By Severen “Sevy” Henderson

Practicing What I Preach

In the class I teach for future fire instructors, there is one point I try to hammer home. Don’t just complain about problems. Fix them. Even if the load is heavy or the attempt sounds crazy, at least come up with a plan. Leadership starts at the intersection of recognizing that change is needed and taking action.

So I’m applying that same mindset to my beloved, bewildering, heartbreak-inducing Cleveland Browns. This is the first in what I’m calling my How to Fix It series. Sometimes that’ll mean sports, sometimes society, maybe even creativity itself. But for now, I’m starting where my pain runs deepest.

The Dawg Pound and the Decades of Despair

Cleveland is a sports city where football reigns supreme, even though it ranks 35th in Nielsen’s radio market rankings. Yet ESPN Cleveland (850 AM) has carved out a presence so strong that its morning show, The Really Big Show, is considered one of the top midday sports talk programs in mid-markets. In smaller markets like Pittsburgh or larger ones like Detroit, sports talk doesn’t always dominate the public conversation the way it does in Cleveland. The Browns aren’t just surviving in the chatter. They’re driving it.

Despite all the sports heartbreak, Cleveland’s still standing. When factories closed and manufacturing jobs disappeared across the Midwest, many cities never recovered. But Cleveland survived the purge. The steel mills went silent, but the city’s heartbeat kept pounding thanks to its hospitals. The world-renowned Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals employ thousands and have become a new identity for the city. People fly in from across the globe for care and innovation.

Cleveland rarely gets its due. For all the jokes about snow and football futility, it’s also a city of art, medicine, music, and grit. The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the best in the country, and it’s free. Playhouse Square is second only to Broadway in live-theater seats. Add Lake Erie on the city’s doorstep and you’ve got a city that’s every bit as scenic as it is scrappy.

For me, my hometown of Cleveland sits somewhere between the Midwest charm of my current home, Chicago, and the East Coast flavor of New York. A mix of the two that doesn’t compare to either. It’s got the water, the skyline, and the soul. Where Detroit leans on its past and Pittsburgh leans on its blue-collar pride, Cleveland quietly grinds forward, reinventing itself without losing its edge.

But the despair hasn’t belonged only to the Browns. The Cleveland Indians, now the Guardians, spent years trying to break a curse that felt spiritual. They even changed their name in hopes of shifting the energy, shedding the ghost of Chief Wahoo and the weight of generations of disappointment. It wasn’t just a rebrand; it was a plea for a clean slate. But the sting of coming close and falling short still lingers, especially for fans who can still see that 1997 World Series collapse every time October rolls around.

Then there were the Cavs. For a brief, glorious moment in 2016, they made Cleveland believe again. Down 3-1 to a 73-9 Golden State Warriors team that looked untouchable, LeBron and company pulled off the impossible. That championship didn’t just end a drought; it healed something. It snapped a 52-year stretch without a title in any major sport for a city starved for a win. You could feel it in the streets. It wasn’t just about basketball; it was a release of generations of frustration. For a moment, Cleveland wasn’t the punchline. It was the headline.

That same year, the Indians made their own historic run, meeting the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. Both teams carried curses and years of misery on their backs. Game 7. Extra innings. Rain delay. And when the Cubs finally broke their 108-year drought, Cleveland once again became the supporting character in someone else’s redemption story.

Meanwhile, across Lake Michigan, Chicago has championships in every major sport. The Bulls. The Blackhawks. The White Sox. The Cubs. Even though the Bears won in 1985, the city still talks about it as if it were last season. Chicago lives in its past glories while celebrating them in the present. Cleveland is still searching for its first taste of that kind of triumph in football, the one sport that means the most.

As much as the Cavs’ victory meant to the city, nothing would compare to seeing the Browns in a Super Bowl. Going and winning would be the ultimate goal, but the Cleveland Browns are one of only four teams in the entire NFL that have never appeared in a Super Bowl.

The others are the Detroit Lions, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Houston Texans. And though none of those teams have ever won a Super Bowl, all three have at least hosted one. Something Cleveland still hasn’t done. For a city that helped build the NFL’s identity, that omission feels like salt in an old wound.

