Wait 'til Next Year, Again

The Path to a College Football Playoff

2012-02-08T18:18:00.000-05:00

The dominoes continue to fall and nowit won’t be long before college football finally has a legitimateplayoff to determine its national champion. The news that the BigTen is noodling various playoff scenarios carries with it thesignificant implication that it not only can be swayed but that itwill. To this point the Big Ten served as both the enemy of progressand the 10,000 pound elephant in the playoff advocates’ ointment.

There is this overwhelming unmet needof so many to crown a national champion in Division I football on thefield. Initially it stemmed from the distinct possibility that thetwo ranking groups, the Associated Press and the United PressInternational Coaches Poll, since taken over by USA Today, left openthe possibility that there could be, God forbid, a difference ofopinion on which team really was the theoretical best for that year.Indeed they did disagree at various times, though it should be notedthat it didn't result in rain falling upward or dogs playing withcats.

Despite all the supposedly smart men inhideous blazers paid by universities to wring hands and scratch browsover all things related to college football, no one could quitefigure out how to deal with an incredibly antiquated and increasinglyirrelevant bowl system that seemed to be an insurmountable hurdle toa national playoff system.

The preservation of this goofy bowlsystem, which is really a vestige of a bygone day where it wasdifficult and expensive for teams to travel anywhere but locally,always has been a curious thing. There’s no overriding reason, forexample, why the Rose Bowl needs to continue to exist except toenhance the pockets of those who run it. Sure it’s tradition. Sowas the Maypole dance. Everything has its time and its expirationdate.

What started out as a nice way for ahandful of teams to celebrate an end to a football season has sincemorphed into an impossibly controlled crazy quilt of games that nolonger celebrate any real success. All it takes to become bowleligible is for a team to win half its games in a given season and asthe number of bowl games propagate faster then Kris Kardashian Jennerthe relevance gets even harder to find. Bowl games are now theequivalent of participation trophies that little leagues hand out sothat no kid is left to feel bad because his team didn’t win.

So a legitimate football playoff seasonhas been hamstrung by the abject refusal of anyone with any guts toadmit that the king hasn’t been wearing any clothes for at leasttwo decades. Thus we’re left to act like the bowl games matter andthat taking a back hoe to them would be tantamount to tearing at thevery fabric that holds this country together.

Certainly the Big Ten’s Jim Delany,whose title is commissioner but who has always seen himself as muchmore of a deity, has been the biggest advocate for the current bowlsystem. In the past he has vowed that the Big Ten wouldn’t everconsider approving any sort of playoff system. I wonder what’sturned his head?

Well, let’s start with the fact thathis conference has become mostly shut out from winning a nationalchampionship for the last 6 years. When the SEC sent two of itsteams to play for this year’s national championship, Delany had tosee it as the disaster it really was. The nation was left to witnessa redux of sorts of the SEC Championship game, Delany's conferencewas losing its competitiveness and the spotlight and the situationdoesn’t look to change any time soon.

But there is more. Whenhorse-and-buggy thinkers like Delany put the clamps on any talks of alegitimate playoff system it’s not as if others didn’t still tryto make something, anything happen. Thus was born probably thesingle dumbest creation in college football history next to theflying wedge: the Bowl Championship Series.

Through a convoluted point system thatweighs everything from a team’s ranking in the more traditionalpolls to the color of its uniforms, the BCS tries to force a matchupof the two best teams in the country in one super, duper bowl gamethat takes place at the end of a particularly hellish week of otherBCS-related bowls run by the very idiots whose interests run counterto the rest of the college football fan base.

The hope I guess was that by having theBCS align with the traditional bowls and their traditional conferencealignments and then throwing millions of dollars at the conferenceanyone with any authority would look the other way at the inequitiesit caused. It's worked, sort of, except that all anyone really doesis complain about the way it works.

It’s not just that the BCS systemignores teams/conferences it doesn’t deem sponge worthy that causesthe problems, although that’s a big part of it. It’s the factthat despite all the rigor of its ranking process in the end thosesame guys in the hideous blazers get to ignore those rankings whendeciding who will participate in the bowl they represent. The draftused by most fantasy football leagues makes more sense.

How did this lead to Delany’sevolution on the subject of a playoff? How about the fact thatMichigan got to play in a BCS bowl game which Michigan State, easilythe conference’s second best team and a team that handled Michiganduring the regular season, did not.

No one outside of Ann Arbor thoughtthis was fair and I suspect Delany heard an earful from most of therest of the conference. The selection of Michigan instead ofMichigan State by the Sugar Bowl was indefensible. It wasn’t basedon on-field accomplishment but more so on which team supposedlytraveled better. That’s code for which team had the more affluentalumni base that would buy tickets to a game that was played forabsolutely no stakes and had even less meaning then that. And don’tget me started on Virginia Tech. How they played in anything beyondthe Meinke Car Care Bowl remains a bigger mystery then Newt Gingrich.

In truth, it was only a matter of timebefore the inequities of college football started impacting the BigTen in a negative way. Until recently, the Big Ten has had it mostlyits way and had absolutely no incentive to do anything different thensimply being the petulant child who refuses to get into the car sothat the rest of the family can leave for vacation.

But the thing we know most aboutcollege football these days is that it’s not about the athletes andit’s not about the students. It’s about the money. Statelegislatures everywhere continually squeeze the budgets of the publicuniversities that taxpayers help support and university presidentsare forced to find new revenue streams as well as ways to widen theexisting streams.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then,that Delany’s whispered sanctioning of a playoff system comes withthe notion that it would involve an additional home game for the toptwo seeds. The best teams in the Big Ten have stadiums the size ofRhode Island and fill them with an ease that even a touring BruceSpringsteen would admire. That’s a lot of extra money for aconference that splits its proceeds among all its members.

Now nothing comes easy when it comes toDelany and the Big Ten, which is why their kicking around of a 4-teamplayoff is akin to dipping one's toe in the tub to test thetemperature. But Delany is smart enough to know that you can't be alittle bit pregnant and understands full well the history of how theNCAA's basketball tournament went from a sleepy little 8-teamtournament to the 68 team monstrosity it is today. Once you startthere's no going back.

And just like that the bowl system isno longer the insurmountable hurdle to a more equitable system. Itwill take time and it won't be perfect immediately but make nomistake that the path is being paved. Who knew, except everybody,that money would solve all problems?

Lingering Items--Winter Doldrums Edition

2012-01-31T19:12:00.001-05:00

When the Super Bowl ends sometimearound 10 p.m. EDT this Sunday it will mark not just the end of avery curious but interesting football season. It is also will markthe beginning of the dullest period of the sports season.

Fortunately, the dull times don’tlast too long as it’s at most a few weeks until major league teamsreport to spring training. Until then, though, you have time tocatch up on Mad Men before the next season starts in March or wasteyour time with meaningless games in whatever sport you follow.

The Ohio State Buckeyes men’sbasketball team, talented and athletic and a real contender for anational championship, have a difficult schedule ahead over the lasthalf of their regular season, but the presence of a Big Tentournament and the knowledge that the Buckeyes will be in the NCAAtournament come March render these upcoming games mildly interestingand overwhelmingly irrelevant, like the Plain Dealer on a good day.

Far worse, though, is the NBA seasonand not just because the Cavaliers are still in the early stages of amajor rebuild which, if history is any indication, is a minimum 8year process. If there are any NHL fans in this area, and I supposethere probably are a few, nothing much interesting happens this timeof year, either. Like the NBA, more teams make the playoffs thenshould and only a few teams really have a chance of taking the crown. That much was known months ago and not much has changed in theinterim.

So what we’re left with for the nextfew weeks is to engage in postseason speculation when it comes to theBrowns, preseason bitching when it comes to the Indians and in seasonindifference when it comes to the Cavs.

Let’s start with the Cavs. Withthem, the current mostly boring debate surrounds whether or not theteam should just continue on a losing path for the rest of the seasonin order to secure a better draft pick. Right now, the Cavs wouldmake the playoffs and wouldn’t make the lottery. It’s asituation known as NBA purgatory. There are only a few teams with alegitimate chance to make the NBA Finals. There are a few othersthat are close to that level and thus would likely benefit from theseasoning that the NBA playoffs bring. The rest of the teams thoughare just spinning their wheels in the most unproductive mannerpossible in purgatory.

There is no good that could come fromthe Cavs making the playoffs this season. They are simply too faraway to reap any tangible benefit from playing in the postseason. If/when the Cavs are able to cobble together enough pieces and partsto make a far more legitimate run, most of the players on the currentteam will be playing elsewhere. In other words, getting playoffexperience under their belts, to the extent that matters, won’tbenefit the Cavs anyway.

All that said, of course, it’sridiculous to think about tanking an entire NBA season. Professionalathletes for the most part are imbued with a strong sense of prideand competitiveness. They may know their team sucks, but when thewhistle blows they still tend to play hard if only because they don’twant to be embarrassed.

There are notable exceptions to this ofcourse. The Cavs, for example, have had rosters full of players thatmailed it in for millions a year. But this Cavs roster isn’t ofthat ilk. They aren’t talented enough to compete at the highestlevels but neither are they jaded enough to spend the rest of theseason going through the motions.

I don’t think that fans need to worryanyway. Water finds its level and for this Cavs team, that’ssomewhere far closer to the ceiling then the upper floors. Thelottery looks secure for another season.

The Indians, on the other hand, areabout to embark on another gun fight once again wielding a dullknife. They spent another offseason gathering spare parts and brokenhearts through barter while the key competition around them acquiredassets with cash.

It’s to their detriment but not theirfault that they didn’t acquire Prince Fielder and his expandingwaist line. It was an ill advised move by the Detroit Tigers. Butit does emphasize why the Indians will always fall short of fillingthe gaps they need. They are essentially playing in a differentleague when it comes to better financed teams.

The acquisition of Fielder by theTigers is interesting because it somewhat dispels the notion of smallmarket vs. big market teams. I don’t think of Detroit as a bigmarket anymore although that tide could be turning along with thefortunes of the auto industry. They're just a small market with a bigmarket thinking owner.

That said, I don’t recommend that anyteam, least of all the Indians, overpay someone like Fielder wholooks like he took training tips from an online consortium run by CCSabathia and Dinner Bell Mel Turpin. The contract the Tigerscommitted to for Fielder will be a bigger millstone around their neckthen the Travis Hafner contract has been around the Indians’.

I fully expect that Fielder will havesome good numbers for the next year or two and some of that will comeat the expense of the Indians as they try to claw back intorelevance. But come years 6, 7, 8 and 9, if not years 3, 4 and 5,someone in Detroit is going to lose his job for green lightingProject Fielder for $200+ million.

Meanwhile, back at the corner ofCarnegie and Ontario, the Indians are putting on their usualoffseason flourish designed to systematically lower expectations aspart of their overriding goal each year to under promise and overdeliver.

Indeed that’s why last season feltlike such a revelation. With nothing promised, the Indians easilyexceeded expectations. The problem is that with the limited bit of asuccess comes the implied obligation to further upgrade. Insteadfans received the same warmed over players that can be had on thecheap as they rehab from injuries. About the only thing differentfrom any number of seasons past is that the Indians applied that samecriteria to one of their own, Grady Sizemore.

The key word in every Indians’offseason is “if,” as in, “if Grady Sizemore can stay healthy”or “if Kevin Slowey can stay healthy” or, well, you get thepicture. But as we know full well by not, most of the “ifs”become “buts” and the Indians, by virtue of their inaction, willagain be scrambling to develop other revenue sources besides the moretraditional route of good play-inspired attendance. And the circlegoes unbroken.

The Browns have underwhelmed thus farin the off season, but it’s early. They're is still time tomassively disappoint. The only move of consequence was the additionof failed former head coach Brad Childress as the offensivecoordinator.

But like most things that happen inBerea, it looks like it will come with the odd condition in the formof not allowing Childress to exercise the full benefits of his titleby being the team’s play caller. But perhaps Childress was chosenexactly for that reason. As Andy Reid's offensive coordinator inPhiladelphia, Childress didn't call plays then either.

Still, it smacks of a compromisereached between head coach Pat Shurmur and his boss, team presidentMike Holmgren. Shurmur doesn’t appear to want to relinquish whatlittle power he has and Holmgren needs to quell a fan insurrectionover the awful state of the offense. Who better to step in and playthe part of a well paid patsy then another client of both Shurmur’sand Holmgren’s and Tom Heckert's agent, Bob Lamonte, the out ofwork Childress?

Like most compromises of this nature,its structure suggests failure and not success. If the Browns needan offensive coordinator, and they do, then hire one and let him dothe job. The last thing this team needs is another consultant, whichis what Childress essentially has signed on for.

This is the kind of thing that reallyis starting to grate on the nerves of fans when it comes to Holmgren. Brought in to make tough decisions, he continuously backs away atthe sign of any internal resistance. He kept Eric Mangini on for ayear because Mangini literally pleaded to Holmgren to spare him theax. It was nice for Mangini but awful for the fans and the progressof the franchise.

When he brought in Shurmur, who hadn’tbeen a head coach at any level, Holmgren allowed Shurmur to controlthe narrative by suggesting that he could handle both head coachingduties and the job of first assistant. It only sounds reasonable ifthe Browns were trying to cut costs on the number of assistants, butthen when have the Browns ever been on that kind of austerity plan? They trend in the opposite direction, doling out money to meaninglesscoaches long since gone.

Armed with empirical proof that Shurmur(or any head coach) is ill suited to do the job of two coaches atonce, Holmgren nonetheless again backed away from forcing Shurmur torelinquish some control. This can only mean more of the same fornext year. If Childress lasts the entire season under this constructI’ll be amazed.

As for upgrading the roster, the firstthing the Browns need to decide is which of their free agents theywant to pursue. It would seem like D’Qwell Jackson and Phil Dawsonare layups. More interesting is running back Peyton Hillis. Heckertis now leaking it to the media that the Browns do want Hillis back.

Hillis, when healthy, is exactly thekind of running back most teams need these days. While the presenceof a running game is still important to the overall effectiveness ofan offense, attitudes have changed on exactly what a presence means. There can be no doubt, for example, that a team does not need aWalter Peyton or a Barry Sanders to be successful. Quick, name methe starting running backs for the New England Patriots and the NewYork Giants.

Hillis is exactly the kind of effectiveno-name player that most teams look to have on board, as long as hedoesn't cost too much. His problem is that he is injury-prone. Heplays football like Grady Sizemore plays baseball and it leads tomore injuries and less effectiveness.

The injuries have hurt Hillis’bargaining power, but not in the same way they hurt Sizemore’s. Because there’s very little guaranteed money in the NFL, thechances are much better that a team would be willing to sign Hillisto a long-term contract. Sizemore couldn’t sniff anything morethan the one-year deal the Indians offered him.

If Hillis is lost to free agency, itwon’t be a major blow. I like his game, but he’s fungible withbacks like Chris Ogbonnaya, a point that will become more evidentwhen the Browns develop a better right side of the offensive line andemploy credible receivers. At that point they’ll become far morepass oriented, like the rest of the league, with just a dash ofrunning thrown in to keep teams honest.

The other Browns story that remains inthe background concerns the fate of former Plain Dealer beat reporterTony Grossi. The PD’s public editor, Ted Diadiun, gave a ratherfarcical account of what he termed a painful but necessary decisionto demote Grossi, as I anticipated in my earlier column on thissubject.

Diadiun pulled out the old “standards”card and essentially suggested that it wasn’t Grossi’s views ofBrowns owner Randy Lerner that got him in trouble but the fact thathe expressed them publicly. Apparently the Plain Dealer discouragesits sports reporters from having opinions.

Diadiun is making a distinction withouta difference. Irrespective of whether Grossi expressed the opinionpublicly, the fact of the matter is that he didn’t respect Lernerand that didn’t seem to matter to the PD until Grossi said it outloud.

And for what it’s worth, I’m notbuying the whole “inadvertent tweet” defense Grossi offered inorder to save his job. Maybe Grossi did mean to respond onlyprivately but the fact remains that he didn’t and it doesn’tmatter anyway. Whether he made his views of Lerner known publicly orprivately is irrelevant. He held the opinion and it did impact insome fashion on his coverage. That isn’t a sin because everyreporter has an opinion on his subject matter and many times it isn’tfavorable. So be it.

Indeed, I think it’s cowardly forGrossi to try and hide behind a defense that relies on the phrase“inadvertent tweet”, two words that shouldn’t ever be utteredconsecutively, by the way. He feels that way, he said it, end ofstory. But even more cowardly is the journalistic yarn the PD ishiding behind in order to assuage the feelings of a pathetic andirrelevant billionaire and his ineffective and weak first lieutenant.

The Plain Dealer demonstrated, to thedetriment of the rest of its staff, that when the going gets tough,the reporters get tossed.

With the Super Bowl upcoming and BillBelichick further affirming his status as one of the all time greathead coaches in NFL history comes this week’s question to ponder: When Art Modell hired Belichick, he said it would be the last headcoach he’d ever hire. If Modell has stuck to it, would he now bein the Hall of Fame?

Pathetic and Irrelevant

2012-01-26T05:48:00.000-05:00

When the obituary of the ClevelandPlain Dealer is written, and it will be sooner rather than later,don’t be surprised if the words “pathetic” and “irrelevant”appear somewhere in the first 10 words or so to describe thereasoning behind its demise.

Already a shadow of its former gloriousself, the Plain Dealer will be done in by no shortage of irony andperhaps the tipping point will turn out to be their pathetic buthardly irrelevant response to the apparently former PD Browns beatreporter Tony Grossi's tweet about Browns owner Randy Lerner.

The back story here is that Lerner, whogives interviews about as often as the Browns have winning seasons,did grant one to the fawning, preening troll-like blowhard whooccupies the afternoon drive-time slot for the Browns’ flag shipstation, WTAM. As interviews go, it was, to borrow a few choicewords, pathetic and irrelevant.

Lerner wasn’t asked anything remotelychallenging or controversial and he complied spectacularly by notsaying say much interesting, he never does. His tone was mostlyflat-lined, matching note for note his stewardship of a franchisethat, to borrow a few choice words, has been pathetic and irrelevantfor more than a decade. In short, Lerner’s coming out was thenon-event of this year's Berea social scene. So be it.

Grossi, likely frustrated that hisstatus as the longest tenured Browns beat reporter didn’t give himthe same access to Lerner and hence the opportunity to actually askquestions and demand answers, tweeted that Lerner is a “patheticfigure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world.”

This, of course, probably angeredsomeone inside of Berea, though I doubt Lerner much paid attention. My guess is that it was the public relations director. Maybe it wasMike Holmgren, who just weeks ago railed against the negativeattitude of the media and essentially vowed to do something about it.

It doesn’t matter. Someone got theword back to the Plain Dealer about Grossi’s tweet and the editorsthere jumped into panic mode. Grossi was forced to remove the tweet,apologize to Lerner and await his fate like a petulant child who justspray painted the cat and was now waiting for dad to come home andmete out the punishment.

Well that punishment came in the formof his removal from the Browns’ beat, according to multiplesources. No one at the Plain Dealer is saying much about it, hidingfor now behind the kind of “no comment” comment that they detestfrom others with something to hide. If/when they do say something,it will be along the lines of what they already said when theydiscovered the tweet, that his actions were inappropriate as theythen utter vague references about compromised integrity or some othersuch horseshit.

There’s something very peculiar aboutnewspapers, the so-called champions of free speech everywhere. Forvoracious First Amendment advocates, they have awfully thin skins. Maybe they’re just jittery about their business prospects.

It’s actually odd for me to take upthe banner for Grossi because I never felt like he was all that goodof a beat writer to begin with. At this point in his career, andperhaps jaded by years of watching, to borrow a few choice words,pathetic and irrelevant football being played on the lakefront,Grossi became satisfied with perfunctory analysis and lazy reporting.His editors and audience alike yawned their indifference.

He was repeatedly scooped, like manyPlain Dealer sports writers tend to be, by harder working reportersat smaller newspapers or, God forbid, bloggers. Perhaps his biggestflaw, though, was that he never had much interesting to say. Mysense always was that he had readers because of his platform and notbecause of his talent.

Any of those would have been goodenough reasons to can Grossi and you wouldn’t have heard a peep outof me. But the Plain Dealer, having tolerated his mediocrity foryears, has long since lost the argument that Grossi should be firednow because he was lousy at his job.

Instead, they took a much moreinteresting approach, claiming essentially that it was thefreestyling ways of the internets and social media that made itimpossible for Grossi to do his job effectively anymore. Why? Because he had the temerity to call it as he saw it when it came toLerner? What happened to truth as a defense?

Lerner, frankly, is a pathetic figureand an irrelevant billionaire. Whether he’s the most irrelevantbillionaire in the world can’t be measured empirically but let’sgrant Grossi the latitude that Lerner is in the top 10. The point,though, is that none of this is news anyway, except maybe to theowners or editors of the Plain Dealer who apparently have been toobusy trying to scour up advertisers and subscribers to pay attentionto such small matters as the disintegration of a key economic driverof the city that the Browns are or at least should be.

Lerner’s ownership of the Browns hasbeen a disaster. He’s treated the Browns like some sort ofaquatic experiment where he keeps buying various kinds of exotic fishand throwing them in the tank together to see if they can survivetogether. About every two years or so, he’s forced to buy morefish when his last experiment didn't work. The next time he showseven a modicum of leadership of the franchise will be the first.

If this hurts his feelings, or ifsomeone pointing this out hurts his feelings, then he should get outof the game. By holding on to the franchise he voluntarily puthimself in a position to be criticized. Yet I really doubt that itdid hurt his feelings. First of all, he’d have to demonstrate hehas any. Secondly, he’d have to demonstrate that he even readGrossi’s tweet, which I doubt, or cared enough about Grossi'sopinion to even voice his displeasure.

It’s important to the underpinningsof this story to harp on what a lousy owner Lerner has been becauseit completely eviscerates any argument the brass at the Plain Dealercould conger that Grossi’s integrity as a journalist was somehowcompromised by a supposedly inappropriate tweet.

Are they mad that Grossi feels the wayhe does about Lerner or just the fact that he said it publicly? Forthese purposes, the answer doesn’t matter. If Grossi’s integritywas compromised it was done so long before he made the supposedlyoffending tweet and yet he’s remained on the beat for years.

But I doubt that Grossi’s integritywas compromised anyway. He’s been on the Browns beat since 1984and has seen the same things we’ve all seen, but from a much betterview. Lerner’s pathetic and irrelevant ownership of the Brownsprovides the significant context to why the team itself has beenpathetic and irrelevant for so long. It’s part of each and everycrappy coaching hire, each and every crappy draft and each and everycrappy loss. It's the story that he was paid to write in the firstplace.

Let’s also not forget that this issports and not politics, though the fossils that teach journalism oncollege campuses, assuming it’s even still offered as a curriculum,would argue that the standards are the same. Maybe they should be,but they most certainly are not. Sports reporters, particularlythose covering the teams on a daily basis for any media outlet, havealways been given a much wider berth by their editors to mix fact andopinion in a story then the reporter covering city hall. It’s onlywhen those editors become embarrassed by the children they let runloose on the sports beat embarrass them at cocktail parties that theydecide to act as if the same rules apply.

But it’s also a measure of what thesesame internets have brought us that the landscape of journalism haschanged. There’s a reason that this web site, and many like it,get so many visitors each day. People are clamoring for a different,fresher perspective, one that isn’t afraid to mix fact and opinionor that is otherwise not bound by some of the conventions of an agingprint media.

Grossi's little foray into Twitter,with the ongoing approval of his editors, was the equivalent ofdipping a pinky toe in the Atlantic. If the Plain Dealer had beensmart, they would have answered the call from whatever facelessBrowns official complained and said “welcome to 2012. This is notyour father's Plain Dealer.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’tstandards, but it does mean those standards have evolved. The onlyones that haven’t seemed to notice are the editors of the PlainDealer, which they amply demonstrated here.

It’s funny. The Plain Dealer willsurvive the demotion of Grossi but they won’t survive overall.because they never could recognize that the same thought process thatbrought them to making the decision on Grossi is the same thoughtprocess that is making their newspaper increasingly more pathetic andirrelevant.

The Complications of Life

2012-01-23T18:48:00.001-05:00

The death of former Penn State footballhead coach Joe Paterno is a reminder, if nothing else, of howcomplicated life really can be.

In most respects, Paterno lived a lifeworth emulating. In other ways, though, he became a tragic figurewith the fatal flaw of not knowing exactly when to say when.

In a tribute broadcast by ESPN, JeremySchaap pulled out a revealing Paterno quote to explain why he hung onfor as long as he did. Paterno said he wouldn’t retire because ofPaul “Bear” Bryant, the long time head coach at Alabama. Mereweeks after retiring from Alabama, Bryant suffered a massive heartattack and died, having lost, apparently the will to live once hiscoaching days ended.

And so it was with Paterno. He stayedlong past his sell date for the most understandably selfish reason ofall: he feared his own death. Despite a loving and devoted family,including 5 children and 17 grandchildren; despite a legacy ofaccomplishment and philanthropy; despite, really, having squeezed asmuch life into his decaying frame as humanely possible, Paternorefused to retire because the loss of the one thing that sustainedhim above all others would kill him.

In the end, we’ll never know ifthat’s true though we certainly have every reason to believe thathis firing and the loss of the only job he ever really knew, coupledwith the awful circumstances surrounding it, sapped Paterno of anyremaining fight left in his body. His advanced age and broken spiritprevented him from taking on the vestiges of a supposedly mild formof lung cancer, to which he succumbed mere weeks after its diagnosis.

The last interview that Paterno evergave, with Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, revealed a man whowas seemingly at peace with the conflicts inherent in his legacy. Hecertainly did not come across as evil. But neither did he comeacross as any more aware of the truly awfulness of the situation athis beloved university and his role in allowing it to metastasize.

Paterno admitted he didn’t know howto handle the situation and that’s why he went to his bosses. Itall sounded reasonable if not conveniently naïve. Paterno reallyhad no bosses, only figureheads that had absolutely no power tocontrol the institution within the institution that Paternoeventually became.

Paterno had long since stoppedlistening to his bosses anyway about how to handle problems withinhis football program. As the Sports Illustrated expose details,Paterno worked tirelessly to keep any misbehaving players from beingpunished within the context of the general university population. Having created a “we take care of our own” culture within theteam, it was hardly a surprise really that Paterno’s bosses didnothing about the Jerry Sandusky allegations. If Paterno waspunting, which he was, why wouldn’t they? It was, likely to theirwarped thinking, just a football team matter.

Now that he has passed on, there willbe even further re-examining of this tragic situation in the contextof the greater good that Paterno accomplished in his life. Theconstruct of the argument advanced is whether one “incident”should wipe out nearly 5 decades of positive contributions.

It doesn’t but not because Paterno’sdeath demands a re-examination of the judgment rendered just a fewmonths ago. It doesn't because the question as posed is a false onebecause the answer isn’t one or the other. Paterno, was every bitas complicated and conflicted as the rest of us. Iconic status andcoaching achievements don’t give anyone a pass at the moredifficult aspects of what we all face on a day to day basis and inthe end they didn’t give Paterno a pass either, nor should they.

Running a major college footballprogram, these days or any days, is not a task for the feint of heartor the weak of mind. Paterno could come across paternalistic in thebest sense of the word but he also had enough guile to honor hisBrooklyn roots well.

He didn’t want the universitydisciplining his players because that discipline could cost him avictory or two. Far better for him to have the players run laps orwhatever other form of antiquated punishment Paterno could conger upthen kick them off the team or out of the university. A coach thatdoesn’t win is an ex-coach.

Paterno saw football glory as a meansto a better end for the university as a whole because the riches itbrought did indeed enhance the overall educational experience foreveryone on campus. And Paterno honored that goal with his time, histalents and his pocketbook.

But let’s not lose sight of the factthat Paterno was using the ends to justify the means. He wasn’t acheater, like the Jackie Sherills and the Barry Switzers of theworld, both of whom Paterno despised. That doesn’t mean though thatPaterno didn’t cut his share of corners or manipulate thecircumstances with his well earned clout in order to serve some shortterm needs. He did. That’s life.

Paterno’s story, his rise, his fallfrom grace, the constant reexamination, is the same really that hasplayed out with Ohio State’s Jim Tressel, if only on a lesser scaleand without the tragic ending.

Like Paterno, Tressel had gained ahealthy dose of clout within a major university setting as a resultof nearly unprecedented success on the football field. That successraised the profile and the bank account of the university. Itenabled Tressel to use that clout for much good but he was alwaysmore cagey then most wanted to acknowledge. Did Tressel use thatclout to achieve some short term gains? Probably, but that shouldn’tsurprise.

Tressel’s explanation for his lack ofresponse to the tattoo situation was understandable only in thecontext of understanding Tressel as the same kind of complex figureas Paterno. He wanted to do right by his players and his program andthe university and ultimately hoped it would all sort of work outwithout any real repercussions.

But Tressel, like Paterno, fell to theforces of convenient outrage that only want to see every issue as ablack or white choice until, of course, those same forces are facedwith their own complex challenges.

It was never a question whether Tresselwas a good man or not. He was. His downfall, just like Paterno’s,was that his god-like image that he helped cultivate ultimatelycaused those around him to punish him more harshly for histransgressions then if he had just been more upfront about his surehumaneness.

Any sort of tragedy causes a bit ofself reflection in everyone else. Ultimately, though, with Paternoas with Tressel, most doing the reflecting will struggle to see thereal point. It’s not that either was actually less then the sum oftheir parts. It’s that both were fully the some of their parts. Life is never paint-by-numbers and it is possible, indeed entirelyreasonable, that a person can be both good and bad at the same time.

It was true for Paterno, certainly, andtrue for Tressel as well. If we're being honest with ourselves, assituations like these call for, then let's all admit, too, that it'salso true for the rest of us. And perhaps that is the best lessonfor us all to learn.

The Cleveland Hopes

2012-01-18T20:45:00.000-05:00

With the Cleveland Browns running out of ideas to turn its franchise around, here’s one to consider: rename the team and pick new colors. Maybe it’s just time to retire the “Cleveland Browns” and the orange and brown once and for all.

We’re more than a decade into Browns 2.0 and virtually nothing that’s happened in that period of time has honored what the City of Cleveland fought so hard to retain. At this point, the Browns are no longer a franchise with a great legacy but a franchise that’s a stumbling, bumbling mess. It’s the soft spot on every team’s schedule. And unlike, say, the Chicago Cubs, they aren’t even lovable losers, just losers.

I’m not sure it would make any difference substantively, but maybe it is time to simply rename this team, give it new colors and a clean record book. At the very least, no matter what the team does next year it is bound to set franchise marks on both sides of the ball, for good and bad. That would be well worth celebrating even in the midst of another 4-12 or maybe a 5-11 season.

When it comes to being a Browns’ fan, I have my bona fides so I don’t make this suggestion lightly. I was a very long time season ticket holder who smartly didn’t re-up when the team returned. Enron was a safer investment then a personal seat license. I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of games in person and hundreds upon hundreds of games on television. Each of my daughters wore Browns’ onesies in their cribs. Everything about the Browns of my youth is a great memory, even the Forrest Gregg years.

But when Art Modell, a morally and fiscally bankrupt carpetbagger chasing a buck to preserve a lifestyle he never deserved moved the team to Baltimore the equation changed. Modell’s stupidity destroyed the bond between the team and the town and no matter what anyone tells you, it’s not the same and never will be.

The NFL made the entire city dance like a catfish on a fishing line just to get the privilege of building a new stadium at its expense and charging its citizens more money just to keep what it had. It dangled our name and our colors as the ultimate prize and continuously dropped the subtle suggestion that Cleveland would lose its status as a major league city if it didn’t knuckle under the ridiculous demands.

And we bought it the con like a desperate housewife buys a Thighmaster off of QVC without really questioning the underlying cynicism. Undeniably having the NFL in our backyard is a boost to civic pride and brings needed money into the city. That’s not really the issue of the moment anyway. It’s just that we fought so hard to hold on to something we shouldn’t have lost anyway and 12 years later it’s getting harder and harder to remember why.

Look what it brought us. We have a moneyed ownership that’s among the most incompetent in the history of professional sports. We’ve had one coaching regime after another with nothing much to distinguish one from the other. Losing is losing.

The new Cleveland Browns stadium has all the charm of every other generic stadium being built these days. The so-called Dawg Pound is just that, so called. It lacks the humor and the irony of its predecessor at the old Stadium. It’s the kind of space that white-bread architects sitting in Kansas City perceive as edgy, but with better guard rails and step risers that better conform to building codes.

The loges that ring the stadium might as well be hermetically sealed. Honestly, the only difference between sitting in a loge watching a game from a television monitor and sitting at home and watching a game from your television monitor is that the loge probably has better food.

The premium seating, such as it is with its own climate-controlled respite, represents in its own small way why the 99% are so pissed at the 1%. They have a much better view and access to better bathrooms.

None of this, though, is meant as a paean to the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It was a shit hole from the day it opened until the day the last girder was thrown to the bottom of Lake Erie. The plumbing was pathetic, the site lines obscured and the seats were uncomfortable. But in context to the team it housed, it worked.

As a fan you had to put up with a lot of crap to want to spend 4 or so hours at the Stadium on a late November Sunday. The last thing you wanted was to put up with a lot of crap from your team as well. And so in that sense, the players developed a sense of the fans and vice versa. When it worked, it was a beautiful thing to behold. When it didn’t, the bad times didn’t last long enough to matter.

