John Kuntz, cleveland.com

Two bold choices led the Browns to Freddie Kitchens (right) and Baker Mayfield (left).

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EXPLAINING 3RD & SHORT

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- No team wants to be a verb. Rarely is it a good thing.

No one calls spending money to fix the problems in your life Yankeeing.

Neither winning while handsome nor winning while dressed in a sweatshirt is called Patriotsing.

Adding a disgruntled superstar to win big is not called Raptoring, and adding a disgruntled superstar to win big and then winning just as much when he's not on the court is not yet referred to as Celticking.

But everyone knows what Brownsing means. It's not great.

Once upon a time, everyone knew the same about Clemsoning.

Here's the Clemsoning definition from urbandictionary.com

1. The act of failing miserably on a grand athletic stage, or when the stakes are high.

2. Record-setting failure, usually reserved for college football.

They need a new definition for Clemsoning now. It needs to include something about kicking Alabama's booty.

Both Clemson and the Browns wear orange. But I was reminded of the comparison by a list of positive quotes distributed by the Browns on Saturday after the official hiring of Freddie Kitchens. One of them came from Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, who was a grad assistant and then receivers coach and tight ends coach at Alabama while Kitchens was the starting quarterback there in the mid-90s.

"I've known Freddie a long time," Swinney told the Browns. "He's tough and he's a winner. He always has been. I thought he did a great job of taking advantage of his interim opportunity and rallying the team, which has afforded him this opportunity. I have no doubt he'll take and run with it. I think the Browns got it right giving him the opportunity to lead them."

No one talks about Clemsoning anymore.

Those previous failures in big games gave way to a 55-4 record and two national championships over the last four years. Swinney piqued the interest of some for the Browns job, but there may be nothing that rips him away from the college game, where he can dominate at Clemson and then return to his alma mater, Alabama, when Nick Saban retires.

But Swinney reminds us that language is alive. It can change over time. Clemsoning once meant something it doesn't mean now.

Maybe the same will happen with Brownsing.

Now it's time for 3rd & Shorting, which means forcing yourself to finish a task whether you like it or not because the person who produced the thing you are consuming will feel sad inside if you ignore it.

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THE SEARCH FOR BROWNS STABILITY

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David Richard, Associated Press

Freddie Kitchens could help bring an era of tranquility to the Browns.

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Three years, 10 months and 20 days. Forget wins.

That's your goal, Freddie Kitchens and John Dorsey. If you reach it, you'll have done it by winning.

The goal for Cleveland football isn't only victory, but tranquility.

The Browns officially announced Kitchens as their new football coach Saturday, so mark your calendars for Dec. 2, 2022. If the Browns get there, 1,420 days from now, with Dorsey still as their general manager and Kitchens still as their head coach, they will have surpassed the most stable era of Browns football since the franchise returned.

That's the Phil Savage-Romeo Crennel Era.

You may not have realized there was such a thing as the Savage-Crennel Era. In Cleveland, there was.

From Feb. 8, 2005, the day Crennel was introduced as the Browns head coach the day after winning a Super Bowl as the defensive coordinator of the New England Patriots, until Dec. 28, 2008, when Savage was fired as general manager on the last day of the season (with Crennel ousted the next day), the Browns didn't make a major change.

How did they do it?

By going 6-10, 4-12, 10-6 and 4-12 on the field.

By drafting Braylon Edwards, Kamerion Wimbley, Joe Thomas and Brady Quinn in the first round.

By posting double-digit wins for the only time in the last 21 seasons.

By sending no one to the Pro Bowl in 2005 or 2006, but then chalking up six Pro Bowlers, led by Thomas, after that 10-6 season in 2007.

That's what passes for an era in Browns football.

I was going to list all the hirings and firings of Browns general managers and coaches since Dwight Clark was named the first director of football operations in November of 1998. But your eyes would glaze over.

So here are the days between firings or resignations of either general managers, directors of football operations or head coaches since the return. You already know the names, or you've chosen to wipe them from your memory.

720, 487, 923, 1498, 1, 308, 407, 661, 67, 364, 42, 701, 704, 326, 72.

Those final 72 days are the start and the end of Gregg Williams' half-season as the interim head coach. Some of the departure days including two firings at once, like Pat Shurmur and Tom Heckert.

But when it comes to Browns fans saying farewell to someone who had been making major decisions for the organizations, from Chris Palmer's firing on Jan. 11, 2001 to Williams, there was a big move, on average, every two years.

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On behalf of Dwight Clark, Chris Palmer, Butch Davis, Terry Robiskie, Phil Savage, Romeo Crennel, George Kokinis, Mike Holmgren, Tom Heckert, Eric Mangini, Pat Shurmur, Joe Banner, Rob Chudzinski, Mike Lombardi, Mike Pettine, Ray Farmer, Sashi Brown, Hue Jackson and Gregg Williams, here's hoping for a smooth four years of no major changes.

That would mean more than one 10-win season in four years and a decent season of Pro Bowlers.

That would mean that the Outlaw Browns had actually outsmarted the rest of the league, which is what they've been trying to do for several years.

It's not a bad thing.

A lot of fans pined for a real football guy when the Browns hired John Dorsey as the general manager last December. But once upon a time, Hue Jackson was a real football guy, too, a respected coordinator with previous head coaching experience who was drawing head coaching interest from multiple franchises.

Jackson was a hire that many teams would have made.