Unlike those newer franchises, Cleveland’s history runs much deeper. The team was named after its legendary founder and first head coach, Paul Brown. A football visionary who helped shape the modern game. Brown didn’t just build a team; he built a system. He invented the playbook, the film room, and the concept of coaching staffs as we know them. Cleveland football was literally his blueprint.

But in one of the most infamous moves in NFL history, owner Art Modell fired the man the team was named after in 1963. Paul Brown later took his talents south to Cincinnati, where he founded the Bengals, and they have even reached multiple Super Bowls (1981, 1988, and 2021). Meanwhile, the Browns, the team that bore his name, have never even made the trip.

And Modell wasn’t done rewriting bad karma. Before he moved the team to Baltimore under the cover of night in 1995, he also fired a young head coach named Bill Belichick. You might’ve heard of him: six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, arguably the greatest coach of all time. The man who built a dynasty was once a Cleveland Brown, and we let him go before he ever got the chance to finish what he started.

To make the pain worse, the team Modell uprooted, the Baltimore Ravens, went on to win not one but two Super Bowls (in 2000 and 2012). That first one, just a few years after the move, felt like the championship that should’ve belonged to Cleveland. Different name, same bones. It was the cruelest twist of fate imaginable: the ghost of our franchise winning the trophy we’d been waiting on for decades.

In the modern era, Cleveland hasn’t even been close to the big game. They haven’t hosted one, haven’t played in one, and have watched as other cities celebrate championships earned through hard work, dedication, and leadership we can’t seem to find. For a franchise with a fan base this loyal and a legacy this rich, that absence feels heavier every year, especially when you consider that teams like the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have won Super Bowls, torn down their entire franchises, rebuilt from scratch, and won again, all in the time Cleveland hasn’t made a single appearance.

So while winning would be divine, just being in one would move the earth in Cleveland. It’s the missing piece in a city that’s tasted everything but that ultimate validation.

We’ve lived The Drive, when John Elway marched 98 yards in the 1987 AFC Championship to rip our hearts out. We’ve survived The Fumble, when Earnest Byner was three yards from glory in 1988 before the ball slipped away. We endured The Move, the day Art Modell packed up our soul and took it to Baltimore. When football returned in 1999, it felt like a rebirth, but it was really a reincarnation gone wrong. Same name, same colors, brand-new ways to lose.

Cleveland is a city that bleeds loyalty. It’s loyal to the game, to the grind, to the grief. The town builds cars. The citizens shovel snow, show up at parking lots in the wee hours of Sunday morning for the greatest tailgate show on earth, and hope that, with a new year, will come new results. Each Sunday goes from hoping for a miracle to ending in heartburn and heartbreak.

The Browns aren’t just a team to the city of Cleveland. They’re family. Dysfunctional family at that. They’re the cousin who can’t seem to get it quite right. They’re the reason fans brave the elements in freezing weather, grandmothers still yell “Here we go, Brownies!” like it’s a church hymn, and adults spend their hard-earned money to travel not only downtown to the stadium but across the globe when the NFL decides who goes overseas for games. This team belongs to the people. But man, those people have been through it.

The thing about Browns fans is, we’re loyal beyond logic. We don’t quit, even when we should. But loyalty without accountability is just blind faith. And after years of despair, it’s time to admit the truth. This team doesn’t need another rebuild. It needs a rescue.

The Root Cause: Leadership Without Vision

While preparing to instruct future firefighters, I had the pleasure of hearing one of the greats speak: Bob Hoff. To most in the service, that name carries weight. He’s a retired Chicago Fire Commissioner, a legend in the firehouse, and a real-life inspiration behind the 1991 movie Backdraft. Chicago, as always, honors its past by keeping it alive in the present.

When Hoff spoke, he compared my job in the fire service to sports, especially football. The comparison landed because the parallels are real. In both worlds, chaos waits around every corner. And in both, success depends on command and consistency. You need structure. You need leadership. You need someone calling the shots, setting the tone, and holding everyone accountable.

The Cleveland Browns have had none of that.