Here’s a little something to chew on to make the case of retiring the “Browns.” Between 1960 and when the Browns were disbanded by Modell, the most consecutive seasons the Browns had losing records was four: 1990 through the 1993 season. Other than that they only had two consecutive losing seasons twice: 1974 and 1975 and 1981-1982. And even in that, the 1982 season could be discounted because the record was 4-5 in that strike shortened season and besides, the Browns still made the playoffs. In context, that’s a pretty amazing history, which is why the Browns are considered a storied franchise.

Since 1995, the Browns have had only two winning seasons total and, of course, they weren’t consecutive. Stated differently, the Browns are mired in their third, yes third, four season losing record since 1995. Nothing storied about that.

In every conceivable way, this iteration of the Browns has nothing to do with the legacy we worked so hard to preserve. It’s been so dishonored as to become completely irrelevant.

Lest I be misunderstood, I’m not arguing for just chucking the franchise completely, though if Randy Lerner sold the team it wouldn’t break my heart as long as it was to Dan Gilbert or someone similarly committed to winning in this town.

What I am advocating, however, is that this town stop honoring the legacy of Paul Brown and find a brand new path with brand new colors. The economic bump on jersey sales alone would help replenish the county coffers that have been systematically pillaged by various politicians over the last several decades.

But if we’re going to rename the team, let’s make sure we do so in a way that’s not generic. No Gladiators or Crush or similarly silly name mean to to convey a sense of brute force. Pick something more aspirational.

To get the ball rolling, here’s an idea. Let’s honor one of Cleveland’s most famous former citizens, the comedian who actually helped close the old Stadium with the fitting “Thanks for the Memories.” It also has the added benefit of reflecting what’s truly become the remaining thread on which this fan’s loyalty is still based. Here’s to you, the Cleveland Hopes. May it take you less years to make the playoffs from here then your namesake, Bob Hope, lived.

Lingering Items--Shakespeare Edition

2012-01-12T06:32:00.000-05:00

Apparently the NFL has run out of head coach candidates. How else to explain the Kansas City Chiefs hiring Romeo Crennel as its next head coach?

Before answering that question, it’s probably worth asking why it’s even necessary for anyone in this corner of the world to contemplate the question.

It’s not except out of abject curiosity considering Crennel’s tenure in Cleveland.Crennel had one good year here.

It was 2007 and the Browns won 10 games. In typical Browns fashion, they didn’t make the playoffs, one of the few 10-win teams ever to not make the playoffs. That 2007 season was transcendent nonetheless. The Browns were riding high from the draft after grabbing Joe Thomas as an anchor left tackle and then seeing Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn fall to them late in the first round due to a weird confluence of events. At the time, Charlie Frye was the team’s starter and Derek Anderson was the back up, albeit a very tentative back up. He had a big arm but little experience and was floundering in the Ravens organization until general manager Phil Savage grabbed him on his way out of Baltimore.

The season opened in rather typical fashion, with the Browns getting thumped by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Frye had a season opening debut that was such a disaster that he was benched before halftime. Crennel took responsibility for that, as if he could avoid it. A few days later Savage traded Frye to Seattle for a 6th round pick. It suddenly elevated Anderson to starter, a position most fans also thought was simply a placeholder until Quinn found his sea legs. Indeed, had Quinn reported to camp on time instead of stupidly holding out, he almost certainly would have been the starter instead of Anderson and both Quinn's and Anderson's trajectories may have been forever changed. But missteps like that have defined Quinn’s mostly inert career.

Then a funny thing happened. Anderson caught fire in a way that was in many ways far more unreal then anything either Tim Tebow or Cam Newton have done this past season. Tebow and Newton were well known commodities. Anderson could have walked through any mall in Cleveland at noon on a Sunday in December and no one would have noticed.The Browns under Anderson didn’t go on a specific tear. Their longest win streak was 3 games. But Anderson was terrific, putting together a season of historical significance. And while the Browns tied the Steelers for the division lead, they lost the tie breaker as the Steelers, not surprisingly, swept the season series. Then the Browns lost out on a wild card when the Indianapolis Colts tanked the last game of the season against the Tennessee Titans. It was a large measure of satisfaction when the Titans lost to San Diego in the first round of the playoffs and the Colts, coming off a 13-3 season and with great Super Bowl hopes, also lost to the Chargers.

Things looked so good for Crennel at the moment and for Savage, the general manager who stoutly stood behind Crennel when the wheels were falling off in 2006, that owner Randy Lerner gave both new contracts.1

1 If you want to know why a hold out inevitably follows a player’s first break out season, it’s because of owners like Lerner. Neither Crennel’s nor Savage’s contract was up. But buoyed by one year of success and disregarding one year of failure, Lerner acted like he had just won the lottery and decided to blow all the winnings on a flying car, which would have been a much better investment then giving either Crennel or Savage new, more lucrative and longer term deals that neither had quite yet earned. Lerner had to swallow both contracts after a disastrous 2008 season, thus continuing the pattern of throwing good money after bad when he Butch Davis quit and later perfected when he bought Aston Villa. He may be an idiot with money but wouldn’t you like to be one of his kids? Better still, someone he likes enough to hire?

But the 2007 season ended up being far more smoke and mirrors then substance. Those passes Anderson completed in 2007 became overthrown interceptions the next and Braylon Edwards, off of his one good season, became an intolerable pain in the ass in the locker room that Crennel simply couldn’t control. As other players watched Edwards do what he wanted without consequence (remember the trip to the Ohio State/Michigan game that caused Edwards to miss a team meeting on the night before a game?), other players acted similarly. Each week you could literally watch parts fall off the car as it careened down the highway with no one at the steering wheel.

The season ended at 4-12, just like Crennel’s first season, with the 10-6 season sandwiched in between. What characterized Crennel’s tenure most, though, was his massive disorganization. A lifelong assistant suddenly thrust into the spotlight, Crennel was gentle in his demeanor and approach, treating the players like visiting grandkids and he the goodtime grandpa. The problem was that the grandkids were an unruly mess and there were no parents to send them back to at the end of the day. The inmates were running the asylum and tried to keep the status quo by constantly praising the warden as the greatest guy around.

I’m surprised Crennel has gotten a second chance though in context, maybe not so much. He worked with Scott Pioli, Kansas City’s general manager, in New England. But this won’t end up any better for Crennel then it did in Cleveland.Crennel may have learned some lessons in the last few years, but he’s never going to be a successful head coach. His niche is as an assistant, someone that the players can occasionally confide in when they feel they’re being picked on by the head coach. He’s simply too good natured to draw firm lines with the various malcontents that populate NFL locker rooms from time to time.Stil, I envy Crennel a bit. Securing the Kansas City job is like winning the lottery but not because he’s a head coach again. More so because it will give him a chance in the next year or two to retire quietly on the contract that the Kansas City owner will have to eat for having greenlighted this hire in the first place.

**

Although many in the media have been writing the obituary of the Pittsburgh Steelers for years, this time they may be right. When the playoff season closes after this season, the award for the worst performance will undoubtedly be handed to those Steelers.

First of all, the Denver Broncos aren’t a very good team irrespective of what miracles Tim Tebow and Jesus are able to accomplish this year. The Broncos play in the worst division in the NFL at the moment and basically by finishing 8-8 won it by default. (Fascinating, though, isn’t it, that three teams in the division finished 8-8 and the fourth 7-9?

That’s the kind of mediocre parity that would have given Paul Tagliabue a chubby.)The Steelers on the other hand looked to be on the upswing. They finished 12-4, which was tied them with the Ravens for the second best record in the conference. But if there is such a thing as a soft 12-4, these Steelers accomplished it.

This past Sunday they were exposed for the aging mess that they’ve been building toward for several seasons. All it took was a few key injuries to the several octogenarians on the team to underscore this fact.Ben Roethlisberger will recover from the gimpy ankle he suffered against the Browns but he’s not the biggest problem anyway. The Steelers are old on offense and old on defense. Their best players all are on the back sides of their careers.

The bigger problem though is that the Steelers, who for years seemed to always find the right replacements, may have made a major miscalculation by letting this group get old together. Where they had been deft in cutting ties to players at just the right moment, this time they let it ride for a few more years and lost the opportunity to do what they had done nearly better then any other—draft well and work those players in quickly.

No one who watched the Steelers’ wretched offensive line on Monday came away thinking that they are poised for a quick rebound. Indeed, four of the front seven on the offensive line, indeed half the offense, are at least 29 years old. In NFL dog years, that’s old.The situation is even worse on defense where 7 of the starters are at least 32 years old. It’s now clear why James Harrison resorts to thug-like antics such as the cheap shot on Tebow Sunday. He’s 33 years old and that’s the only way he can make his presence felt. I don’t see the Steelers taking any sort of Browns-like nose dive to the bottom of the conference, but neither do I see them being an elite team in the near-term either. The great year they just had, from a record standpoint, will just serve to delay their repairs as they suffer the purgatory that’s created when you limp into the playoffs and then end up with only a lousy draft position to show for the effort.

**

I wonder if Reggie McKenzie, the new general manager for the Oakland Raiders, learned something from how poorly Mike Holmgren handled the Eric Mangini situation.

Emboldened by the death of Barnabas-in-a-turtleneck Al Davis and being the first person to hold the GM title for the Raiders, McKenzie decided that head coach Hue Jackson wasn’t his type of coach and canned him after only a year at the helm. It is either that McKenzie didn’t think Jackson had the right stuff to be a head coach or that he felt Jackson had bungled key personnel decisions, like acquiring Carson Palmer for a first and second round draft pick. Either would have been enough. Both sins put him squarely in the Mangini camp.

Whereas Holmgren kept Mangini and wasted an entire season in the process, something Holmgren now reluctantly admits in the same way that I reluctantly admit I watch the Cavs, McKenzie decided that would be a ridiculous approach and sent Jackson off to contemplate his next coaching job.

The move isn’t going to make McKenzie popular with the fraternity that is NFL head coaches past and present but it is the right thing, if the Browns are any example. But ultimately it’s the right thing for the Raiders.By almost every measure imaginable, the Browns latest facelift was delayed at least 12 months, and actually longer when you factor in the impact of the lockout, by Holmgren’s incessant need to look like a good guy to his coaching brethren. That’s why the Browns find themselves, at best, stuck in the lowest ring of purgatory now and for probably another season or two, and the Raiders will find themselves much closer to the playoffs next year.

**
With the playoffs in full bloom and this weekend representing the single best weekend in professional football, this week’s question to ponder: Why is it so difficult for the NFL to simply guarantee each team one possession in overtime?

Staying the Course, Again

2012-01-07T04:11:00.000-05:00

If you treat press conferences conducted by Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren as performance art, then his latest body of work, on display as it was Thursday, didn't quite measure up to the provocative performance of a few weeks back. Thursday he was calm, collected and all together non-specific. It’s the kind of performance anyone could have turned in.

It paled in comparison to the star turn he made the last time he took to the podium spitting, spewing and basically blaming the media for being nattering nabobs of negativism who won't be getting any extra Browns playoff tickets from him. Like any example of performance art, it made you think even if that thought was “what the f _ _ _?”

But if you treat a Holmgren press conference as an opportunity to learn when exactly the Browns will quit wandering through the NFL like they’re one of the Lost Tribes of Israel then it was a major disappointment. Holmgren took about 75 minutes to say what can be summed up in 3 words “stay the course.”

Actually, I have no great problem with Holmgren's message, mainly because he's right. It’s just that he’s not the first or only Cleveland Browns’ executive to espouse that view. Just the latest. Maybe I should consider renaming this blog to "Stay the Course, Again."

It’s rather defeating to reminisce about such an inglorious past, but if one of the great truths in the NFL is stay the course, then the other great truth is that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

In late November, 2006, with the Browns under the unsteady leadership of Romeo Crennel, a serial good guy but an undisciplined mess of a head coach, and reeling once again, general manager Phil Savage stepped to the podium to proclaim his faith in Crennel and to declare, wait for it, that the Browns would be staying the course.

Savage, like a country lawyer, made an impassioned argument for staying the course, pointing out that the really good teams and franchises got that way through stability. He then talked about Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech and how fans wanted him out after his first season and by staying the course things worked out well. He talked about Brian Billick at Baltimore and how fans wanted him out and yet he went on to win a Super Bowl before he, too, was fired. He then talked about Bill Cowher to presumably make the point about how good things happen when you stick with one horse.

When that 2006 season ended, the Browns sat where they sit today—4-12. And yet, in the short term, Savage was right. The next season the Browns won 10 games even though they didn’t make the playoffs, a very rare occurrence in the NFL for any 10-win team. The problem? They really weren’t on the right course.

The next season demonstrated that the previous was achieved mostly through smoke, mirrors, an easy schedule and one transcendent season by Derek Anderson, who then fell off the map. The Browns quickly regressed the next two seasons when their talent didn’t match the assessment they had made of it. Crennel was canned, so was Savage and it was time again for a new course.

That next course lasted about a half season after Lerner impulsively hired Eric Mangini and then watched him lay waste to the franchise in near record time. Lerner quickly brought in Holmgren to chart still another course, which is where the franchise finds itself today.

But the back story to why all that occurred lies in the course the Browns were staying under Savage. Four months after Savage’s impassioned “stay the course” plea Lerner visited various newsrooms around the state to essentially make the same pitch. It wasn’t so much that he was making the case to keep Savage and Crennel as he was that Crennel and Savage needed much more time to see their plan through because the cupboard was bare when they arrived.

Lerner talked about how a good NFL team needs about 35 core players and at that time, early 2007, the Browns only had 18. In other words, there was much work to be done and it could only get done by, wait for it, staying the course.

The problem was that when things all came crashing down it turned out that Lerner (and Savage, by proxy) had missed the mark badly on the state of the team. Not only did it not have 18 core players, not even close, but they hadn’t made any meaningful progress in adding to the mix.

Here is the list of players from 2007 that Lerner claimed were core to the Browns’ development as a upper tier franchise if only the course would be stayed: “I have (Joe) Jurevicius, (Orpheus) Roye, Kellen Winslow, Braylon Edwards, Kamerion Wimbley, Sean Jones, Brodney Pool, Eric [Steinbach], Jamal Lewis, Andra Davis, Charlie Frye, D'Qwell Jackson, Leigh Bodden, Josh Cribbs for special teams certainly if not other, Steve Heiden, and emerging players like Leon Williams, Lawrence Vickers, Jerome Harrison, Travis Wilson.”

Remember, that’s 2007, just 4 years ago. Only 3 current Browns’ players remain with the team: Steinbach (injured all season), Jackson and Cribbs. Arguably all 3 remain in the “core” category. But the rest of the list is mostly laughable, especially the inclusion of players like Jones, Lewis, Davis, Frye, Williams, Harrison and Wilson.

Yet that’s the course that Lerner wanted to stay, at least until he fired Savage. It illustrates mostly the disconnect between theory and reality. The Browns’ cupboard wasn’t bare. There was no cupboard in the first place. It was a team with a random assortment of players that couldn’t be counted on to accomplish much of anything, so it didn’t. Had the team actually been further along, as implied by Lerner, it would be paying dividends today and fans wouldn’t be getting another earful of stay the course messages from the latest architect.

So while I have no great quibble with Holmgren’s message, it really was delivered in a vacuous way and without any real understanding of why it tends to fall on deaf ears. Far better than Holmgren, Browns fans know their history. They know what they’ve been promised and they know when they’ve been let down.

It would have been would have been instructive to hear Holmgren’s or general manager Tom Heckert’s view on how many core players the Browns need, how many they currently have and who they are as the context for staying the course they’re on. But Holmgren was too busy dodging specifics for earnest eye-brow furling instead.

In truth, the Browns do have more core players now then they had in 2007, but the number is still south of 10 and that, ultimately, is the crux of the problem. I’m not sure that any NFL franchise can ever have or even needs 35 core players. But they certainly need at least 20 and can’t win more than a handful of games when it’s less then 10. When you consider that the Browns aren’t even in double digits at the moment, you start to appreciate the enormity of the task at hand.

So it all boils down to the most operative question: “what course?” To Holmgren and Heckert, that course is the one that sees them gathering draft choices like game tickets at Chucky Cheese and making them count. It means eschewing any sort of quick fix through free agency. It means giving the players on board, at least those that are worth the effort, the time to grow. That’s all well and good if they’re right about what they have at the moment. They may be but too much history suggest otherwise.

Still, if this is what fans are being force fed and Holmgren and Heckert are really committed to building methodically, then they are absolutely right about one thing: they can’t blow the upcoming draft. They have gathered together a number of picks and need to hit on nearly every one if this franchise is really going to take a significant, permanent step forward in the next few years.

If they don’t then it will be time for Lerner to hire his next genius and set his next course and time for the rest of us to once again find another team to root for in the playoffs.

All Giddy in Berea

2012-01-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

For a team that just completed another year of abject futility, the Cleveland Browns seem awful giddy at the moment. Head coach Pat Shurmur had a real bounce about him at his year end press conference, in contrast to his usual dour demeanor. All the post-season stories being written focus solely on the great future this team has, according to players and staff alike. Of course, the post-season stories being written after the last several seasons said pretty much the same thing from a different but similarcrew, but why quibble?

If the Browns are happy with their direction, then why spoil the party? Would it really do any good at this point to talk about the 4 wins this season, which is one less then in either of Eric Mangini’s two miserable seasons? Is it really necessary at this juncture to talk about a team that scraped the bottom of the barrel once again on offense and approached scoring touchdowns like teenagers approach taking the SATs?

When it comes to the Browns, cynicism easily prevails. Fans have heard so many versions of the same warmed over rhetoric about new directions, building the foundation, patience, time, draft picks, development and the like that they’ve become jaded to any process.

Need proof? How many fans were at Cleveland Browns Stadium this past Sunday to watch their team play the hated Pittsburgh Steelers? Unless they were disguised as orange seats or decided to wear black and gold just to blend in, then not many.

I doubt that Randy Lerner noticed but perhaps Mike Holmgren did, but only if he has an attendance bonus clause attached to his contract. It was the most visible sign yet that the fans aren’t yet buying what he’s selling, perhaps because they still aren’t sure at this point exactly what he is selling except an amorphous concept of patience that thus far has resulted in Holmgren squandering one season in order to keep a coach he never wanted and allowing a rookie head coach to take on two jobs instead of concentrating on the one he’s never had.

As I sit here again dissecting another season, I still have no idea what this team stands for, and that's been true now for years. I understand that a new offense is still in its infancy and that there are a dearth of players on the current roster that could execute it anyway, but as practiced this season it all seemed like just such a big mess.

On defense, it’s a mixed bag. There was significant improvement when you consider the overall stats but yet this team still can’t stop even mediocre running backs from gaining huge chunks of yardage each and every game. The defense isn’t particularly physical as all the missed tackles each week will attest. And while the pass defense was fairly stout, particularly inside the red zone, they still allow way too many big plays to be considered an upper echelon unit.

But those are the details. What’s the bigger picture? What’s Mike Holmgren’s vision? What kind of team is he really looking for? What’s Pat Shurmur’s vision? What kind of team is he really looking for?

Those answers to those questions are just as mysterious today as they were the day Holmgren arrived and as near as anyone can tell, outwardly this team has made no progress in essentially two years of Holmgren’s leadership. I guess when you don't have a specific destination, any path will do.

All that said, though, perhaps we should take some solace in the words of defensive back Sheldon Brown who expounded at length Monday in a story written by the Plain Dealer’s Mary Kay Cabor on how close this team is to being significantly better. When his playing days are over, the front office should grab him if for nothing else then team spokesmen. He offered the most cogent and articulate explanation on the state of the team that I've heard in years.

Brown dispelled two related notions up front. First, this team is not a mere key draft pick or two from changing its fortunes. Second, using a first round draft pick on Heisman trophy winner Robert Griffin III with the thought that he’d be the team’s savior is “crazy.”

Brown’s right. Fans are rightly frustrated but that doesn’t mean they’re not crazy. There a fair number of them at the moment that have gone off the rails in trying to find the appropriate target(s) for their frustration. It may very well be that Colt McCoy isn’t a franchise quarterback, for whatever that means anymore, but anyone who suggests that this year provided enough evidence of that is as loopy as Michelle Bachman.

The Browns’ offensive line, particularly the entire right side, was as weak as any team in the league and perhaps the weakest of any team not the Chicago Bears. When Eric Steinbach went down, general manager Tom Heckert did an awful job of finding credible backups. Tony Pashos, as brittle as a porcelain tea cup, couldn’t block a cold at this point in his career. Shaun Lauvao? If he wasn’t false starting or holding, you wouldn’t have even noticed him on the field, except as the one with his hand on his hips as he looked at his man draped on top of a prone McCoy. As for their backups? I defy anyone to name them without looking at the Browns’ depth chart.

The weakness in the line manifested itself in poor pass protection and a poor running game, the two keys for any quarterback to be successful. And that’s before we even stop to consider that the number one receiver on the team didn’t even play his senior year in college, the number two receiver catches like Braylon Edwards and runs like Bob Golic, and the third receiver is a converted quarterback.

There isn’t a quarterback in the league, and I say that without any intent to exaggerate, who could have turned that chicken stuffing into chicken salad, not a one. So even if Andrew Luck somehow fell to the Browns (or they traded up), absent any other change on offense the only change you’d see next year is that the Browns would go from 30 to 32nd in the league in scoring and the team would once again be staring down the barrel of a four or five win season.

What the Browns need far more than a quarterback at the moment are receivers, offensive linemen and running backs, in that order, assuming Steinbach can play next season. If Steinbach cannot come back, then it’s a toss up between linemen and receivers as to where the need is the greatest.

Where Brown was particularly insightful, however, was in talking about the youth on the team and the need to let it mature rather than simply blow things up as the Browns tend to do every two years. Brown believes that the additional experience that the young players on defense have gotten this past year will pay huge dividends, assuming the players are willing to do what it takes to take the next step in their own development. That’s a big assumption, perhaps, but it is true that the biggest leap for most professional players is between their rookie and sophomore years.

Finally, Brown talked about Shurmur and had nothing but praise for him. It’s become popular of late to blast Shurmur, at least when fans have taken a break from blasting McCoy, for the ills of the Browns. It’s misplaced.

Shurmur, like McCoy, is very far down on the list of things that went wrong with the team this year. Mostly the top 20 spots of that list are populated by things such as a lack of credible players (blame the general manager) and the impact on the lockout on a rookie coach installing a new system.

Shurmur, like the young players on defense, has to step up his game, but to suggest that he can’t progress as a head coach or that he’s in over his head is to ignore all evidence to the contrary. As Brown noted, though he didn’t have to, the one thing you could definitely say about this team in a positive way is that it didn’t quit at any point during the season.

There were low points and blow outs but those weren’t sustained. Usually the team kept it close even as they were usually overmatched and often by a huge margin. Both Pittsburgh games provided the best example of that, particularly this past Sunday’s when it would have been far easier to have gone through the motions then to put any effort into it.

I don’t necessarily share Brown’s optimism that this team is close, mostly because it’s a mantra that I’ve heard before and partly because it’s exactly what you’d expect an aging player looking to hang on would say in order to stay in the good graces of a club he hopes will employ him again next season. I do admire his candor nonetheless.

And irrespective of whether I or anyone else share’s Brown’s optimism, it doesn’t mean he’s not speaking the truth. He is. The only way for this team to get good enough to make the playoffs on a regular basis is to pick a true course and stay it for more than a year or two.

But that’s not what the fans want to hear, mostly because they’re fed up with hearing the truth and don’t trust that anyone associated with the Browns has the ability to do anything meaningful about it anyway, as two decades of futility demonstrate.

Another Season on the Runaway Train

2012-01-01T20:20:00.001-05:00

How you view the Cleveland Browns 13-9 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday depends mightily on the bar you set. As measured by the usual late-season poundings the Browns endure from the big brother that's probably getting tired of pushing them around, it was a success. As measured by the usual things the NFL tends to chronicle more meaningfully, like wins and losses, not so much.

The loss came in the same mind numbing way that most Browns losses have come this season. A solid defensive effort for most of the game kept it close but a dearth of playmakers on offense once again kept the Browns from entering the end zone when they had the opportunity and when they needed it most. Settling for field goals early and unable to capitalize on two Steelers' turnovers and a final shot at the end zone late, the Browns lost to the Steelers for what seems like the 183rd straight time.

It also completed the Browns' 8th losing season in their last 9, and 16th losing season since 1990. It also marked the 10th time since their return in 1999 that they've won 6 or fewer games in a season. There's simply no way to sugarcoat it. The Browns as a franchise really are a runaway train, as Chris Palmer so presciently noted over a decade ago.

But really in the grand scheme of all things Browns, this was as meaningless of a game that could possibly take place so getting exorcised at this point is a wasted energy. Disregard any notion from some of the players, such as Josh Cribbs, who called the game “their Super Bowl.” It's a rather hollow statement, like “moral victory.” The Steelers had something to play for, the Browns didn't. The Steelers took care of business, the Browns did what they've done 12 other times this season, play the victim.

The point, I guess, is that the backdrop to Sunday's game was about as irrelevant as a Browns' game can get, at least in terms of having any meaning locally. It's in that context, truly, that this game must be quickly viewed and easily forgotten.

If you're nevertheless trying to discern some meaning, then two things stood out. First, the Browns' shortcomings, so brilliantly displayed game after game, are as apparent as the backside of Kim Kardashian. Second, and to be more specific, what Sunday did so ably demonstrate is that the failures of this team don't start with the quarterback. Seneca Wallace, subbing again for Colt McCoy, looked exactly like McCoy has looked most of the season.

Maybe that's an indictment of McCoy or Wallace or both, I'm not sure anymore. What it is an indictment of is a porous right side of the line that can't sustain blocks in the passing game or open up holes in the running game and a lack of big time receivers that can consistently be counted on to scare an opposing defense.

Take the example of the Browns' two possessions in the fourth quarter following fumbles by Steelers' running back Isaac Redman and then the Browns' final possession of the game.

The first possession took place just as the fourth quarter started. Taking over at the Pittsburgh 43 yard line (after a face mask penalty on James Farrior on the Joe Haden recovery of the Stedman fumble) and trailing just 13-9, this was the place where a good team rises up and snatches the momentum.

Not the Browns. Wallace threw incomplete on first down and Montario Hardesty had no gain on second down. Wallace completed a rare pass to Mohamed Massaquoi, rare not because he wasn't throwing to Massaquoi but rare because Massaquoi actually held on, that gave the Browns a first down. But that's as far as it went. Hardesty lost two yards on the next play, Massaquoi dropped Wallace's next pass and then a short, underneath pass to Greg Little was incomplete. The Browns were forced to punt.

Given an almost identical second chance minutes later, the Browns reacted in almost identically futile fashion. After a completion for a first down to Cribbs, Wallace then missed on his next three passes and the Browns again were forced to punt with just over 4 minutes remaining in the game.

The Steelers had a chance to run out the clock and seemed well on their way to doing so but on 3rd and 2 with 2 minutes remaining, the Steelers decided not to trust Redman again, who was subbing for the injured Rashard Mendenhall, and instead forced a risky pass from Ben Roethlisberger that went incomplete.

It gave the Browns one final chance with 1:46 remaining and no time outs. With snowflakes the size of canned hams flying furiously, Wallace moved the ball into Pittsburgh territory with a series of out passes. But when Evan Moore couldn't get out of bounds on a catch at the Pittsburgh 24-yard line, Wallace, demonstrating he can learn something about clock management, spiked the ball with 5 seconds remaining. It gave the Browns one final opportunity that went for naught when a Wallace Hail Mary fell harmlessly in the end zone.

While any of those three possessions nicely summed up the season, it's not as if the rest of the game ran anything other than to script.

After a scoreless first quarter that saw the Steelers strangely forego a field goal attempt from the Browns' 32-yard line on their first possession, the Browns rode the game's first wave of momentum to take an early 3-0 lead on a Dawson 26-yard field goal.

The momentum was courtesy, first, of a Jabaal Sheard sack of Roethlisberger that turned what would have been a short Scott Suisham field goal try into a 45-yard attempt into the wind. It went wide right. That gave the Browns a certain bounce in their step that lasted nearly all the way to the Steelers' end zone. But on 1st and goal at the 4 yard line, Peyton Hillis, last year's touchdown machine, lost 4 yards. Two passes ostensibly intended for Massaquoi were incomplete and the Browns settled for the field goal.

The Browns took a 6-0 lead near the end of the first half on a Dawson 45-yard field goal, but Pittsburgh got on the board with a Suisham 19-yard field goal just as the half expired. That was a victory of sorts for the defense though as Roethlisberger had moved the Steelers down to the Browns' 1-yard line with just over a minute remaining. But lacking any timeouts, the Steelers were forced to throw and both Rothliberger passes were incomplete, forcing the short field goal.

The Steelers' tied it on their first possession of the second half with a Suisham 29-yard field goal (after a long drive stalled at the Browns' 11 yard line) and then took the lead for good on their next possession following an interception by Troy Polamalu of a Wallace pass at the Browns' 43-yard line. Redman, holding on to the ball, finished the last 7 yards of the drive with a nice run up the middle for the touchdown and the ultimate margin of victory.

Though the Browns had those 3 separate opportunities to potentially win the game in the fourth quarter,
it wasn't to be, again.

So let the evaluation begin, though how much is really necessary is an open question. The Browns were bad in every month of the season and for the identical reasons each time—lousy blocking, poor running, dropped passes, arm tackling, that sort of thing.

Nothing about what took place Sunday was particularly instructive either, although Cribbs had a career day receiving with 7 catches, many of them acrobatic and in traffic, for 91 yards. Hillis had only 10 carries for 30 yards before exiting with an apparent knee injury and Hardesty was a non-factor.

The one thing about this offseason that will be different is that the Browns won't be looking for a new head coach. Pat Shurmur's job is safe even though there is some sentiment brewing among fans that Shurmur is indeed a major part of the problem.

That's a tough call at this point, as difficult, really, as assessing McCoy's potential. Shurmur had nothing to do with filling out the roster. He was foreclosed by the lockout from conducting any sort of offseason program that would have familiarized the players with a new system. By the time the lockout ended, much of the preseason was lost, further frustrating any chance to fully install a new office.

The one thing that will be the same about this offseason? It's the realization once again of what the Browns really need—everything. It will be the third season of the Mike Holmgren regime and this time he would do well to bring a sense or urgency to a fan base whose patience has about run out, if all the orange seats around Cleveland Browns Stadium in a game against the team's most hated rival is any indication.

Because another 4 or 5 win season and the Browns will find themselves like the Cincinnati Bengals, practically begging fans to attend games that no one will much care about anymore.

Making the Winnable Unwinnable

2011-12-24T16:55:00.002-05:00

You can now add “spike the damn ball” and “stay on side” to the list of things that Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren now will attribute to another Browns' loss. This time, he might just be right.

Down 17-0 and the clock winding down near the end of the first half against the Baltimore Ravens, the Browns, specifically head coach Pat Shurmur and quarterback Seneca Wallace, squandered a golden opportunity with the ball on the Ravens' 3 yard line and the clock ticking away. With no time outs (the last had been inexplicably squandered with 57 seconds remaining) and confusion the order of the day, Wallace didn't spike the ball but instead handed off to Peyton Hillis. The run went for naught, the clock expired and the Browns walked into the locker room without any points.

It was the lost touchdown that ended up being the difference in a 20-14 loss to the Ravens.

Less egregious but still ridiculous was defensive lineman Phil Taylor biting on a hard count by Ravens' quarterback Joe Flacco with 2 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Flacco and the Ravens were slightly out of Shayne Graham's field goal range, sitting at 4th and 2 at the Cleveland 37-yard line, when Flacco decided to see if he could get the Browns to jump offside. He did and with that first down the Ravens were able to run out the clock and complete an undefeated season at home. Had he not, of course, the Browns would have likely had one final possession and one final attempt to win a game that started out unwinnable and ended up very winnable.

That this was the case so late in the game was attributable mostly to the level of confidence and indifference that overtook the Ravens, just as it has overtaken many Browns' opponents this season, after opening up a 20-0 lead against a team that really did look like it was going through the motions.

But Josh Cribbs finally broke free on a punt return and scampered 83 yards for a touchdown that on the scoreboard at least put the Browns back into the game at 20-7. It brought some needed life to the sidelines while the Ravens just yawned.

When the Ravens were forced to punt on their next possession, Wallace and the Browns put together one of the more impressive drives of the season that ended with Wallace hitting Evan Moore for a 6-yard touchdown that closed the gap to 20-14.

The Browns could get no closer, however. On what turned out to be their last possession of the game, the Browns were sitting 4th and 5 at their own 45 yard line with just over 4 minutes remaining. Having blown two of their time outs on the previous drive, Wallace and/or Shurmur picked that moment to use the last timeout. It didn't help.

The play as called was a simple screen that went for no yards and gave the Ravens the ball. That led directly to the Taylor offside penalty that ultimately allowed Flacco to take a knee to end the game and begin to ponder the playoffs in earnest.

The close loss was rewarding in a way that the game ended up being more competitive then it started out to be. Then again most of this season has been rewarding in that same way. Little moments where some sun peeks through the perpetual cloud that hangs over this franchise.

