Faces from the Browns' past will be popping up all over Minneapolis in the Super Bowl.
Off in never land at Super Bowl time, the Browns hope the spring draft gravitates them back toward Planet NFL.
Voices seem to call, "Return if you can, but not the way you left."
So many faces representing what might have been seem to appear.
Bill Belichick readies for his eighth Super Bowl. He was the Browns' head coach the last time the franchise won a playoff game, 23 years ago. What if that team had stayed? What if he hadn't been fired after five seasons while the team was moving to Baltimore?
Sixteen years ago, Belichick's dad, Steve, turned up in a room in New Orleans. Bill was talking nearby about having reached his first Super Bowl with New England.
Steve Belichick gave an impassioned rant, blasting Cleveland media people he thought had treated Bill poorly. Now Bill is going to his eighth Super Bowl.
Josh McDaniels first worked for Belichick when he was 25; it was on Belichick's first Super Bowl team. Now going on 42, McDaniels has been with Belichick in one capacity or another for all eight of the Super Bowls.
As soon as McDaniels finishes coordinating New England's offense in Super Bowl 52, he is supposed to be hired as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. Why didn't the Browns go after HIM?
Actually, the Browns either looked in on McDaniels or wound up interviewing him before hiring Eric Mangini in 2009, Rob Chudzinski in 2013 and Mike Pettine in 2014.
Look at how things turned out for those head coaches. Who knows what a McDaniels regime would had looked like, other than ... different.
New England's quarterback is you know who. How close did the 2000 Browns come to spending that sixth-round pick on Tom Brady, rather than Spergon Wynn?
In Cleveland, Brady would have been stuck behind the No. 1 overall pick of the 1999 draft, Tim Couch. In New England, he began his career behind the No. 1 overall pick of the 1993 draft, Drew Bledsoe.
In Cleveland, Couch got hurt early in the 2000 season and was replaced by veteran Doug Pederson, now the head coach of the team Belichick will face in Super Bowl 52. Wynn was third string. There was never a question as to whether Couch would be the starter when he healed.
In New England, Bledsoe got hurt early in the 2001 season and was replaced by Brady. Brady has started ever since.
Coming off Sunday's win over Jacksonville, Brady's postseason passing-yards total is 9,721. The question of how his career might have played out in Cleveland has been asked 10,000 times.
Other faces?
The Belichick-McDaniels-Brady offense has given Dion Lewis 40 rushing-receiving touches in this month's two playoff wins. The Browns cut Lewis on Aug. 30, 2014, two days after Brian Hoyer started at quarterback in a 33-13 win over the Bears.
The Browns rode with Hoyer until a 7-4 record faded to 7-6, at which point the keys were handed to Johnny Manziel. Now, Hoyer is Brady's top backup.
Steve Belichick, who entered grade school when his dad coached in Cleveland, coaches the Patriots' safeties. He is named after his grandfather. The elder Steve Belichick, incidentally, thought the Vince Lombardi Trophy should have been named the Paul Brown Trophy.
Carson Wentz, who was 11-2 as Philadelphia's 2017 starter, is the quarterback the Browns passed by because they preferred what the Eagles gave them in a trade.
John DeFilippo, who inherited Manziel as offensive coordinator in Cleveland in 2015, is the "OC" who kept the Eagles winning despite the Wentz injury.
Jim Schwartz, Philadelphia's defensive coordinator, broke into the NFL with Belichick's Browns.
Devin McCourty, who starts at safety for a New England team looking for its 16th win (counting regular season), is the brother of Jason McCourty, a starting cornerback for the 0-16 Browns.
Johnson Bademosi, who played four years for Cleveland, is a special teams stalwart for New England (ex-Brown Bubba Ventrone is one of his coaches.
Faces from the Browns' past are all over the Super Bowl. Will the Browns ever be in one?
Reach Steve at 330-580-8347 or
steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP