"Hell yes, there's emotion," Hue Jackson responded to a reporter's question on that topic outside the Browns' locker room. "We want to win."
Win?
That, as always, will have to wait until next year for professional sports' worst franchise.
Unless, of course, they go 0-16 again.
Cleveland's 28-24 loss to the Steelers on this Sunday afternoon at Heinz Field brought a bookend finish -- the Steelers also beat them at FirstEnergy Stadium in the season opener -- to the second winless season in a 16-game season in NFL history. The other belonged to the 2008 Lions. The 1976 Buccaneers were 0-14, accounting for the only other winless season of 10-plus games.
But that doesn't begin to paint the picture:
• The Browns have lost their past 17 games dating to last season, they're 2-41 in their past 43 games, 4-49 in their past 53.
• The Browns' 1-31 record spanning 2016 and 2017 is now the worst two-season record since the NFL went to a uniform schedule in 1933, the year the Steelers were founded. The Lions' 2-30 record over 2008 and 2009 was the previous worst.
• The Browns have lost their past 22 games outside Cleveland, their past 17 within the AFC North, their past 33 played on a Sunday.
• The Browns have lost 26 of their past 29 meetings with the Steelers, including 14 in a row at Heinz Field. Their most recent victory here was Oct. 5, 2003.
• The Browns haven't had a winning record since 2007.
• The Browns have made one playoff appearance since rejoining the NFL as an expansion team in 1999. That was a 2003 AFC Wild Card loss at Heinz Field in which the Steelers overcame a double-digit, fourth-quarter deficit.
• The Browns have had, since that loss, eight head coaches and 25 starting quarterbacks.
• The Browns haven't won a road playoff game since Dec. 28, 1969, in Dallas. They've only played in eight road playoff games since then.
• The Browns have the longest playoff drought in the NFL at 15 years, now that the Bills ended their 17-year drought by clinching Sunday. (The Seattle Mariners have missed baseball's postseason for 16 years.)
• The Browns haven't won an NFL championship since 1964, before the Super Bowl was created.
This list could grow long enough to paper every mile of the Turnpike between here and Lake Erie, but the only number that seemed to matter to the current Browns on this day was zero.
"Nobody wants to go 0-16," running back Isaiah Crowell said. "As a competitor, you're always going to be upset about it."
"We stayed together," guard Joel Bitonio said. "But most of these guys played at good college programs. They probably didn't lose 16 games in four years. It takes a toll, not winning in the NFL. It's tough. It's hard for me to put into words right now because I'm just a little bit annoyed in the whole situation."
That, he'd explain, was a reference to the Browns losing four games by four or fewer points, including this one, which ended with them driving into Pittsburgh territory until wide receiver Corey Coleman, a first-round draft pick in 2016, did this:
Right between the hands. Right in his helmet. One could watch that loop 1,000 times and still not believe it doesn't result in a catch. Except that it happened to the Browns.
Go ahead and supply the jokes. A clever Cleveland fan on Twitter offered that at least he didn't have to wait for the ball to drop at Times Square.
Coleman sure wasn't laughing. He sat devastated on the field, held his head between his hands on the sideline bench, then looked and sounded inconsolable in the locker room, saying of the drop, "I'll never forget it. I've got to catch that. I've got to make that play."
Also after the game out on a lower concourse, the Browns' immensely unpopular owner, Jimmy Haslam, told reporters Jackson would be back as head coach, explaining, "Hue hasn't lost his magic" from the period in which he was a coveted offensive coordinator in Cincinnati.
Jackson, who vowed before this season that, if the Browns would again go 1-15, he'd jump into Lake Erie, said after this, "I don't think anyone else could have stayed in this job for two years and be 1-31. A lot of coaches would have said uncle after last year. We're going to turn this around. I understand how our fans feel. The only thing that's going to change their minds is us turning this organization around and getting to winning."
That water's awfully cold this time of year.
