CLEVELAND – The flu bug found a home in Berea and got comfortable.

Cornerback Eric Wright totaled his Mercedes and had to crawl out the back window.

Linebacker D’Qwell Jackson, the team’s leading tackler, was lost for the season with a pectoral injury.

Coach Eric Mangini continued to be a national punching bag, this time taking a series of below-the-belt shots in a column in Rolling Stone magazine.

The list sounds like the chorus of a country-western song, but it’s reality for the Browns. The floundering franchise has had more than its share of drama over the last few years, but last week stretched the boundaries.

“My wife left, kids are sick, hopefully she’s coming back,” defensive coordinator Rob Ryan said. “It’s been a tough week.

“You start questioning, maybe I should go to church more often, start living better.”

The flu was the big story in the middle of the week, as 12 players, including six starters, missed practice Wednesday. Everyone but defensive end Corey Williams was back by Friday, so the focus switched to preparing for the Packers (3-2).

Practices had been shortened, lineups juggled and game plans simplified, so there was plenty of catching up to do.

“You want to paint a picture of the opponent and right now I’m not sure if they have that picture or not,” Ryan said Friday. “Hopefully we’ll all be on the same page come Sunday. We need to be.”

Wright was listed as questionable with a shoulder injury after getting knocked around in the wreck. With Jackson out, the Browns can ill afford to lose another starter.

“We’ve had a rough year so far,” Ryan said. “It just has to get better. We just have to keep working through it.

“My father always said, ‘Tough times don’t always last, tough people do.’”

Mangini is as tough as they come, but the unrelenting attacks from the national media – many based in New York, his last stop – would make anyone ask: Why me?

“I don’t read Rolling Stone. I’ve never had a subscription to it,” Mangini said of the piece that compared him to a “Willie Wonka” character and said the players quit on him. “Everybody is entitled to their opinion. I respect everybody’s opinion.

“What I really focus on is us. Us making progress, us moving forward, us winning games, knowing this is a process and like any other process it takes time. I believe that the things that we are committed to are right.”

It would be one thing if all the Browns’ problems were off the field, out of their control or image issues. But the struggles on Sunday supersede everything, and that’s where the Browns have come up the shortest.

They are 1-5 overall, 0-2 at home. They have the last-ranked defense and 31st-ranked offense.

Quarterback Derek Anderson has the NFL’s lowest passer rating, 41.7, including a microscopic 8.5 in the fourth quarter.

“He’s got nowhere to go but up,” coordinator Brian Daboll said, shaking his head.

Anderson hasn’t gotten much help, as the receivers have dropped 15 passes in the last two weeks.

“Dropped passes aren’t fun, but I think the throws could be a little better, too,” Daboll said. “The concentration has to improve. We just keep working on it with drills and concentration drills.

“They have to come down with it, we have to put the ball where it needs to be put. And that’s the bottom line.”

The Packers are a difficult foe against whom to fix things. They have an experienced secondary that is second in the league with 10 interceptions and an offense ranked eighth in scoring with 26 points a game.

The Browns need a break and could get one from the schedule. Next week, the Packers host the Minnesota Vikings in the return of Brett Favre to Lambeau Field. It will be the biggest story of the year in Green Bay, and the biggest story of the week in the NFL, so there’s a chance the Packers will be looking ahead.

That won’t matter if the Browns don’t improve their level of play and overcome the headlines of the week.

“I think we’ll be in the best place we can be, based on the situation that we had,” Mangini said. “There have been a few challenges here along the way, but they’re going to happen. When I’m talking to the group next year about the ability to be able to deal with adversity, or the ability to adjust to things that happen that are unexpected, this is a good example of situations like that. We just have to adjust.”

When 4 o’clock arrives this afternoon, an asterisk won’t be attached to the result. The standings don’t care if the Browns had a tumultuous week.

“You just gotta deal,” guard Eric Steinbach said.

Contact Scott Petrak at 329-7253 or spetrak@chroniclet.com.

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