The Browns didn’t quit. Unfortunately there’s nothing else good to say about the game they played against the Commanders Sunday.

The defense was poor. The offense was nonexistent. Special teams chipped in with inconsistency throughout interluded by intermittent absent-mindedness.

Simply put, the team doesn’t make routine plays routinely. No aspect of what they do on the field looks like it’s being done by people who’ve played football before. They come across looking as natural as a donkey riding a penguin.

Deshaun Watson’s season has been up and down like a West Virginia mail route. Last week he was probably the best player the Browns fielded. This week he couldn’t hit a guy standing alone like a wallflower next to the sideline on a nearside screen pass.

He’s missing open receivers as if he’s scared his life could end at any moment. And with the way the offensive line is playing, that’s almost understandable.

This was week five and stunts up front are still confusing the O-line as if someone just invented a twist 15 minutes ago. And on the rare occasions when the protection holds up, Watson holds the ball too long and gets clobbered anyway. He’s been hit more than the dashboard of a drummer’s pickup truck at a stop light.

The receivers aren’t always creating separation, but when they do, Watson doesn’t see it. And when he makes the right read and delivers on time and on target, the receiver drops the ball.

This team is failing at the most minor details. When fundamentals don’t show up on film as being second nature, it falls on the coaching staff. The players have to execute the game plan which they are not, but why bother with scheme at all if there’s no foundation. The Browns are a very expensive house built on wet sand dampened by the tears of children.

It’s hard to determine what they’ve been practicing leading up to these games other than the first offensive drive. If they weren’t wearing matching uniforms I’d swear this was a bunch of beer leaguers who’d never met each other.

The only thing for which they can be counted on from week to week is a pathetic lack of execution. The common theme so far this season has been that the three phases haven’t been in synch with one another. One takeaway from the game could be that they were all on the same page this week; it was a page in a book about losing, but they were all on it.

—@PoisonPill4