Hunt signs with the Browns, the worst place he could go could go

Please come with me as we skip over the fake moralizing and manufactured outrage and see that Kareem Hunt was always going to play football again.

Might be sooner than expected, and going back to Cleveland is setting him up to fail — more on this in a minute — but he was always going to have another job in the NFL.

The Chiefs released the star running back last fall almost immediately after security video surfaced that showed him kicking a woman in a Cleveland hotel. That was the surprise. NFL teams don’t typically act so swiftly, and so decisively, particularly when it comes to removing a key part of a team that was shaping up to be a Super Bowl contender.

Does that sound cold? Good.

The NFL is cold. Many other businesses are, too. Sales, finance … heck — journalism. We are all lines on a spreadsheet somewhere, and if our value exceeds cost, then we’re in luck.

Hunt’s financial cost is the NFL’s version of peanuts, and he is still just 23 and was league’s leading rusher in his only full season as a pro. So he’s in luck. The Browns announced they had signed Hunt on Monday. They did so predictably, with a statement from general manager John

Dorsey that referenced his personal history with Hunt — Dorsey oversaw the Chiefs front office that selected him in the NFL draft.

Dorsey hit all the expected notes: said Hunt took responsibility for “his egregious actions” that the Browns “do not condone.” Hunt is undergoing treatment and subject to an NFL suspension, and Dorsey’s statement made clear that another incident “will not be tolerated.”

Hunt released a statement, too. Again, it hit most of the expected notes. He apologized both for the violence and for lying about it later. He thanked the Browns for the opportunity and expressed a commitment to be “a better and healthier person.”

Notably, neither man’s statement mentioned the victim, or even the existence of a victim, and both focused solely on the incident caught on video, ignoring a larger and troubling pattern that developed around Hunt.

Sadly, that meat-headed, narcissistic, optics-first-and-everything-else-second response was also expected.

The NFL and the men who operate it are not in the business of healing. They are not about self-improvement. They are about football — first, foremost and above everything else.

That is not a controversial statement, or even a criticism. There is no “gotcha” there. And that stance is not extreme. Those words are a reflection of what the NFL has shown itself to be about, over and over, year after year.

If the NFL generally and the men who run the league specifically truly cared about Hunt beyond his gifts on a football field, they never would have allowed him to sign with the Browns.

That’s nothing against the Browns, who with quarterback Baker Mayfield leading a nice collection of talent are well-positioned to be a contender for years.