The problem is that there is never enough sun to allow anything to grow. Shurmur is just the latest coach to walk the sidelines with the same bewildered look that overcomes every Browns head coach at some point. At least Shurmur got a chance to ask the question that the fans have been asking for years just at the conclusion of that aforementioned squandered opportunity at the end of the first half.

Apparently thinking he told Wallace to spike the ball instead of handing off to Hillis, Shurmur for all the world to see, mouthed “what the hell is he doing?” I wish we knew.

That the question could apply to Wallace or Shurmur, or certainly Holmgren or Tom Heckert speaks volumes about where this team is at it puts the finishing touches on another wasted season. Fifteen losing seasons in their last 17 is more then a trend. It's a way of life.

The reason it's a way of life, of course, is that the Browns at no point in that 17 years could answer Shurmur's simple question. Think about it. How many times as a fan sitting there watching one mind numbing loss after another, one mind numbing season after another, have you asked that same question? You've asked it of Randy Lerner when he hired his next flavor of the month. You asked it of any number of general managers who made questionable draft choices or ridiculous free agent signings. You've asked it of any number of head coaches who have made one puzzling decision after another. And you've asked it of any number of players, and there have been plenty, who have made one bonehead play after another.

That the Browns sit there now, 16 weeks into a season and just as clueless as the day training camp opened, and can't even figure out how to conserve time at the end of the half in order to give themselves a chance to score would be astonishing if it wasn't so commonplace.

Ah, but I digress.

The Ravens raced out to a lead like so many before them. It was aided at the outset by an interception Wallace threw on the Browns' opening drive just as that drive was starting to get interesting. It was actually lucky that the interception by defensive back Ladairius Webb didn't go for a touchdown. Wallace telegraphed the throw from the second he took the snap. It was just a matter of time anyway.

On their first play from scrimmage, Flacco threw deep for Torrey Smith. Mike Adams, defending the play, was flagged for a questionable interference call that gave the Ravens the ball at the Browns' 5 yard line. Flacco then calmly hit Ed Dickson for the 5-yard touchdown pass and a way too easy 7-0 lead.

A Graham 48-yard field goal on the Ravens' next possession made it 10-0 and then on the Ravens' third possession Flacco led running back Ray Rice beautifully dropping in a pass in coverage that Rice turned into a 27-yard touchdown and a 17-0 lead.

When the Browns' finally got on track late in the first half, they blew the opportunity. Still as a measure of incompetence it's worth going through the sequence, especially if you didn't get a chance to see it live.

Following a Baltimore punt, the Browns took over at their own 16 yard line with 3:21 remaining in the half. A completion from Wallace to Greg Little on second down took the ball to the Baltimore 27 yard line. Two plays later Peyton Hillis picked up 14 more yards and just that quickly the Browns were at their own 41 yard line.

Where things got interesting is when defensive back Chris Carr was flagged for a 30-yard interference penalty of questionable origin on Cribbs. That put the ball on the Baltimore 29-yard line with 1:51 remaining. That's not a typo. There were nearly two full minutes remaining and 29 yards to cover. There were also two time outs remaining.

After two incomplete passes and the clock not running, Shurmur inexplicably burned the Browns' second time out. There was 1:42 remaining. It was not in vain, however, as Shurmur then had Chris Ogbonnaya line up wide left with Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis covering him. Wallace hit Ogbonnaya as Lewis backed off coverage. The gain covered 12 yards putting the ball on the Ravens 17 yard line with 1:15 left. In other words, there was plenty of time, even for your average CYO team.

After Wallace completed a 9-yard pass to Greg Little that put the ball on the Baltimore 8-yard line, Shurmur weirdly called for his last time out with 57 seconds remaining. It was a head scratching decision then and remains one now.

After the time out, Hillis ran up the middle for 3 yards, forcing the Browns to scramble to keep ahead of the clock. Wallace then through a short out patter to Evan Moore whose progress was stopped in bounds, thus keeping the clock running. This apparently flummoxed both Shurmur and Wallace and 20 more seconds went casually ticking off the clock. With 11 seconds remaining but Wallace not watching the clock, he ran a play instead of spiking the ball. The play? A handoff to Hillis that had no chance of getting into the end zone. With that the clock expired with Shurmur on the sidelines gesturing how to spike the ball and mouthing the words that still resonate throughout the land.

The loss wasn't embarrassing as so many have been this season. Indeed there were a few bright spots. Hillis, for example, had 112 yards on 24 carries, something that will probably ruin Ray Lewis' evening. The defense gave up just a field goal in the second half and Cribbs had the 83-yard punt return.

But as usual it wasn't nearly enough for a team that is simply out manned at nearly every position when they play against the better teams in the league.

With a week remaining and all the mystery sapped long ago from the season, the Browns still can give their fans a “if only” moment by beating what looks like will be a resting Pittsburgh Steelers team. And if the Browns do find a way to win it will give Holmgren even more ammunition for the specious argument he advanced last week that if only they could snap the damn ball, catch the damn ball, spike the damn ball or stay on the right side of the damn ball they'd be in the playoff hunt.

Lingering Items--Penalties Edition

2011-12-22T06:09:00.000-05:00

Whether the sanctions levied against Ohio State were too harsh or too lenient may be a matter of perspective. That won’t stop nearly anyone from questioning athletic director Gene Smith’s competency, however.

The biggest surprise levied against the Buckeyes was the 2012 bowl ban. Otherwise it seems like things pretty much went down as expected. When Ohio State self-imposed a litany of sanctions against the program, all they really did was give the NCAA a little wriggle room to make a few additional tweaks in order to look like it wasn’t just simply taking the Buckeyes’ word on everything.

So the tweak they made was not the one that was expected mainly because Smith was emphatic time and again that a bowl ban wasn’t on the horizon. So sure was Smith, in fact, that he didn’t even contemplate pre-empting the NCAA on that count by making the 6-6 Buckeyes sit home this bowl season instead.

What fans have now is a meaningless Gator Bowl to soothe their feelings when what they really wanted was to hit like the hurricane new head coach Urban Meyer promised for next season, play for the Big Ten title and possibly a national championship.

Smith is taking more heat for this then perhaps he deserves, though he does deserve some. It’s difficult to take Smith to task for the underlying infraction given former head coach Jim Tressel’s conduct. And assuming the conspiracy theorists are just that and Tressel didn’t take a bullet for Smith (what would be his incentive for that?), Smith’s only real sin was not level setting his bosses or the fans of the program.

The feeling always has been that Smith is wired into the NCAA in ways that other athletic directors are not. Every time he spoke, in that semi-sincere, semi-arrogant way of his, it carried the imprimatur that he knew from where he spoke. It turns out he was just as clueless as nearly everyone else in this whole matter.

One of the cardinal sins you can make in any organization is to overpromise and under deliver, which is exactly what Smith did here. Had he kept his mouth shut and just said that he hopes that the university had done enough to satisfy the NCAA, I doubt anyone would have been surprised by the bowl ban. After all, the NCAA is a random, feckless, morally undisciplined enterprise rife with conflicts of interest and wholly incapable of governing a church picnic, let alone a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

But the one thing to remember is that the NCAA Committee of Infractions ultimately is a group of individuals with their own feelings and emotions and the last thing individuals with their own feelings and emotions want is someone who carries the imprimatur of authority, like Smith, telling them what they should or shouldn’t do.

In many ways, Smith’s constant proclamations that a bowl ban was not in the offing served almost as a dare to the NCAA. So where’s the surprise that they did knock the battery off of Smith’s shoulder only to watch him flinch?

I have very mixed feelings about the sanctions overall. Much of my trepidation is with how the NCAA treated Tressel, a very fine man and educator, who made a serious mistake. But a 5-year “show cause” finding is particularly harsh. It may be that Tressel wasn’t going to coach again in college anyway, but to basically be told that he can’t earn a living at his chosen profession for the next 5 years is an astounding penalty given his one indiscretion.

As for the bowl ban, that seems harsh if only because while the Buckeyes did play in last year’s Sugar Bowl, part of their sanctions was to forfeit the game and give back the money earned. Effectively, it’s as if they have been banned from two bowl games.

Yet the NCAA isn’t going to do much to explain its reasoning mainly because it doesn’t have to, which gets to the other side of my feelings about this. I understand that the conduct engaged in by the Buckeyes’ players broke a rule and I understand that Tressel covered it up deliberately. But the rule makes no sense in any context but one in which the NCAA doesn’t want anyone else earning money that could have instead lined their pockets. The fact that Tressel covered it up just proves the adage, though, that the cover up is often worse then the underlying breach.

I know that a lot of fans are calling for Smith to be fired and maybe he should be as part of the overall housecleaning. I’m not sure he could have ferreted out Tressel’s misconduct but some of the other activities that went unchecked are a failure that occurred under Smith’s watch. He should have had more robust systems in place.

Ultimately, though, the NCAA matters are now finally behind the Buckeyes. Sure they’ll linger because of the bowl ban and scholarship reductions, but the football program itself is on solid footing right now. Besides, it gives Meyer and the players the added chip on their shoulders for the 2012 season and should set them up well for 2013 and beyond. The hurricane may be delayed, but it’s still a good bet that it will hit ground and leave appropriate damage in its wake.

**
James Harrison, the NFL’s reigning and most clueless thug, seems to have reluctantly accepted the fact that his vicious hit on Colt McCoy was illegal. The revelation came to him apparently about the time he lost his appeal and the rest of his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates, while publicly supporting him, privately sate him down and told him that his brutish ways were actually hurting the team far more then helping. That it happened in the wake of a bad loss to the San Francisco 49ers is just a bonus.

But Harrison, as is his wont, doesn’t go down without a fight and thus surmised that the Browns as well should be fined or otherwise penalized for not properly attending to McCoy. So we have Harrison adamantly denying he did anything wrong for most of the last two weeks suddenly getting religion and becoming the voice of concern for McCoy?

Harrison is like the criminal who in the course of robbing a house gets bitten by the watch dog and then sues the homeowner. Lacking an ability to process either irony or context Harrison should just shut his mouth and play within the rules, assuming he can which actually may not be a safe assumption at all.

Meanwhile the Browns were indeed let off the hook for their malpractice when it came to safeguarding their starting quarterback but the rest of the NFL must now pay a price by staging so-called independent athletic trainers in the press box to oversee all the vicious hits and make suggestions to each team’s medical staff as to which players they may want to administer an exam to.

I’m happy whenever the NFL creates additional jobs, particularly for athletic trainers. I wonder, though, exactly why the NFL went macro on this instead of focusing specifically on the fact that the Browns medical and coaching staff screwed up. Indeed, the Browns’ medical staff for the last several years has a distinct history of putting its players in jeopardy but yea, it sounds like the NFL has an institutional problem.

It may very well be that the Browns and their medical staff needed some tough love in the form of some kind of penalty given their history but then again what we know most about the NFL is that they are very reticent to punish management and very pleased to punish the players.

The person to feel sorry for here is McCoy. He’s about to miss his second straight game and whatever grip he had on the Browns’ starting quarterback job. More than that, though, he very easily could have lost his life or at least suffered some permanent damage when he was sent back into the game seconds after getting his brains scrambled.

There was a teaching moment here just not the one the NFL focused on.

**
The Cleveland Indians continue to make their quiet offseason noise by signing any retread with a pulse that they can find. The latest contestant in this year’s version of “Who Can Fill the Shoes of David Dellucci?” is Andy “Don’t Call Me Either Adam or Dave” LaRoche.

This LaRoche, the son of former Tribe closer Dave LaRoche, a mediocre pitcher from the mid 1970s, brings a resume that includes a .247 average with 5 RBI in 40 games last season. But there’s more. LaRoche’s high water mark, batting average-wise, is .258.

If it makes you wonder why anyone would continue to sign LaRoche given his age (28) and the fact that he’s never done anything of note at any time for any major league team he played for, just follow the money. LaRoche, like so many that the Indians sign every offseason, is on a minor league contract. The team pays more in laundry bills then it would have to pay LaRoche.

If by chance he makes the big league team out of training camp, and if he does, look out, then he’ll make the major league minimum, which for 2012 is slightly more than $400,000. In other words, what LaRoche lacks in skills he more then makes up for in the fact that he works cheaply.

The one good thing to keep in mind in all of this is that Eric Wedge is no longer the team’s manager. LaRoche is just the kind of player that Wedge loved, mainly because LaRoche’s baseball skills approximate those that Wedge possessed as a player. That would have meant only one thing: a spring and early summer of screaming at the television every time LaRoche grounded out weakly with runners in scoring position.

**

The Cavs start their season in a few days, which leads to this week’s question to ponder: Will the Cavs take Jared Sullinger with the first pick in next year’s draft?

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Double Digit Failure

2011-12-20T06:22:00.002-05:00

It’s that time of the year again, isn’t it? No, not the holiday season, though it’s that, too. It’s that time of year that the good folks and fans of the Cleveland Browns see every year, like potholes on the interstate.

Yes, I am talking about that time of the year when the Browns cement another double digit losing season.

That it was the Arizona Cardinals that administered the blow this season seems particularly cruel. The Cardinals, except for their one foray into the Super Bowl, have been perennially one of the worst franchises in the NFL. Now even they’re laughing at the Browns.

And while I don’t necessarily have a great desire to revisit one painful season after another as the Browns now careen toward their real favorite season—draft season—there are always those reminders of just why the Browns are who they are.
No matter how many times they do a reset on this franchise they just can’t get it right. Mike “The Big No Show” Holmgren is the latest architect and while he bitched and groused at the media a week ago not to report that it’s all just a bunch of “same old same old” with this team, he’s done absolutely nothing to provide any evidence to the contrary.

In his first full year at the helm, Holmgren decided that what the team and its fans needed most was to waste a season so he kept Eric Mangini as head coach despite the fact that Mangini and his approach to football and those who play it is at the extreme opposite of pretty much everything Holmgren stands for.

But Holmgren decided to assuage Mangini’s feelings rather than be a good steward for the people who pay his salary—the fans—and allowed Mangini to basically hang himself in the worst lame duck role ever invented.

The Big No Show essentially admitted that he wasted last season, but we already knew and wrote about it so why turn over that same shovel of dirt? Well, for the simple reason that it stands as a marker for why this franchise stumbles and bumbles its way into 10+ losses each and every season, that’s why.

To truly appreciate, though, the level of institutional failure just consider head coach Pat Shurmur’s coyness in his Tuesday press conference about the future of Colt McCoy as the Browns’ starter once he’s healthy.

For reasons that only Shurmur could discern, he refused to commit to McCoy as the team’s starting quarterback when healthy. It was an insidious, rookie mistake by Shurmur in a year of insidious, rookie mistakes by Shurmur.

All McCoy has done for him this year has gone out and run Shurmur’s crappy offense with no receivers, a porous right side of the line and no running attack and get his brains beat in for the trouble. James Harrison, the NFL’s biggest thug, rams his helmet through McCoy’s facemask and knocks him into some previous week. McCoy takes the lick, gets back into the game because the Browns’ medical staff is incompetent and then gets rewarded with a statement from his head coach that strongly suggests that perennial backup Seneca Wallace may very well have won the starting job.
And how did Wallace win that job? Well, he got the Browns into the end zone twice in one game which in Shurmur’s world is an achievement of great distinction apparently. Let’s give him the game ball.

Of course Wallace also abjectly failed nearly the entire second half of the game, including overtime, the Browns lost the game and Wallace ended up with a line that looked like every one McCoy has had this season (except all those games that Shurmur stupidly had McCoy throwing the ball 40 times). But yea, apparently to Shurmur, that’s the kind of progress this team has been looking for.

This is exactly why the Browns can’t progress as a franchise wrapped up in one neatly wrapped little holiday present. The team is run by boobs who are so oddly focused atn times on things that mean nothing while missing the far bigger picture that it’s a wonder they remember to tie their shoes in the morning. Maybe they wear slip-ons.

The saying goes that you are what your record says you are and while there may be times to quibble with that, this Browns’ season isn’t one of them. Frankly, none in the last 12 have been, either. Week in and week out they look like a 4-10 team because they’re run like a 4-10 team. The way in which they lost Sunday’s game at Arizona may have been a reminder of what could have been, as Holmgren views things. But it was also a near perfect display of why they are who their record says they are.

When a call needed to be made or a play needed to be executed, the Browns couldn’t quite make it, not just in overtime but from about halfway through the third quarter through the end of the game. There were flourishes of competence at times followed by too long stretches of futility and too few players willing to put an end to those flourishes to turn an inevitable loss into a win.

The Browns on the field played exactly like the front office, from Holmgren down to Shurmur, played.

Why is it, exactly, that the special teams folded just when it needed to stand up? I guess it’s the same reason they couldn’t snap the damn ball or catch it all season, either. The difference between good players and the mediocre ones that surround them has to do with the ability to consistently execute. The same holds for front office executives and head coaches.

In truth, virtually any player in the NFL is capable of doing something special on any given play. It’s why they’re in the NFL in the first place. But the reason Tom Brady makes so much money and Wallace so little, comparatively speaking, is the ability to consistently execute.

But none of this matters now because Holmgren sits and twiddles and Shurmur decides right now is the exact time not to commit, again, to a quarterback. Is it any wonder this franchise is a mess?

Frankly, I’m not sure why so many have seemed to have jumped off the McCoy bandwagon given how few competent people general manager Tom Heckert put on it to help McCoy get to his destination. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could do any better with what McCoy’s had to work with.

Maybe it’s just the idea that Wallace isn’t McCoy in the same way that McCoy wasn’t Jake Delhomme and Delhomme wasn’t Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson. The attention span and patience of Browns fans, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks, seems to run about 10 games before they’ve seen enough. And the best player is the one sitting on the bench, whoever that might be.

Sure, it’s all understandable except that it’s not. At some point the clowns that run this organization and the fans that worship it are going to have to give someone enough leeway to develop in some capacity. At some point fans are going to have to realize that the Browns are just a really awful team with really awful players at so many positions that there's little chance for anyone to develop as a quarterback because we run them off before giving them a real chance.

I’m not raging against Shurmur staying on as a coach anymore then I’m raging against Holmgren or Heckert sticking around. What I am raging against is the Browns machine they’ve inherited and have done little to alter. The machine is broken and needs a real overhaul and not the tinkering they seem to be engaging in.

Instead of actually doing something different, innovative and unique, they just keep making the same mistakes of all the other nincompoops who came before them and then complain that the media isn’t giving them a fair shake.

The Browns need Holmgren to act like a president, have the presence of a president and bring a calm, professional demeanor and approach as he goes about actually making meaningful change. And he needs to do it out front where people can see him working and not from the comfort of his Arizona home.

Holmgren in turn needs Shurmur to stop acting like a know-it-all who thinks he got into the job because he’s such a genius and start embracing the fact that he does have much to learn. Make him hire an offensive coordinator so that he stops acting like one. Make him commit to a actually developing a quarterback and designing a scheme around the players you have instead of the players you wish you had.
But maybe that’s too hard.

So sure, let’s change out the quarterback again because it carries the hint of making progress even if it ends up being the exact opposite of what actual progress looks like. Let’s keep pressing the reset button again and again because really that’s all it’s going to take to fix this mess. And while we’re at it, let’s get used to the painful drip, drip, drip of loss after loss because if there’s one thing we do know, the world doesn’t lack for the next set of goofs standing in line to take more of Randy Lerner’s wasted money.

Business As Usual

2011-12-14T20:45:00.002-05:00

For a franchise that has known little else but embarrassment since it came back into the NFL 12 years ago, you’d think at some point the Cleveland Browns would finally reach rock bottom. Apparently there is no bottom.

Mike, the Big No Show, Holmgren finally made a media appearance on Tuesday to say in rather clinical if also defensive fashion that the franchise he now oversees did almost nothing right to protect the health of the quarterback that Holmgren believes is the future.

It was Holmgren’s first press conference in months and came, not coincidentally, the day that Bud Shaw of the Plain Dealer called out Holmgren for leaving Pat Shurmur to fend for himself on what was clearly a team issue that should have been addressed by Holmgren. (An aside. I thought Shaw’s column was excellent. That said, it was similar to what I wrote a few weeks ago about the mysterious no show by the team’s leaders to explain just what the hell is going on with the team this time. Oh well.)

But before anyone gets the idea that Holmgren came out to offer some sort of mea culpa or other overt act of leadership at another of the 650 million critical points in this franchise's recent history, think again. Instead Holmgren came out mostly to defend the team's complete bungling of Colt McCoy's head injury last Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers and then do his level best to convince the unconvinced that this team is not operating like every other incompetent regime that came before him.

But in trying to make the “this is not business as usual” case Holmgren actually did the opposite by devoting the first few minutes of the press conference to explaining why it's taken this long for anyone higher then Shurmur to address the McCoy concussion issue. In short, it was because he wanted to get his story straight with the NFL and the players' union before having to address the media. Given the passage of time, you'd have thought Holmgren could have done a better job. Put it this way, Gene Smith thinks Holmgren gave a lousy performance.

As to the concussion issue, which dominated the conference, Holmgren took the Phil Savage approach. He came out swinging and defensive, blamed others, accepted no blame himself for anything and essentially mocked anyone with the audacity to think differently.

In a startling but hardly unbelievable fashion Holmgren claimed that McCoy wasn’t administered any sort of concussion test before sending him back into the game against Pittsburgh, not even as a precautionary measure, for two reasons. First, the patient seemed lucid. Second, the medical staff was too busy attending to other injured players to see exactly how McCoy got assaulted by the biggest thug in the NFL, James Harrison

McCoy, who claims to not remember a damn thing about the hit or what happened immediately after, appeared coherent enough to the Browns’ crack medical staff to such an extent that a precautionary test for a concussion wasn’t necessary? Who exactly is leading that staff, Dr. Bombay or Dr. Vinnie Boom Botz? The guy from the Sprint commercials? Maybe there isn’t anyone with a medical degree at all but someone who happened to stay at a Holiday Inn Express the night before.

In defending the medical staff's approach to McCoy, Holmgren was quick to emphasize foremost not how important the health of the players is but how impressive the medical staff is, calling it's the best in the business. But by offering the reasons behind the rather perfunctory exam of McCoy on the sidelines in essence Holmgren just signaled to every player on the team, not to mention any player who might potentially play for the team, that the Browns’ medical staff is a bunch of incompetent boobs that can’t be trusted enough to make even the most obvious of exams. That’s got to be comforting not to mention a real selling point when trying to lure free agents. Makes one wonder how Holmgren sees this as different from the past, unless he meant it's now worse, or what the medical staff would have looked at if McCoy had come to the sidelines with his femur poking through his skin.

But let’s assume that the staff was too busy with all the other walking wounded on this team. It strikes me that Shurmur had a pretty good view of what was going on during the game. So too did many if not all his coaches, including those sitting in the press box with the luxury of replay. They all saw Harrison attempt to ram his skull through McCoy’s. Shouldn't it have occurred to Shurmur or anyone else at any point to run over to that overwrought, overworked medical staff and say something like “make sure you check McCoy for a concussion. He nearly had his head decapitated”?

A particularly rich exchange occurred when Holmgren offered up that the outcome of his meetings with the league and the union was that the league will likely tweak its concussion procedures going forward, which was a not so subtle suggestion that it was the league’s policies that failed McCoy and not the Browns.

The truth is that the Browns, from Holmgrem to Heckert to Shurmur to every member of Shurmur's staff, failed McCoy. But that in itself isn't unusual because McCoy is just another in a long line of players that have been mostly abandoned by this team in one form or another. It isn’t just all the medical issues that they’ve had, two of which have resulted in lawsuits by former players LeCharles Bentley and Joe Jurevicius. It’s all the other little ways that that this team fails the very players and fans it claims to value.

If Holmgen was the leader we thought he was, he would have taken the charge, made an apology and laid out exactly how things would be different going forward instead of claiming that things already are different. Instead he came across as weak by merely offering excuses, defending the bumbling antics of his medical staff and then refusoing, when asked, to back McCoy by acknowledging that they haven't given McCoy even a reasonable opportunity to be fairly evaluated.

But why focus on just McCoy. You can start with Tim Couch and wind your way through nearly every player that has strapped on a Browns’ uniform in the last decade and come to the conclusion that Cleveland has been a miserable place to earn a living as a football player because of rampant incompetency at every level of management, from the owner on down to every coach and front office goof that has been given a title and a paycheck.

What seemed to really bother Holmgren most during the entire press conference was the growing perception that Holmgren as a leader isn't any better or different from those who came before him and that it really is business as usual for the Browns. He should have saved the sanctimony.

I’m not ready to write off this current regime just yet but if Holmgren really doesn’t think this team is operating in a “business as usual” format then he did very little due diligence before taking the job. The Browns’ reaction to the McCoy hit was exactly how every other regime that’s had the keys to Berea would have handled it, which is to say poorly.

Holmgren implored the fans to trust him that this will all get fixed. That would be a whole lot easier if every visible sign this season, from the questionable signings to the bad fundamentals to the boring product on the field to the constant bungling of personnel and medical issues, didn't suggest that it's beyond his ability to fix.

Lingering Items--Evaluation Edition

2011-12-11T08:12:00.006-05:00

Baylor University quarterback Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night and that is apparently enough to anoint him the next future quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. It's exactly that kind of patience that has gotten this franchise in trouble in the first place.

Maybe it's best to forgive the locals who see Griffin as another Cam Newton, someone who can come in and play well on a bad team. It's brought some excitement to a moribund Carolina Panthers franchise so perhaps there's some legitimacy in that view.

But as you ponder a future with Griffin, ask yourself whether quarterback is even close to being the biggest area of need on the Browns at the moment. For anyone who has already written off Colt McCoy, what is it exactly that you see in Griffin that would have made this Browns team any better this year?

Would Griffin's presence make Mohamed Massaquoi any faster? Would his presence make Josh Cribbs run a decent route or help Greg Little catch the ball? Would Griffin have healed Peyton Hillis or Montario Hardesty? Would Griffin have been able to turn anyone on the right side of the offensive line into a better run or pass blocker?

Griffin may be a game changer but with all his talent there are things he can't do and that starts with filling the prodigious holes in the Browns' offense. Personally the thought of the Browns investing all that cash into a first round pick like Griffin only to watch him get clobbered by the same things that are turning McCoy into a pinata is about as appealing as it was watching the Browns invest all that cash in Tim Couch only to watch him get clobbered into a premature end to his career.

Somewhere along about the time Pittsburgh's James Harrison was engaging in about his 12th dirty hit of the season by blasting into McCoy's facemask with the crown of his helmet, many fans and too many jugheads in the media decided McCoy wasn't the answer. And if that blow to the head didn't do it then it was the critical interception that McCoy threw a few plays later that sealed his fate, never mind that his brain was so scrambled by the play he probably couldn't even remember which team he was playing for.

This is why it is so difficult to be a Browns fan. Not only do you have to put up with an organization that redefines incompetence each season, you also have to deal with a fan base with the patience of a newborn.

I get that everyone's tired of all the excuses. So am I. But to condemn McCoy to the Island of Misfit Browns Quarterbacks right now given the putrid cast that general manager Tom Heckert surrounded him with this season makes as much sense as the BCS. If McCoy is to be evaluated in the context of this team, then why does anyone think that Griffin would fare any better or last any longer?

The same crappy front office that brought this mess of an offense, that decided that no moves needed to be made at wide receiver, that decided an injury prone Tony Pashos was the answer on the right side of the line, that put their faith in Montario Hardesty, is going to be the same crappy front office that drafts Griffin and then surrounds him with the same kind of second tier castoffs.

That's the nub of the problem. There isn't a quarterback in the entire NFL that could move the needle statistically for this offense. And there isn't a quarterback in college, especially a junior like Griffin or a senior like Andrew Luck, that could have done any better then McCoy.

This isn't to defend McCoy so much as it is to point the white hot glare of the spotlight on the reality of this Browns' offense. It's a mess in almost every way a team's offense can be a mess. Outside of Joe Thomas, there isn't a quality player lining up on that side of the ball at the moment. The few players that even pass for decent, like Hillis, have been hurt all season.

If this were Vegas, it would be as if the Browns' front office bankrolled McCoy at the blackjack table and then told him that the only time he could bet was when he was dealt a 8 and a 7. Winning 4 of every 16 hands sounds about right to me. And yet the fans seem puzzled by that lack of success.

I think McCoy has some ground to cover as a quarterback and perhaps he may never make it as a big time NFL quarterback. But anyone who thinks they can make that conclusion after this season with that supporting cast ought to quit their day job and apply for a job with the Browns as the next general manager. Sure things won't get any better, but on the plus side they probably won't get any worse.

**
Speaking of that thug James Harrison, if Roger Goodell and the NFL don't come down with at least a two game suspension on him for the hit on McCoy then it will be confirmation that they aren't really serious about eliminating concussions. And if I were representing the former and current players suing the NFL for its responses to the growing number of concussions I'd use the hit and the lack of effective action by the league for it as exhibit 1 that the NFL just doesn't get it.

Harrison by any measure is the dirtiest player in the league. Last year he was fined over $500,000 as the result of four vicious, unnecessary hits. Browns fans will recall that Harrison knocked both Josh Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi out of the same game with brutal, illegal hits.

That of course hasn't deterred Harrison one bit. In reaction to the fines, Harrison hasn't just shown no remorse. He more than double downed on his thug persona by slurring Goodell in an article entitled “Confessions of a Hit Man” that appeared in Men's Journal.

I like in particular how Harrison did his best to portray himself as an outlaw with a grudge, someone who is constantly fighting for some abstract notion of respect despite the huge salary and plush lifestyle he leads thanks to the generosity of the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The choice quote of that article is the one that hopefully Goodell reads right before he throws Harrison's ass out of the league for good: “But up until last year, there was no word of me being dirty—till Roger Goodell, who's a crook and a puppet, said I was the dirtiest player in the league. If that man was on fire and I had to piss to put him out, I wouldn't do it. I hate him and I will never respect him.” For good measure, he also called Goodell a “faggot.”

Three points about those quotes. First, Harrison's a liar. Goodell never called Harrison the league's dirtiest player, though he should have. Second, Harrison's reputation goes back further then a year ago. He's always been a thug who would rather lead with his helmet when making a tackle then take the easier and less riskier bath of tackling with his shoulder. Third, Harrison apologized in that passive aggressive way most people apologize. He's sorry if anyone was offended by his remarks. He's not sorry he made them. He's not saying he didn't mean them. He's just sorry if you're too much of a sensitive puke to hear them.

The Harrison apologists in Pittsburgh, which include the Steelers' owner and the head coach, will point out that this is Harrison's first personal foul of the season and that he is trying to conform despite his loud mouth bragging to the contrary. What these apologists fail to appreciate is that Harrison has no interest in learning his lesson. He sees himself as the protector of some ancient league ethic about the violence inherent in the sport and remains hell bent on upholding the image of the thug who posed for that article bare-chested and brandishing two guns. Besides, the lack of personal fouls is hardly a marker for better behavior. Harrison didn't draw a penalty on the Cribbs or Massaquoi hits either and they were clearly illegal.

There also is the theory that even the Plain Dealer's resident contrarian Bill Livingston advanced that somehow Harrison can't really be blamed because McCoy appeared to be a runner on the play. Well, McCoy was scrambling, true. He also threw the ball from behind the line of scrimmage, which makes him a quarterback. No one's complaining that Harrison should have held up hitting McCoy at all. Where Harrison crossed the line was lowering in lowering his head so that the crown of his helmet was aimed squarely at McCoy's chin. Harrison could have hit McCoy in the chest but that is a pussy move in Harrison's world. Far better to blast him in the face just so he and the rest of the league get the message.

The league sent Ndamukong Suh to the sideline for two games for stomping on a player during a nationally televised game. Suh's high schoolish move looked awful but caused far less damage. Suh's a repeat offender that has more than demonstrated that he has no predisposition to play by the rules. In that regard, though, he's just following the lead of players like Harrison. If the league really wants to send an effective message to the Suhs of the world, they have to start by sending Harrison to the sideline as well. And if they were really serious, Harrison's season would be over.

**
It looks like Cleveland Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is in hot water with some fans, including Cavs fans, for opening his mouth again and daring to speak the truth about the joke that the NBA has come at the expense of small market teams.

Gilbert was getting excoriated in some corners for being one of the more aggressive owners during the NBA's lockout. Gilbert's fight then and now was to level the playing field for a league that is tilting in favor of a few super teams and against everyone else.

If you had invested as much money as Gilbert has into this franchise and then watched as the league sat passively as that franchise's value was being significantly diminished by rules that should be designed to protect it, wouldn't you speak up just as loudly?

It's not worth getting into all the particulars of the Chris Paul trade and its ramifications on the entire league. What is worth getting into is all the various goofy rules and exceptions that can easily get manipulated by the league's high rolling clubs at the expense of everyone else.

Basketball is a winter sport and it's understandable that pampered players would rather play their 41 home games a year in a warmer climate. No one wants to go to Minnesota or Cleveland or a dozen other places in the winter. Hell, I hate being in Cleveland in the winter. But if the NBA is truly going to thrive it must protect the Minnesotas and Clevelands of the league even if it comes at the expense of nullifying trades that aren't in the sport's best interest.

Sure that's a slippery slope but on the other hand it's exactly why there is a commissioner in the first place. His most important duty is as a guardian of the entire league's best interest and not just the interest of a coddled few.

Cavs fans should be applauding Gilbert, not crucifying him. Gilbert's motives may be selfish—the protection of his own investment—but they have the byproduct of protecting the overall health of the league.

