BUF 11 (all but one '99 and earlier)
CHI 11
NO 11
NYJ 11
SD 10
SEA 10
WAS 10
ATL 9
BAL 9 (back to 1996)
TB 9
DET 7
JAX 7 (back to 1995)
OAK 7
CLE 6 (missing '96-'98)
STL 6
CIN 5
CAR 4 (back to 1995)
ARI 3
HOU 1 (back to 2002)

[Fire Marshall Bill]

Do you happen to know how many of those 27 for the Hawks & Packers were under Walrus?

Reasoning being, outside of Zorn/Largent there weren't many hawks wins and the Packers were pretty much irrellevant for a looooong time.....IF my old as recalls correctly

[Hikohadon]

Do you happen to know how many of those 27 for the Hawks & Packers were under Walrus?

Reasoning being, outside of Zorn/Largent there weren't many hawks wins and the Packers were pretty much irrellevant for a looooong time.....IF my old as recalls correctly

The Pack was irrelevant from 1968 until Holmgren (5 winning seasons out of 23), but have been mostly relevant since then, even under Sherman.

Holmgren had 7 winning seasons (out of 7) in Green Bay (92-98) and 7 winning seasons (out of 10) in Seattle (99-08).

The Seahawks have had 15 winning seasons in their history (back to 1976). About half those came under Holmgren.

[mattvan1]

The Pack was irrelevant from 1968 until Holmgren (5 winning seasons out of 23), but have been mostly relevant since then, even under Sherman.

Holmgren had 7 winning seasons (out of 7) in Green Bay (92-98) and 7 winning seasons (out of 10) in Seattle (99-08).

The Seahawks have had 15 winning seasons in their history (back to 1976). About half those came under Holmgren.

I think you meant to type that the Packers were irrelevant until Ron Wolf arrived and brought Mike Holmgren with him.

[JCoz]

I heard someone on the radio yesterday (I think SVP) say that Everyone in the NFC except the Lions have more playoff wins than Dallas in the last 15 years.

Just sort of an interesting bulletpoint.

[Hikohadon]

The Pack was irrelevant from 1968 until Holmgren (5 winning seasons out of 23), but have been mostly relevant since then, even under Sherman.

Holmgren had 7 winning seasons (out of 7) in Green Bay (92-98) and 7 winning seasons (out of 10) in Seattle (99-08).

The Seahawks have had 15 winning seasons in their history (back to 1976). About half those came under Holmgren.

I think you meant to type that the Packers were irrelevant until Ron Wolf arrived and brought Mike Holmgren with him.

Whichever floats your boat.

[JCoz]

Those are equally true. Holmgren had very little to do with any personell aquisitions in Green Bay, that's why he left in the first place.

[mattvan1]

The Pack was irrelevant from 1968 until Holmgren (5 winning seasons out of 23), but have been mostly relevant since then, even under Sherman.

Holmgren had 7 winning seasons (out of 7) in Green Bay (92-98) and 7 winning seasons (out of 10) in Seattle (99-08).

The Seahawks have had 15 winning seasons in their history (back to 1976). About half those came under Holmgren.

I think you meant to type that the Packers were irrelevant until Ron Wolf arrived and brought Mike Holmgren with him.

Whichever floats your boat.

Simply looking for the truth

[Hikohadon]

The facts are that Green Bay's resurgence occurred at the same time Holmgren arrived. Whether that was all due to Wolf or not is debatable. You could also argue that his success in Seattle was all due to a GM. But the fact remains that he had winning seasons in 14 of 17 years he coached.

Carrying the anti-Holmgren crusade all the way to his coaching career seems both pointless and silly.

Besides, none of my posts were meant as an endorsement of Holmgren, more a representation that many teams have gone through a period of suck.

If Holmgren were coaching, I might try and make a correlation, but he ain't, so his record as Team President is 9-23.

[JCoz]

I don't care about any Anti-holmgren sentiment, hiko you make good points there is no knocking holmgrens coaching chops. But Wolf had at LEAST as much to do with that turn around, as did Brett Favre. Wolf came in and his first moves were to hire Holmgren and trade a 1st rounder for Brett. The facts are that th resurgence coincided with Wolf as much as Holmgren. No need to undermine those moves or his considerable role in turning that franchise around.

[mattvan1]

I don't care about any Anti-holmgren sentiment, hiko you make good points there is no knocking holmgrens coaching chops. But Wolf had at LEAST as much to do with that turn around, as did Brett Favre. Wolf came in and his first moves were to hire Holmgren and trade a 1st rounder for Brett. The facts are that th resurgence coincided with Wolf as much as Holmgren. No need to undermine those moves or his considerable role in turning that franchise around.

He also signed Reggie White in FA.

Not trying to be argumentative but just wanted to point out that it was more than Big Mike's coaching acumen that helped the Packers return to glory.

The Seahawks are a better example of Holmgren's coaching ability, IMO.

[JCoz]

Meh, both stays were examples of his coaching skills, its just that in Green Bay he had a competant GM, and in Seattle, not so much.

Take Brady away from mumbles and he most likely wouldn't have hoisted any Lombardis to this point. BB is still a great coach despite that fact.