As a firefighter, I’ve seen what happens when leadership fractures. Imagine a five-alarm fire with five chiefs shouting five different orders. One says “vent the roof,” another says “protect exposures,” a third screams “pull out!” You know what happens next? Chaos. Not the organized chaos we’re used to, but dangerous, deadly chaos. Because when everyone’s in charge, no one really is.

That’s been the Browns for years. A team with too many voices and not enough vision. Every decision feels reactive rather than proactive. One season, we’re chasing analytics; the next, it’s “old-school football.” One GM drafts for speed, the next for size. One coach preaches culture, the next tears it down. It’s whiplash disguised as strategy.

The deeper problem isn’t just losing. It’s the absence of identity. In the fire service, even when we lose a building, we learn something. We adapt. We come back smarter, stronger, tighter. But in Cleveland, the Browns just keep relighting the same fire with the same broken match.

We haven’t just spun through regimes; we’ve spun through quarterbacks like a revolving door at a downtown hotel. Every new coach brings a new “guy,” every new “guy” brings a new promise, and by Thanksgiving, we’re Googling the backup’s college highlights. Since their rebirth in 1999, the Browns have fielded one of the longest lists of starting QBs in NFL history. That infamous jersey with names taped down the back isn’t a meme, it’s a memorial. Hope stitched over heartbreak, again and again.

What makes it sting is how it started with real buzz. The fight to keep the Browns’ name and colors felt like a civic win, like we rescued a piece of our soul from a moving truck in the night. When the team came back in ’99, we treated it like a homecoming parade. New era, new stadium, new chance. But instead of building on that energy, we built on sand. Every season since has felt like another attempt to reboot an operating system that never boots.

Ownership hasn’t settled the ground under our feet either. When the NFL awarded Cleveland an expansion franchise to replace the team that was stolen away, the Lerner family, longtime Browns backers, stepped in to buy what was fittingly called the New Browns. Under Al Lerner, there was at least a sense of stability and civic pride. He was one of us, a Clevelander who helped bring football home. But after Al passed in 2002, control shifted to his son, Randy Lerner, a man who, while well-meaning, treated the franchise more like a family heirloom than a living, breathing organization. Football never felt like his passion. It felt like his inheritance.

When Randy eventually sold the team in 2012, fans thought we’d finally turned the corner. The new buyer, Jimmy Haslam, came from football royalty as part of the minority ownership group of the Pittsburgh Steelers and had real-world success, building his fortune through the Pilot Flying J truck-stop empire. On paper, it looked like the perfect fit: a proven businessman, a football insider, and someone ready to spend. Cleveland leaned forward. Finally, owners with urgency.

But over a decade later, urgency has looked a lot like overcorrection. Quick fixes. Flash hires. Big splashes with small results. I don’t question the Haslams’ intentions; I truly believe they want to win. What I question is the pattern: the churn, the midstream pivots, the constant need to start over instead of grow through. Culture can’t calcify when the scaffolding keeps changing.

The Baseball Experiment

The Browns are still knee-deep in the baseball experiment. They brought in Paul DePodesta, the real-life inspiration for Jonah Hill’s character in Moneyball. DePodesta was one of the architects behind the analytics-driven approach that helped the Oakland A’s punch above their payroll in the early 2000s, using data to uncover undervalued players and challenge years of gut-based scouting. The idea in Cleveland was similar: bring that same methodical discipline to football, use analytics to find smarter edges, and finally inject some consistency into the team’s decision-making.

On paper, I respect the ambition. In practice, baseball analytics and football analytics are cousins who don’t speak the same language. Baseball is math. Football is chaos. You can’t Moneyball your way through 11-on-11 collisions.

Baseball is a series of largely independent events, pitcher versus hitter, played out over 162 games with massive sample sizes. Football is entangled chaos every snap: scheme, matchup, health, weather, cadence, pre-snap motion, protection, leverage, spacing. One injury to a left tackle can turn a franchise QB into a tackling dummy. Baseball lets you isolate player value; football forces you to measure interaction effects. A guard is only as valuable as the system, the calls, and the guy next to him.

Baseball’s cap is soft culture; football’s hard cap weaponizes tradeoffs. Pay a star here, hollow out depth there. In baseball, you can grind edges over time; in football, 17 games and one torn hamstring can torch a season.

