CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland may not be strong enough to allow the plan to see itself through, but if this Browns front office is fired anytime soon, know this: The next general manager will oversee a winner. And you'll credit the wrong guy.

If this grand, brief experiment ends after this season -- and it shouldn't, oh it shouldn't -- the next group of decision makers will step in and see what no Browns GM has inherited in years.

A foundation.

I'm standing up here not for the people but for the plan, not for the individuals but the idea. Sometimes, ideas need defending, especially those with delayed outcomes.

Some have reached the point of taking the losing personally, so 0-6 and 1-21 is enough, and the calls for the jobs of Sashi Brown and his crew have begun. They'll wrap themselves in the history of misery that means nothing in the now, and Jimmy Haslam may listen and panic and 2018 could welcome a new boss surveying this scene:

A defensive line built around two high and productive picks, one of them, Myles Garrett, a supposed can't-miss the whole league agreed on.

Solid linebackers and a secondary featuring an interesting if uncertain talent in Jabrill Peppers, playing out of position, and another guy or two who could help.

An offensive line that looks set and should be solid.

That young tight end, David Njoku, drafted when he still wasn't old enough to drink, who is raw but with a high ceiling.

Corey Coleman, who can't stay healthy yet who still could be something, but otherwise a receiving corps with huge problems.

There's a need for a more dynamic running back.

And then there's quarterback.

It's too hard to tell on DeShone Kizer (Hue Jackson hasn't helped that), but there's a chance to get your quarterback in the next draft.

That's because the Browns have two first-round picks. And there are three second-rounders, which allows more chances to package some things and grab another first-rounder if need be. What's looking like another lousy season in 2017 means that Cleveland's own first-round and second-round picks will be high.

What do you think, new guy? How do you plan to proceed? Quarterback at the top of round one? A receiver with the other first-round pick? Move up for a running back at the end of round one, and use some of that massive salary cap room on a top corner?

Yeah, that's workable, thanks to the previous regime.

The new guys making those picks wouldn't have felt the pain that made all that possible, but someone had to feel it. You're feeling it now. The front office is feeling it now.

And that's one of the problems. We need to stop saying the Browns are doing this to the fans and understand they are trying to do this for the fans. Maybe you believe a long play by the front office is just a ploy for Haslam to keep them around for an extra year, but 1-21 sure is a strange strategy if you care about people thinking you're smart.

Jackson is desperately grasping for wins right now, looking for a quick Sunday fix and a bandage for the wound. But the front office is making you take your horrible-tasting medicine, because the long-term strategy is aimed toward, for the first time since the Browns returned, full health.

At least there is progress in the complaints.

Previous regimes failed with who they did pick, from Barkevious Mingo to Trent Richardson, Justin Gilbert to Brandon Weeden, Johnny Manziel to Cam Erving.

Now, the wails are about who wasn't picked -- Carson Wentz, Deshaun Watson and Malik Hooker. But you know the Browns could have only one of them, right? Trading the Wentz pick created the pick that could have been Watson or Hooker (but not both), a pick that was traded again. Jackson, by the way, wanted Hooker.

So the first-round receiver they'll draft next year for their first-round quarterback to throw to, he'll exist only because of that trade.

You're joking to yourself now that the Sashi guys, if they're around in 2018, would trade down again, but the new football hero that you imagine they'll hire, he'll pick the best QB around like those math boys were afraid to do. The cliched columns will write themselves.

But Brown and Paul DePodesta will take a quarterback high eventually or trade for a worthy veteran, just by the law of averages and common sense. Do you think they'll get to the end of a three-year teardown/rebuild and go, "Hey, we forgot to get a quarterback?"

So unless Kizer looks like a sure top-shelf starter by the end of this season, a new QB, picked somewhere in the top 10 (maybe at No. 1 the way things are going) will arrive and be surrounded by some talent, the way Wentz was in Philadelphia and Watson was in Houston, and the way neither of them would have been in Cleveland.

So they passed on Wentz, a move I think was born primarily out of a short draft prep time after they were hired in January, and a reasonable, but maybe wrong, contention that the roster was so barren, they needed quantity from that pick more than quality.

They passed on Watson, somehow viewed as a savior now when much of the national predraft analysis wondered if he was worth a first-round pick. Listen, I loved Watson, and if I had been picking for the Browns, after the Wentz trade I'd have taken Ohio State's Michael Thomas, not Coleman, at 15, and Watson would be throwing to Thomas in brown and orange right now.

But what if by next summer the Browns have added:

USC quarterback Sam Darnold, SMU receiver Courtland Sutton and Alabama running back Damien Harris to this offensive line, plus holdovers Coleman and Njoku; with a defense featuring Garrett, Ogbah, Jamie Collins and Peppers. All, save for Joe Thomas and Joel Bitonio on the O-line, acquired by this regime.

Would you be happy then? What makes you believe that won't be what actually happens? They targeted defense in the last draft and the offensive line in free agency. It's time for skill positions again.

Owner Jimmy Haslam (left) needs to give Sashi Brown another draft to see this through.

The Philadelphia 76ers are projected as a playoff team this season, with a raft of young talent acquired only through incessant losing and repeated high drafting. Sam Hinkie, the GM who birthed the idea, is long gone, forced out in April 2016, and those who replaced him can act like all that talent arrived through their sheer genius, as opposed to Hinkie's calculated pain and plan.

Here in Cleveland, former Cavs GM Chris Grant wasn't around for the first Cleveland title in 52 years, but he acquired many of the picks (including the one that became Kyrie Irving) that helped form the nucleus around LeBron James that gave the legend something to work with.

That may be the fate of this Browns group, but their sacrifice will have been for you. Nobody plans for the future in the NFL because the present demands so much, usually a scalp.

But this front office went for a long-term teardown anyway. Was that the smartest thing they could have done to keep their jobs? Or were they thinking what was best for the organization first?

If they were allowed to take their extra draft picks with them if they are fired, you'd keep them forever. But the screechers who demand their pound of flesh know that win or lose, fire or keep, those extra picks aren't going anywhere.

We know -- you mock draft picks, too. That is, right up until draft day, when those picks can turn into future Watsons or Hookers and you'll scream yourself hoarse over them.

It still comes down to acquiring the right players, and there have been mistakes, from Kenny Britt to Kenny Britt, and Kenny Britt to Kenny Britt (and Dwayne Bowe). Maybe Coleman was a miss.

But really, you're most upset with late-round misses, like disappointing receiver Ricardo Louis, a mid-fourth round pick. Fourth-rounders miss. Or you're upset with the guys they didn't take.

Meanwhile, Ogbah, Carl Nassib, Shon Coleman, Joe Schobert, Derrick Kindred, Seth DeValve, Garrett, Peppers, Njoku, Kizer, Larry Ogunjobi and Caleb Brantley are out there playing from their first two drafts. Yet people act as if every pick has been a failure.

If they don't solve quarterback, fire them after the 2018 season. If you look at three drafts then and see bust after bust after bust, fire them after the 2018 season.

But don't panic mid-stream, the way Jackson is doing, just because you can't see the long-term plan that isn't nearly the failure you think it is so far.

Maybe Cleveland, after 19 years of football nothing, can't stomach another eight months of this, because planning is hard and screaming feels good.

Here's the thing Cleveland: You may not be strong enough to handle the plan. But you're going to reap the rewards anyway.

The guys who put it in place just may not be around to see it.