Dorsey was a hire that many teams would have made.

There are three recent moves made by the Browns that were far from obvious, that wouldn't have been made by many other NFL teams. And they were important milestones on pushing the Browns into 2019 with young talent and optimistic fans.

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3 MOVES BY THE OUTLAW BROWNS

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John Kuntz, cleveland.com

Giving Sashi Brown power over football decisions after the 2015 season was the Browns' first outlaw move.

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3. Sashi Brown

On the day the Browns fired general manager Ray Farmer and coach Mike Pettine after the 2015 season, our Mary Kay Cabot listed six outside names if the Browns went beyond the walls in Berea for a new football decision maker.

* Terry McDonough, then the Arizona vice president of player personnel under the GM, is still in that role and the Cardinals were the worst team in football last season.

* Duke Tobin, then the de facto GM in Cincinnati under owner Mike Brown, is still in that role, and the Bengals finished last in the AFC North last season.

* George Paton, then Minnesota's assistant GM, is still the assistant GM.

* Scott Pioli, then Atlanta's assistant GM, is still the assistant GM.

* Eliot Wolf, then the Green Bay director of player personnel, was passed over for the Packers GM job last year and was hired by Dorsey as an assistant GM with the Browns.

* Chris Ballard, then Kansas City's director of football operations, is now the GM in Indianapolis and helped shape the Colts into a playoff team.

That was a strong and smart list at the time. You could have applied it to many general manager openings around the league. But how many of those possibilities do you really regret the Browns not hiring now? Only Ballard, who at the time was Dorsey's right-hand man with the Chiefs and has proven up to the take in Indy.

Brown wasn't on any other team's list at the time. Promoting a guy more steeped in the salary cap and in contract negotiations was an outlaw move -- yes, Harvard grads can be outlaws. What Brown did, at the very least, was take a deep breath and commit to the future at the expense of the present, a move a "football guy" may not have been able to stomach. That's how the Browns got back-to-back No. 1 picks in the draft and why Myles Garrett and Baker Mayfield are Browns right now.

Maybe the Browns didn't have to go 1-31 to get where they are. But going 1-31 clearly did play a part in getting them where they are.

Had they hired Ballard in January of 2016, this franchise would look rather different. The Browns might be great. But if they had hired one of those other names, candidates who haven't done anything in the years since to engender envy, the Browns might be stuck in the same 5-11 cycle they were in before.

That was one outlaw move that begat the rest.

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John Kuntz, cleveland.com

Baker Mayfield was the next big decision that wasn't an obvious choice for the Browns.

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2. Baker Mayfield

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Sam Darnold could be here. Easily. And Darnold might have worked. He's a better athlete than Mayfield, has a higher upside -- and you can't imagine the Browns without Mayfield.

As Terry Pluto pointed out last week, draft analysts Mel Kiper, Todd McShay and Mike Mayock all had Mayfield rated fourth among draft quarterbacks last year.

At NFL.com, reporter Tom Pelissero spoke to 15 teams to come up with his pre-draft QB rankings -- Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen, Mayfield.

"He scares me a little bit, to be honest with you," an offensive coordinator told Pelissero. "I would not feel comfortable drafting him in the first half of round one. I don't even know if I'd feel comfortable him in round two."

It's absolutely ludicrous.

NFL -- Nincompoops Faking Legitimacy. Nobody knows anything in this league.

Now that Mayfield has made it at 6-foot-1, draft people will be much more accepting of Kyler Murray, the 5-11 (maybe) successor to Mayfield as the Oklahoma quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner. They are completely different quarterbacks, but Mayfield's success at less than ideal size will give NFL decision makers permission to actually use their brains and analyze quarterbacks, beyond looking at measurables.

Darnold may have worked here. Josh Allen would have been a disaster. Josh Rosen had a questionable season with no help in Arizona.

The Browns got by far the best rookie QB because Dorsey did what he thought was best.

The real football guy made an outlaw choice of an outlaw quarterback.

Mayfield finished with a Pro Football Focus grade of 84.5, ninth overall in the league. Allen was No. 25 at 65.6; Darnold No. 26 at 64.7; Lamar Jackson No. 31 at 58.5; and Rosen No. 32 at 49.1.

I'm fairly certain Brown would have taken Mayfield as well.

But what would Chris Ballard or Scott Pioli or Duke Tobin have done?

Sometimes one outlaw move helps lead you to another.

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John Kuntz, cleveland.com

Freddie Kitchens is the last of the Browns outlaw trio.

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1. Freddie Kitchens

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Now Dorsey and the Browns search team has made another outlaw choice.

You gonna argue?

Other teams wanted Kitchens as an offensive coordinator, but it's hard to imagine anyone else hiring him as a head coach right now after an eight-game coordinator audition in Cleveland.

On one hand, it's a smart, safe choice - the in-house guy who clicked with Mayfield.

On the other hand, he's Eight-Game Freddie.

The Browns could be living in a Terry McDonough-Josh Allen-Mike McCarthy world right now.

Or a Chris Ballard-Sam Darnold-Eric Bieniemy world.

Or any other GM-QB-coach trio you could think of. At the end of the 2015 season, they were at Ray Farmer-Johnny Manziel-Mike Pettine.

Now they're here -- Dorsey-Mayfield-Kitchens. One outlaw GM led to a football guy, who picked an outlaw QB and an outlaw coach.

You'll take it.