Personally I'd rather have Gilbert being the standard bearer for fairness then have owners like the Dolans who have been less vocal and far more compliant in fostering baseball's inherent economic unfairness.

It's a funny thing about fans. As much as they like to bitch about how the cards get stacked against them, particularly in Cleveland, they'll do little on their own accord, like stop supporting those who stacked those cards against them. Meanwhile when someone with some gravitas does step forward on their behalf their pride takes over and they complain that they don't need any help in their fight against the bully, even as they stand their bleeding from the beating they've been taking.

**
With the Cavs opening up training camp this past Friday and the talk now of waiving Baron Davis so that his salary won't count against the cap, this week's question to ponder: Doesn't it seem rather convenient that Davis has suddenly developed a bad back?

Who's Minding the Gap?

2011-12-06T19:00:00.002-05:00

There’s a concept in the business world called gap analysis. It works like this. Say you need to reorganize a business unit or redesign a business process because it's become a bloated, inefficient version of its former competitive self. You can just start trying different things to see if that will make it better. In football terms, that's called the Cleveland Browns Approach. Usually it doesn’t work. You could also take a more methodical, process-oriented approach. In football terms, that's called the Rest of the NFL Approach. That tends to work much better.

Assuming you follow the Rest of the NFL Approach, the first task is to do an “as is” analysis, which is exactly what the term suggests. During this phase you review, factually and unapologetically, the current state of what you’re doing. You make no value judgments. You just take an honest, sometimes brutal assessment of what you currently do.

The next step is the “to be” phase which also is exactly what the term suggests. Having decided that a change is necessary, you undertake an assessment of what you want the reorganized or redesigned business unit or process to look like. You do this by benchmarking against your competitors. You try to find best practices that others are using. In short you meticulously design exactly what it is your business unit will look like as a more nimble, capable competitor.

The final step is to undergo a “gap analysis.” This means you compare your “as is” work product with your “to be” ideas and figure out what are the gaps keeping you from getting where you are to where you want to be. If you’re at all honest about the process, it should lead to some sobering conclusions and daunting tasks. But if you perform those tasks correctly, the gaps will close.

To this point, the Cleveland Browns have mostly been shooting crooked in the dark. Not knowing where they really want to go, except in the most general of terms, they figure that any road will get them there. That's why there's been a series of coaches, personnel directors and players of all shapes, sizes and temperaments and yet as one season blends into another the franchise hasn't progressed in any discernible fashion.

I bring all this up because there’s been much talk the last few days about the gaps between the Cleveland Browns and the rest of the teams in the AFC North or, for that matter, the rest of the good teams in the NFL. Josh Cribbs, who else, spurred it on by declaring in this week’s post-game gripe that the gap between the Browns and the rest is huge.

Joe Thomas, on the other hand, took issue with the declaration, suggesting instead that it’s all a matter of execution.

This isn't exactly an argument over nature vs. nurture, Lodge. Instead it's an outward manifestation of all the little disconnects between what’s taking place in the front offices occupied by general manager Tom Heckert and club president Mike Holmgren and what’s filtering down to the players.

Besides, there’s no need to take sides between Cribbs and Thomas since they’re both in essential agreement. The ability to execute is what differentiates minor and major talents. So yes, the Browns have a huge talent gap. How do we know? The players they have lack the ability to execute.

Never was this more clear then the debacle that was the Ravens game this past Sunday. It was no secret that the Ravens wanted to run the ball with Ray Rice and Ricky Williams. Even if the Ravens had tried to disguise it, which they didn’t, the steady rain dictated that approach. And yet even knowing exactly what was coming and when, the Browns’ defense was rendered powerless to stop it.

This was the result of talent gap. The Ravens’ offensive line played bigger, stronger and faster. They executed their assignments with precision. The Browns’ front 7, to a man less talented then their counterparts, could only absorb the blocks and respond only after the play had mostly passed them by. It’s why the Ravens gained nearly 300 yards on the ground and why the Ravens could have gained 500 yards on the ground if that had been their wont.

When the Browns had the ball, it was the same situation, just in reverse. The Browns’ offensive line, particularly the right side where most plays seem to be run, played smaller, weaker and slower than the Ravens’ defensive line. They were often perfunctory in the execution of their assignments. Rarely were there even slivers of light through which Peyton Hillis could run.

When Colt McCoy had the ball, he was under near constant siege against a defensive line that was far better in its ability to apply pressure then the offensive line was in preventing it. And even when there was time, McCoy’s receivers failed to execute on their main job assignment, catching the ball.

According to Mary Kay Cabot in Tuesday’s Plain Dealer, the Browns’ receivers lead the league in dropped passes with a staggering 35 of them. And that’s without Braylon Edwards! If the offensive line isn’t opening holes and the receivers aren’t catching passes, then how exactly is a team supposed to score?

So what you had really on Sunday was an almost perfect visual documentation of a gap analysis with the Ravens representing a “to be” state, the Browns in the “as is” phase and all those very telling statistics, not to mention what you actually witnessed, separating the two.

It manifested itself in the plays the Ravens made routinely on both sides of the ball and the plays the Browns did not. It manifested itself in the visceral feel you got that the Ravens players seemed to just hit harder and cover better. It manifested itself in the records of two teams who only technically play in the same conference and league.

The fact that a gap exists is itself not the problem. There’s always a gap unless you’re the team at the top and even then there are all sorts of mini-gaps between various aspects of your operations and those other teams that do some tasks better then you.

The issue is exactly what it will take to close the gap and that is the question that various iterations of Browns deep thinkers supposedly have been trying to solve with virtually no success. Former general manager Phil Savage often spoke about it in terms of the number of quality players it takes to be competitive. Eric Mangini, a de facto general manager, talked about it in terms of a mystical process. In the end they were just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it would stick.

What really bothers the average fan still is that they're tired of that approach and are starting to think, based on the results they see each week, that this regime is more of the same.

It would help if someone on this Browns staff laid out much of a realistic vision on how those gaps are going to be closed. But Holmgren speaks sparingly and Heckert not at all. You can't tell exactly what gaps they see and what plans they haveto close them. All your left to do is look for little clues and make assumptions that are probably wrong.

What I fear is that the Browns are reaching a critical mass with their fans, most of whom have proven they can take an incredible amount of abuse. What these fans need at the moment is a reason to believe that despite the numbing sameness each week there is a definite plan in place and it's being acted upon. Right now, that just doesn't appear to be the case.

The Inevitability of it All

2011-12-04T19:34:00.000-05:00

So much about the way the Cleveland Browns game against the Baltimore Ravens played out on Sunday seemed inevitable. Whether it was the inability to stop a good running attack, the inability to put points on the board, the untimely interception or even the early injury to quarterback Colt McCoy, it all seemed so predestined.

And the 24-10 final score in favor of the Ravens? Yea, that was inevitable, too.

There would be no surprises this week. No chance of the Ravens taking the Browns too lightly. No early Ravens turnovers to give the Browns unexpectedly good field position and a few quick scores. Instead, inevitably, just another butt kicking at the hands of team on a far different trajectory. At least the loss gave the Browns the rather dubious bragging rights of having been dominated by both Harbaugh brothers in one season. So there is that.

The game certainly carried the whiff of nearly every other loss that preceded it, right down to the deceiving final score.

Helping early on to keep the score closer than the game was a couple of factors. There was the rain, which kept the Ravens from throwing too much. Then there was Ravens head coach John Harbaugh eschewing a field goal early for an unsuccessful fourth down attempt and then Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff missing two short field goals late in the second quarter. Had the Ravens piled on the points then, the score and the game being witnessed would have been perfectly in sync. That would come.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let's focus for a moment on the things we knew were coming before the coin was even tossed.

First was Ravens running back Ray Rice, channeling a young Jamal Lewis and running through the Browns' defense like a deer darting cars on a country two-lane. On his first 6 carries he averaged 10 yards per. He couldn't keep up that pace but the pace he maintained was brisk enough. He was well over 100 yards rushing in the first half and only the presence of Ricky Williams, who took some carries from him, and slightly better play by the defensive line kept Rice from running for 300 yards.

That untimely interception? It came late in the first half, during a two-minute drill of sorts and followed two previous passes from McCoy that could have been intercepted. But more to the point it was then followed by what else, an inevitable pass interference call near the goal line. But in something that is becoming inevitable but on the good side is a successful goal line stand by the Browns' defense. That makes four in two games.

Still, after the defense held Cundiff made it a bit of an adventure but did finally convert a short field goal and gave the Ravens a 10-0 halftime lead.

So while the that score looked perfectly manageable, it really wasn't. It might as well have been 30-0, which it could have been considering how the Ravens otherwise seemed to be dominating the game, if you define dominating in terms of plays run (17 more than the Browns), time of possession (7 and a half minutes more), yards gained (170 more), you know, that sort of thing.

It was the kind of trends that tend to eventually pay dividends at just about the time you start to get heady and think you are really in the game.

And yet, there the Browns found themselves, midway through the third quarter and still within the same sort of striking distance and breathing anew. When Jabaal Sheard stripped Joe Flacco on a great individual effort and the ball was recovered by Jayme Mitchell, suddenly the Browns found themselves at midfield. The unexpected turnover!

It all looked so inevitable in the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished sort of way when McCoy took a sack on first down. But on second down, Peyton Hillis found himself all alone downfield and in the midst of a Ravens blown assignment on defense. McCoy saw it, hit Hillis and the play covered 51 yards down to the Ravens' 3 yard line.

But inevitability once again reared its ugly head as the offense couldn't find a way to put it over the goal line, a Hillis run stuffed at the line and two incomplete passes. In fairness to McCoy, though, tight end Evan Moore dropped a well thrown pass in the end zone and Greg Little looked to be interfered with on a third down pass. Phil Dawson converted the 21 yard field goal without incident and the Browns were back to within 7.

Now remember those things that tend to come back and haunt you? They did, just that quickly.

On the Ravens next play, Rice scampered for 67 yards, giving him 187 on the day with plenty of game still to play, and Ricky Williams cleaned up two plays later to push the lead to 17-3 and just like that it was back to reality. That meant lots more of Rice, lots more time of possession for the Ravens and the inevitable march to the inevitable Josh Cribbs post-game crabbing about his role, which was non-existent on this particular day.

Indeed, the fourth quarter more or less resembled a pre season intra squad scrimmage. Neither team looked to be doing anything more then trying to hone some new formations, keep the clock moving and get the hell out of the rain. But Ravens' punt returner Lardarius Webb threw a bit of a monkey wrench into that when he returned a Brad Maynard punt 68 yards that pushed the lead to 24-7.

As I said, inevitably the score and the game being witnessed would come back into sync.

That forced the Browns to do what they inevitably do in late games that are out of reach. Score a meaningless touchdown. This one was from McCoy to a wide open Moore, who held on this time probably because it mattered so little. I guess it showed that McCoy doesn't give up even when the game is over but maybe it just shows that by that point in the game the other team is just bored.

On a macro level, and irrespective how they got there, really there was nothing particularly knew or different here that gave you a sense that much had been learned by this Browns team from the several other iterations of this game that fans have already seen this year. But that's not a surprise. Lacking talent in most areas and also banged up pretty good, there's no reason to have expected anything different. That's why it all seemed so inevitable in the first place.

But let's not completely let that spoil the party. Let's go micro, briefly.

Here's one thing I am starting to like: Jordan Norwood. He can get open and catch. He only had 3 catches on the day for 29 yards, but he's one of the few players you can actually point to and say that there's been real progress this year.

Here's another thing I'm liking better each week: the play of Jabaal Sheard. It's hard to single out anyone on the defensive line on a day when Rice had 200+ yards rushing, but the play Sheard made in stripping the ball from Flacco was a thing of beauty. He was getting pressure but Flacco stepped up in the pocket. Sheard didn't give up on the play, closed quickly and knocked the ball loose from Flacco just as he was beginning his throwing motion.

On the other hand, here's something I'm really starting to hate: that play where McCoy takes a 5-step drop, pirouettes, takes three more steps back and then throws a screen pass to a running back with a linebacker draped on him like an oversized suit. The next time it's successful will be the first.

And here's something else I'm really starting to hate: the numbing sameness of each and every game. It matters little who the running back is, who the receivers are or even who is or isn't playing on defense. It matters little, really, who the opponent is.

Now the Browns find themselves on a short week having to face the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night. Chances are it will go exactly the way you think it will so there's probably no reason for you to look so tired come Friday morning. You can be fast asleep by 10 knowing full well how it all turns out.

Lingering Items--Yapping and Snapping Edition

2011-12-02T20:04:00.000-05:00

Another week, another loss and another Josh Cribbs flare up. Sensing a pattern, like a Ryan Pontbriand bad snap?

There is coming a point, perhaps quickly, perhaps not, where Cribbs is going to wear out his welcome with Pat Shurmur and the rest of the coaching staff. This is at least the fourth time this season where Cribbs has gone through his whole passive-aggressive approach to using the media post game under the guise of his passion for winning to bitch about not getting the damn ball.

By this point there are some very clear patterns to Cribbs and unfortunately they aren’t on the field in his role as a receiver. Cribbs views himself as one of the team’s few playmakers and gets aggravated when it doesn’t seem to be acknowledged in that week’s game plan.

The problem though is that while Cribbs is a playmaker of sorts, he’s not nearly as awesome as he believes and that’s just a fact. I’ll give him his due as a good open field runner. I’ll give him his due as the kind of player that doesn’t take a play off. When he’s in he gives you everything he’s got.

But let’s look a bit deeper.

The whole “good open field runner” thing? Almost any skill player in the NFL should be a good open field runner because it means that he isn’t wading through a phalanx of tacklers in order to grind out yards. So, yea, when Cribbs gets the ball in space he can perform like about 80 other players in the league. That alone doesn’t qualify him as a playmaker.

The real problem for Cribbs is that while he’s skilled as a return man, he’s not very skilled as a receiver nor is he a viable threat in the backfield. He has good but not great speed. He’s made some good catches this season but the real bread and butter of the position lies in the ability to run good, consistent patterns and fend off defensive backs. Cribbs is just average, at best, at those key skills and while he may get better, he’ll never get good enough to be anything more than the third receiver on a team that lacks depth at receiver.

Cribbs likewise doesn’t possess the requisite skills to run out of the backfield. Eric Mangini’s occasional dalliances with the wildcat formation more than showed that Cribbs isn’t that viable of a running threat. He doesn’t have a running back’s sixth sense to see an opening before it fully appears. His approach is more bull-in-a-china-shop then scat back, despite his size, mainly because he doesn’t seem to have been trained any other way.

This is all to say that Cribbs may be the kind of player you want on the team, he’s not the kind of player around which a coordinator designs an offense. At this juncture I’m not sure he understands that fundamental fact.

It’s actually getting tiring listening to Cribbs talk constantly about his passion for winning while believing its only path runs through his legs and desire. I understand that most professional athletes tend to be self-centered, but frankly Cribbs’ act is wearing thin.

The Browns certainly are better off with Cribbs on the team then not, but the more he complains the more he begins to tilt the balance of that equation in the wrong direction. Publicly Shurmur may be giving Cribbs a pass by saying that he wants a team full of players that want to win as badly as Cribbs, but privately Shurmur is probably seething.

When you’re trying to put together a winning culture, the first thing that has to be eradicated is the me-first attitude that players on losing teams tend to develop. Cribbs may not be there yet but he’s well down that road. Unless he decides to take another path, that road will eventually lead to an exit ramp out of Cleveland. Count on it.

**
If you’re still surprised that the Cleveland Browns cut long snapper Ryan Pontbriand on Tuesday, like so many of his former teammates seem to be, you shouldn’t. Pontbriand sealed his fate when he admitted he was in a snapping slump, whatever that means.

Pontbriand dribbling the ball to holder Brad Maynard last Sunday on a crucial field goal attempt against the Cincinnati Bengals was the last straw, of course. But even before that he had seemingly lost the ability to accurately do the one and only task for which he was being paid: snap the friggin’ ball.

In baseball they call this either Chuck Knoblauch’s Disease or Steve Sax Syndrome. In football it may very well become known as Pontbriand Panic. And irrespective of whatever accomplishments may have preceded the onset of the affliction, once you develop the yips you’d have an easier time convincing Child Services that Dina Lohan or Kris Jenner are mother of the year candidates then in correcting the problem.

When Johnny Miller and Ian-Baker Finch lost the ability to make 3 foot putts, they went to the broadcasting booth. It mattered little that their tee to green game was still solid. The money is won on the greens and Miller and Finch were so overcome by technique issues as they tried to work through the problem that it was literally painful to watch either putt.

It’s almost that way with Pontbriand, which is why he’s gone. A coach holding his breath just hoping the ball makes it back to its intended spot on a straight line isn’t a good sign and that’s exactly where Shurmur found himself with Pontbriand.

Pontbriand said that when he botched a snap earlier this season that helped contribute to another brutal Browns’ loss he went home and made 150 snaps just to get the bad feel off his hands. But those are the easy snaps to make. There’s no stout defensive lineman breathing down his neck; there’s no game on the line.

That Pontbriand did his job well for a number of years is actually pretty irrelevant. Professional sports has always been a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business and by that measure, when it came to Pontbriand, the answer was “not much.”

It’s probably difficult for most fans to remember that while long snapping has always required special expertise it wasn’t always a specialty job. It used to be that almost anyone else on the team fulfilled the role of the person responsible for getting the ball to the punter or the holder. Sometimes it was a defensive player. Other times it was a back up lineman. Teams simply didn’t take up a roster spot for this one specialized skill and it all seemed to work out just fine for every great punter and place kicker in the history of the sport for quite a long time. But apparently there was room for improvement and thus begat the age of the long snapper as a commodity separate and distinct from any other position on the field.

According to Wikipedia, a source nearly as reputable as TMZ, Pontbriand held the distinction of being the highest drafted long snapper in the history of the NFL when he was picked by the Browns in the 5th round. Pontrbriand played in two Pro Bowls so it’s hard to say that it was a wasted pick and yet why is it hard to imagine, especially given the awful draft history of the re-born Browns that using any pick on a long snapper was simply a waste of time? Maybe the answer lies in the fact that it’s still hard to imagine, even in this day and age, that the Browns, particularly these Browns, a team that needs more and not less draft choices, would blow a choice on any long snapper when their needs have always been far more vast. Ah, another column for another day.

If you want to truly understand why the Browns cut Pontbriand rather then allow him to work through whatever mental block he was experiencing, you can point to two things.

First, even though this Browns squad never had any playoff aspirations, winning still is rather important to the overall psyche of the team and its fans. Pontbriand cost the team at least one win and probably two. In the grand scheme it doesn’t mean much but on a micro level both losses were incredibly deflating.

Second, the Browns are simply a team that can’t afford any mistakes if it ever has a hope of winning again. One bad snap can happen. Two raise a few eyebrows. Three is a trend and Pontbriand had entered trend territory at least three games ago.

So goodbye, Ryan Pontbriand. I’m sure you’ll find work again. Unfortunately, and sadly, I’m sure you’ll botch snaps again. Once the yips get in your blood, the only long term cure is to take up another sport.

**
So it looks like there will be a NBA season after all. That certainly was a very short nuclear winter.

Actually it’s not a surprise that the NBA and its players figured out a settlement to what ailed them. It’s exactly how collective bargaining is supposed to work. The beauty is that economic factors eventually come to bear on all the parties and it forces them to get more realistic.

NBA owners or most of them anyway have debt that needs serviced. It’s tough to do that without the income flowing that the debt was based on in the first place. NBA players or most of them anyway have their own type of debt to service as well which can be particularly difficult without an outsized paycheck coming their way.

And that, kids, is the real lesson of labor law. Disputes over new collective bargaining agreements, especially ones where the owner is trying to cut back on the largesse of the previous version, are common and difficult. But eventually they do get solved.

There’s a school of thought that suggests that the players’ lawsuits was the impetus. Perhaps but not because there was any legal merit to them. All that litigation promised was paydays for the lawyers and interminable delays to the resolution of the ultimate issues. Staring down the barrel of a gun being held by lawyers and judges tends to make parties skittish and so it was that the owners and the players finally found common ground.

Good for them.

Meanwhile and well under the radar, major league baseball owners and players entered into a new agreement without all the saber rattling that usually attends these things.

In each case, baseball and basketball, the issues the parties solved are important to them and mostly irrelevant to the average fan, with one exception—economic disparity.

On that front, it appears as though the NBA owners made a bit more headway in giving its smaller market teams the opportunity to compete on a level playing field than did baseball owners. For reasons that both confound and mystify, baseball owners continue to delude themselves into thinking that there economic structure is fundamentally sound. As if.

In basketball, the owners didn’t do as much to put in a hard salary cap as they could have given the leverage they had, but they have made it far more expensive for big market teams to spend freely at the expense of their partners in smaller markets. The real question is whether or not it works.

Statistics consistently bear it out that when a team loses its superstar, like Cleveland and LeBron James, like Chicago and Michael Jordan, it’s a 10 year death march back to respectability. There are several reasons that conspired to create that situation but it is a serious, serious problem.

The reason Dan Gilbert was such a vocal proponent of making a fundamental sea change in NBA economics was that he well understood all the impediments to his ability to get a good competitive team on the court in a short period of time. The question now is whether any inroads were made toward that goal with the new agreement. We won’t know that answer for at least a few more years or, stated differently, about 90-100 more losses by the Cavs.

Still, for fans of all sports, we now have that rare moment where there aren’t any dark clouds of labor unrest hanging over any major sport. Baseball, football and basketball are now in the midst of very long-term deals and hockey, well, let’s just say that there won’t be any problems any time soon there either. It will be a long while before the players feel chippy again having lost an entire season a few years ago.

**

Ohio State’s hiring of Urban Meyer with the expectation that it will turn things around immediately leads to this week’s question to ponder: If the Browns had hired Urban Meyer, would Browns’ fans have those same expectations? Bonus question: if they did, would they be justified?

Urban Architecture

2011-11-28T19:58:00.002-05:00

How you feel about the Ohio State Buckeyes hiring Urban Meyer as its next football coach probably says a lot about how you feel about college football in general these days.

For Buckeyes fans, Meyer’s hiring, assuming he’s the Meyer of two national championships and not the burned out Dick Vermeil-type that left Florida in the lurch, this is the best possible outcome to the worst possible scenario.

No one outside of the drive-by moralistic hypocrites in the national media who simultaneously scream for an even bigger payday for a national championship while belittling the sordid side of what all that money brings with it wanted to see Jim Tressel leave the Buckeyes.

Tressel committed a serious infraction of NCAA rules. The system depends on honesty from those running programs and Tressel wasn’t. It’s highly debatable whether he deserved the equivalent of the death penalty for his single transgression, but that plane has flown and there won’t be a return trip.

Having Tressel be replaced by Meyer is almost scripted too perfectly for the locals, kind of like Al Lerner pushing his friend Art Modell to move the franchise to Baltimore and then buying the new one in Cleveland. It surely makes the nervous nellies think that Meyer in Columbus can’t possibly end well, even if he wins big.

Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Meyer has a consistent record of high achievement and the requisite Ohio State roots so there isn’t any reason to think that his success won’t continue. Yet for many fans, particularly those in Cleveland who understand that every silver lining in their sports world exists merely to deflect attention briefly from the dark clouds, they’ll watch with that same skeptical eye usually reserved for the Indians and the Browns.

For those solely focused on the Buckeyes, like the more pragmatic folks downstate, they tend to take their luck when they find it and don’t question its source. So Meyer as a Buckeye is the lucky penny with no downside and if he does fail there will be someone better to come along anyway.

Indeed there really isn’t a downside to the Meyer hiring. He’s the right age. He’s coming off a self-imposed sabbatical, which means his batteries are fully charged, and he seems poised to pounce like a dog at the ankle of the UPS guy. He says the right things. He does the right things.

Once we step outside of the parochial world of the Buckeyes program and its fans, though, all that the hiring of Meyer suggests is that for all the good talk about reigning in a sport that is careening out of control, no one’s serious. Not Gordon Gee. Not the NCAA and certainly not the media despite their constant moralizing.

It starts with the money that Meyer is being paid. We’ll know soon enough the exact terms because it will be a public record. But it’s multi-millions over multi-years. And yet in the context of the Buckeyes program it’s a blip. No non-revenue sports will get cut and overall it’s a cost that’s easily absorbed by a nine figure enterprise.

The fact that any college team, public or private, can afford to pay that kind of money to a football coach is really a rather shocking thing, isn’t it? Yet it’s common place, so much so in fact that complaining about the spiraling costs of high quality football coaches puts one in the “get off of my lawn” category.

But isn’t all this piling on of the cash what got programs like Ohio State, Auburn, Miami, Boise State, Michigan, and, of course, Penn State, in trouble in the first place?

Maybe that answer, too, depends on your perspective. Still it’s hard to not place the latest volley in the arms race that is big time coach hiring in the context of the larger picture about all that is wrong with college football.

There rarely is a week that goes by when one program or another has run afoul of the NCAA. Part of that stems from a rule book so draconian and yet so oblique that it’s hard sometimes to even find a thread of logic for the underlying rule. The other part of it stems from the fact that the pressure to win in college football is every bit as great as it is in the NFL because the money is too great to be ignored.

On the same day that Meyer was hired by Ohio State, 10 other coaches, at least, lost their jobs and all for the same essential reason, the negative impact those coaches were having on the athletic department’s bottom line. That includes big names like Rick Neuiheisel at UCLA and Ron Zook at Illinois to the next tier down like Turner Gill at Kansas to still another tier down like Ron Ianello at Akron.

The Ianello firing is instructive because even at the level at which the Zips play, winning and the money that follows winning, guide the decisions. Ianello won exactly two games in his two seasons so on the surface the firing shouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.

But in reaching the decision, Zips athletic director Tom Wistrcill had to notice the increasing abundance of open seats at their new stadium. Akron’s stadium is modest by Big 10 standards but keeping it mostly filled is still important to the overall health of the football program’s budget. So Akron will find a new coach, pay him about $400,000 and hope for the best, which means more butts in the seats.

Meanwhile Meyer’s top assistants will be pulling down at least that much to further ensure that a football program teetering at the moment doesn’t have an extended stay in the land of 6-6. Money doesn’t always guarantee success. But spending big money to make even bigger money should guarantee against extended failure.

Meanwhile it’s not hard to wonder what must go through the minds of all those players, particularly the likes of Dan Herron and Devier Posey who got smacked down so hard because of their desire to have even the faintest of taste of the big bills being thrown around like confetti after the BCS title game.

Surely they must shake their heads and wonder why the system conspired to hurt their brief careers so harshly over chump change while it greatly enriches those at the top of the pyramid. Consider just the example of how a failure like Rich Rodriguez ended up with a bigger salary from Arizona then he was pulling down from Michigan before he was fired. They’re hoping certainly that the Michigan experience was an anomaly and he’ll go back to being the Rodriguez of the more successful West Virgnia experience. Their budget depends on it.

It all just proves the point that no mistake is too big to overcome if there is even a slightest chance that it will bring more money to the program.

If it weren’t for the fact that nothing in the great State of Ohio is more beloved then Buckeyes football, given this kind of economic disparity underscored by the Meyer hiring you could almost see the roots of an Occupy Ohio State movement take hold. Almost.

I’m not going to begrudge the Buckeyes their glamor hire because I’m a Buckeyes fan like the rest of the sane citizens of this State. It’s important to me for reasons that are completely stupid in the grand scheme of life to see that the team succeeds. I happen to think Meyer is a fabulous hire and since I’m not directly paying for it, I couldn’t be happier. The real worst case scenario to me would have been hiring the next John Cooper. That’s not going to happen.

Yet I’m nonetheless perplexed at the insanity that has enveloped college football generally and keep batting around the question in my mind if the Meyer hiring is a further sign of the coming apocalypse or just another head shaking moment in a sport so corrupt that these things now seem perfectly acceptable.

There’s no question, though, that with all that the money has brought the sport, things like constant conference re-alignment, jerry-rigged national championships, low-life boosters, players and their “consultants” gaming the system, shady coaches who look the other way because they are just as scared as anyone as to what lies down that dark alley, a day of reckoning is coming. Let’s just hope it’s still a few years and another Buckeyes national championship away.

Lingering Items--Turkey Edition

2011-11-22T19:26:00.000-05:00

When all hell broke loose at Ohio State last Spring, it wasn’t surprising that eventually stories would get written that would be less than flattering of former head coach Jim Tressel, even if lightly sourced and highly speculative. He was fair game, after all, because he had admittedly failed to disclose potential violations of NCAA regulations to his boss, athletic director Gene Smith. When he signed an affidavit indicating he was unaware of any potential violations that pretty much made him a piece of raw meat to any writer with a grudge.

Those stories that did get written, like the Sports Illustrated hit job, were lightly sourced and highly speculative but mostly revealed nothing new nor did anything to cause people to re-assess all they ever thought about him. Tressel didn’t get a pass but his reputation didn’t take any more hits.

That won’t happen for Joe Paterno. The grievous nature of his misconduct is so insidious that in large measure it truly does undo a lifetime of other good work. It’s not just that Paterno failed at protecting innocent children from a creepy alleged pedophile, it’s also that Paterno actually used that lifetime of other good work as a club to bang over the heads of his bosses whenever they tried to rein him in.

The Wall Street Journal, in an article that appeared Tuesday, left no doubt as to exactly why Paterno did deserve to take the fall he did. Paterno may have had a supervisor but it was in name only. The story left no doubt that Paterno had an unrelenting grip on the administration at Penn State for years. It also left no doubt as to how exactly Paterno could become so blinded by the power that he yielded that he would look the other way when his friend and assistant, Jerry Sandusky, was engaging in very suspicious and odd behavior.

The best part of the story? It’s not lightly sourced or highly speculative. It is established not through whispery shadowy figures looking for their 15 minutes of fame but instead by the official records Penn State was forced to keep as a public institution.

A series of email exchanges and other incidents surrounding Paterno’s vaunted program tells the story very clearly of the man who really ruled Penn State and how in other contexts Paterno was willing to misuse his power to further not the interest of the school at large but those of his team and players and, ultimately, himself.

The WSJ article, written by Reed Albergotti, describes clashes that Paterno repeatedly had with the Penn State standards and conduct officer over the increasingly large number of disciplinary infractions committed by his players, things like campus fights and drunk driving, and how in each instance Paterno was able to keep his players from being subjected to the same standards as the general student population.

An old school type, Paterno was of the firm mind that athletes were different and could be dealt with separately and behind the closed doors of the locker room. He never did accept subjecting his players to the same rules as the rest of the student population.

In one particularly damning confrontation (though, frankly, it’s all pretty damning) Paterno forced the hand of university president Graham Spanier by giving him an ultimatum: fire the standards and conduct officer, Dr. Vicky Triponey, or forego any fund raising by Paterno. This was no idle threat. Paterno raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the university over his long tenure and he was telling Spanier that the spigot would stop unless Spanier fired another university employee that had dared to cross ol’ JoePa.

This ultimatum came out of an incident involving a player that Triponey had suspended, Dan Connor, for making harassing phone calls to a retired assistant coach. Despite the suspension, Paterno told Connor to suit up anyway. Triponey told Connor that if he did he faced expulsion. That’s when Paterno made his ultimatum, which prompted a visit from Spanier to Triponey at her home.

Spanier told Triponey that if forced to choose, he would choose Triponey over Paterno in the squabble but Spanier also made it quite clear to her that he didn’t want to be forced to make that choice. Given the not-so-subtle message, Triponey relented and significantly reduced Connor’s suspension.

That was somewhat of a prelude to another ugly confrontation, the one that ultimately pushed Triponey to quit her efforts to wade through the cesspool that Paterno created.

In 2007 6 players were charged with forcing their way into a campus apartment and beating up several students, one severely. Triponey’s department took over the inquiry and was thwarted in her efforts to investigate by the players who essentially refused to talk to her. When Triponey complained about the stonewalling to Paterno and suggested he have his players cooperate, Paterno refused, telling her that the players shouldn’t be expected to cooperate with the school’s disciplinary process because to do so would pit player against player thus impacting the team dynamic.

Stop and consider for a moment how seriously twisted Paterno’s thinking had to be to make that case. Publicly he espoused a “do the right thing” approach. That’s always easy when things are quiet. But “do the right thing” only works if you follow it when times are tough. Here, Paterno deliberately kept his players from cooperating in a university investigation into allegations that they beat up other university students.

Ultimately and not surprisingly the players suffered very little in the way of discipline for the ugly incident and Paterno cleared his conscience by imposing his own discipline—having the whole team pick up trash after football games. Very old school. Very stupid.

Once Paterno was able to rid the university of a pest like Triponey, her replacement was far more compliant, agreeing with Paterno and making a recommendation to the university that only Paterno should have the right to discipline his players.

In large measure, this all starts to answer the question of why Paterno, Spanier and the rest of the administration would be so tone deaf when it came to the accusations against Sandusky. In large measure it was because the university had long since abdicated any authority over anything Paterno touched. Is it really hard to imagine Paterno stonewalling a real investigation into Sandusky, especially when you consider that Paterno waited a day after he found out before he told his boss?

Meanwhile and despite all public statements to the contrary, it’s now more clear than ever that Paterno had little interest or regard for anything outside of his football program. His fundraising activities, while prolific and greatly benefiting the university generally, intentionally became the sword he’d use to cut down any resistance in his path. It’s kind of sick, kind of twisted but ultimately is why football programs like this get so out of whack.

