If the entire story feels too Hollywood, too contrived to be the actual narrative of an NFL football team in a singular season, remember all the people standing to benefit from its goodwill.
The Browns fans and alumni—who have endured years of gross administrative incompetence, wasted draft capital, blown games, organizational infighting, regime changes and one emotional Sunday chinlock after the next—could not just simply have a team that turned things around and one day found themselves on the sunny side of competence. It wouldn’t feel right. It wouldn’t level out the kind of mental tax that was paid year after year.