The mistake in Cleveland hasn’t been using analytics. It’s believing a baseball-style blueprint could fix a football-shaped problem without first stabilizing identity, command, and development. You can’t spreadsheet your way out of a leadership vacuum, and you can’t model your way past a culture that resets every 18 months.

Their recent drafts have been just as confusing. Take the 2024 draft, for example. The Browns’ decision to reach for a quarterback in the third round left analysts and fans scratching their heads. As Yahoo Sports put it, the selection “sparks immediate debate.” Over at Pro Football Focus, the reaction was even sharper: calling it one of the reaches from Day 2.

That’s not just a reach. It’s a leap of faith without a parachute. Until the Browns stop treating quarterbacks like rental cars, align ownership with football ops, and use analytics as a compass instead of a crutch, we’ll keep writing names on that jersey and wondering why the t-shirt slogans outlast the eras.

No vision. No stability. No chain of command.

If everything’s everyone’s fault, then nothing ever gets fixed. Leadership isn’t about titles or press conferences. It’s about direction, the kind that steadies a crew when the heat’s rising and the walls are closing in. Until the Browns find that kind of leadership, they’ll keep doing what they’ve always done: fight the same fire every season, hoping somehow it burns different this time.

Where It Went Off the Rails: A Post-Return Timeline

1999 to 2007: The Expansion Years
The new Browns were like a startup with no business plan. They had players, coaches, and fans, but no direction. Quarterbacks came and went faster than Cleveland weather patterns.

2008 to 2016: The Era of False Hope
A few flickers of excitement, Derek Anderson’s Pro Bowl year, Josh Gordon’s breakout season, sprinkled into a stretch of misery. Bright spots that dimmed as quickly as they appeared.

2017 to 2019: The Mayfield Opportunity
Baker Mayfield arrived in Cleveland with swagger, personality, and hope, and for once, it felt like the franchise was turning a corner.

John Dorsey, the GM who drafted Mayfield, deserves credit. He came from the Kansas City Chiefs front office and is now in a role with the Detroit Lions, both organizations trending upward. Dorsey stepped into Cleveland in December 2017 and immediately began building: Mayfield with the No. 1 pick in 2018, cornerback Denzel Ward with the 4th pick, and running back Nick Chubb shortly after.

But then the franchise pulled back. Culture wasn’t built. The momentum wasn’t sustained. Instead of layering in accountability and systems, we shortcut through flash moves, mixed messaging, and unfinished frameworks. Mayfield didn’t fail us. We failed him. And today he’s thriving as the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, reminding Cleveland fans of what could’ve been.

2020 to Present: The Deshaun Gamble
This move screamed desperation, a franchise willing to sell its football soul for the promise of elite talent, even when the baggage outweighed the benefit.

Each era starts with a slogan and ends with silence because no one sticks around long enough to fix the foundation before hanging another banner on the drywall.

Now, add another chapter of uncertainty: the team’s planning to leave the lakefront core of Cleveland and move to suburban Brook Park after the 2028 season, a decision that stirred lawsuits, legislation, and debate about what “belonging” really means. The plan involves a new domed stadium, a mixed-use development near Hopkins Airport, and the eventual demolition of the current downtown site. For fans who already feel like the team is always one misstep away from “next year,” the move feels less like progress and more like another reset. Culture takes root when place matters. If we keep changing the ground beneath us, it’s hard to build anything that lasts.

The Fix: My Blueprint for Rebuilding the Browns

If I ran this team, I’d start by applying the same leadership principles I live by in the fire service: structure, accountability, culture, and growth. But more than that, I’d make the hard calls that leadership demands, even when they’re unpopular.

1. Establish Command Stability: The Incident Command System

First, I’d hire someone familiar with an incident command structure. A person who exudes leadership. Someone who knows how to lead even when they aren’t in charge. I’d find a person who could walk into the Browns’ facility in Berea, and the first thing that person would teach would be the Incident Command System, a structure recognized at the national level and in the fire service that ensures a clear chain of command. No overlap, no ego, no confusion when things go bad. Everyone knows their assignment, who they report to, and what success looks like.