Ultimately, for all the good that money brought, it was stained and what’s even more important, the university knew it. Spanier and the university’s board of trustees created a monster in Paterno and then recoiled at any attempts to control their creation. In truth they couldn’t anyway. His ego run amok and his values long since compromised, he was a runaway train for years and it was only a matter of time before he either died or crashed, the university administration apparently ambivalent as to which would occur first. Unfortunately, the well-being of several young boys became collateral damage.

**
So the Indians are on the verge of signing Grady Sizemore. Surprise, surprise. What I’m looking forward to is exactly how Sizemore and his agent spin the lack of interest Sizemore clearly failed to generate on the free agent market.

The anticipated incentive-laden one year deal is essentially the same kind of deal that the Indians have been giving the injured and lame for years on the if-come. It’s mostly little risk because if the player does perform the Indians benefit for a year and the player benefits by pricing himself out of a market the size of Cleveland. Rarely, though, do these actually work out.

The lack of interest in Sizemore isn’t surprising. He was good early, regressed and then has been hurt the last several years. His legacy will be of potential unfulfilled. The injuries mostly did him in but in truth even when healthy his skills were not improving.

Though Sizemore is more or less a fan favorite, the real problem with the impending deal is that it is simply a band-aid, a way of avoiding making decisions about the club’s future without Sizemore. By cutting him loose initially when he rejected a restructuring of his contract, the Indians more or less said that it was time to move on. Now they aren’t so sure.

It’s that kind of indecision that really keeps the franchise from fully progressing. There’s an argument of course that the team has other important decisions to make so avoiding one in the outfield for another year may make some sense. Perhaps. But the forceful counter is that every time they make a decision like this it keeps them from developing a longer term solution, which is what they ultimately will need.

In the long run the Indians would be far better off by being more definitive in their approach. Having decided that Sizemore’s talent no longer matched his financial ambitions, the Indians should have been content to merely move forward and stop inhibiting the progress of whoever it is they had tentatively decided would fill in the gap.

**
One of my favorite things to do after each Browns game is to listen to a couple of the radio call-in shows to gauge fan reaction where every loss is greeted with the gloom of a coming apocalypse and every victory is treated as one step closer to the playoffs.

For those not so inclined, let’s just say that there’s a fair amount of the fan base (assuming these callers represent the diversity of the fan base) that was already willing to pull the plug on Pat Shurmur after the loss to the Rams. While I expected similar irrationality after the Browns’ win over the Jaguars on Sunday, I was a bit surprised at its depth.

For many callers, the victory got them reassessing the Browns’ 4-6 record to the point where they concluded that this team really should be 6-4 if it had any breaks and in playoff contention. After all there was the 4th quarter melt down in the first loss. Then there was the heartbreaking loss to the Rams. And hey, when you think about it, there were only two games in which they really weren’t competitive—Tennessee and Houston.

Oy vey. Lest anyone get too excited, let’s concede for the moment that theoretically a few of their games could have gone a different way. Now let’s visit the reality as to why they didn’t.

Simply put, this team isn’t good enough to overcome even simple false start penalties. Even in those so-called tough losses, the Browns weren’t exactly lighting it up on offense nor were they losing to really good teams. This Browns team has struggled against every manner of competition in its fight for respectability. The fact that it only capitulated against two teams shouldn’t be used to deflect what your eyes are otherwise telling you.

If there is one positive about this team at this moment, it is in the simple fact that the basic structure of a real franchise is now in place. What’s missing of course is what makes the difference between bad and good teams—players. There just are too many people starting on the Browns that would be relegated to special teams almost anywhere else. When those starters get hurt they are replaced by players that would struggle to remain on most teams’ practice squads.

As much as we’d all like to believe it, this Browns team, as presently constructed, isn’t a good one just hoping to break out. It’s a bad one just hoping to hang on. There’s some reason for optimism for the future but let’s never delude ourselves into thinking that the playoffs are just one or two players away. It’s that kind of myopia that has for years put the franchise in the box from which it can’t seem to escape.

**

LeBron James and his other self-absorbed buddies are going on a 4-city basketball tour starting in Akron. Unless the tickets are free, it strikes me as a waste of time and money but it does lead to this week’s question to ponder: What’s a better value, LeBron’s Tour or the annual holiday visit of the Harlem Globetrotters?

Improbably Probable Victory

2011-11-20T17:10:00.003-05:00

Virtually every reason the Cleveland Browns are a bad team this year (and last year and the year before that and on and on) was on display in the waning minutes of Sunday's game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. There were special team screw ups, missed assignments, stupid penalties, you name it. And yet, through it all, the Browns were able to win 14-10, giving the hopeless hope if not for the season then maybe the long term. Maybe.

But that will be a real long term unless the Browns stop doing exactly what bad teams tend to do, find ways to lose. Of course the same could be said for the Jaguars who, too, had plenty of the same thing. So in a sense, someone had to win the game that neither team seemed good enough to accomplish and on this day that was the Browns. Something tells me, though, that few fans in either city feels too good about their team.

After a mostly uneventful first half that saw the teams take a 7-7 tie into halftime, things started to get interesting somewhere around the time the Browns looked like they might assert themselves and give its defense the few breaks they deserved. As it was, it will be the Jaguars who will find themselves in the same head scratching territory the Browns coaches, players and management have been in since almost the onset of the season. Of course, with a record of 3-6 entering the game it's not as if this is unfamiliar territory for the Jaguars, either.

Let's recount it all because it really was the story of the game and the season for both teams.

The Jaguars were forced to punt on the first possession of the second half, nothing surprising there. It was a re-run of what the first half looked like. But when the Browns took over on offense, they looked positively proactive, or as proactive as a team that avoids the red zone like I avoid stores on the Friday after Thanksgiving can be.

A few completions from quarterback Colt McCoy and some timely, decent running by Chris Ogbonnaya, pushed the Browns into Jaguars territory. Of course much of it couldn't have been accomplished without a compliant Jaguars' defense and special teams doing what the Browns have nearly perfected. For example, the Browns got a new set of downs early in the drive when Jaguars defensive back Drew Coleman was called for pass interference on Jordan Norwood a full five yards behind the line of scrimmage. Yes, the Browns kept the drive alive by losing five yards and being rewarded for it.

But when McCoy took a sack with the Browns at the Jacksonville 16 yard line, it wasn't much of a surprise. That's the nature of this team. Though Phil Dawson made the 40-yard field goal, the play was nullified by a leaping penalty on the Jaguars that put the ball on the Jaguars 11 yard line. Of course the Browns then gave 5 yards back immediately when Shaun Lavauo false started (the second of the drive).

Ogbonnaya then ran for 6 yards which was followed by a McCoy scramble that was close to giving the Browns another first down. But Joe Thomas was called for holding, pushing them back even further. Still, things looked good when McCoy hit Ogbonnaya for a 14 yard pass that got the ball to the Jacksonville 6 yard line.

That's when this clusterf**k of a drive mercifully and predictably ended, with McCoy throwing late over the middle in the direction of Ben Watson. It was picked off by Dawan Landry and the chance to take the lead squelched. The Browns didn't really deserve the points anyway.

The funny thing about this incredibly inept 7 minutes of football? It wasn't even the worst of it all. That would come a bit later.

First, though, let's note here that the Browns did recover from what looked like a drive scripted by Adam Sandler on their very next drive. Playing cleanly for one of the few times all season, the Browns' offense moved down the field methodically and without error and ended it happily when McCoy hit Josh Cribbs for a 3-yard touchdown pass to give the Browns a 14-7 lead, finally.

Then the fun really started.

On their next drive the Jaguars looked like quick learners and moved the ball back down the field in a way they probably hadn't done very often this season and certainly not this game. And yet, in a way that only a 3-6 team on a roll can, it failed to close the deal when Gabbert did something positively sublime on third down. First, he took a huge sack for 15 yards. To add on, he more or less threw the ball backwards in the process and was then credited with a fumble. The official scorers at NFL central may change the ruling but for now you have to love the notion that a quarterback could be sacked (which should end the play) and yet also credited with a fumble. Even if these two concepts normally can't exist, I think they should for teams this bad.

Anyway, that forced Jaguars head coach Jack Del Rio to have to try for the field goal though I'm sure his instincts were to try and convert the fourth and 23. The field goal was good and the Jaguars closed to within 14-10.

This was the exact moment where everyone knew the Browns would go into their prevent mode on offense and hope against hope that the defense would save the day. It ultimately ended up working out that way but, not surprisingly, not in the way they thought.

All good intentions were thrown out the window when Ogbonnaya ripped off a 40-yard run that put the ball into Jaguars' territory. But Browns' head coach Pat Shurmur is nothing if not consistent and despite all the criticism of a week ago did his level best to work the team into field goal range instead of a touchdown that would put the game out of reach. It had the same results of a week ago as well.

After McCoy took a sack on a play in which he really had no intention of passing anyway and it pushed the Browns back to the Jacksonville 23 yard line, Shurmur called for another off tackle to Ogbonnaya to set up the field goal that would give the Browns a 7 point lead. The snap was good this time and so too was the hold. The problem is that Dawson pushed the 38-yard attempt right and it went over the top of and not to the left of the upright, according to the officials.

Yikes.

That put the Jaguars in full scramble mode and the Browns defense gave them every chance to break their hearts. On a crucial 4th and 1 play defensive lineman Phil Taylor went offside and gave the Jaguars a first down at the Browns' 29 yard line. Then Gabbert missed on his next two throws and appeared to miss on the third as well but Joe Haden was called for pass interference at the 14 yard line.

A short pass to Chastin West got the ball to the Cleveland 5 yard line but Maurice Jones-Drew, a back that usually terrorizes the Browns and who had 87 yards on the day, couldn't push the ball any closer than the 2 yard line. With 8 seconds remaining, the Jaguars were able to get two plays off and while both throws were on target they were dropped, giving the Browns an improbably probable victory.

If these were any other teams playing on this day, it wouldn't be fair for either to claim the victory. But when you're fighting to not be labeled the NFL's worst team (and as long as Indianapolis is allowed to finish the season, that battle appears to be over anyway), any thing that even comes close to resembling a victory will do.

There isn't really much that the box score will tell you. McCoy was mostly accurate didn't have a lot of yards, had a really bad interception and a touchdown pass. Gabbert threw a lot more passes, had a few more completions and yards then McCoy, but otherwise wasn't anything more than a young quarterback looking to pay his dues.

The aforementioned Jones-Drew was mostly contained while Ogbonnaya actually had 115 yards on 21 carries and the Browns' first touchdown, a 1-yard run in the second quarter. Norwood had a really nice 51 yard catch and run and Greg Little added 5 receptions.

The Browns now find themselves at 4-6 on the season, which strangely doesn't sound as bad as their play seems. But they will still struggle to their third straight 5-11 season given that the remaining games all seem to be against either Baltimore or Pittsburgh. Of course, now that they have found some luck, maybe it won't be as bad as it seems. The Bengals are regressing, the Arizona Cardinals aren't that good so there is a chance, actually, that legitimate measurable progress can be charted come season's end. There's also a chance I might find myself in a store the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I doubt that, too.

The NBA's Nuclear Winter

2011-11-17T06:16:00.003-05:00

I love labor disputes in professional sports. They are the best, most sublime form of entertainment available to the sports/legal geek hybrid.

Labor disputes in real industries where real people lose real money to feed their real families and pay their real bills aren’t any fun. They’re serious stuff with serious consequences. But labor disputes in professional sports? They’re silly stuff with silly consequences, except for the tangential businesses that rely on them.

The NBA owners and players are currently locked into the most ridiculous labor battle since the NHL players lost an entire season to their own admixture of hubris and stupidity. Unable to learn anything from the past, NBA players are in the midst of making the same mistakes as their other professional league predecessors.

What’s really driving the NBA and their players to their nuclear winter (a brilliantly timed turn of the phrase by Commissioner David Stern) isn’t merely hubris and stupidity, though each is playing its part. This time the lambs are being led to slaughter by those who supposedly are being paid to have their backs, their agents.

The NBA players union is ostensibly led by Billy Hunter, a mostly ineffective middling labor executive. Hunter has been around awhile and his only discernable accomplishments to date has been to avoid any significant labor dispute through almost complete capitulation to whatever Stern has wanted.

In fairness, though, Stern hasn’t wanted much until now. Now he wants plenty.

The owners, whom Stern represents, have been mostly transparent in their goal since the economy first turned in 2008. They want to change the economic equation that had long since gotten out of whack. Players were taking too big of a piece of the pie, revenues were not keeping up, and just about every aspect of their salary cap and its multitude of exceptions had made their business virtually unmanageable, at least according to them.

As unprepared as only professional players can be, the NBA players, like NFL players, like NHL players, never really did develop any goal outside of holding on to as much as they could. Not understanding at all what success could look like at the bargaining table there really was no chance that they could strike a deal that they’d ever consider fair.

And that is the nub of the problem. By not developing any concrete goals or otherwise defining victory for themselves, they left themselves open to back channel manipulation and those pulling the strings now are the agents who were supposed to be representing their interests.

A little back story first. There’s a group of 5 or 6 of the biggest agents in the NBA who got together early in this process in order to try and manipulate the outcome. What drove them together was their lack of unity during negotiations for the last contract. That’s the one where the union agreed to a couple of key items that have mostly hurt their agents: a rookie salary scale and maximum contracts for veterans. In each case there isn’t much to negotiate for an agent representing either a rookie or a veteran and hence there isn’t much of a fee that can get generated.

The other thing these agents understand is that the league’s current economic structure is such a mess and the competitive balance so skewed that only a radical refiguring could straighten it out. Surmising correctly, the agents believed that this radical refiguring would in essence again further their ability to generate a fee.

So they’ve been working behind the scenes, convincing their gullible and uninformed clients that they were getting screwed by Hunter and the union and the owners. The rejection by the players of the owners’ last, best and final offer wasn’t a surprise in that context. It really didn’t matter what was in that proposal anyway. It was never going to be accepted.

What this group of agents has been gunning for mostly is to change the leverage proposition in these negotiations. The agents know that the Hunter-led union has never been a match at the bargaining table to Stern and his committee. Thus their goal has been to keep the union from striking a deal of any sort by offering litigation as a viable alternative to bargaining.

At first, they were the minority voice in the room. Hunter was able to keep the group together. Eventually he was not.

The problem with the agents’ thinking is the same as the problem with the NFL players’ thinking on this issue. There is no end game to this strategy. The only thing a court could eventually do, assuming that their legal strategy is sound, which it’s not, is to force the parties to continue to negotiate. No court anywhere can force the NBA to moderate their proposals to the union or put in place any new deal.

What the agents have sold their players on is the likelihood of a court declaring that the lockout amounts to illegal concerted activity on behalf of all the owners and putting in place the status quo, meaning the old contract, until a new one is negotiated.

Certainly if that strategy was sound, it would force the owners to be more moderate, meaning more opportunities for the agents to preserve their fees. But that’s a big “if.” As we learned during the NFL strike, federal labor law provides an exemption to an antitrust claim during a labor dispute. There can be no question that there is a labor dispute in this case.

For the strategy to work, individual players need to file the antitrust lawsuit (which they have, in two courts) and make the difficult claim that a labor dispute no longer exists because they are no longer, in fact, represented by a union.

It didn’t work for the NFL players and there’s no reason to think it’s going to work any better this time, either. David Boies, a superstar antitrust lawyer representing the players, seems to think that his clients have the upper hand this time because the owners have given the players their final offer.

It’s a nice theory but it isn’t likely to hold up. The owners are perfectly within their legal rights to bargain hard and to give a last, best and final offer and to lock out the players. The players are within their legal rights to not accept that offer just as they have the right to strike. At some point, if nothing changes the economic pressures on each will increase to the point that one or both are likely to moderate their positions and strike a new deal.

That’s the worse case scenario for the agents of course which is why they’ve been pushing the litigation strategy. If I had more respect for Hunter’s abilities as a union leader, I would say that he let the litigation hawks pursue this avenue to prove that it won’t work. More likely Hunter just gave up, like he has so many times before.

At this point there’s no reason to expect any NBA games this season. Depending on your level of interest in the game, it might make no difference to you. Heck, I just realized a few months ago that the NHL was no longer on strike.

But even if you’re the biggest NBA fan ever you still have to laugh at how ridiculous all this really is. The issues are, in large measure, idiotic. The inability of adults to figure out in an orderly, professional manner how to divide a discretionary pie this big is such a colossal failure that it ought to at least make you re-think exactly why you’re a fan in the first place.

I’ve rethought it and yet remain. Why? For the laughs. For the laughs.

Losing His Inner Winner

2011-11-14T20:14:00.000-05:00

There probably is some place in Hell especially reserved for the Cleveland Browns these days or, more particularly, their fans. The cruelness with which each game unfolds to their very eyes isn’t just dispiriting, it’s numbing in the same way that watching Dancing with the Stars is numbing.

Staring blankly, they’ve lost the will to live.

The Browns’ loss to the St. Louis Rams is only consequential if you thought the team had higher aspirations for the season. Since no sane person did, then it’s just a loss among many. The way it ended and the pain inflicted was certainly something special but on a macro level, so what?

Well, plenty, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

One of the great pleasures of writing about the Browns is the ability to step away from it from time to time in the same way that one of the great pleasures of banging your head against a wall is how good it feels when you stop. So it was that I stepped away from Sunday’s game to regroup from all the bad football that’s been played in the name of the Browns for so many years, particularly all the years I’ve been doing this for this web site.

Ok, so I lied just a tad. I didn’t step away from Sunday’s game in order to regroup. I had better plans for the day; plans that didn’t include anything to do with Cleveland Browns’ football. But the fact that I could so easily step away for the day and not give it a second thought was a far bigger surprise then the fact that the Browns found a new and dumber way to lose one of the only remaining winnable games on their schedule.

It wasn’t always this easy.

I was a long-time season ticket holder at the old Cleveland Stadium. When Art Modell, morally and fiscally bankrupt as he was, decided to take a blowtorch to his reputation and move the team to Baltimore, I was as pissed as any die hard. I work in business and understand the dynamics and can fully appreciate the fact that difficult and unpleasant decisions must get made. But the larger point for me when it came to the Browns and Modell was the simple fact that despite all the incredible built in advantages that comes with owning a NFL team, he was still managing to lose money. That was a marker for his inept ownership and the real reason the team never went to the Super Bowl. Modell was a bumbling, incompetent fool of the first order who had no discernable skill other than to charm people with the same quips over the years.

When the Browns returned, it wasn’t quite the same and anyone who pretends otherwise is not being truthful with him or herself. It’s not just that the new Cleveland Browns Stadium had none of the character (or the plumbing problems) of the old Stadium, though that was part of it. It was simply that whatever compact existed between fan and team was ripped to shreds when Modell took his team and left town with the tacit permission of the rest of the NFL.

In the intervening years, the Browns have attempted to rebuild that bond and have done about as bad a job as possible in that regard. The moneyed ownership has been aloof. The decision-making process has been almost universally circumspect. The product on the field has been consistently awful. If they ever need another case study at the Harvard Business School on how not to build a brand or how to destroy customer loyalty, then someone ought to be documenting the Browns more carefully for future generations.

Stepping away from a meaningless game and stepping away completely are two different things and thus I return to contemplate the game I didn’t see. As this Football Monday beckoned, the day after when all the analysis and all the paralysis that accompanies each game, I find myself in a far different frame of mind. Not having watched the game and actually still not having seen any highlights (which, in a 13-12 loss, how could there be any?) I have a sobering sense anyway that I’ve seen this game before, mainly because I have, for years.

Honestly, was there anything about the Browns’ offensive ineptitude on Sunday that surprised anyone outside of maybe Chris Ogbonnaya going all Boyce Green for a game and gaining 90 yards?

Ok, maybe there was one surprise. It’s that head coach Pat Shurmur was so desperate for any kind of win that he completely buttoned up the offense when it was inside the 10 yard line late in the game, purposely playing for the field goal that never came.

He can explain his tepid thinking all he wants but the bottom line is that Shurmur has confidence in only one player, Phil Dawson. That is how far things have fallen.

It wasn’t even that Shurmur didn’t trust the offense to score a touchdown, although given how rarely that occurs that might have been part of his thinking. It was more so that he didn’t trust the offense to hold on to the ball in order to give Dawson an opportunity to kick the winning field goal, which is a far more damning assessment.

That is a bad message on a fair number of levels. The first, of course, was the lack of confidence Shurmur showed in his quarterback, Colt McCoy, as well as the lousy receivers on this team. That may be understandable as well as the fact that Shurmur wanted the Rams to burn time outs by keeping the ball on the ground. Fair enough, but who in the name of Woody Hayes in his prime calls for a handoff to a tight end who hasn’t had one carry the entire year? Or to a tight end at all? It would have been far more sublime if Josh Cribbs hadn’t recovered the fumble.

This is where my world and their world perfectly collided yesterday. I didn’t have to witness it first hand and hallelujah for that. As I sit here now I savor how uplifting it really was not to have watched that highly ironic series of plays. Had I been watching I’m sure I would again have gained a deeper appreciation as to why Elvis used to keep a loaded hand gun nearby when watching television. When you have that kind of money, sometimes the only real answer to your frustrations is to shoot out the screen.

On another level Shurmur’s play calling speaks very poorly of his hand-picked offensive coordinator, Pat Shurmur. I can’t even imagine the internal dialogue he had to come up with to call a play that was either too cute or too stupid by half, take your pick. Maybe he felt the site of McCoy handing off to Alex Smith would leave the Rams so gobsmacked that Smith would waltz into the end zone untouched. Maybe he just wasn’t convinced that a fumblerooskie would work. Maybe he had a bigger brain freeze than Ryan Pontribriand. Yea, let’s go with that.

Shurmur is learning and so a few rookie mistakes are to be expected. But the moment he lost his guts to try and force the Rams to win the game with under two minutes by scoring a touchdown instead of field goal, what happened next on the botched field goal was as inevitable as Ted McGinley joining a dying sitcom.

You can’t instill winning in a team that hasn’t won if you aren’t a winner yourself. I’m not suggesting that Shurmur isn’t a winner but I am suggesting that unless he can keep his nut sack in tact during a game’s more crucial moments, to the extent that a game against the Rams can have any crucial moments, he’ll never be a winner and neither will his team.

Shurmur hasn’t lost the team yet but as sure as Kim Kardashian finding another athlete to exploit he will lose this team if he doesn’t find his inner winner and fast. If Shurmur doesn’t understand that the reason his team and its fans are emotionally devastated yet again is not the loss itself but the pathetic way in which he made it transpire through his own timidness, then he might as well simplify his life and go back to being a lifelong assistant coach.

Shurmur had the game in his hands and panicked, like LeBron James. Predictably, the results were the same, both on and off the field.

Paterno State University

2011-11-09T19:17:00.003-05:00

***UPDATE***
Last night, the Paterno State University Board of Trustees fired Joe Paterno. Not surprisingly, he was shocked by the decision, thus confirming what we've known for years. You don't have to be much of a cynic to wonder whether the Board's action came after Paterno (with their implicit approval) floated the trial balloon of a year-end retirement only to see the adverse reaction to it. Unable to sustain an unsustainable position, the Board had to take the action that Paterno was reluctant to take himself. Two points. First, let's not ever try to pain Paterno as a sympathetic figure. This scandal doesn't erase all the other good in his life but neither does that good erase his morally bankrupt conduct in this case. If there is even one additional abuse victim once Paterno knew about Sandusky's alleged conduct (and by all accounts there were), then Paterno and many others are complicit in that abuse and should pay a heavy price. Second, at some point soon you can bet that the Big Ten Commission Jim Delaney and the NCAA will add some unintentional humor into this by announcing that neither Paterno nor Penn State violated any NCAA rules. That will be the final confirmation, really, of the NCAA's irrelevance in really being a force for something positive in the lives of young men and women. And if that brings about the downfall of the NCAA as well, then so much the better.

Original column starts now...

Whether Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno wins or loses against Nebraska on Saturday, the last home game he’ll apparently ever coach, won’t matter. The scoreboard when it’s over will still read, “Paterno State University 1, Abuse Victims 0.”

In what can only be described as the most tone deaf answer yet to the burgeoning child abuse scandal that is rocking not just the Penn State football program but also the entire university, Paterno is being given the opportunity to retire at season’s end. If the Penn State administration or Board of Trustees understood how depraved this situation really is and how absolutely vile they have been in their reaction to it, Paterno’s retirement would have started this past Monday.

As it is, Paterno will be given the opportunity to say goodbye to the fans, the students and all of the Penn State sympathizers. In the process more then a few people will infer that Paterno too is a victim in all this. They’ll talk about his record, his good works and how all of that is being forgotten in another rush to judgment. Don’t believe it for a moment. Paterno as victim surely turns this tragic tale on its head.

If the latest reports are true, there are at least 20 victims of the most horrific child abuse imaginable, any number of whom could potentially have escaped the abuse if Paterno had acted with any sort of moral center, who now will never escape their own personal hells. Paterno on the other hand can retire quietly, richly, and with the gratitude of a fan base that will wonder why he had to be forced out.

Paterno State University 1, Abuse Victims 0.

That’s the real scoreboard by which Paterno has chosen to be remembered. The same lack of compassion that caused Paterno to make a perfunctory, late report to a campus administrator about something “inappropriate” (his unfortunate words) involving former defensive coordinator and lifelong Paterno friend, Jerry Sandusky, is the same lack of compassion being exhibited by Paterno now. It’s sad, really, where we as a society cannot fully embrace the real victims of abuse and yet will give a pass to Paterno’s own despicable conduct in this whole thing.

Make no mistake about it. Allowing Paterno, the 84-year old coach whose contract expires at the end of the season anyway, to retire at season’s end rather then cutting ties now is only slightly less of a despicable reaction then if Paterno had been allowed to coach still another year. Yes, it’s that bad.

You can’t expect drunken college students to understand the human tragedy of this situation, which is why they showed up en masse at Paterno’s house on Tuesday evening to cheer him on. But we all should have expected better from Paterno then and now and yet again he’s failed to do the right thing.

If Paterno really did have a moral compass that he could consult, it would have immediately told him that the only response was an immediate resignation and a pledge to never stop raising funds for those innocent victims of Sandusky’s conduct. But hey the Nittany Lions are 12th ranked at the moment and have 3 games left in a season that could result in them playing in the first ever Big Ten Championship. There are priorities and when the season ends they'll still be abuse victims so what's the rush to start the healing?

He did give a minor shout out of sorts to the abuse victims when his student supporters visited him Tuesday evening, but most of his words were reserved for himself and assuring his supporters that he is indeed doing fine. Nice to know. I wonder how that poor child who allegedly was being sodomized in 2002 was feeling right about the time he discovered that students were clapping out their support for the man that did little to stop the abuser from striking again or paying a price.

I’d like to think that at some point soon Paterno will come to his senses and realize that a year end resignation is such a worthless and disrespectful response that he’ll change his mind and turn over the reigns immediately. But I won’t hold my breath.

Paterno couldn’t do the right thing in 2002, when he wasn’t nearly as senile as he apparently is now, so why should we expect him to act in a more dignified manner now? He couldn’t comprehend then how truly despicable the allegations against his buddy Sandusky were then so why should he understand how awful it is for him to remain in his current position is now?

A year end resignation and the eternal gratitude of Penn State Nation seems just a little too good for what Paterno really deserves. If the there was any justice, Paterno’s statute on the campus would be taken down, his office cleaned out, and he be shipped off to wherever codgers like him go to contemplate why they ultimately did little to prevent more kids from becoming Sandusky victims.

The only real hope for righting this ship is for the Penn State Board of Trustees to step in the breach at this moment and say, “not so fast, Joe.” But they are no more in charge of the university then the worthless figurehead who calls himself president at the moment. It’s Paterno’s college and he’s going to be allowed to do any damn thing he wants. Besides they were likely complicit in arranging this soft landing for Paterno, viewing it as a win/win situation for everyone; everyone that is within the Penn State family.

Paterno State University 1, Abuse Victims 0.

The scandal at Penn State, both the actual tragedy and the unbelievably awful reaction by the adults in charge, then and now, makes this far and away the biggest scandal in NCAA football, ever. It’s the worst kind of reality show and the issues it highlights go so far beyond what takes place between the lines on Saturday that it’s almost unfair to think of it as merely a football scandal. Indeed it’s a human tragedy made all the worse, if that's even possible, because it took place at an institution of higher learning and moral upbringing and was facilitated by trusted figures who, when push came to shove, chose the wrong priority to serve.

Reading the grand jury transcripts and the charges levied against Sandusky are stunning in their import. Whether you have children or not, only the absolute worst among us cannot help but be struck for how awful all of this must been for the victims. If the allegations are true, then Sandusky was worse than a garden variety sick bastard child pornographer. Sandusky’s alleged crimes involve unthinkable pedophilia of a kind so depraved that it’s actually hard to believe that it could exist in a civilized society.

What is it about the human condition that brings people to such unspeakable acts? And what of the underlying psychology of it all?

You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that the abuse Sandusky allegedly heaped on some of his victims, taking place as it did in public places, was not so much a brazen act of defiance as it was a sign that Sandusky wanted to be caught. And he was, at least twice from what the reports indicate. Yet, it was to no avail and by all accounts the abuse continued because those trusted to do the right thing, like Paterno, didn’t.

Maybe Paterno couldn’t comprehend the human tragedy, either, and that’s why he made only the slightest of gestures to stop it all. In one sense it’s easy to understand how that can happen. But in the larger sense, if someone in Paterno’s role doesn’t do the right thing, who would? That’s why this whole thing is where it’s at today.

Paterno has hung around the Penn State program probably decades past his expiration date from a purely coaching standpoint. But the fact that he did hang around for so long doesn’t just suggest but demands that he go to greater lengths then anyone at Penn State to ensure that its moral compass never get questioned.

Well, surprise, surprise. Paterno didn’t do the right thing then and didn’t do the right thing now. At least he’s consistent. I guess stress does bring out the true character of a person.

Eat Less, Exercise More

2011-11-08T19:54:00.001-05:00

There will come a point where Cleveland Browns fans will let a makeover take hold, mainly because they’ll realize that they have no choice. Whether it's this none the next one or the one after that is the only real question.

If the last three years, indeed the last 12 years have taught us anything, it's that there is no quick fix in the offing for this franchise. The other thing the last 12 years has taught us is that this franchise is in danger of becoming the Los Angeles Clippers of the NFL unless some time is finally given to let a plan take hold.

The theme of head coach Pat Schurmur's weekly press conference on Tuesday was, well, there wasn't a theme. Just like the weeks that preceded this there was a numbing, frustrating sameness about it.

But that's the point. The numbing, frustrating sameness is borne from an overall lack of talent on this team that at this point makes every play and every drive and eventually every game look exactly the same.

Schurmur may have sounded almost Belichik-like (or even, shudder, Mangini-like) when he said that the team just needs to keep working. He likened it to the diet advice that no one wants to take: eat less and exercise more. Everyone is waiting for a doctor somewhere to invent a magic pill. Well guess what? So is every fan of every miserable team in every sport. It ain’t happening in either case.

Maybe Schurmur was being truculent, and who could blame him, but he was speaking an inconvenient truth that no one seems to have the time and patience for. Everything about this franchise has to get better and the only way that's going to happen is through hard work coupled with patience. The franchise didn’t get this bad over night and it isn’t going to get significantly better over night, either. It's not a message that sells tickets today, but properly executed will sell tickets in the long run.

I don't think the wheels have fallen off this version of the franchise’s latest grand plan despite the team's performance in the last few weeks in particular. To believe that they have would require the assumption of facts clearly not in evidence, like the presence of a run gain, the presence of a credible receiving corps, the stoutness of an offensive line.

What's really happening is that the Browns are performing exactly as a team in this state (and also in this state) should perform. To do anything better would be a story probably more surprising then one with a headline “Kim Kardashian Quits Reality TV Forever.”

There is nothing wrong with the Browns' schemes (though you can certainly question several individual plays) on either side of the ball. The team's struggles aren't a reflection of poor coaching. This team simply lacks enough talent in every phase (except kicker) to perform on anything resembling a high level for any sustained period of time.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t building blocks in place. There are. But as the inevitable injury bug has hit this team like it hits every NFL team at this point of the season, you really start to gain an appreciation of how important depth really is right about the time it becomes clear your team has none.

If the Browns were a new house under construction, the foundation has been built, a frame erected and the roof under cover but that’s about it. Meanwhile the fans are like the impatient homeowners demanding to move in now. In fact they have moved in against all better judgment and are bitching because it’s so cold at night and because the builders seem to make so much noise during the day and yet never seem to quite finish.

There’s plenty of blame to throw around, I suppose, but how you want to dole it out very much depends on whether you look at it from a micro or a macro level and that, ultimately, is the two camps in which fans tend to fall these days.

Those operating on a micro level are hurling bricks at Colt McCoy and Shurmur at the moment, along with whatever is left over at Peyton Hillis. It’s energy wasted. Those operating on a higher plane can see that little about what’s happening on the field this season, good or bad, is on Shurmur, though you could put a bit more on team president Mike Holmgren and general manager Tom Heckert.

