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I want to make a pact with Brady Quinn before he plays another down of football. I want us both to live here, in this moment, as long as we can. We need to enjoy it; for moments like this are often as fleeting as Nicole Richie’s sobriety.

You see, Saturday night I fell in love with Quinn. Big time. But here’s the crazy part: he fell in love with me too. He had to. I was in the throng of crazed, orange and brown football fans that chanted his name and maniacally cheered as he threw for 155 yards and 2 TDs in a preseason game against the Lions fourth string defense. And I must say, without asking him, that he loved it. He loved our love. He loved my love. Thus, at this moment, he loves me.

ANYWAY, I want to make a pact with Quinn, binding us to this moment forever. We need to always remember how this feels. If this were a real relationship (and not this creepy one in my head), Quinn and I would be in that very beginning stage where everything is perfect and meant to be. We both just realized we like to eat Taco Bell and watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force. We are shunning our friends and family to go places together (Taco Bell) and to stare into each other’s eyes. I am flawless to him, and he flawless to me. It’s a Shakespearian sonnet.

I want to make this pact because, odds are, this feeling will fade.

You see, people do have imperfections and flaws. Relationships aren’t all roses, candies, rainbows and Grilled Stuffed Burritos. There will be hardships – especially when that relationship involves the Browns offensive line and a blitzing Steelers defense.

How do I know that? Let’s just say I’ve been here before – all Browns fans have. We’ve had brief moments of youthful bliss with Tim Couch, Kelly Holcomb, Jeff Garcia, and Charlie Frye. Hell, I think we even had a drunken one-nighter with Luke McCown, but I can’t be certain. At one time or another, we fully loved these quarterbacks. We read about their practices. We saw their preseason heroics. We saw their appearances as backup QBs. We saw them produce on other teams. We liked them and we wanted them to like us.

Then the season started. Interceptions were thrown. Drives were stalled. Underwear was hung on doorknobs. The tiny little sneeze that used to be innocent and charming was now like a power drill to the skull. Basically, these figurative honeymoons were just like real ones: they ended and we returned home. Fast. This clip from the X-Games sums up each and every QB relationship I’ve had since 1999.

For years, Browns fans have been left looking for a QB to really fall in love with. It’s been sadder, more repetitive, and much less comical version of Flavor of Love (which is now entering season 3).

This leads us to Quinn, our latest knight in orange armor. Saturday night, after enduring 3 quarters of terrible, here-we-go-again football against the Lions, Quinn took his first snap as a Brown. It was like everything that happened for the previous two hours, or even the previous eight years, was a distant wet fart. Call it reactionary and silly (because it was), but Quinn made every single one of us feel better. And we let him know it.

We chanted his name in the first quarter. We booed every signal caller that didn’t wear No. 10. Mahatma Gandhi could have strolled under center and Big Dawg would have chucked a half-filled Miller Lite bottle at his head. We wanted Brady! We wanted to believe! We wanted to fall in love again!

And we did.

Here’s the thing: People call preseason games meaningless. People say this because they are meaningless – except for this game. Nothing about that moment, when Quinn confidently read the Lions’ fourth string defense and led us to two scores, felt meaningless. Actually, it felt like the only true meaning I’ve experienced as a Browns fan. It was special and I want to remember it forever: the hope, the love, the belief, the excitement, the near-gayness – everything.

That is why I need this pact. And Quinn needs it too. Because if/when this moment is over, and Quinn becomes another embattled Browns quarterback with too much on his shoulders, and an angry mob of championship-starved cretins in dog masks call for his pretty face to be mangled in a meat grinder, his confidence and spirits will dampen. If/when he then gets hurt and the crowd cheers as the next QB du jour trots onto the field to save the day, he may cry. The boos will drown out every “Bray-Dee! Bray-Dee!” that ever echoed across Lake Erie. He’ll know us as a faceless mob that crushed his dreams. And we’ll know him as a singular chode that did the same to us.

In my heart, I believe he’s going to be a 10-time pro bowler who leads us to six super bowls. But in reality, who knows? He may flame out as early as his next series of preseason football. He may never be our savior. He may never be the hometown guy who revives a down and out franchise with his canon arm and dashing good looks. He may be a sadistic punch line. A future version of me is probably writing a sad, poorly-written column about it as we speak.

If/when all the bad happens, no one will remember the random preseason game in mid-August when we all believed the tide was turning. Instead of a tide, Saturday will become another distant wet fart, just like Couch’s preseason heroics, Holcomb’s backup prowess, Jeff Garcia’s Playmate girlfriend, and Carlie Frye’s HILARIOUS McDonald’s commercial with Braylon Edwards (and whatever Luke McCown did).

But I want to remember this moment, regardless of how much a future version of me calls him an “over-hyped Notre Dame sissyboy.” I don’t want either of us to forget the standing ovations, the name-chants, the touchdown pass to a future busboy at Denny’s, or the time we went ice skating and I fell down. That is why I need the pact.

It’s easy to forget the fun and excitement and hope of the good times after it all slips under .500. And in Cleveland Browns Stadium, the ultimate microcosm of life and love, this is a likely scenario.

So, Quinn, do we have a deal?

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