The Browns learned a valuable lesson this weekend that a number of teams around the league figured out long ago.

The NFL does not care about them. The NFL does not care about anyone. The NFL cares only about its shield. Nothing else.

Fairness is an accessory this year, not a priority. Keeping the season on schedule and throwing confetti in February is all that matters to the NFL.

No quarterback in Denver? Too bad. Suit up.

No receivers in Cleveland? Good thing Kevin Stefanski loves those tight ends.

The NFL’s obtuse attitude this year is something to both admire and detest. The determination that forced the Browns to play Sunday’s game against the Jets without any legitimate receivers is the same resolve that forced the Broncos to play without any of their quarterbacks last month against the Saints. It’s the same obsession that will allow a league predicated on collisions, sweating, spitting and bleeding on each other to complete its season amid a pandemic. 

Finishing an NBA season or completing a condensed MLB schedule this year seemed ambitious. Playing an entire NFL season in this COVID-19 environment felt insane. Yet here we are, entering Week 17. By god, they made it. Pay no attention to the trail of carnage in the rear-view mirror. 

The Browns are now part of that collateral damage. 

Stefanski refused to blame any part of their embarrassing 23-16 loss to the Jets on the fact that their entire receiving corps was wiped out and placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list 24 hours before the game. Stefanski did, however, acknowledge that the news came so close to kickoff that he didn’t have time to alter his game plan. It was a scheme that ultimately led to Baker Mayfield heaving 53 passes, certainly a curious decision given the team’s absences at receiver. 

The Browns made plenty of mistakes Sunday, from blown coverages in the secondary to Mayfield putting the ball on the ground three times. The play calling was certainly curious.

None of that conceals the league’s maddening inconsistency that forced the Browns to play on the same day it fined the Ravens $250,000 for breaking protocol last month. Yet despite the breach, the league postponed Baltimore’s game against Pittsburgh three times because of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Ravens locker room. The same was true in Tennessee, where the Titans were fined $350,000 but enjoyed the benefit of having their game against the Steelers moved to later in the season. 

The Ravens and Titans broke the rules and were rewarded for it by having their games postponed until more players were available. The Browns, as far as we know, didn’t really break any rules. It was just a matter of wrong place, wrong time at the team facility. 

How does that make sense?

You think Jimmy Haslam would pay $300,000 if it ensured the Browns could play the Jets a few days later when the team was closer to full strength with a playoff berth on the line? I bet he would. 

The fact that the league acquiesced to the Titans and Ravens but forced the Browns (and before them the Broncos) to play is bad optics for the league — if only the NFL cared about the optics. 

This game was too important to the Browns to be played in these conditions. The fact that we’re so late in the season and running out of time to reshuffle the schedule likely played at least a small role in the decision to play on. That’s what makes it so infuriating. The league had ample time in May or June to build a Week 18 into the schedule for this exact scenario. It chose not to, illustrating the same blinding arrogance it displayed in April when it refused to postpone the draft even a few weeks.

Nothing stops the NFL. Not a pandemic and certainly not one team’s lack of a positional group. The Browns have just been irrelevant for so long that no one around here really noticed or paid attention to the league’s course of action this season. It didn’t really matter in Cleveland.

Until now. Now it really matters.

The Browns remain in control of their own fate, and if they lose their last two games of the season — including next Sunday against the Steelers — they probably don’t deserve to make the playoffs anyway. Still, Roger Goodell answers to 32 bosses who want to squeeze every last dollar they can out of this season. It’s why they expanded the playoffs this year to help compensate for some of the lost gate revenue.

Now you know. Now you know what so many other fan bases in so many other cities long ago realized: Nothing slows down the NFL’s train. No team or player is bigger than the brand.

That chugging locomotive that put the Browns at such an extreme disadvantage on Sunday is the same one that can still carry them to the playoffs. Their best shot at the postseason now is as the seventh seed — a playoff seed that didn’t exist until the owners agreed to expand the playoffs in March. 

The NFL gives, and the NFL takes away. Most importantly, the NFL runs over anyone and anything that gets in its way. Week 17 is coming and the train is rolling again. Hold on tight.