At 2-5, Browns general manager Ray Farmer agreed with his head coach, Mike Pettine, that no one was panicking.
But, at 2-5, is there also a sense of urgency?
"Urgency is what prompts everyone to get better and to look at themselves," Farmer said, via ESPN.com. "I think Pett (coach Mike Pettine) said it at his press conference -- nobody is panicking. The opportunity for us now is to go out and do the things that we know we're capable of doing.
"Should we have won some games, could we have won some games? Absolutely. Did we win them? No. So the NFL says you are who you are, you are who your record says you are. In that instance, we're going to turn around and say, 'OK, we know who we are. We know the games we could have won. We know the games we should have won. We know the mistakes we've made. How do we correct those?'"
The problem with evaluating the Browns is that there is always a tendency to want to replace the people at the top and start over again. Every two years or so, they are left with players on both sides of the ball acquired for schemes the team is no longer playing. It is a carousel of hope and eventually disappointment.
But will Farmer's team show enough promise to warrant a departure from that cycle?
Since he joined the club in 2013, the team set itself up quite nicely in the draft. The Browns had a top 10 pick in 2013, two first-round selections in 2014 and another two in 2015.
At the moment, 2014 is a head-scratcher, mostly because the team seems to be playing out the string with Johnny Manziel. Justin Gilbert is kind-of, sort-of playing offense. The jury is still out on Danny Shelton, though he has not had a high-impact rookie season like an Aaron Donald from St. Louis (though Shelton has far less protection on that defense).
So once again, the Browns will be confronted with the same decision: Gut it out or cut bait. Having a sense of urgency about it will at least tip the scales in one direction.
