Pressure? What pressure?

Here's a bulletin that really isn't a bulletin about expectations in Berea this season with regard to the professional football team that makes its home in that southwest Cleveland suburb. Warning: They are lofty.

After keeping thoughts private about how the Browns fared last season, allowing their head coach and general manager to explain why they finished a disappointing 7-10, owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam III finally stepped forth the other day in Phoenix at the National Football League owners' meeting.

In a sit-down session with Cleveland-area media, Jimmy Haslam pronounced the entire organization "disappointed, very disappointed. None of us thought we'd be 7-10. . . . The desire to win in that building . . . is extremely high. We've got high standards, so we expect to do better."

Here comes the bulletin. It has thus reached the point with the Kevin Stefanski/Andrew Berry regime where nothing less than a return to the postseason after consecutive seasons of failing is not only expected, failure conceivably could trigger a recasting of the front office.

Since purchasing the Browns for a billion bucks in 2012, the Haslams have fired five head coaches, one interim head coach and five general managers. During that time, the Browns are 59-118-1 (33%). There is no such thing as job security at 76 Lou Groza Blvd.

And now with quarterback Deshaun Watson ready to play a full season for the first time since 2020, the pressure to succeed will be palpable all season for all concerned. Most of it will be on Watson and Stefanski. 

Watson for certain because this is why the Haslams brought him to Cleveland in the first place, bribing him with a fully-guaranteed $230 million contract with the fallout of that deal still reverberating angrily around the NFL.

Stefanski has no excuses now if this all fails. He's got his quarterback leading a pretty good offense for the entire season. His general manager has overloaded the wide receivers room, correcting a problem that plagued the club last season. Finding five shouldn't be a problem. And the coach wisely changed his defensive and special teams coordinators. (About time.)

Haslam did not come right out and declare that anything less than the playoffs is unacceptable. "I don't want to say that," he said coyly. "But I think we have expectations to go to the playoffs." Some might consider that speaking out of both sides of one's mouth.

He refused to be drawn into making an absolute declaration. "I'm not going to say if we don't make the playoffs, X, Y, Z happens because that will be the headline tomorrow," he said. After all his years in Cleveland, it's hard to believe Haslam is so thin-skinned as to worry about tomorrow's headlines.

Along the way, he hauled out an old truism. "There are 32 teams that think their team is going to win the Super Bowl," he said. "I can assure you this: From ownership to personnel to coaching to the support people in the building, nobody wants to win more than the group of people I just listed. Nobody works harder or cares more about it." So do the other 31 teams.

And where has it gotten them? Rhetorical question.

Haslam has to know the window of opportunity for the Browns is slowly closing. The reliable veterans are getting older -- especially on offense -- with just one playoff appearance to show for their efforts. And Berry hasn't done enough with the roster from a talent standpoint to assure the future will be not be a problem.

After gaining the playoffs for the first time in nearly 20 years in 2020, the Browns once again morphed back into the same old sad-sack team of the early 21st century. How the team fares this season represents a fork in the road. Going the wrong way could prove fatal for the fourth-year incumbents.