What of Holmgren? Has he really been around long enough to have made much of an impact? To a certain extent, yes. He came in halfway through Eric Mangini’s first season, liked little of what he saw of Mangini then, but kept him around for another fruitless year anyway. It was the equivalent of saying “I’ll start my diet a year from now.” Meanwhile the patient just got fatter and clogged a few more arteries in the meantime.

For Holmgren, then, blame him for a lost season in 2010 when virtually no progress was made on any front in terms of putting in place whatever grand scheme he was conjuring.

In that context, exactly what was Heckert to do? Pretty much exactly what he did do, which was to work counter of purpose to Mangini by starting to accumulate 4-3 defensive talent and West Coast Offense type players despite the fact that neither system was in place yet.

But it’s not like measurable progress was made. There are just so many holes to fill that Heckert’s been like a battle field medic triaging a unit that’s been decimated as it sits low in the valley with snipers around the entire perimeter. Mistakes are going to get made. The only real issue at the moment is whether or not he's been directionally correct. I think he has.

The players that Heckert has drafted tend to be among the better performing players on this team, despite their relative inexperience. Notwithstanding the Houston game, Phil Taylor and Jabaal Sheard are the kind of players that virtually any team in the league would want. The same can be said about Joe Haden and T.J. Ward. Less certain are the long term prospects of players like Tony Pashos and Greg Little, but in those cases you can understand the thinking because neither has been awful, just raw.

I also understand the thinking about not trying to use the free agent market as a quick fix in any one area, but I don’t understand it when it came to his essential obstinance in refusing to introduce any veteran presence to the receiving corps. This young and less than stellar unit could certainly benefit from the wisdom of someone with a track record, and enough of those types were available in the offseason that it makes his lack of action on this count puzzling.

The key, though, is that at this point Heckert isn’t failing in obvious and dramatic fashion. It’s just that the successes are hard to see given all the carnage that needs to be sifted through first. Like any significant project, it just takes time.

Perhaps the most obvious question that ought to get asked, the one hardest to answer, is why counsel patience now and not, say, when Mangini came on board? It’s a fair question because all Mangini ever did was counsel the same thing Shurmur is doing now. The difference, I suppose, is that Mangini was a failed quantity with little man’s syndrome and mostly just pissed people off. He was as collaborative in approach as most dictators tend to be.

In this case, the chances for success following patience seem to be more likely. There is a collaborative approach and theme in place from the team president down through the handpicked coaching staff. Unless you’re completely convinced that Holmgren, Heckert and Shurmur are just never going to make it, then the only choice is patience.

This is surely not the answer most want to hear just like they don’t want to hear the real prescription for losing weight. There just is no substitute at the moment so best now to accept the fact that we just need to eat less and exercise more and take solace in the notion that it’s proven time and again that given time and dedication the approach will work.

Bullied, Again

2011-11-06T16:11:00.003-05:00

The Houston Texans are pretty good football team, but no one is confusing them with the Green Bay Packers at the moment. Nonetheless, treating the Cleveland Browns like they were trying to purposely violate some anti-bullying law, the Texans punched the Browns early, often, stole their lunch money and a good amount of their self-respect and pride along with it in a 30-12 dismembering that ultimately was still so much of the same old same old.

There were too many small moments in the game indicative of the bigger picture to truly single out any one as the most representative of the ass-whipping the Browns endured, so I'll just go with my favorite. The Browns, opening the second half of the game with the ball, ran a pitch to running back Chris Ogbonnaya and he lost three yards. And that was a major improvement in how they started the first half of the game, with Ogbonnaya running up the middle and then immediately fumbling the ball to the Texans just seconds after the Texans opened the game with an 82-yard drive for a touchdown.

It was the second straight week that the Browns lost a fumble on their first play of the game and while both lost fumbles effectively ended any chance for the Browns in either game, I nominate this week's fumble as worse if only because the Texans had already scored. At least they were only down 7-0 a week ago.

But back to the bullying for the moment. The Texans are tied with the most scoring points in first quarters this season. That means they're a fast starter. The Browns are at the bottom of that stat. The Texans lived up to their billing, so did the Browns.

Starting their opening drive at their 18-yard line, quarterback Matt Schaub opened the game with four laser-like pass completions. All that did was loosen up a defense that was geared toward trying to stop the best two-back running combination in the league since Kevin Mack and Earnest Byner shared a Browns' backfield a generation or so ago The Texans combo of Ben Tate and Arian Foster came into the game with over 500 yards each and finished Sunday's game both with over 600 yards each, well on their way to each having well in excess of 1,000 yard seasons.

After Schaub completed the four passes, Foster started first, running for a mere 11 yards on his first three carries. Then Tate cleaned up with a 6 yard run and then a 27 yarder for the touchdown. If the Browns defense fashioned themselves as an elite unit, it's top 5 ranking feeding that ego, they shouldn't any longer. Tate's two runs were so easy it was as if the defensive line had failed to report in for the series.

After the Ogbonnaya fumble, which gave the Texans the ball right back on the Cleveland 28 yard line, Foster gashed his way to even more yards before setting up a way-too-easy quarterback draw by Schaub that immediately put the Texans up 14-0.

The Browns, as usual, were resigned to more of the same sort of offense. No red zone penetration until the game long since over, the Texans protecting their side of the field as if contained the best playground equipment, the Browns were reduced to their usual mode of scoring, Phil Dawson 50+ yard field goals, of which he had two, until the late meaningless touchdown.

The Texans next touchdown was a model of everything the Browns' offense wants to be when it grows up, assuming they want to build a credible running game. Tate had runs of 24 and 9 yards on the drive and Foster finished it off with a 19 yard run directly up the middle and he wasn't even touched. Consider how improbably that should be. He went through Ahtyba Rubin, Jabaal Sheard, Phil Taylor, D'Qwell Jackson and Scott Fujita and then Mike Adams. None of them were even close to laying so much as a glove on Foster.

Now before going any further with dissecting this mess, let's say a word or two about Lawrence Vickers and his impact on the game. It was huge. Vickers was either extracting revenge against a Browns regime he barely knew or just continuing to re-assert himself as the league's best blocking back, which he surely is. I predict many will suggest it's the former when in truth it really was the latter.

It really should give fans pause to consider exactly why general manager Tom Heckert let Vickers get away so easily. Sure, rookie Owen Marecic came into the league with a good reputation, a young man's Vickers if you will. So that means the decision the Browns' management made was financial, banking on the theory that Marecic was simply a cheaper version of Vickers.

Well, he is a cheaper version of Vickers, no denying that. He's also an inferior version of Vickers. Marecic has done little to help spring a moribund Browns' running attack. Vickers was blowing holes through the Browns like he was wielding machetes. It's very fair to suggest that the Browns' running game would be much better with Vickers than Marecic. Not great, certainly, but far better. Which means that the Browns offense would be much better with Vickers than Marecic. Again, not great, but far better.

Sorry, back to the game. The Texans looked as if they might completely blow the game open when Jacoby Jones returned a punt 50 yards to the Cleveland 40 late in the first half. But Schaub was picked off by Jackson on the next play. Then it got interesting.

With the ball sitting on their own 42-yard line, Colt McCoy and the Browns offense put together one of those great drives we've all come to love. No gain. Incomplete. False start. Decent run. No gain. Another false start. Sack. McCoy running for his life, throwing the ball up for grabs and having it intercepted. This one was by Quintin Demps who looked like he would return it for a touchdown. But with only the kind of luck the Browns have these days, McCoy was able to force Demps out of bounds with two seconds remaining, just enough time for Neil Rackers to kick a field goal to give the Texans a 24-3 lead.

The second half was mostly an exercise in playing out the string with the Browns again reduced to putting together a drive in the fourth quarter that gave the score a measure of respectability their play didn't otherwise merit. Taking over at their own 36 yard line, McCoy was able to effectively move the team down field and in position where he was able to find Josh Cribbs on a 2-yard pass for a touchdown. But let's be fair to the Texans. Defensive coordinator Wade Phillips had stopped blitzing perhaps out of a measure of respect for the fact that McCoy's family was in attendance and to that point McCoy had been beaten like a bass drum in a Memorial Day parade.

For those interested at all in the statistical battle, all you really need to know that it was as lopsided as you would expect. McCoy threw for 146 yards, most of which came near the end of the game, as usual. He was also sacked 4 times and generally knocked around like a bowling pin, also as usual. Ogbonnaya and his practice squad buddy Thomas Clayton averaged all of two yards per carry. In total, the Browns had under 200 yards total offense.

The Texans had nearly 400 yards. Foster and Tate were responsible for most of it as each ran for well in excess of 100 yards and that was pretty much the story of the game.

Still, as bad as it was, and brother it was bad, there still was a nice little play made by defensive lineman Phil Taylor on a play that wasn't. With just over two minutes remaining, it appeared initially as if linebacker Chris Gocong had successfully stripped the ball from third string running back Derrick Ward. The ball was picked up by Taylor who wasn't so much running as looking to deliver a forearm shiv to anyone who wanted to get in his way, which he did. Of course he lost the ball in the process and while the Browns recovered it didn't matter because the call was reversed anyway.

Besides the Taylor play, the other redeeming feature of the game is that it did manage to answer some lingering questions. As we established at the outset, not all fumbles on your first offensive play of the game are created equal, though they all have the same effect when they're committed by the Browns. We also have established what a mistake it was not to sign Vickers. We now firmly know that it really doesn't matter who the Browns play. Their offense will invariably look the same. Finally, we're starting to realize that for the third straight season 4 wins could very well be this team's high water mark, which means another high draft pick just not high enough to garner Andrew Luck.

The Browns do have a chance, a real honest to gosh legitimate chance, to find that high water mark when they take on head coach Pat Shurmur's old team, the St. Louis Rams, next Sunday at home. They then have Jacksonville at home the following week, so that's another chance as well. And they better take advantage of one of those two teams, and preferably both, because the second half of the schedule has all the makings of a disaster with two games each against Pittsburgh and Baltimore still to come. If you cringe at what you witnessed against the 49ers and Texans, you may want to just avert your eyes all together when the remaining games are played starting later this month.

Lingering Items--Letting Go Edition

2011-11-02T20:52:00.001-04:00

Since it’s rare (it’s happened once) for a NFL team to go undefeated and win it all, it’s fascinating at times to gauge fan reactions to individual losses. There are always reactions as if no game should ever have been lost. There are players to blame, certainly, but mostly fans blame the coaches.

As an overall approach, that makes sense. The plays that don’t get made are, to most thinking, the best evidence of bad coaching. We tend to think, for example, that if a player is wearing a brown and orange uniform, he’s just as competent as anyone else wearing a uniform to execute the play that’s been called so all things being equal, the coach screwed up.

Of course that can’t possibly be true as a decade or so of incompetence in Cleveland can attest. We’ve had all manner of coaches and techniques and yet the performance has remained amazingly consistently bad. No coach could have won with these players.

The problems being experienced by the Browns at the moment are in many ways the same as those being experienced by the Ohio State offense. New schemes and raw players counsel patience. There’s just no substitute for the passage of time and all the repetitions that brings. Bitch all you want about Colt McCoy but if you’ve ever listened to the Beatles live in Hamburg recordings, you can get a better sense that development just takes time.

But that’s not to suggest that coaching hasn’t played a role in what’s transpired to date. It has, in both a good and bad way.

Pat Shurmur, like Colt McCoy, is new to this gig. He’s spent plenty of time prepping for his opportunity but heavy does lay the crown once you’re given it to wear.

Evaluating McCoy to this point is all about what you want to make of it but it’s far easier to do then evaluating Shurmur. We know the record, 3-4, but how much of that is really due to coaching? That is far harder to discern.

Since Shurmur serves as his own offensive coordinator you can certainly look at that aspect of his performance and make some conclusions. The reason Shurmur needs an offensive coordinator has less to do with plays called or schemes designed and has more to do with simply having another voice to bounce ideas off. There’s nothing worse then being the only person in the office with your particular expertise. You can talk to others about unique issues but mostly they can just nod in sympathy, clueless as to what the hell you’re actually talking about.

So it is with Shurmur, particularly on game days. What’s been evident in several games is that his offensive coordinator instincts have overtaken and in some cases inhibited the development of his head coaching instincts. What a particular game may be dictating to an offensive coordinator can be wholly different then what it may be dictating to a head coach who has to balance both sides of the balls.

For example, it probably made sense to the offensive coordinator in Shurmur to have McCoy keep huddling up and slinging the ball in abject futility during several games because he felt like a spark was needed. But to the head coach Shurmur, an even more frenetic approach, such as a no huddle, two-minute drill type tempo early in the game, with the knowledge that if it’s not working your defense is mostly good enough might be more appropriate.

But without any healthy discussion during game day except between the left side and right side of Shumur’s brain, Shurmur is rendering himself less effective. Thus it wasn’t a surprise when team president Mike Holmgren indicated that there would be an offensive coordinator hired next season.

Another area to judge Shurmur is in attention to detail. Whether a new coaching staff or a shortened training camp or both are to blame, the Browns are not nearly as disciplined as they should be. There hasn’t been a game yet this season when there haven’t been multiple false start penalties on the offensive line. There hasn’t been a game this season where there haven’t been multiple personal fouls committed. The Browns haven’t turned into the Oakland Raiders but they’ve certainly regressed in this area as compared to the two seasons under Eric Mangini.

These seem like the simplest of fixes and yet it continues to be a nagging problem with this team. Given its lack of overall talent, it’s simply not good enough to consistently or even predominately overcome these mistakes. If Shumur wants to placate the fans and take some heat off his team, rapid improvement in this area would be the easiest way. 1st and 10 is challenge enough right now. 1st and 15 might as well be 1st and 50.

Another more difficult area to judge Shurmur is in his use of personnel. He talks often about getting the ball in the hands of playmakers but he still has never adequately answered why he deliberately kept the ball out of Peyton Hillis’ hands early in the season. He’s likewise devised no gimmicks to get the ball to Josh Cribbs in the open field. As a receiver, Cribbs is very limited. But that shouldn’t stop Shurmur from trying to find him other opportunities. You can tell Cribbs is frustrated but he’s too polite to take it completely off the reservation.

None of this is to suggest that Shurmur won’t make it as a head coach. But too often someone new to the role tries to do too much with it and as a result fails miserably. Even Bill Belichick needed to fail in order to eventually succeed. Yet that’s the last thing this organization can withstand.

The Browns aren’t poorly coached at the moment but neither is this coaching staff extracting more value out of the team then its talent would otherwise dictate. Patience with Shurmur is just as necessary as it is with McCoy but in truth if Holmgren is going to have any lasting impact on this team it will be to teach Shurmur exactly how to be a head coach.

**

The Brian Robiskie era, such as it was, is officially over. It’s not a surprise. The writing has been on the walls for weeks and in skywriting last Sunday when Jordan Norton came in as the third receiver instead of Robiskie once Mohammed Massaquoi was injured and Greg Little and Cribbs stepped up in grade.

I’ve written about Robiskie before and mentioned how precarious his role on the team really was. A good route runner, he nonetheless had almost no ability to get himself open. His approach was too slow-footed and mechanical to be taken seriously by the defensive backs in the NFL.

My guess is that Robiskie will get a look from one or two other teams and may even stick around for a few more seasons. That will mostly be related to pedigree and draft status. But there’s also the not so small fact that if a team as deficient in receivers is nonetheless cutting one, how good could that receiver be? Not very.

Robiskie is the quintessential good guy. He was an excellent college receiver. He’s studious and well liked. He won’t struggle in a post-football career. There comes a time when, as the coaches like to say, it’s time to get on with your life’s work. For Robiskie it just came sooner then either he, or Mangini, expected.

**
Of even higher visibility in the letting go department was the Indians parting ways with Grady Sizemore by not picking up his $9 million option for next season.

The conventional wisdom is that the Indians’ small market status figured in the decision but I don’t think it really had all that much to do with it. Instead it was Sizemore’s agent that drove the decision.

There may have been a few teams in baseball that would have picked up Sizemore’s option, but very few. His health issues and his lack of productivity during those periods in between are hardly suggestive of a $9 million/year player and that’s true whatever size market your favorite team plays in. The only one not to realize it at the moment is his agent.

According to Chris Antonetti, the Indians’ general manager, Sizemore was disappointed because he wanted to remain an Indian. Well, Sizemore could have controlled that by getting better control of his agent who insisted that the contract would not be re-negotiated. That was a mistake because there’s usually no team that likes you more and willing to overpay you more then your current one.

Maybe Sizemore’s agent thinks a better long-term deal is in the offing from some other team and maybe he’s right, but it will be a struggle. I think several teams will make incentive-laden short term offers to Sizemore, with the Indians being one of them. But it will be a shock of major proportions if anyone is willing to give him a guarantee in any contract year of $9 million unless it vests three seasons from now following three seasons of significantly improved numbers.

Sizemore’s career has been mercurial, to say the least. It’s hard to say how much the injuries really impacted him though obviously they did. Yet his batting eye never really improved all that much. He struck out way too much and that never changed and he didn’t walk enough to be an effective leadoff hitter, his preferred spot in the order.

Ultimately, Sizemore has had plenty of time in baseball to live up to the potential he showed but his development stopped, because of injuries mostly but also perhaps because he didn’t work hard enough on the gifts he had.

The Sizemore story isn’t over yet and perhaps there’s still a chapter to be written in Cleveland, but no complaints here about the move the Indians made. We’ve all seen what a millstone contract can do to a team as Travis Hafner’s ridiculous contract continues to inhibit the financial flexibility of the Indians.

**

With the NBA lockout still holding strong and actual games now being missed, no one seems to be in much of a hurry to resolve the dispute. The NBA owners are saving money as the players are being led to slaughter. All this leads to this week’s question to ponder: Did NBA players really think there’d be a groundswell of support for their cause?

A Formula Loss

2011-10-30T19:58:00.002-04:00

In a season where more questions are being raised then answers given, here's one thing that we do know. The San Francisco Bay Area doesn't bring out the best in the Cleveland Browns. But then again, not much does.

In a game that in some ways resembled the earlier loss to the Oakland Raiders, the Browns lost to the Raiders' nearby cousin, the San Francisco 49ers, 20-10 and in the process cemented the formula that's become all too predictable: good defense, bad offense, few chances, another loss.

The closeness of the score, like it did in Oakland, suggests a more competitive game then fans probably feel like they witnessed, thanks in part of a questionable call by 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh early in the game. It kept the game closer early then it should have been and allowed what could have been a rout to become a far better game then it started out, though “better” in the context of the Browns' offense is a very relative term.

At least the Browns got into the end zone this week. It needed to do more, much more, however, and that's why it lost the game.

As it was, though, it looked at the outset like the game would be a total team failure. Early on the Browns' defense looked as if it didn't realize that running back Frank Gore played for the 49ers. The offense, early and late, looked as if it never grasped the concept of a blitz, wanting nothing more than to complete a few passes, gain a few yards on the ground and then get on a plane and head back to Cleveland, which is strange because the weather in San Francisco looked perfectly delightful.

Needing to get off to a quicker start then they've managed to at any other point this season, the Browns instead fumbled on the second play of the game, turning it right over to the 49ers. It set up a 4 yard run by Gore that gave the 49ers a quick 7-0 lead.

Now the Colt McCoy naysayers will put the blame for that turnover on McCoy because technically he did fumble the ball while in passing formation. But a blitzing Ahmad Brooks blew past right guard Tony Pashos without giving him a second thought and clobbered McCoy before he could ever take a stance.

The 49ers made it 10-0 on a drive that started at their own half-yard line, featured a 26-yard run by Gore and a key first down on a tackle eligible play, for goodness sakes, but ended in just a 29-yard David Akers field goal when the Browns defense decided to stiffen before the rout was on too quickly.

Indeed that rout would have been on with the 49ers next drive if, first, the 49ers running game, which had been very effective to that point, could have punched it in from one yard in three separate attempts, and second, if Harbaugh had not attempted to gain a measure of swagger by eschewing another easy field goal on 4th and goal. Gore up the middle went for no gain and the Browns took over on downs. It kept the game in manageable territory.

But the 49ers just came right back anyway, moving methodically down field with the Browns defense providing only intermittent resistance. Quarterback Alex Smith, looking in the first half exactly like a quarterback with a good running game and getting no defensive pressure, found receiver Michael Crabtree on a way-too-easy 2-yard pass to push the score to 17-0.

A Phil Dawson 52-yard line at the end of the first half brought the Browns marginally closer at 17-3 but it hardly brought them back into the game. The Browns were being dominated in every way possible and for good measure Gore had over 100 yards in the first half alone.

Meanwhile the Browns' offense, without Peyton Hillis (and Montario Hardesty, who went out early with some sort of calf problem), without a credible receiver, and without a credible right side of the offensive line, looked as lost as you'd expect. It's a measure, really, of the Browns' offensive ineffectiveness that the only points they seem to get these days are on Dawson field goals that travel in excess of 50 yards. They treat the red zone and the end zone like in laws that they can't stand visiting.

The defense, though, inexplicably found its sea legs in the second half, and pretty much shut down the 49ers until it mattered most. The 49ers, mired all second half in the kind of offensive funk that is standard in Cleveland, stopped moving the ball. Gore, getting banged around, suddenly became ineffective, gaining just a handful of yards the entire second half. He ended with 125 yards on a day that started as if he'd gain 300. That, unsurprisingly, brought Smith back to, well, being the Smith of his first 6 years in the NFL, and again allowed the Browns' to hang around in a game in which they were otherwise being dominated.

Things got a little uncomfortable for the 49ers when McCoy and Josh Cribbs hooked up on a 45-yard touchdown early in the 4th quarter that brought the Browns to within a touchdown with plenty of time to play.

But just when the defense needed to step up one more time, it collapsed thanks in part to a critical D'Qwell Jackson face mask on Gore on 3rd and 3 from the San Francisco 32 yard line. Gore was stopped short of the first down but the personal foul gave the 49ers a new set of downs. From their they kept the chains moving, thanks in large part, and I mean that in two ways, to an 18-yard pass to 300+ pound nose tackle Isaac Sopoaga, who lined up as a fullback on the play. It was nearly the identical play that Smith completed earlier to tackle Joe Staley that went for 17 yards.

The Sopoaga completion brought the ball to the Cleveland 14-yard line and set the 49ers up for a 26-yard field goal by Akers that sealed the game. A few mad dash plays near the end of the game padded the stats of the offense but the game was well over by that point.

The most frustrating aspect of the loss is the same thing that has been frustrating this team throughout the season. A good, solid defensive effort essentially wasted by an offense that is so lacking in talent at the moment that it really has very few opportunities to score.

As an example, consider a few key moments in the second half when matters really could have turned in the Browns' favor.

In a preview of what the second half would turn into, the Browns' defense held the 49ers to a quick three and out to open the second half and a Josh Cribbs punt return brought the ball into 49ers territory. But on 3rd and 2, offensive coordinator/head coach Pat Shurmur called for one of the most ill-conceived plays on his cheat sheet. He had receiver Greg Little go in motion and then stop in the backfield. McCoy took the snap and Little swung out left, essentially taking a pitch from McCoy that everybody saw coming, including the 49ers. It lost 8 yards and forced another punt.

Then there was the next series which again followed a 49ers 3 and out. Again looking as if it had some momentum, the Browns' offense got a jump start when McCoy hit tight end Ben Watson on a simple out pattern that Watson, through pure effort, turned into a 29-yard gain. But two plays later McCoy, scrambling, unleashed a pass to a double-covered Little in the end zone that resulted, naturally enough, in an interception. It was another momentum killer even as the defense continued to try and put the offense in a position to succeed.

McCoy wasn't awful, but neither was he great. He lost the handle twice on the snap and had the other fumble early in the game. The interception he threw was pure folly, a college kid toss that may have worked in Texas but doesn't tend to work in the pros. But he also was 22-34 for 241 yards and the touchdown pass to Cribbs that gave the Browns some hope. He continues to get pounded on by opposing defenses and still answers the bell for the next play. At the very least, you have to admire his pluck.

The running game was awful. Chris Ogbonnaya, subbing for Hardesty most of the game, had just 37 yards on 11 carries. That said, he still looks to be an improvement at this point over Hardesty, who has trouble picking up blitzes, trouble catching the ball out of the backfield, and lacks any sort of burst of speed when the situation demands.

On a comparison basis, though, the statistical tale was surprisingly close after it was decidedly titled in the 49ers favor after the first 30 minutes. This was due to the Browns' defense essentially holding the 49ers to few second half yards. That's of little consequence, though, because those are only the small consolations in a business that demands wins.

The Browns take to the road again next week, this time against the Houston Texans. But it matters little where these games are contested. Unless the formula changes, the outcome again should hold no mystery.

The Colt Conundrum

2011-10-26T19:43:00.000-04:00

There were two, maybe three developments this week that should give Cleveland Browns fans pause to rethink their impatience with quarterback Colt McCoy. First was the Minnesota Vikings’ decision to start Christian Ponder instead of an increasingly ineffective and indifferent Donovan McNabb. Next came the Miami Dolphins putting Sage Rosenfels on the reserved, non-football injury list and signing J.P. Losman as their new starting quarterback. Then came the Indianapolis Colts putting Kerry Collins on injured reserve list where he joins Peyton Manning.

You could also take it another step when the Oakland Raiders, out of sheer desperation, giving away high draft picks like they’re growing off the vines in the Sonoma Valley, for Carson Palmer once Jason Campbell went down with an injury. Or what about the Seattle Seahawks turning over the quarterbacking duties to Charlie Whitehurst once Tavaris Jackson went down with an injury.

That’s five teams right there that are in far worse shape then the Browns at the moment when it comes to having a credible starting quarterback. Still local fans seem to grow frustrated by the moment with McCoy as if the Browns are just teeming with all sorts of alternatives.

There are plenty of statistics, from the now traditional quarterback rating system to the goofy new ESPN quarterback rating system to any number of metrics in between to make the case that McCoy isn’t playing at a particularly high level at the moment and many have used them to further an argument not worth making.

There also are all sorts of ways to counter all of these statistics to put it into the kind of context that no one much wants to hear about as they contemplate a future of Seneca Wallace and whoever is worse than J.P. Losman.

But since that’s what should be talked about, it’s what we will talk about.

Maybe it’s easy for most people to dismiss the massive overhaul in offensive scheme that took place in an offseason that didn’t exist for McCoy, but I doubt McCoy is as dismissive. Not having access to his head coach and getting precious little offseason training in the new scheme has had an effect. Wish it away if you’d like but facts are facts.

Interestingly, that might be the least of the problems.

Why, for example, dwell on schemes when there are even more obvious reasons for McCoy’s tepid play. For instance, the Browns’ number one target for McCoy, Mohamed Massaquoi, would not be a number one receiver on any other team until someone can prove otherwise. He has decent hands, runs decent routes, but lacks the true speed and elusiveness to ever be a number one threat. Even Massaquoi seems to recognize as much. He doesn’t demand the ball because he knows he doesn’t deserve it over anyone else.

Maybe Eric Mangini had hopes against hopes that his drafting of Massaquoi in the second round was a stroke of genius that would pay great dividends, but the consensus of every other personnel guy in the NFL was to the contrary. And guess what? They were right and Mangini was wrong. Massaquoi never was and never will be any team’s legitimate number one receiver.

That alone is a strong enough case to make for the difficulties McCoy and by proxy offensive coordinator/head coach Pat Shurmur have in stretching defenses and getting the ball downfield in a hurry. But why stop there?

The number two receiver (who will sooner rather than later ascend to the number one role) is Greg Little, a rookie who didn’t even play college ball last year. Forget about missing the offseason, which he did as well. Little missed nearly two years before finally suiting up and starting a game and when last he did play it was in a far different scheme then the West Coast offense that Shurmur employs. Little has good speed, good hands and a big body but he’s still too raw to be immediately effective. His future looks bright and as he develops so will the offense and by proxy McCoy but that’s at least another season away and certainly isn’t helping McCoy much right now.

The number three receiver is Josh Cribbs, a valuable and passionate player but not a credible receiver. I think Cribbs works hard and wants to be good but he is never going to be more than a third receiver on a team with lousy receivers. If Cribbs isn’t acting as the third receiver, then that slot falls to Brian Robiskie, a far more credible and professional receiver, if in name only, with virtually no ability to get open against NFL-caliber defensive backs.

Take all the time you need to devise an appropriate offense around that mess and let’s see how well anyone short of Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady does in it.

While McCoy doesn’t have much to throw to downfield, what he does have at his disposal are several tight ends that can catch the ball. What none of them can do though is get open deep, which again limits the ability to go deep. So what you get is what you’d expect. Lots of short stuff that can occasionally sustain drives that ultimately tend to result in field goals and not touchdowns.

But heck, we already knew going into the season that this receiving corps wasn’t very good. General manager Tom Heckert has steadfastly refused to upgrade it through free agency, believing there’s enough talent to develop that would otherwise be inhibited by a stop-gap free agent pickup. The logic is sound but I’m not sure the assessment is. Does anyone, including Heckert, think that there is still unrealized upside to Massaquoi, Cribbs or Robiskie?

The fact that this was the team’s most pressing offensive need going into the season and remains that way 6 games into the season should help frame the debate about McCoy, but it hasn’t. Fans see balls overthrown, underthrown, intercepted or simply off target and assume, wrongly, that it all falls on McCoy. I’m certainly not suggesting that McCoy doesn’t need to improve. He does. But it will be remarkable how much better he’ll look when he has an actual receiving corps to throw to.

Why focus though just on the receivers? It’s not as if the Browns have once established a credible running game this season that would take pressure off a clearly deficient passing game.

There’s been enough drama around Peyton Hillis to last two seasons so there’s no use rehashing that for now. But his absence is equivalent to trying to run an engine without motor oil. We know, too, that Montario Hardesty is merely a nice running back at this point, not a game breaker. I wouldn’t reach any conclusions on Hardesty just yet since he’s only 6 games into his pro career. But running backs, unlike many receivers, tend to develop quickly or not at all. Hardesty could certainly become a feature back but for now he’s far more Jerome Harrison then Jamal Lewis.

But let’s not forget in all of this the rather crappy play of a patchwork offensive line that’s missing one of its stalwarts, Eric Steinbach. Hillis for example benefit greatly by having Joe Thomas, Alex Mack and Steinbach all healthy last year. With Steinbach out, the right side of the line, from where virtually all the penetration seems to come, is below average. Holes aren’t being opened for the running game and blocks aren’t being made to give McCoy time to breath.

In other words, a bushel basket full of McCoy’s problems has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the state of the other key components of the offense.

It’s actually hard to get a good assessment of McCoy at the moment but that hasn’t stopped so many from trying to do just that. About the only thing we really do know is that McCoy can take a pounding and still come back for more.

But there will come a point, soon perhaps, when that physical abuse being thrust on him by an offense that’s deficient on every other level will take its toll and he’ll be sent to the sideline with an injury. And just as Indianapolis, Miami, Seattle, and Oakland has discovered when their starters went down, that’s when fans here may begin to appreciate McCoy just a little bit more.

A Bottom Line Business

2011-10-23T17:12:00.003-04:00

Just win, right baby?

Pro sports is a bottom line business and there's no better bottom line then a win of any stripe. And that's what the Cleveland Browns got on Sunday, beating the Seattle Seahawks 6-3 a week after laying a colossal egg against the Oakland Raiders. What the game lacked in excitement, it more then made up for in lack of intrigue. As soon as Phil Dawson kicked his second 50+ field goal of the day there was little doubt of the outcome. That was due to a combination of a good Browns' defense and a bad Seahawks' offense, feel free to fiddle with the percentages how you want.

To say the game was a snoozer is to do a disservice to Ambien. There hasn't been a game this boring won by a Cleveland Browns team since the Browns beat the Buffalo Bills by the same score two years ago. You remember that game, don't you? It's the one where former general manager accelerated his ascension out of town by sending a profane email to a fan after the game.

If you did manage to stay awake for every play of this game, you're probably breaking out the Visine about now. There were plenty of eye rubbing moments.

For instance, it's really kind of hard to explain how a team that had the ball for over 42 minutes on offense and ran an astounding 84 plays, like the Browns did, managed only 6 points. It's even harder to explain how in all of those minutes and plays the only ones hey ran in the red zone were late in the fourth quarter.

It's also kind of hard to explain how Dawson, who had the first game of his career with two field goals in excess of 50 yards, still managed to have two others blocked. And for added measure when we're talking about special teams breakdowns, again, is the fact that but for a fortunate call on a phantom block in the back penalty on Seattle's Kennard Cox against James Dockery, the Seahawks would have won the game instead. It nullified a punt return by Leon Washington that had gone for a touchdown.

Ok, I lied. It's not that hard to explain. Let's start with the offense.

For reasons that I'm sure head coach Pat Shurmur will adequately explain once he thinks about it, the Browns seemed hellbent on focusing more on possession then effectiveness. There were few pass plays, for example, that were of the vertical variety. It wasn't clear whether Shurmur just feared Colt McCoy passing down field like Luke Fickell fears Braxton Miller throwing down field or Shurmur had game planned as if the weather would be 35 degrees, windy and rainy, and just didn't feel like scrapping it when the weather turned out otherwise.

Whichever the case, it was painfully clear that the Browns were not so much concerned with putting together drives as they were maintaining a few slogs through a difficult yet bendable Seahawks defense. Thus were an endless series of short out passes, several swing passes, a few over the middle passes, and plenty of runs in the middle of a stout defensive line. It all added up to 20 first downs and kept the ball out of the hands of a Seahawks offense that hardly knew what to do with it anyway.

