Continuity or change?

Retooling with the same group or starting over?

Living up to a promise made in preseason or reacting to the record?

Those are the bottom-line questions that Jimmy Haslam must face as this long and dreary Cleveland Browns season winds down.

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has decisions to make as the team wraps up another subpar season, including whether or not to keep coach Mike Pettine. AP Photo/David Richard

Personnel moves have backfired, the on-field product has been poor and the Browns are threatening a 13-loss season for the first time in 15 years. The futures of general manager Ray Farmer and/or coach Mike Pettine have become a regular talking point on local and national shows.

Pettine already has made a public plea for togetherness, and two prominent members of the team have said they want the coaching staff back.

Donte Whitner stood behind the coaches, saying the players had let them down.

Sunday in Seattle, quarterback Johnny Manziel made it clear he doesn't want to go through another spring learning a new offense.

"We'll see what happens," Manziel said in his postgame interview. "I don't think anybody really knows. I want these guys to be here next year. And I want to have these receivers and the people that we have on this roster, on this staff. So we can go through the spring and not have to really learn what his call is on this play and be able to go through a spring and have some of that continuity."

Teams that start over often are behind the proverbial eight ball. While the other three teams in the division refine their offenses with players who have been in the same system for years, the Browns start over, again and again.

"Any time you make a change in an organization on the coaching staff, or you make a change in the organization, there is a one step back that you have to take," left tackle Joe Thomas said. "That's just a part of making the change. You're going to get a lot of new players, you're going to get obviously new coaches, new people in the building. And it does take time to teach people the new philosophy, the new procedures, the new schemes."

It's hardly a coincidence that the Browns have lost at least 11 games in seven of the past eight seasons and that in those eight seasons, they've had five different head coaches.

That's the argument for continuity. But if the plan is flawed or the decision-makers are making the wrong decisions, continuity only perpetuates mistakes. The worst thing when making a mistake is refusing to recognize it.

For the Browns, the decision on continuity has many layers. There are decisions to be made about the front office and Farmer and decisions on the coaching staff -- along with decision on players, including Manziel.

Do the Browns stick with Manziel? Do they use a high draft pick -- they figure to be picking No. 1 or No. 2 -- to take a quarterback? Do they bring in a coach who will make more use of Manziel's elusiveness, or is that elusiveness a path to Robert Griffin III-like struggles? Does Manziel truly believe in this staff, or are there lingering feelings about his demotion earlier in the season?

Manziel clearly has improved from his rookie season. While former offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan got out of Cleveland, new coordinator John DeFilippo and quarterback coach Kevin O'Connell convinced Manziel to work from the pocket. The change has been eye-opening, and the Browns don't put too much of the Seattle loss on Manziel. The team had just seven possessions and scored on three; Pettine said Manziel did the job he was asked to do and "we thought he was solid."

Haslam fired one coach after one season. Then he fired a GM and a team CEO after the CEO and GM had hired the new coach. He then married an existing personnel director and coach by making the personnel guy the GM.

It created a situation where the GM picks the players and the coach decides who plays. Pettine has said there have been zero personnel moves the coaching staff did not support, but losing can strain ties.

Haslam, meanwhile, walks with the tag of a reactionary quick to open the trapdoor.

If the Browns stick with the group in place, they start from an expansion-like win-loss record.

If they bring in a new group, they start over.

It'd be nice to say the only positive is there's nowhere to go but up, but that's been true in Cleveland for years. The Browns always seem to find a way down.