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Impatience of Browns owner sets up situation where Johnny Manziel takes a seat after strong showing

Jimmy Haslam bought the Cleveland Browns for $1 billion in 2012.

The team went 5-11 that season and Haslam fired general manager Tom Heckert and coach Pat Shurmur, who were with the franchise just three and two seasons respectively.

In came Michael Lombardi and Rob Chudzinski in the same positions and the Browns went 4-12 in 2013. Both were fired after just that single campaign.

Ray Farmer and Mike Pettine have the jobs now. They went 7-9 last year, are 1-1 this year. On Wednesday, the team announced it was bringing quarterback Josh McCown, freshly cleared from a concussion, back as the starter over Johnny Manziel, who got the fan base excited with a couple of deep touchdown passes in Sunday's victory against the Tennessee Titans.

It's likely the Browns' recent history of revolving door decision-makers is related to the choice for the immediate future.

The smart long play here is to throw Manziel out there and let him learn and grow, and see exactly what the Browns have in the one-time Heisman winner. If he's good, then that's good. If not, start over.

At least, that's the smart play unless your career is resting in the balance. When that's reality, when your owner has a quick trigger finger – how do you give a general manager one season like Haslam did with Lombardi? – then everything changes.

Then it's about winning as many games as possible right now, despite the unlikelihood of Cleveland being a Super Bowl contender – presumably the ultimate goal – or McCown being in town in, say, 2017.

"We're tasked with winning football games," Pettine told reporters on Wednesday. "The decisions we make are what gives us the best opportunity to win this Sunday."

Pettine has more information to make this decision than anyone else. He is a good coach and he's the one who has watched (and re-watched ad nauseam on film) McCown and Manziel in every practice, workout, game, etc. The Browns' brain trust has never wavered in the belief that McCown was a better option. He is 36 years old, in his 13th NFL season and brought in from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to lead the club. He is far more experienced and capable of handling complex defenses.

Moreover, he looked good before getting concussed in the opener against the New York Jets – 5-of-8 passing for 49 yards, 23 more yards rushing. All of that was on a long Cleveland drive that ended with his injury and a fumble in the end zone.

So why should the pecking order change?

And does Pettine want his players, especially his quarterbacks, thinking that acknowledging a brain injury (not that McCown's wasn't obvious) might cost them the starting job?

So fine, here comes McCown against the Oakland Raiders on Sunday. Johnny is back to the bench and, hopefully, still progressing in practice.

That's all understandable and justifiable. After all, football is too violent and too serious of a sport for experiments. You can't ask the rest of the team to literally risk their necks out there as you play an inferior talent at a position such as quarterback.

How inferior though is Manziel? How insulting would his presence in the huddle be, especially on a team with other young players who, like everyone else around the Browns, wonder about the long-term future? Don't they want to know if Manziel can develop into something too?

And this is where the way Haslam has run the operation becomes a viable point of debate. A really well-run franchise has everyone on the same page building to a single goal. Maybe that's Cleveland right now, but the Haslam Era hasn't displayed it.

Manziel undoubtedly has a long way to go to become a viable franchise quarterback – namely a propensity to turn the ball over, either via interception or fumble when hit.

He also showed things on Sunday that you can't teach.

"Coaching is overrated," Pettine joked on Sunday, relaying a line from offensive coordinator John DeFilippo in the moments after Manziel avoided a rush, rolled into open space and gunned a 50-yard, game-clinching touchdown to Travis Benjamin. It was his second such play, an improvised game-breaker out of nothing. The Browns won by two touchdowns … or those two plays.

"Frustrating," said Titans defensive end Brian Orakpo, who almost had Manziel sacked on the play. A year ago, when in Washington, Orakpo mocked Manziel's "money" sign hand gesture and goaded him into a nationally televised flipping of the bird. Now he was reduced to respect for the young QB.

It was a sign of how far Johnny Football had come after an offseason trip to rehab and a lot of work on the practice field. It was a sign, perhaps, of how far he might still go.

Only now it's on hold. Is he good enough to be the future? Who knows? The guy has thrown only 74 career passes.

Is it fair to make that decision without giving him a chance to work on the weak parts while flashing the strong ones that a coach can't coach – and thus can't set up a way to evaluate in the confines of practice?

"I know that on the outside those things get brought into it," Pettine acknowledged. "And we've already seen circumstances have come about for us to get an evaluation of him. We're not going to use a season and look at it that way, and say, 'Hey, we need to know.' We think over the natural course of events, we'll find out."

Maybe that's another injury to McCown. Maybe that is later in the year if the Browns are out of contention.

Josh McCown starts on Sunday though. At his age he isn't the long-term answer in Cleveland, but under an owner who has yet to show any appreciation for such a concept, you can understand why win-now, evaluate-later is the choice.