But let's at least give some credit where it's due and in not so snarky fashion. One of Shurmur's shortcomings as a head coach is his inability to reign in the throwing tendencies of his offensive coordinator, who happens to be the same person. With Peyton Hillis on the sidelines nursing a sore hamstring (or was he?) it seemed like a situation tailor-made for Shurmur's instincts.

Instead he stubbornly committed to running the ball with Montario Hardesty and recently signed Chris Ogbonnaya. Between them, they had 36 carries, which is surely worth an exclamation point! Hardesty more or less responded with 95 yards on 33 of those carries, but that was more than enough to keep the clock moving. McCoy, too, had 8 carries for 31 yards, but those were all the result of broken down pass protection running head long into receivers who couldn't get open. The guess here is that those were the times that a more vertical pass play was called, but that's just a guess since there were plenty of times when the protection broke down before McCoy had a chance to grip the strings on the ball.

The reason all this is important is that it ended up having the intended effect near the end of the game as the Seahawks defense tired and gave up some key runs that, but for the second of the two blocked field goals, would have technically sealed the game earlier.

So in that sense it was a positive to see Shurmur take some of the pressure off of McCoy and put it on the running game. The negative, though, is that while Hardesty can bang out some tough yards, he seems to lack that extra gear to get around end or crack back into a slight opening that the really great running backs possess. It would have been interesting if Hillis had been able to play (or was he able to play?) to see how stout that Seahawks defensive line really was.

Still there should be a few statistical highlights when you run the number of plays the Browns did. In addition to the 162 yards rushing (from which we subtract the 21 yards lost in sacks), McCoy was 20-25 for 178 yards and 1 interception. He did throw one interception, which occurred when the Browns were actually moving the ball forward in what could be called chunks. Maybe that's really what spooked Shurmur.

Now let's talk about the special teams. There was no secret to the two blocked field goals. Red Bryant was just too much for the middle of the line to block. He was able to push his way through far enough each time to spoil any trajectory that Dawson might have been able to put on the ball. As for the breakdown on the punt coverage, it was simply a matter of missed tackles. Washington avoided several tackles at the initial point of contact and from there the seam opened. The penalty call on Cox was a mistake but an understandable one. Cox did extend his arms at Dockery's back and Dockery, the last person who could have gotten Washington, fell. But if there was contact, it was less then a high school freshman gets on his first date.

The defense was a bright spot for the Browns but it was aided greatly by two overarching facts. First, Tavaris Jackson, the Seahawks starting quarterback, was out. That left Charlie Whitehurst to make just his third start in 6 seasons. He played exactly like a guy making his third start in 6 seasons. He was jittery, tentative and lacked any touch on the ball. It didn't help, either, that on three or four occasions when he was on target his receivers dropped the ball. Ultimately he was 12-30 for just 97 yards and one interception, which came, not unsurprisingly, immediately after the called back punt return.

If the lack of personnel wasn't a difficult enough obstacle for the Seahawks to overcome, another was created when starting running back Marshawn Lynch was scratched right with a bad back right before the game started. Without a credible running attack, Whitehurst was pretty much stuck playing Charlie in the Box on the Island of Misfit Toys.

Indeed it seemed rather unlikely that the Seahawks would even find a way to score a single point. It's telling actually how their points did come about. On the one defensive play where the Browns' coverage did break down, Whitehurst found a wide open Sidney Rice all alone at about the Browns' 10-yard line. While the pass was completed, it was Rice's wrong shoulder and forced Rice to lose balance and step out at the 9-yard line. A running play went for no gain but on second down Ahtyba Rubin was called for a face mask penalty, giving the Seahawks the ball at the Cleveland 2 yard line. Another run for no gain followed by two incomplete passes forced the Seahawks to kick the 20-yard field goal. In that short series of plays did the Seahawks aptly sum up the true awfulness of their performance.

So again, do the math how you want but the Browns did come out with the win and stand at 3-3 which, if only psychologically, is miles ahead of 2-4. It puts 5 or 6 victories this year well within reach and a chance for everyone to come away with the only victory this town needs at the moment, the one spelled p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s.

Lingering Items--Talking Heads Edition

2011-10-21T18:24:00.000-04:00

Are the sportswriters in this town merely idiots or are they just reflecting the collective angst of a downtrodden fan base. In Cleveland it's sometimes hard to tell.

Browns' president Mike Holmgren made his semi-regular pilgrimage to the podium in Berea on Thursday to talk about the state of the Browns as he sees them and for his candor he's rewarded with more questions about not just what the heck he said but why. The reason I suspect is that no one takes anyone at face value.

Responding to questions about the state of negotiations with Peyton Hillis, Holmgren said they are at a standstill, which was obvious to nearly anyone who remembered that Hillis hadn't signed on to any contract extension just yet. Holmgren didn't blame Hillis or his agent and he didn't suggest that the Browns had lost interest. It's a question of value, which it always is, during contract negotiations.

Holmgren was asked about first year coach Pat Shurmur and then said what was obvious to nearly anyone who remembered that Shurmur, hired by Holmgren, is barely 5 games into his first go-round as a head coach. Surprise, Holmgren still backs Shurmur.

So when is Holmgren going to make Shurmur hire an offensive coordinator? Well, that's up to Shurmur, or so said Holmgren.

And then there were the questions about Colt McCoy. Is he really “the man?” Holmgren said what was obvious to nearly anyone who remembered that McCoy is just 5 games into a new offensive scheme. Yes, McCoy is the quarterback for this year. Well then, what about next year? We'll see, won't we, or so said Holmgren. If he's not, then we'll keep looking until we find the right quarterback.

It really was that obvious and straightforward, so naturally the local writers, like Marla Ridenour at the Akron Beacon Journal, concluded that both Hillis and McCoy face uncertain futures in Cleveland. Welcome to the big leagues.

I suppose the Ridenours of the world should be forgiven for their superficial approach to a sport they probably don't quite understand. I'm talking about journalism and not football, by the way. If you're going to engage in analysis and put it out there, it helps to actually analyze and contextualize. It's easy to assume that everyone has an agenda, that things said aren't what is meant, as the way of putting a spin on what you wanted to conclude anyway, but seriously isn't the future just as uncertain for virtually any player on the Cleveland Browns? Why single out Hillis and McCoy?

Maybe Joe Thomas and Joe Haden are safe. You could probably count T.J. Ward in there as well. But take a stroll through this lineup and ask yourself who else really is safe for the next few years. And when you come to the end of that yellow brick road, maybe then you'll start to understand why a team that's been this crappy for about a hundred thousand reasons for the last 10 plus years stands just 2-3 at the moment.

The Browns' roster has improved because the drafting has improved. But the draft happens exactly once a year and unless the NFL and its other member clubs take pity on the Browns and let them choose the first 30 players in the draft in each of the next four years, the improvement in this roster to the point where the team is consistently competitive with the best teams in the league is going to be slow.

This isn't a question of counseling patience to a fan base with none. It's a reminder that what gets said has context, that's all. Is that too much to ask? Perspective.

If there could be any mild criticism of what Holmgren had to say, it stems from his naivete about the fragile state of the psyche of this town's fans. An entire generation fans has been borne and is now midway through college and hasn't seen anything resembling the kinds of teams that their parents experienced in the early 1980s. It's one thing to tell war stories but it doesn't always translate to a younger group of fans with the attention span of a puppy and no tolerance for lousy product.

So when Holmgren, in all candor, said that the Browns would be comfortable letting Hillis enter free agency and then try to sign him, alarms went off to the sportswriters ready to pounce. Doesn't Holmgren get what Hillis means to this town? Doesn't he know that Hillis was a Madden cover boy?

There is an absence of players that the fans can identify with which fully explains why they've sunk their hooks so deep into Hillis and Josh Cribbs. But until Hillis can prove he can stay healthy (which he hasn't), why should the Browns risk tying up significant long-term dollars in the context of a hard salary cap and why should Holmgren say otherwise?

But beyond not quite being fully tapped in to the sometimes misguided thinking of this fan base, there was nothing much said by Holmgren that couldn't have been easily imagined. The problem I guess is that he had the temerity to actually say it before the writers could and thus sent them scurrying to invent another angle.

**
Speaking of Cribbs, there wasn't anything much said by Holmgren on that subject, but plenty of kvetching anyway when Cribbs said earlier this week that he's not much of an option in the offense and that he'd rather contribute more on special teams.

Finally.

Here's a note to Cribbs and the rest of the fans. At best Cribbs really is the third receiving option, even on a team strapped for guys that can get open and catch the ball. Cribbs wears the banner of a playmaker because he has good instincts when he gets the ball in the open field. He also is one of the most passionate players the Browns have ever had.

But having good open field instincts and passion doesn't necessarily make one a good receiver and that realization has dawned on Cribbs, just not as quickly as it did on Shurmur. Cribbs is not, as the Plain Dealer's Bud Shaw suggested earlier this week, going all Keyshawn and saying “just give me the damn ball.” He's just being honest. He's an afterthought.

That's because Cribbs just isn't a good receiver and may never be. Isolate on him when you can and you'll see that he doesn't run crisp routes. He isn't particularly elusive when it comes to getting open, either. In other words, even average defensive backs in the league don't fear Cribbs because he isn't all that hard to cover.

It's relatively easy to get Cribbs the ball on short crossing routes and hope that he can break a long run occasionally, but that isn't a system. It's just a small piece of a much larger puzzle of which Cribbs is never going to be a major piece.

It makes for easy writing to say that the Browns need to get Cribbs the ball, but then ask yourself exactly how that should be done and who should suffer at that expense. Should Cribbs take carries away from Hillis or Montario Hardesty? Should he take opportunities away from Greg Little? I suspect that if Cribbs was better then any of those players then those opportunities would come. He's just not.

Cribbs is valuable in spot duty but he's never going to approach the raw receiving talent of even a player like Little and Shurmur knows it and now so does Cribbs. Does that mean Cribbs doesn't have a role? Of course not, but it isn't going to be any more of a role then a third receiver typically gets on any team.

Cribbs' real value is on special teams and instead of trying to preserve him for an offense where he doesn't fit in, it is time that Cribbs return full time to covering special teams on both sides of the ball. That will make this team better and could have possibly saved the team the embarrassment of last week's special teams failures.

**
While Holmgren looked positively relaxed at his press conference, Shurmur was a slightly different story. He's wearing the stress of a season spent coaching new players and a new system that needs more practice then the collective bargaining agreement will allow.

It was refreshing though that Shurmur was willing to acknowledge that McCoy will get better when his fundamentals improve. Shurmur attributes the low completion percentage, for example, to simply a lack of consistent fundamentals.

The question really is what Shurmur and McCoy are doing right now to make that better. The answer is probably not much.

The Browns do ostensibly practice during the week but most of that is dedicated to refining their approach for the next game rather than working on things like footwork. That's what the offseason is for and that's where the lack of a formal offseason has hurt McCoy then probably most other players in the Browns' lineup.

What you do see from McCoy are the occasional flashes of brilliance and the many flashes of Derek Anderson. But there's been enough brilliance to justify the continued confidence the coaching staff has in McCoy but not enough to say that McCoy need not worry about a replacement for the next 10 years.

While there is no question that McCoy's fundamentals need to improve in several areas (and I've written about that plenty), I also get the sense that more is being asked of McCoy then is typically asked of a rookie quarterback.

Part of that is likely due to the fact that McCoy isn't actually a rookie but a big part of it is Shurmur's insistence of putting in the entire West Coast offense rather than roll it out over time. There's merit to either approach so it's not as if there's a right answer.

If you watch what the Carolina Panthers are doing with Cam Newton, it's really similar to how the Steelers approached the integration of Ben Roethlisberger. The offenses get simplified with the quarterback as a spoke and not the axle. Newton may be having some individual success but his team isn't much good and that's why it's losing. The Steelers were far more successful but that was mainly because their team, on both sides of the ball, was excellent.

But let's remember that McCoy has a far different background then either Newton or Roethlisberger. Newton is a great athlete with very limited experience. There's only so much he could handle anyway. Roethlisberger was a good talent with good experience in a lesser program. Likewise there was only so much he could handle.

McCoy was a four year starter for a much bigger program. He should be able to handle more. Moreover, there's no reason for the Browns not to use this season as a lengthy training camp for next season. That's tough for the fans to hear and even tougher to charge full price for but it is the truth. The Browns were never going to the playoffs this season but that doesn't mean that there isn't anything to accomplish.

As Holmgren noted, McCoy is getting kicked around pretty good. It's a good initiation really to see what comes out the other side. If he's still standing at season's end and the improvement's there, then the Browns will really know they have a quarterback. And if that turns out to be the case, then this season would hardly be a waste because better days will follow.

**

It may just be me, but the question I've been pondering this week, after learning that the Browns signed running back Chris Ogbonnaya and waived Armond Smith: What was it again that compelled Shurmur to pitch the ball to Smith on a crucial and unsuccessful 4th and 1 while the Browns were still in the game against Tennessee?

A Not So Special Team

2011-10-16T20:14:00.002-04:00

If the Cleveland Browns did any work during their bye week it wasn't particularly apparent in the Oakland Coliseum on Sunday. Looking mostly like they were still hung over from the game two weeks ago, the Browns fell hard to the Oakland Raiders by a somewhat deceiving score of 24-17.

It's only somewhat deceiving because it never really felt like the Browns were in the game despite the objective proof that they had a chance to tie the game with under a minute remaining thanks to a late touchdown pass by Colt McCoy to Mohamed Massaquoi with just over a minute and then a successful onside kick brilliantly executed by kicker Phil Dawson and recovered by defensive back James Dockery.

But McCoy couldn't capitalize on the opportunity for mostly the same reasons the Browns were in the position they were in at that moment. He was off target on his throws when it mattered most and the Raiders went away with the victory on the day that they honored the recently deceased Al Davis.

The hubbub near the end of the game notwithstanding, the Browns' offense had another miserable day against another team that was ripe for the taking.

And lest anyone think that the Browns inability to again generate any consistent offense had more to do with the emotion of the day exhibited by the Raiders for Davis, it was not. The Raiders were without their starting quarterback for most of the game and while that stymied their offense from that point forward, it didn't matter. Almost from the outset it looked like an early Raiders 14-7 lead was really more then enough anyway against a Browns' offense that seems to regress each week.

The funny thing is, this Raiders team, particularly with Kyle Boller in and Jason Campbell out, isn't very good. They're the usual undisciplined mess they've been for years. There's some talent on defense and a few good skill players on offense, but they aren't a first tier ball club.

Let's consider the evidence. Before getting injured, Campbell was 6-9 for just 52 yards and no touchdowns. Boller was, well, Boller. He was 8-14 for 100 yards and no touchdowns. The Raiders didn't have a running back gain more than 100 yards, though Darren McFadden was close with 91 yards on 20 carries. In many ways, the Raiders' offense resembled the Browns' offense. It generated one early touchdown, a Darren McFadden 4-yard run on the Raiders' first possession of the game and a Sebastian Janikowski 48-yard field goal in the third quarter. And that was it.

So why did the Browns lose? Well, a decent amount of the blame can be put on the special teams, which yielded two touchdowns. The first was a 101-yard kickoff return by Jacoby Ford and then, for good measure, another when they bit hard on a fake field goal as punter Shane Lechler found a wide open Kevin Boss for a 35-yard touchdown. The Ford return was particularly damaging because it completely sapped the Browns' only real offensive momentum of the day. On the previous play quarterback Colt McCoy hit tight end Alex Smith on a 1-yard touchdown pass that helped knot the game at 7-7.

So, yea, throw out the mistakes by the special teams and theoretically the Browns win the game. But the problem with that kind of thinking is that it ignores two overarching points. First, the Browns got as close as they did because Raiders' head coach Hue Jackson channeled Ron Zook at just the right or wrong time, depending on your perspective. Second, the Browns have fundamental problems on offense. The Raiders have theirs and that's for them to figure out. But the Browns have to answer some serious questions around why their offense gets worse when it should be getting better.

Let's go back to Jackson. Had the Browns been able to tie the game, he would have had some 'splainin' to do. Seemingly taking pity on a Browns' team his Raiders' were dominating to that point, Jackson eschewed a late field goal on 4th and 1 from inside the Browns' 10-yard line with just under 5 minutes remaining that would have given the Raiders a 17-point lead. With Janikowski kicking off, the Browns would likely have had to march 80 yards quickly and recovered two onside kicks in order to actually get back into the game. But the 4th and 1 failed and probably caused more then a few butts to pucker when the Browns recovered the onside kick. Good think for Jackson that Davis died. Otherwise he might have fired him on the spot. He still might from whatever middle earth lair he's occupying at the moment.

But the Raiders' escaped and the Browns are left to wonder why a team with two weeks to prepare looked like they hadn't practiced in a month, particularly on offense.

McCoy, looking more confused and uncertain then at any time since freshman football, couldn't discern coverages, couldn't detect pressure, and missed receivers all day in the most spectacular of fashion. Balls sailed high. Balls fell short. Balls missed their targets by 5 yards. It was a miracle, really, that he wasn't picked off.

The late rally juiced his stats but he still was only 21-45 for 215 yards, though he had the two touchdown passes.

The running game was again non-existent. It's becoming increasingly clear exactly why the Browns haven't extended the contract of running back Peyton Hillis. He's just not in their long range plans. After starting the game, Hillis was mostly absent from there on out, making a brief appearance in the fourth quarter. Marv Albert, announcing another Browns' game as if it's a permanent assignment, said that Hillis supposedly tweaked his hamstring. Perhaps, but he did re-enter the game, so that explanation falls by the wayside.

So, too, will the explanation that Shurmur used for not deploying Hillis against the Titans two weeks ago, that the situation didn't dictate his use. It's not clear why those same situations dictate using Montario Hardesty instead of Hillis, especially since Hardesty can't catch. It must be that Shurmur sees something in Hardesty that isn't quite apparent to the untrained eyes of every other observer. Hardesty rushed 11 times for 35 yards and Hillis had 6 carries for 14 yards.

Whoever is running the ball at the moment isn't really the issue anyway. Teams are stacking the box against the Browns because they simply don't fear any part of the Browns' passing attack. They're willing to concede short and even mid-range routes because they don't sense that anyone receiver on the Browns has big play capability. And they're right until they're proven wrong.

That means that McCoy needs to get better and quickly. His decision making isn't crisp. He's not handling pressure well. His fundamentals are awful. His lack of accuracy has everything to do with an inability to set his feet and throw, even when he does have time. It is up to him and the receivers to stretch the defense and give the running game some breathing room and they're failing miserably.

So while the loss can be pinned on the offense and the special teams, at least the defense was mostly respectable, despite the absence of cornerback Joe Haden. You had to feel some compassion for his replacement, Dmitri Patterson. The Raiders threw in his direction on nearly every pass play. The Raiders had only 14 completed passes and it seemed like every one was in front of Patterson who kept coverage soft to avoid the big plays.

It would be nice to think that what fans are seeing from this Browns team at the moment are the necessary growing pains of a team in transition. And hopefully that's all this malaise really is because anything more is too difficult to ponder at the moment. So standing at 2-3 and not even at the half way point of the season, it's not time to write the season off completely and start planning next year's draft. But that's not to excuse what's taken place to date. There has to be progress soon or all of this just ends up being another wasted season for a franchise that, unfortunately, has that act down pat.

Lingering Items--Fleeting Regrets Edition

2011-10-14T19:05:00.000-04:00

The NBA lockout has now resulted in regular season games being cancelled and from all appearances it looks to be headed toward the land of the NHL. It eventually will get solved but will anyone notice?

Indeed right now outside of columnists like Bill Simmons and a few other basketball junkies, the NBA’s labor problems are pretty much being met with a shrug by most everyone else, unless you’re someone earning $30,000 a year whose livelihood depends on games being played.

If the NFL lockout was the equivalent of the last episode of M*A*S*H in terms of generating interest, then the NFL lockout is like any episode of The Amazing Race. It draws some interest, even some really devoted fans, but most of the country is tuning out.

You can take my word for it or consult any number of sources but on the pecking order of television ratings, the NFL is the 1000 pound gorilla and the NBA is, perhaps, a full grown chimpanzee. Network regular season games in the NBA draw a 2.2 share, which means that of all the television equipped households in this country, only 2.2% were tuned to that game. The story is better in the NBA Finals, but that’s merely by comparison. Last season’s NBA Finals drew less than an 11 share.

By contrast, last season’s Super Bowl was actually the most watched television program in broadcast history, surpassing that final episode of M*A*S*H. NFL regular season games that are nationally broadcast routinely draw in excess of a 10 share, similar to a NBA Finals game.

There are probably a dozen or so reasons you can cite for this vast difference, but however you want to choose to parse it the fact remains that the fans have spoken. Casual indifference toward the NBA lockout vs. intense interest in the NFL lockout mirrors the ratings for each sport.

I’ve avoided writing much about the NBA lockout because I’m four-square in the camp of the casual fan. Frankly, if the whole season was cancelled it would make absolutely no difference in my life. I understand and empathize for the vendors and all the ancillary people that depend on the NBA for their livelihood. Those folks are always the victims. But let’s face it, the NBA owners and the players care so little for any of those people that it’s hard to feel any empathy for the lockout’s main participants.

For those that do care, though, perhaps you’re scratching your head (just as you scratched it raw during the NFL lockout) as to how two sides with $4 billion to split can’t figure it out. If only it were that easy.

The reason the NBA owners and its players can’t divide all that basketball related revenue is that over the last several years and through the last several contracts they’ve created such a byzantine economic system that almost no one at the bargaining table can even figure it out.

The NBA supposedly has a salary cap, but that’s in theory only. The cap serves as merely a guideline and teams routinely blow past it because of all the exceptions that have been created to address individual situations. Then of course if you run out of exceptions it doesn’t matter anyway. A team can go as far beyond the cap as it wants. It just has to pay a luxury tax.

In essence the NBA takes the worst aspects of major league baseball’s system and layeres on the dumbest ideas they could think of. It couldn’t be worse if it was designed and overseen by Congress.

I’d be more interested in this lockout if it was about real reform, like a level playing field that recognizes the economic differences between Milwaukee and Los Angeles. But it’s not. Any semblance of that was abandoned early by the owners who used a hard salary cap as an opening volley in the negotiations.

At this point is really comes down to deciding on the proper revenue split between the owners and the players. The owners are trying to get it to a 50/50 split and the players are resisting. It’s as boring of a dispute as a mid February game between the New Jersey Nets and the Golden State Warriors.

Eventually this will get solved and in a way that the rich on both side get to remain rich. It will also get solved in a way that the average fan that bothered to care will get stuck with the bill. It always does. It would just be nice to think that one side or the other would have the common courtesy to at least give that fan a peck on the cheek before they screw him once again.

**

Lots of handwringing this week over the ill fortunes of the Ohio State Buckeyes, mainly because the fans aren’t used to seeing the Buckeyes fail. They stand at 3-3 and the meltdown in Nebraska that started midway through the third quarter certainly makes a reasonable person wonder whether the Buckeyes will even become bowl eligible.

They might not, but that’s less of a problem this season then it usually would be.

One of the reasons the Michigan Wolverines didn’t improve much under Rich Rodriguez had everything to do with them missing bowl games every year. That extra practice time that programs are given in order to prepare for a bowl game are incredibly valuable more so for the following season then the actual upcoming game.

But in the case where there is going to be an offseason coaching change anyway, that kind of prep isn’t nearly as valuable unless the new head coach is on board for those practices.

At this point, even if the Buckeyes become bowl eligible, I wouldn’t expect a new head coach to be hired prior to that bowl game. And before I’m accused of putting the cart before the horse, I do believe a new head coach will be hired by the Buckeyes.

This isn’t an indictment of Luke Fickell, exactly, but if anything is clear at the moment it’s that he just wasn’t ready to assume the head job at a program this big. Part of that may be due to how little time Fickell had to prepare for that role. But a big part of it is simply due to his lack of experience as a head coach.

Fickell’s good for the program and I hope he’s retained by whoever is hired. But if Fickell is retained as the head coach, the team is going to continue to struggle for the several years it takes for Fickell to gain the kind of experience one needs to run a program the size of Ohio State’s.

If you think it’s painful watching a freshman like Braxton Miller learn on the job how to be a quarterback at the highest level of college football, triple that feeling if Fickell keeps his current job. The Buckeyes might be respectable the next few seasons but they won’t be the kind of threat they were under former head coach Jim Tressel once he got through his transition year.

Right now one lesson Fickell is learning is how to control the team and I don’t just mean the players. Fickell’s lack of experience on the offensive side of the ball is showing as it’s becoming very clear that he feels he doesn’t have the gravitas to challenge Jim Bollman’s decisions on offense.

The last assistant coach I can think of that’s had a worse year than Bollman was Greg Robinson. Before him it was Ron English. Both were the defensive coordinators for the Michigan Wolverines under Rich Rodriguez and we all know how that worked out. They were as much responsible for Rodriguez’s departure as anything else.

That’s not necessarily the case in Columbus with Bollman, but it’s a fascinating scene nonetheless. Bollman, the Tressel confidant, strutting about the program as if he, not Fickell, is the head coach. Fickell, on the sidelines watching one 3-and-out after another, frustrated and powerless to do much about it. If Fickell has the power to overrule anything Bollman does during the week or on game day, it’s only on paper.

It reminds me of the dynamic between Oakland As manager Art Howe and general manager Billy Beane as portrayed in the movie Moneyball. Howe theoretically reported to Beane but went about his job in quiet defiance of most of Beane’s orders.

These are just the kinds of dynamics that demonstrates why Fickell isn’t the right fit at this moment. He ascended to a role he wasn’t prepared for and most everyone around the program knows it and acts like it. I don’t think that changes any time soon and is fundamentally why Fickell’s future with the program is as the defensive coordinator next season.

**

The Browns play in Oakland this Sunday and in the all-too-predictable run up to the game the focus turned to former Buckeyes’ quarterback Terrelle Pryor who is coming off a league-imposed 5-game suspension.

Pryor gave an interview in which he expressed the kind of remorse that most athletes tend to express. It was mostly vague, talked about regrets in general terms and then turned the focus toward the future.

That probably won’t satisfy many Buckeyes fans who tend to look at Pryor as the devil, the focal point of all that is currently wrong in Buckeye Nation.

But if they spend any time kvetching over whether Pryor is remorseful enough then it’s time well wasted. It’s just not in the genes of most athletes to regret anything, particularly during their playing days. Almost from the outset of their initial pursuits, athletes are more or less programmed to always look forward, mainly because so much about being a professional athlete is about overcoming one failure after another.

There’s no sport that can ever be mastered. Tom Brady throws interceptions. Jack Nicklaus missed putts and drove the ball in the trees on occasion. The best baseball players still fail to get a hit 68% of the time. Dwelling on these failures only breeds more failures.

And so it is with Pryor. It’s probably best not to judge Pryor’s true mindset based on his current verbal output. Most likely his thoughts won’t be fully formed until after his playing days are over. There will come a point, but probably not for years, when Pryor will be able to embrace the attitude and immaturity that cost him and all that were counting on him a chance to really do something special at the collegiate level.

There’s no reason to pick on Pryor for the same reason there’s no reason to spend another moment regretting the Buckeyes’ situation. You can’t alter the past anyway. All you can do is move forward by putting the past in its proper context, meaning those are just more mistakes in a long list that will continue to get made.

**

The major league baseball playoffs are in full flower and it leads to this week’s question to ponder: Is it just me or does it seem like every year the baseball playoffs end up being dominated by former members of the Indians?

Making Good Use of the Bye Week

2011-10-11T05:09:00.000-04:00

The best thing that could happen to the Cleveland Browns did. They had a bye week when they needed it most.

In the midst of a self-inflicted controversy regarding fan favorite Peyton Hillis and some very questionable play calling in last week’s dispiriting loss to the Tennessee Titans, the last thing that head coach Pat Shurmur needed was a game this past Sunday.

What he needed more was a chance to enjoy the weather, visit with the family and clear his head because it’s a long season from here on in.

The nice thing about a bye week is that it does offer some perspective on what’s taken place to this point. The issues with Hillis and such are important, but what Shurmur needed to do most in the bye week was make a proper assessment of where this team currently stands and why, particularly on offense. Given its relatively poor performance to date, Shurmur’s ability to get that righted holds the key to what kind of season this ultimately will become.

When Monday beckoned and the Browns returned to work, a few changes were noticeable. Greg Little is now a starting receiver and Brian Robiskie is not. Tight end Evan Moore is slated for more time. Not specifically addressed but a key to making all that work is how Shurmur will go about accelerating quarterback Colt McCoy’s maturation process.

Right now McCoy’s abilities are being questioned because he had the audacity to throw a few really bad passes in the last few weeks as he was putting together some uneven performances. But the longer view is that McCoy had an offseason without access to Shurmur and his version of the West Coast offense, a truncated pre-season to learn the system and now 4 starts to run it at game speed. In that context, why should anyone expect anything more then they’ve received from McCoy to this point?

Taking still an even longer view, virtually nothing McCoy learned from last year is of value to this season. Not one aspect to the Eric Mangini/Brian Daboll offense has been retained. That includes the blocking schemes, the receiving routes and the check downs. In other words, last season McCoy was getting a crash course in Italian. This season, he’s had to be conversant in Spanish from the first game forward because the fans expect nothing less then fluency out of the gate.

That’s the reality of the situation for Shurmur but he still must push McCoy to make the offense second nature anyway. That’s a function of time in grade but it’s also a function of study. If Shurmur and McCoy didn’t use the down time to work through the nuances that have been causing McCoy trouble, then it was time well wasted and it will show in the next few weeks.

There’s also the issue of mechanics. Perhaps that’s a function of McCoy not being completely comfortable with the offense just yet, but particularly when it matters most McCoy’s mechanics tend to fail him.

When he’s comfortable and not feeling like the next play is the make or break play of the game, McCoy tends to do the little things well. His play action fakes are crisper. He moves around the pocket nicely and then sets his feet properly when he passes.

But just like a golfer who reverts to his old swing when the pressure is on the most, McCoy tends to forego what he’s been learning when he’s really feeling pressure in favor of what’s work for him in the past. That means foregoing any real effort to play fake or set his feet. He then whizzes through his progressions that much more quickly in order to justify his natural instinct to run as a means of buying time. The problem is that it’s not always clear why he’s buying time.

The end zone interception against Tennessee is a perfect example. McCoy labeled it a dumb play on his part but it didn’t seem to occur to anyone covering the Browns on a regular basis to ask McCoy exactly why it was such a dumb play. Had they not treated it merely as a bit of self-deprecation, they likely would have found out exactly what McCoy meant, which is that the play represented the breakdown of the mechanics he needs to be successful.

He rolled to his right to buy time from a pocket that really hadn’t completely collapsed. As he ran, his options grew more limited. Instead of going out of bounds or throwing it out of bounds, either of which is standard NFL moves, McCoy let his college instincts take over and threw across his body into the end zone while getting hit. The pass was at least 10 yards short of his intended target.

So, yea, it was a dumb play but probably not in the way most people think about it. It was a play of inexperience in a league where every defensive back has good speed. It was also outside any of the usual protocol of the offense he was charged with running. McCoy beat himself up not because he’s dumb but because he understood that so much about the NFL game is merging his best instincts with the best of what the coaches have given you to succeed. McCoy fell short and knew it.

It’s Shurmur’s job to ensure that McCoy grows into his role because right now and on the near horizon, there aren’t any other options. Some of this will come as McCoy gains experience. But more of it will come when Shurmur gets better at putting McCoy in situations in which he has a better chance to succeed. It is a hand-in-glove existence.

Beyond the issues with McCoy, Shurmur also needed the bye week to assess the rest of his offense because McCoy is hardly that unit’s biggest problem. The running game has likewise suffered for the lack of an off season and it too is showing. The schemes seem haphazard at the moment with no real clear path in what Shurmur’s trying to get accomplished. Players say that the smash mouth running style of last season is over but that doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Hopefully Shurmur used the time to better clarify his own thoughts and then commit to a style and a running back and let it play itself out. That question gets answered Sunday at Oakland.

But at least Shurmur did address the ongoing saga of the receiving corps. Right now it’s very tight end-centric, which is not a surprise given the style. But it wasn’t clear why a playmaker like Moore wasn’t seeing more action. Shurmur offered explanations on Monday but did acknowledge that Moore needs to be on the field.

As for the wide receivers, the elevation of Little to a starter is one of the most encouraging signs of Shurmur’s deep thinking during the bye week.

Shurmur has come to the conclusion that Robiskie is not a viable option at this point. While good route running is the gold standard for receivers, Robiskie proves on a weekly basis that it isn’t the Holy Grail. By all accounts, Robiskie’s main strength is his ability to run routes. It’s also his main weakness.

There’s no jazz to Robiskie’s game. If the pattern calls for 6 yards and out, Robiskie will run 6 yards and out. If that doesn’t result in him being open, so be it. This is where the weakness comes in. The inability to go off script in the slightest in order to free himself makes it almost impossible for any quarterback to get Robiskie the ball consistently.

Defensive backs study receivers because that’s their full time job. The book on Robiskie is simple. It’s like following the bouncing ball on a one-note melody. The defensive backs know that there’s no chance Robiskie will improvise and thus they understand his every move on the field. Sticking with him is never much of a problem.

