AP

As the Browns prepare to play the Bills on Thursday night, in ESPN’s maybe-the-NFL-really-is-pissed-at-us preseason opener, Cleveland’s running backs will be getting extra attention not because of who they are, but because of who they’re not.

If the current collection of ball carriers struggles, the Browns could bring in Ray Rice. To date, the owner has seemed to give the green light to the move, but coach Mike Pettine and G.M. Ray Farmer have kept their feet on the brakes. If they decide to move forward, quarterback Josh McCown would be OK with that.

“He would be received just like anyone else if he could help us,” McCown said recently on NBC Sports Radio’s PFT Live. “We need to be about second chances and forgiveness, and if the organization does their research and they feel like Ray has moved past that. . . . And there’s some people in our organization that have obviously been around Ray, you know on other teams and such. Then I think we welcome him if he can help us.”

But welcoming Rice wouldn’t mean that anyone would be endorsing the behavior that has kept him out of football for nearly a full calendar year.

“It’s such a delicate situation because of what went on and, you know, no organization wants to ever give the sense that they’re condoning what happened and that they’re OK with it because none of us are, absolutely not,” McCown said. “But at the same time we want to be able to also send the message that people make mistakes and hopefully we can help those people look past that. So if that’s the case we welcome it. . . . For him to be here and help our team, then anybody that can help us. I think the locker room . . . their main focus is always, ‘Can you help us, can you help us get to where we’re going?’ and if you can then come on. So I think that would be our mindset.”

It remains to be seen whether the Browns think Rice can help them. Much of it depends on the assessment of whether their current running backs can get the job done. If they can’t, and if the objective of the Browns is to win as many football games as possible in one of the best divisions in the NFL and the owner already has signed off on the move, why not?