When it comes to the Browns, I’m no different than you are. I’m just a fan.

Those of you who read my stuff with any regularity know me from my coverage of the Cavaliers. I don’t claim to be an expert on them either, but at least I have a press pass.

As for the Browns, I’ve never even been to a game at the new stadium. Or at least it’s still seems “new” to me.

That’s because the Browns of my youth played at old Cleveland Municipal. They featured names like Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar, Ozzie Newsome and Reggie Rucker, Hanford Dixon, Clay Matthews and Frank Minnifield, oh my.  

Hard as it may seem to believe, it’s been 30 years since the Kardiac Kids lit up Cleveland like a roman candle and captured the city’s heart by swashbuckling to the top of the toughest division in football with a style and panache we haven’t seen in the three subsequent decades. 

For as exciting and as memorable as the 1980 season was, there was no inkling then that it would be so revered all these years later. Of course, most subsequent Browns teams have cooperated by showcasing brands of football that make cleaning out gutters look like fun. Plus, living through the morbid experiences of Paul McDonald and Spergon Wynn playing quarterback has only underlined the amazing abilities of Brian Sipe and the offense he masterfully choreographed like a symphony orchestra. 

But before things got lyrical, 1980 started off a bit rough for the good guys in orange hats. Thirty years ago this week, Sam Rutigliano’s Browns opened a season of mild expectations with a stern test. Their soft-as-a-Twinkie defense would be matched with one of its toughest challenges of the season right off the rip: quarterback Steve Grogan and the high-flying offense of the New England Patriots. 

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The Cleveland Browns roster now stands at a precarious 53 players. It is overloaded with linebackers and undernourished with cornerbacks. Yet all anyone can think of at the moment is "there goes another second round pick."

Maybe it just seems this way but the Browns and the second round go together like LeBron James and Dan Gilbert. Montario Hardesty finds himself out for at least the season with a torn ACL and suddenly a Browns draft that looked so promising suddenly looks rather mediocre, T.J. Ward and Joe Haden notwithstanding.

Not surprisingly general manager Tom Heckert spent most of his post-cut press conference answering questions about why Hardesty, with his injury history, was drafted in the first place. Apparently it matters little to those doing the analyzing that Hardesty's latest injury is a new injury for him. All that matters is that he's been injured plenty in the past and so, if dog, rabbit.

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Did you ever try putting a 1,000-piece puzzle together? Where do you start? Answer: with the easy pieces, the ones with the flat sides around the edges.

Fitting the easy pieces together is what the Cleveland Browns’ new leaders (president Mike Holmgren, general manager Tom Heckert and, to a lesser extent, head coach Eric Mangini) have accomplished in the past eight months or so.

It now appears -- based strictly on personnel considerations -- that the Browns will be a better team in 2010 than they were in 2009. But it’s also not dishonest to say that they probably won’t be a playoff contender in 2010 -- unless about 300 pieces of the puzzle fall magically into place. (Is that even realistic, given the lousy luck we’ve had since 1996 -- the most recent being Montario Hardesty's date with the scalpel?)