If that system applied to the Browns, it would mean one unified football philosophy from ownership down to the equipment staff. No more analytics department fighting with the scouts, or coaches publicly contradicting the GM.

The firehouse version of that is simple: One boss, one voice, one plan.

If the Browns installed that mindset tomorrow, decisions would stop feeling like coin flips. The GM sets direction, the coach executes, and ownership supports instead of meddles. You can’t fight a fire when everyone’s holding their own hose, and you can’t run a franchise when everyone’s calling their own plays.

You can’t build a championship if the playbook changes every two seasons. Football, like firefighting, demands trust in the chain of command. Commit to an actual five-year leadership plan. No reactionary firings. No panic hires. Choose the right GM and head coach, align their vision, and give them time to build it. Measure progress by culture, not just wins. The question should be: Are we improving the system, or just surviving the season?

2. End the Moneyball Era

I’d officially end the Moneyball era and thank Paul DePodesta for his service.

I respect analytics. I use them in my own life. But you can’t run a football team like a math problem. The “baseball experiment” has gone on long enough, and what do we have to show for it? A stat sheet full of almosts. Football is emotion disguised as structure, not structure pretending to be emotion. You can’t chart grit. You can’t quantify culture.

The bigger problem is what this system has created: a front office of yes men. Instead of empowering football minds, the hierarchy rewards compliance. The GM and head coach are talented, Kevin Stefanski has won Coach of the Year twice, but instead of leading, they’re managing by analytics. Every decision feels pre-approved by a spreadsheet: fourth-down calls, quarterback rotations, even press conference talking points. Instincts don’t guide the game plan; data and ego dictate it.

DePodesta came here to bring logic, but what he built was bureaucracy, a system that values consensus over conviction. That’s not leadership; that’s management by proxy. Football demands feel. It demands fire. It demands someone who can see momentum shifting and know when to trust his eyes instead of his Excel sheet.

Analytics should be a compass, not a crutch. And when the compass points you in the wrong direction, you don’t need another meeting. You need a leader willing to call an audible.

In a burning building, you don’t pull out a calculator. You pull out your crew, take command, and make the hard call. That’s what Cleveland needs: fewer spreadsheets, more spine.

3. Move the Team Back Downtown

The third move would be to find a way to keep the team downtown, for good. I know this has more to do with city politics than playbooks, but there’s no reason for a city sitting on a Great Lake to treat its waterfront like a backyard pond. The Brook Park plan looks shiny on paper, but football isn’t supposed to be sleek. It’s supposed to be Cleveland: cold, loud, loyal.

The lakefront is sacred ground. It’s where generations have frozen together in belief, grief, and beer. That stadium by the water isn’t just concrete and steel; it’s a living museum of heartbreak and hope. Moving away from that is like moving out of your childhood home, sometimes necessary, sure, but only if you’re building something that honors where you came from. Growth is good, but forgetting your roots is fatal.

And I’m not opposed to a domed stadium for other events, concerts, conventions, even Super Bowls. There’s no reason to stay married to an open-air concept in a city where the weather changes faster than a toddler’s mood. Build the dome. Host the events. But when it’s time for Cleveland football? Pop the top. Let the cold in. Let the wind bite. That’s what makes us us.

Picture this: a rebuilt stadium on the lake, open air, echoing with chants that rattle the water. Downtown bars are spilling over with fans in brown and orange. The same skyline that’s watched this team suffer finally gets to watch it rise.

You want to change the Browns? Bring the football home and hand the playbook back to the football people. Because data can guide you, money can fund you. But only heart can save you.

4. Draft Leaders, Not Likes

Talent wins games. Character builds dynasties. The Browns have too often drafted based on hype, highlight reels, and headlines. But football, real sustained football success, comes from leaders in the locker room who raise everyone else’s level.

The easiest example is Antonio Callaway, the 2018 fourth-round receiver out of Florida. On paper, he was a steal: blazing speed, elite quickness, and first-round athleticism. But he came with baggage, and instead of developing him in a stable culture, the Browns threw him into chaos. He flashed early, then faded out of the league.

Compare that to Nick Chubb, drafted just one round later that same year. Chubb is quiet, disciplined, consistent. He embodies everything “Draft Leaders, Not Likes” means. He’s not the loudest guy in the locker room, but he’s the standard.

If Cleveland had built around Chubb’s mentality instead of chasing highlight reels, they’d have a different identity right now. Every locker room needs talent, but talent without accountability is just potential with an expiration date.

Build a scouting department that values heart and discipline as much as 40-yard dash times. Ask every prospect: What’s your why? And if it’s not about the team, move on.

5. Build a Player Development System

Firefighters drill daily. Not because we expect the same fire twice, but because preparation breeds performance. NFL teams are no different. The Browns need to build a developmental identity, a system that turns mid-round draft picks into long-term contributors. Players should know what it means to “be a Brown” beyond wearing the uniform. That means consistent coaching, player mentorship, and offseason accountability. Drill the details. Build the muscle memory. When chaos hits, they’ll be ready because they’ve trained like it.

6. Own the Cleveland Identity

Stop trying to be the Chiefs, the 49ers, or anyone else. Be Cleveland. This is a blue-collar city that respects grind over glamor. Build a brand of football that reflects that: defense, toughness, grit, heart. Games won in the trenches, not in the headlines.

Browns football, in my rebuilt world, looks like controlled violence with discipline. It’s cold-weather football that thrives on physicality and mental toughness. Offensively, it’s run-first, not just because of tradition, but because it sets a tone: power runs behind a nasty O-line, play-action that punishes defenses when they crowd the box, and a quarterback who doesn’t need to be Superman, just consistent.

Defensively, it’s pressure with purpose: attacking fronts, linebackers that fly to the ball, and corners that hit like safeties. Think Ravens swagger, Steelers toughness, and 49ers discipline, but with Cleveland grit.

Game day at a rebuilt lakefront stadium wouldn’t feel like a show; it would feel like a shift. Fans bundled up like they’re clocking in. Players taking the field to the sound of “Cleveland Rocks” mixed with the roar of 70,000 believers who’ve earned the right to demand better. And for once, when the final whistle blows, you don’t hear, “Wait till next year.” You hear, “See you next Sunday.”

The Browns don’t need flash. They need a foundation.

7. Rebuild Fan and Community Trust

Firefighters and fans have something in common: we show up even when it burns. The Browns’ fans have stayed loyal through pain. It’s time the organization earns that loyalty back. Hold town halls. Be transparent about decisions. Bring the community back into the culture. A franchise that listens wins hearts before it wins games.

Why It’s Bigger Than Football

My daughter Zoë doesn’t know the full history yet, the heartbreaks, the moves, the names stitched and crossed out on that cursed jersey. She just knows that on Sundays, Dad yells at the TV and sometimes laughs right after, because what else can you do?

One day, she asked me, “Daddy, why do you still cheer for them if they always lose?”

And I didn’t have a stat, a quote, or a press conference answer. I just told her the truth: “Because one day, they won’t.”

That’s Cleveland. That’s the Browns. We keep showing up, not because it’s easy, but because it’s ours. And maybe that’s the lesson I hope she carries long after the final whistle: that loyalty isn’t blind, it’s brave. That belief, when it’s earned, is the most powerful thing in the world.

So yeah, I’ll keep yelling at the TV. And when that day finally comes, when the confetti finally falls our way, I’ll look over at her and say, “See, Zoë? That’s what happens when you don’t quit.”

Fixing the Browns isn’t really about football. It’s about leadership. It’s about what happens when organizations stop learning and start reacting. It’s about what happens when culture becomes a hashtag instead of a habit.

I teach people how to lead, in the fire service, in life, and now through creativity. And what I’ve learned is this: systems only work when the people inside them believe they matter. You can’t fake belief. You have to build it.

The Browns have all the ingredients: loyal fans, talent, money, and history. What they need now is direction. Someone to say, “This is who we are, and this is how we move forward.”

Until then, I’ll still be watching, still believing. I mean, there’s even a documentary called Believeland that focuses on just that, because that’s what Cleveland does. But belief without accountability isn’t loyalty. It’s complacency.

So I’m not complaining. I’m fixing. And this is just the first of many.

This Was “How to Fix It”
Where complaining ends and creativity begins.