Little on the other hand is more artist then technician. You can see that he’s more comfortable than Robiskie in occasionally going off script by rounding off a route when the situation calls for it. Do too much of it and the coaches will nail your butt to the bench. But there are split second decisions to make in a game and sometimes it’s better to vary from the plan as long as your quarterback is on that same page. You can see a rapport growing between Little and McCoy. Robiskie hasn’t been able to build report with any quarterback at the pro level.

The fact that Shurmur is admittedly doing some tweaking is a positive sign for growth. The one thing that he has going for him is that that tweaking is not being dictated by an 0-4 start. What the fans want now is not necessarily playoffs this season but real progress. As the fans well know by now, Shurmur’s future depends on it.

Welcome to Cleveland, Pat Shurmur

2011-10-04T05:06:00.000-04:00

Now it’s finally time to say, “Welcome to Cleveland, Pat Shurmur.”

Because of an off season beset by labor problems and a lockout, Cleveland Browns fans really haven’t had the proper chance to get to know Shurmur, and he them. When Shurmur awoke Monday morning after a disaster of a game against the Tennessee Titans it was really the first time that he got to fully understand why this Browns’ franchise puts the “fun” in dysfunctional.

How he deals with a mini crisis that he mostly created will say a lot about whether or not Shurmur will ultimately be successful as a head coach.

The wreckage of a game poorly played against the Titans is still smoldering. It’s being fanned by all the various things that have fanned every flame in this franchise’s inglorious rebirth: pissed off fans, clueless players, unsure coaching, oddly silent management.

This is the point, really, where Shurmur is going to have to decide what kind of head coach he wants to be and team president Mike Holmgren is going to have to decide what kind of president he wants to be. In the aftermath of the Browns’ loss, whatever strategy the two have landed on thus far might need to be reworked.

The most immediate crisis has to do with how a team can roll up more than 400 yards on offense, dominate time of possession and still suffer a blowout at the hands of a better but not great team.

Much of that is easily explained by the rather strange play calling by Shurmur, who serves as his own offensive coordinator. Apparently caught up in the emotion of the game (which is the danger, really, of serving as your own coordinator), Shurmur showed little commitment to a balanced offense at any point in the game and went with his instinct to throw the ball nearly every play, especially in the second half.

The pass plays he did call were unimaginative and the few runs he did add, particularly, at crucial moments, were strange. All you need to know on that count is that on a 4th and 1 play he called for a pitchout to his 3rd string running back. The play prior, which was 3rd and 1, was a dive play without a fullback.

Shurmur’s play calling and his ability to perform two jobs before he’s proven definitively he can perform one of them competently is just one of the issues fans are concerned about. The other is Shurmur’s handling of the team’s best offensive player, Peyton Hillis.

There’s a rather disturbing chill between Shurmur and Hillis at the moment and it’s mostly Shurmur’s fault. It stems not from anything that happened in the Titans game but from the decision, apparently Hillis’, to not play the previous week against Miami.

Hillis was replaced by Montario Hardesty and while Hardesty had a nice game, it wasn’t a breakout performance. Yet when it mattered most against the Titans on Sunday, more often than not it was Hardesty on the field and Hillis left on the sidelines to ponder his fate. Even as Hardesty was proving his inability to catch a 3-yard pass consistently, Shurmur stayed with him and left Hillis to stew in his juices. You could see the frustration in Hillis’ face.

The average fan can’t possibly know what it takes to suit up in a NFL game, particularly when you’re hurt or not feeling well. But I got a feeling that the average NFL fan wouldn’t have gone to his day job with a strep throat, a fever and having just lost 10 pounds because of the flew. That’s why companies have sick days.

But the NFL is a place where guys are supposed to play sick and hurt. The warrior mentality predominates and there’s little tolerance for any player who doesn’t suit up unless his limb is literally hanging by a thread, just ask Jay Cutler.

So it’s not a surprise that there are players, former and active, among the Browns who are grumbling about Hillis not playing against Miami a week ago. But the biggest grumbler seems to be Shurmur, who for reasons pointed or petty has decided it’s best to let the question of Hillis’ commitment to the team linger.

After the game, Shurmur had a chance to step up and protect Hillis and decided instead to double down on the message he already was sending throughout the game by keeping Hillis on the sidelines. As the media probed Shurmur every which way to find out why he used Hillis so strangely against the Titans, the questioning naturally turned to the circumstances of the week before.

Shurmur said, succinctly, “he was sick. That was my understanding.” See, that’s the kind of mind games that coaches like to play. Former head coach Eric Mangini made a hobby out of doing just that. Shurmur could have stood up and protected his running back by saying “Peyton was sick. I assessed his condition and he was in no shape to play against the Dolphins. I didn’t want him getting even sicker because I knew we’d need him against Tennessee, so I sent him home. That’s the whole story and there is nothing more to it.”

But instead Shurmur left Hillis dangling with his “that was my understanding” comment and said nothing, really, in his press conference on Monday to take the sting out of that statement. It speaks volumes. It tells you that Shurmur didn’t buy Hillis’ reasoning and it was also a message to the other players that they shouldn’t think of ever using the same excuse to miss a game. Maybe that’s why Alex Mack played with appendicitis.

But it also was an unnecessary and petty move by Shurmur to keep a controversy going that doesn’t serve the team dynamic well. No good can really come from having Hillis’ teammates question his commitment and dedication.

Meanwhile, Hillis was doing his own talking in the locker room after Sunday’s game, letting the media know that he and the head coach are indeed seeing things differently. When a player is upset with his playing time or the quality of plays being called when he is in, he always tells the media that they will need to ask the coach that question.

Hillis’ postgame quotes were full of “I just run the plays that are called” and “you’ll have to ask the coach about that” phrasing. It’s the typical passive-aggressive way a player challenges a coach without calling him out publicly. Otherwise, a player like Hillis would have just toed the company line with a perfunctory “we just didn’t execute” explanation of why a play didn’t work.

So now Shurmur has a full-fledged locker room problem on his hands and one that he initiated. It will be interesting to see how he gets out of it or if he even wants to. Monday’s press conference suggested that he was taking the easy road with a “controversy, what controversy?” approach. Some head coaches, like Mangini for instance, just let the pot boil and Shurmur’s mostly done the same. Maybe that’s effective but there is at least 10 years of dysfunction within this franchise to suggest that it’s not very successful to building a team in this town.

This year’s bye week is early but it didn’t come a moment to soon. There’s work to be done and much of it is inside Shurmur’s head. He’ll either recognize his mistakes and get them corrected or he’ll take the road traveled by the Manginis and Josh McDaniels of the world and insist on his own correctness as he drags the team further down. In Cleveland we’ve already seen the latter. It would be refreshing to see the former.

This is your time, so welcome to Cleveland, Pat Shurmur.

Beaten Down and Broken

2011-10-02T17:06:00.003-04:00

If a team is going to lose it might as well do so in epic fashion. At least the Cleveland Browns got that part right and not much else as they were pummeled at the hands of the Tennessee Titans, 31-13.

If there's any consolation to the fans, it's that the players will have to watch films of this mess all week. The fans won't have to look at this again.

There were enough missed tackles of all shapes and sizes that helped the Titans build a 24-6 lead late in the third quarter. And while those missed tackles are worth considering, and they will be, the signature play of the day came just at that point, the Browns down 24-6 and with the ball.

Starting at their own 18 yard line, Colt McCoy and the Browns looked as if they were finally putting something together with plenty of time to still do so. Eighteen points isn't an insurmountable lead and while the offense was once again waking up late, at least they now looked like they had the sleep out of their eyes.

After an 18-yard pass to Ben Watson took the ball to the Titans' 29-yard line and gave the Browns a first down, McCoy was flushed from the pocked and ran to his left. As he was spotting Peyton Hillis come across the back of the end zone, McCoy was hit and severely under threw the ball into the waiting arms of safety Jordan Babineaux at the 3-yard line.

Now let's freeze the action right there for a moment.

This wasn't a case of McCoy throwing it in the flat to a defensive player who jumped an out route and had essentially an open freeway to the end zone. Instead, Babineaux was surrounded by Browns players when he caught the ball. Nonetheless, Babineaux weaved his way first down the side lines and then through the middle of the field on his way to the end zone. As he was doing so, Babineaux was hardly touched as literally no one on the offense made any real effort to disrupt his journey.

Maybe they all had the Titans' defense in their fantasy league.

The Babineaux touchdown gave the Titans a 31-6 lead that was as safe as about 94% of the plays that head coach/offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur was calling all day.

Maybe it's a measure of the Browns' resilience or a measure of how confident the Titans felt at that point, but McCoy and the Browns did actually respond to that rather deflating touchdown return by Babineaux (and yes, I keep saying his name because it's kind of fun to type it). Employing a no-huddle offense and simultaneously making the case for sticking with that strategy from here on out, the Browns put together a 15 play 69 yard drive that culminated in a 18-yard touchdown pass to a wide open Watson in the end zone. It brought the Browns to a more respectable 31-13 score but probably frustrated the fans even more.

Why? For the same reason that last week's win frustrated the fans. It's not exactly clear why the Browns' offense struggles so often and yet can look so good in spurts. As if to prove the point, following the Watson touchdown the Browns got the ball right back after a Mike Adams interception and the offense went right back into slumber mode thanks mostly to underneath passes that had no chance of getting additional yards anyway or dropped passes. The lack of production there didn't seal the Titans' victory but only because it had already been sealed much earlier.

There are any number of places to start when considering why this offense struggles. But let's start with the running game.

One of the things that Shurmur is going to have to decide pretty quickly is whether he has two running backs or one starter and a backup. Hillis, either still suffering the effects of last week's illness or in Shurmur's dog house for some unspecified reason, yielded a fair amount of his playing time to Montario Hardesty. All that really did is give neither player a chance to stay in the offensive flow long enough to be effective.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that Shurmur really didn't seem all that committed to the run anyway, so it probably didn't matter all that much whether it was Hillis or Hardesty in the backfield. You can blame it on the fact that the Browns were so far behind as the reason for the offensive imbalance, but the game plan looked from the outset like the running attack was being used solely as a decoy.

I'm going to freeze the action right here for another moment. As much as I've praised McCoy and still believe he's a long-term answer at quarterback, he has more work to do, particularly if he's going to sell this offense to opposing defenses. At times he does a very nice job on play action passing because he actually concentrates on trying to make the play look initially like a run. Too often, though, McCoy goes through the motions and makes a perfunctory move that fools no one, especially the linebackers who are supposed to freeze in place thus giving the tight ends the extra step they need to get open.

For a quarterback and a head coach that rely so much on the tight ends, you'd think McCoy would be good at this move. It's not that he's bad, it's that he's inconsistent. This has to get better for the play action to be much more effective.

Back to the action.

The West Coast offense isn't necessarily designed to stretch defenses but it also seemed like Shurmur's primary goal throughout was to try and give McCoy more confidence in the passing game by calling for so many short underneath routes. Mission accomplished, I suppose. McCoy had a boatload of completions (40-61) and a decent amount of yardage (350) but ultimately that accounted for just 13 points and that is never good enough.

Part of the reason, of course, is that the Browns wide receivers just aren't very good. Mohamed Massaquoi had 6 quiet receptions. Brian Robiski had his first three catches of the season none of which were particularly meaningful. Josh Cribbs, until he proves differently, is on the field simply as a decoy. His route running just isn't consistently good enough for defenses to worry about him. That leaves Greg Little who, though playing well in spurts, is still learning.

As a result, McCoy has to consistently lean on his three tight ends, who are mostly reliable, and the running backs to keep the passing game moving forward. But one of the more obvious points proven in that regard is that Hardesty can't catch very well with nearly has many drops (4) as receptions (5).

Put that together and in that context, the 13 points really isn't that hard to explain, yardage gained and time of possession notwithstanding.

It's a fair point if you want to argue it that when a team only scores 13 points it shouldn't expect to win. I wouldn't necessarily disagree. But it's only part of the story as to why this loss was so complete. The other part of the story is the defense played like it was starting to believe its press clippings.

One of the reasons the Titans didn't seem like they had the ball much had to do with their ability to score quickly early on when good defensive play was needed most and gotten least.

After going 3 and out on their first possession, the Titans rectified it on their next. Starting from their own 40-yard line following a Phil Dawson kick off that went out of bounds (which took the shine on his 48-yard field goal moments before) Matt Hasselback moved the Titans quickly down the field finding tight end Craig Stevens for an 18-yard touchdown pass. It put the Titans up 7-3, a lead it didn't relinquish.

The thing about the Stevens catch is that it was the result of a mental mistake by safety T. J. Ward. With Stevens heading toward the left corner of the end zone, Ward worked back toward the middle instead. Stevens was wide open as a result.

But an even bigger defensive blunder came on Hasselback's next pass, which followed a Browns drive that led to a Dawson 51-yard field goal. On first and 10 from their own 20 yard line, receiver Jared Cook ran right past linebacker Scott Fujita, who was on the coverage. Defensive back Usama Young was late helping out (which is being generous because Young was actually nowhere to be found initially) and then took a horrible angle to Cook while Fujita ran futilty behind. Young wiffed at the tackle and Cook went the distance untouched. That pushed the lead to 14-6.

The Titans then pushed the lead even further with a minute remaining in the second quarter on a 4-yard pass to Damien Williams. But the real back breaker on that drive was two plays earlier when Nate Washington turned a short pass into a 57-yard gain that got the ball to the Cleveland 4 yard line in the first place. Chalk that one up, too, to poor tackling and a general lack of effort. It's really the same thing.

It matters little that from that point forward, the Titans only had 3 more points on offense. They didn't need any more. The damage was done.

As much as last week's last minute win was a confidence builder, this week's loss was that much more demoralizing. It would be one thing if the Browns had kept some of the momentum from that victory but instead they came out as if they were 0-3 instead of 2-1. In other words, just when the team answers one question, it raises a whole bunch of new ones.

Where do they go from here? To the bye week first and to Oakland next, but that's logistics. Where they really go is in Shurmur's hands. And like all the coaches who have tried and failed before him, he probably won't find enough time, even with a bye week, to figure it all out.

Why the Long Face?

2011-09-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

When it comes to the Cleveland Browns of recent vintage, by which I mean at least the last 10 years, I’m used to a fair amount of debate about what they need to do in order to finally win a game. What will take some getting used to is the fair amount of debate about what they need to do to improve the quality of their wins.

Scanning the internets and listening to various talking heads around and about town, one would think that the Browns were 0-3 and headed for another season of abject futility. Ok, so the jury is still out on whether this season will end up in abject futility. But for now why the long faces?

All of this whining just proves the point that the two worse things in life are not getting what you want and getting what you want.

Fans have been pining for a team with both an identity and a chance. Both are clearly emerging and yet all many of them can think to do is curse their fate.

I understand that all the various folks covering this team have air time to fill and column inches to write. But if I see another column like Beacon Journal reporter Nate Ulrich’s weekly Browns Report Card, my head, as Rob Lowe’s character on Parks and Recreation might say, will literally explode.

This incessant need to grade things is what’s come to pass for real analysis these days, as if the subtlety and nuance of football (or any complex activity, actually) could be reduced to one or two pithy paragraphs.

What’s so funny about Ulrich’s report card (and the dozens like it) is that the Browns graded out to about a C in his book. Apparently there’s no extra credit given for winning the friggin’ game.

Maybe it’s because winning isn’t experienced much in these parts so we tend to forge that professional sports especially is a bottom line business and the fact remains that a Browns win, even if it looked like a loss, is still far better for the franchise then another Browns’ loss that looked like a win.

In this town there is no longer any upside to being a fan unless it’s always been your goal to be miserable. Maybe we come by the perpetual dark cloud hanging over us honestly, but it’s no longer sufficient to simply recall the bad ol’ days, it’s now mandatory that they inform even the smallest of points of success.

There’s no question that the Browns’ offense looked like crap on Sunday. As amateurs we’d like to believe that teams play one game a week so it’s not too much to ask for that team to play with sufficient emotion and effort. But it’s never as easy as it seems from the comfort of our comfortable chairs.

Maybe it was the absence of Peyton Hillis that knocked Colt McCoy off his moorings, but I doubt it. Lost in all of this is that McCoy was starting just his 9th pro game and just his third under this latest offensive system. For the most part, last season was a total waste of everyone’s time, including McCoy’s, and thus his progress (or lack thereof) must be judged in the context of all that’s taken place in his short career.

I’m not going to dwell on McCoy’s feeling that the Eric Mangini/Brian Daboll offensive dynamo machine treated him like a non-person. That was just Mangini’s way of letting high priced athletes understand that indeed their shit does stink. And I’m not going to dwell on how most of this is Mike Holmgren’s fault because, well, I just devoted an entire column to that very subject.

Instead I’ll just dwell on the more objective observation that neither Tom Brady nor Peyton Manning were Tom Brady or Peyton Manning after 9 starts. That’s not to compare McCoy to those two now but it is to compare McCoy to those two then because, like those two, McCoy was a pretty fair college quarterback.

So McCoy is playing unevenly in the way that newbie NFL quarterbacks tend to play. It’s one thing to know how to read a defense but reading it in the context of the NFL is far different. The players across the board are better. It’s as if the quarterback is facing a college all star team each and every week.

So it’s not a surprise that a young quarterback will have up and down weeks. There will be times when he looks great and other times when he looks like Derek Anderson and much of it has to do with the subtle changes and differences he faces by each week’s opponent.

But when it mattered most, McCoy stepped forward and led the team on a career-defining drive. McCoy was poised, found the right receivers at the right moment and made the throws he had to in order to put the team in a position to win.

Maybe it’s fair to complain about an offense playing new schemes that has been together for only 3 actual games. It’s what they get paid to do. But to micro-analyze each play while forgetting its most important function, which is to score touchdowns, is a fool’s game. You’ll never lose money taking the team that finds a way to win over the team that looks good losing.

There’s been some grumbling, too, about the defense. To me it looked like the Browns’ defensive line was getting manhandled most of the game by the Dolphins’ offensive line, but the statistics would indicate otherwise. Reggie Bush was mostly a non-factor, but Daniel Thomas did have 95 yards. Yet, quarterback Chad Henne was sacked 5 times. Yet when the Dolphins needed 1 or two yards, their offensive line gave them the push they needed, consistently and that seemed rather troubling, until it didn’t.

The fact is that no defense is going to hold any offense in the NFL to three-and-out consistently. Offenses have the benefit of knowing the play. Defenses can just guess. Things happen and teams move the ball (except those few years when the Browns would go weeks without scoring on offense).

What is far more important is how the team responds when it’s tested and on that the Browns’ defense on Sunday accorded itself well.

I’m not really referring to the lack of touchdowns by the Dolphins’ offense when it approached the red zone. It’s pretty clear after three Dolphins games that Dolphins’ offensive coordinator Brian Daboll loses his nerve when he needs it most. The Dolphins don’t score touchdowns because they don’t take chances, more concerned with preserving any scoring opportunity then they are with maximizing those opportunities.

What I am referring to is that final drive by the Dolphins. Based on the ebb and flow of the game, there was no reason to think that the Dolphins wouldn’t move the ball into reasonable field goal territory. Chad Henne had been incredibly efficient and despite the 5 sacks, which were due more to coverage than pressure, the offensive line was protecting him.

But that was precisely the point when the defensive line stepped forward and put enough pressure on Henne to force him to throw more quickly then he had been used to the entire game. Three incomplete passes and an interception later, the game was sealed and, not coincidentally, the complaining began.

There isn’t any real question that this Browns team needs to continue getting better in order to be an actual force in the NFL, but the key word in that sentence is “continue” and not “better.” It’s already a better team.

The step between better and good can be huge but that’s no reason to bemoan the process it takes to make it. There is a point at which it makes more sense to admire the forest and ignore the trees. This is one of those times.

Just In Time

2011-09-25T17:30:00.002-04:00

The official reason the Cleveland Browns are now 2-1 instead of 1-2 is because defensive back Mike Adams intercepted a crucial 4th and 10 pass from Miami Dolphins quarterback Chad Henne with 21 seconds remaining as the Dolphins were attempting to angle their way into field goal range to kick a game winner. But the real reason the Cleveland Browns are now 2-1 instead of 1-2 is because it was the Browns quarterback, Colt McCoy, who made plays when plays had to be made, tossing a game winning 14 yard pass to an acrobatic Mohamed Massaquoi that helped push the Browns to a 17-16 victory.

It's not like any aspect of the win was easy, but let's just start where it ended. McCoy, struggling most of the day under the pressure of the Dolphins' defensive line, put together a career-defining 65-yard drive that culminated with the pass to Massaquoi. With the Browns trailing by 6 with 3:23 remaining and appearing mostly stagnant all day, McCoy pulled it all back together at just the right moment.

Starting from the team's 20-yard line after a Dan Carpenter 38-yard field goal had extended the Dolphins lead to 16-10, McCoy started first by finding Greg Little who turned what should have been short passes into longer gains to keep the team moving forward. By the time the two-minute warning was given, the Browns were on their own 46-yard line and sitting with two time outs.

Little then turned another short pass into a first down and, for good measure, stopped the clock by going out of bounds. Then came the first real gut check moment. McCoy threw incomplete to Brian Robiskie (suspend the disbelief). A pass to tight end Ben Watson yielded 6 yards but a comebacker to Watson fell incomplete. With 4th and 4 at the Dolphins' 37-yard line, McCoy found Montario Hardesty wide open in the flat and Hardesty turned it into a crucial 10-yard gain and first down.

McCoy then threw incomplete twice to tight end Alex Smith. On third down, an aging Jason Taylor tried to get a jump on Browns' left tackle Joe Thomas and went offsides. It nullified an incomplete pass to Josh Cribbs that would have been another pucker-inducing moment. McCoy used the opportunity to find tight end Evan Moore for 8 yards and another first down. Then, with 45 seconds remaining, McCoy found Massaquoi in the corner of the end zone. Massaquoi leaped and, like Cribbs on an earlier touchdown pass from McCoy, caught the ball, got two feet in and fell to the ground. Dawson added the extra point to give the Browns their margin of victory.

Here's where things got strange. As bad as the Browns' offense struggled all day, especially on offense, the officiating crew struggled more. They called personal fouls on both sides of the ball that demonstrated that they were watching the game about as closely as Don Criqui. (Let me stop progress for a moment to tell you one of the great unintended but funniest lines I've heard in awhile. Criqui referred to Dolphins' guard Robert Incognito as underrated. What else could he be with a name like that?)

But here is where the officiating crew's foibles almost cost the Browns. After Massaquoi caught the ball, he fell to the ground, by himself, exhausted but exhilarated. Watson, by himself, came over to the prone Massaquoi and congratulated him. The officials threw a flag claiming that this was essentially an impermissible group celebration. Television replays demonstrated just how poor of a call it really was.

It was a 15-yard penalty that forced Dawson to kick off from the Browns' 20-yard line, assuring the Dolphins an opportunity for a decent return. To make matters worse, Dmitri Patterson was then flagged for a horse collar tackle on the return (a questionable call as well as it appeared that Patterson had kick returner Clyde Gates by the left shoulder pad and not the back) giving the Dolphins the ball at the Cleveland 47-yard line.

But Henne, who was efficient early but not when it counted, threw incomplete three straight times and then threw it into the arms of a waiting Adams to send the Dolphins and their beleaguered head coach Tony Sparano to an 0-3 loss.

Had Henne been able to move the Dolphins into field goal position and win the game, you could almost count the seconds it would take for the league office to issue an apology to the Browns because they were victimized but such an awful call. Now it will probably be dealt with behind the scenes.

Where it all went wrong for the Dolphins is both simple and complex. The Dolphins aren't really a very good team. They have some skill players but lack the ability to put it all together in a cohesive manner. Henne runs hot and cold but even when he's hot he's just very average anyway. Brandon Marshall is a good receiver but is mentally weak and easily distracted, particularly when the ball isn't coming his way. Reggie Bush is a change of pace back masquerading as a feature back and Brian Daboll, who's charged with coordinating all this mess, is probably going to be out of work at the end of the season. He's not very good at what he does and I'm being nice here.

And yet the Dolphins for the most part controlled the game, which says something as well about the Browns. Games are supposedly won in the trenches but this one was not. The Dolphins controlled those trenches on both sides of the ball. Their offensive line mostly had its way with the Browns' defensive line despite giving up 5 sacks. Most of those were on Henne who tends to alternately hold on to the ball too long or scramble around just enough to get sacked.

Meanwhile the Dolphins' offense was dictating the pace of the game. Henne, stepping outside himself early, completed pass after pass, helped tremendously by a lack of pressure, and seemed to move the ball almost at will. Couple that with a poor tackling day by the defense generally and it's difficult to explain exactly why the Dolphins only came away with 16 points. They just did and heads will roll in Miami. Good.

It's not all that hard though to explain why the Browns only had 17 points. Perhaps they were undone just a bit from the outset by the inability of Peyton Hillis to play due to strep throat. Hardesty though showed some of the same flashes both as a runner and as a receiver. He had 14 carries for 67 yards and 3 receptions for 19 yards.

Mostly though McCoy was just off on his throws. He missed open receivers and through to the wrong sides of others. He tried repeatedly to squeeze in passes that looked ill advised. He was only 19-39 for 210 yards. As a result the West Coast offense was mostly a Dead End offense except on three drives, the most important of which was the last.

Before that, it wasn't until the Browns' fourth drive of the game that they looked like they were even all that much interested in playing the game. On that drive, McCoy hit Watson for 13 yards on a 3rd and 12 play for only the second first down of the game. Two plays later, McCoy, rolling to his right, threw the ball purposely high to the back of the end zone and in the direction of Cribbs. Either Cribbs was going to jump and get it or it would fall incomplete. Cribbs jumped and got it and the Browns pulled to a 7-7 tie. It more than made up for a bad drop Cribbs had on an earlier drive. In total it showed why Cribbs is still a work in progress as a receiver and also why patience when it comes to Cribbs is a good thing.

The Browns offense wouldn't get going again until its opening drive of the second half. Looking fresh after the 15 minutes rest, the Browns moved from their own 20 to the Dolphins' 20-yard line. But then Watson had a false start penalty, pushing the Browns into a 1st and 15. Watson got 13 of those yards back on the next play on a toss from McCoy but then a Hardesty run gained nothing and McCoy threw incomplete to Watson, setting up a 30-yard Dawson field goal that tied the game at 10-10.

From that point forward, which was, sadly, the 10:37 mark of the 3rd quarter, the Browns defense went back to sleep. Fortunately they woke up just in time, with 3:23 remaining, and it made all the difference in the game.

It's a measure of progress in some ways that fans can now complain about how a win was more difficult than it had to be. There was certainly a time (and if you have the time I'll be glad to recount it again in excruciating detail. Didn't think so.) when any Browns win was a reason to overturn cars and set couches on fire. Now we're being just a tad picky, which is definitely a more fun place to be.

Though this wasn't a beauty, it was certainly all right. Besides, it's not like there wasn't something substantial accomplished. For all the missteps in the game, McCoy demonstrated what comes of hard work and study. When the Browns and head coach Pat Shurmur needed McCoy most, the product of that hard work and study was at hand.

McCoy wasn't improvising at the end so much as he was running an accelerated version of what he well understood the offense to be. There wasn't panic and there wasn't confusion. It was mostly methodical, which is what these things are supposed to be.

It may be awhile before the value of McCoy's clutch performance will be properly appreciated, but rest assured that time will come. The next time the Browns and McCoy face a similar situation, and in the NFL that's an almost weekly occurrence, they won't do so with their hands on their hips and a defeatist “here we go again” thought running through their heads. The Dolphins won't be able to say the same thing and that's why the Browns are now 2-1 and the Dolphins are 0-3.

Holmgren's Massive Miscalculation

2011-09-20T20:01:00.001-04:00

It wasn’t too long ago that the conventional wisdom of the NFL know-it-alls was that rookie quarterbacks of any stripe or pedigree had to sit a few years before entering the harsh reality of professional football.

That’s the wisdom certainly the Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren employed when he drafted University of Texas wunderkind Colt McCoy in the third round last season. Holmgren made no secret of his plan to build McCoy’s skills by essentially having him watch a washed-up Jake Delhomme muddle his way through the season.

Well that didn’t work out quite as planned and McCoy was forced into starting the team’s last six games because Delhomme was injured and ineffective and so too was his primary back up, Seneca Wallace.

But a funny thing happened in those six games. McCoy showed enough promise that Holmgren didn’t just accelerate the learning curve for him a bit. Instead he anointed McCoy the starter going into the 2011 season, a position McCoy occupies right now.

The way this situation has ultimately played out makes me question the wisdom behind Holmgren’s initial plan. It also leaves me hoping that more than anything else, the person who learned the most last season wasn’t McCoy but Holmgren.

In sum and substance, the 2010 season was the product of a major miscalculation on Holmgren’s part. Whatever conventional wisdom that Holmgren used in deciding to sit McCoy was more in the nature of theory borne out of Holmgren’s old school ways then it was an example of more contemporary thinking. As a quarterbacks coach first and foremost, Holmgren tends to respect the demands of the position a tad too much. Perhaps Holmgren was spending too much time ensconced in the grind of coaching Seattle to notice that young quarterbacks entering the NFL these days are light years ahead of their counterparts a generation ago when Holmgren first started coaching.

McCoy, for example, is a coach’s son. But more than that, McCoy went through all manner of formalized training, from all the various camps he attended during his high school years to the even more formalized undertakings as a college athlete. McCoy and many like him specialized early and were schooled accordingly because, frankly, that’s how young athletes are taught these days. Add to that the amount of games McCoy played while at a major college and you start to understand that McCoy wasn’t just a wet behind the ears kind of kid when he came to the NFL.

And McCoy is just the local example. Sam Bradford in St. Louis played every snap for the Rams during his rookie season. Joe Flacco essentially did the same thing in Baltimore. The same is true for Matt Ryan in Atlanta. The list goes on and on. Cam Newton, perhaps the least experienced of this entire bunch, is probably putting the final nails in the coffin of old school conventional wisdom when it comes to playing rookie quarterbacks.

All of this is a long way of saying that for as much good as Holmgren has done and has brought to the Browns’ franchise, he blew it when it came to McCoy and the team has suffered because of it.

Holmgren was hired in 2009 during the midst of another franchise meltdown as the result of an impetuous and ill-informed decision by owner Randy Lerner to hire Eric Mangini just days after being fired by the New York Jets.

Mangini got off on the wrong foot and then proceeded to double down repeatedly on his tendencies to lose friends and alienate associates so quickly and forcefully in his first season that it actually seemed like he wouldn’t make it through 16 games. He did make it though it was obvious that the Holmgren hiring meant a limited run for the Mangini regime.

It was never really clear why Holmgren decided to give Mangini a second season. Even if he thought Mangini might improve, it would never have been enough. The two are philosophical opposites when it comes to how the game is played and coached and as consistent with his stubborn nature Mangini had no interest in altering his own views in order to conform to those of his boss.

Thus brought the completely lost season of 2010. Nothing substantive was accomplished and nothing substantive was carried over into this season.

This is why I bristle every time I hear that the Browns were impacted the most by the lockout. It didn’t have to be that way. It was clear well before the 2010 season even started that there would be a lockout following it just as it was clear well before the 2010 season that Holmgren’s lasting mark on the franchise would be to convert it to something more fitting to his style.

If Holmgren wasn’t prepared to coach in 2010 then he should have found Pat Shurmur a year earlier (who easily would have taken the Browns’ gig over an offensive coordinator position in 2010) and really used the season as a springboard for this one. Had Shurmur been in Cleveland in 2010, I have every confidence that he could have prevailed on Holmgren to relinquish his antiquated thinking about rookie quarterbacks and fans would have seen McCoy and the West Coast offense from the first game forward.

Instead, because of Holmgren’s dithering, the Browns lost any chance to enter 2011 with anything resembling momentum and were forced instead to use a truncated preseason to make the major changes fans are just now starting to see on the field. The stutter steps of the first two games offensively are as sure a sign as any that the nuances of the West Coast offense aren’t easily mastered.

This isn’t to suggest that Holmgren has been a disaster in Cleveland because that is clearly not the case. Holmgren has brought a level of professionalism to this franchise that it hasn’t had in two decades. Lerner, left to his own devices, would have kept hiring and firing indiscriminately based on the last person who happened to have his ear. With Holmgren around, Lerner can go back to do whatever it is that rich unemployed guys like him do with their time and we’re all the better for it.

And while I’m a fan of Holmgren generally and believe that the overall talent on this team has improved dramatically in his short time, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that whatever progress the Browns in 2011 might make, it won’t be nearly as much as they could have if Holmgren hadn’t been asleep at the switch from outset.

I understand that Holmgren wanted to walk around with kid gloves and not upset the apple cart from day one. It was in marked contrast of course to how Mangini came in, ham-handed and almost deliberately going out of his way to find apple carts to upset. But it still doesn’t explain precisely why Holmgren let this franchise lose an entire season just so that he could implement what he planned to implement anyway on the day he was hired.

There’s no way of knowing what kind of shelf life McCoy will have as a quarterback in this league. But he does possess not just the requisite physical skills but also the requisite intangibles to be successful. Injuries more than anything else will dictate his future.

And for every game like McCoy played against Cincinnati, there will be a counterbalance represented by the kind of game he played against Indianapolis. That’s what learning actually looks like in 3-D. It’s just that by this point both the Browns and McCoy could be through most of these hard lessons had Holmgren been more assertive or progressive in his thinking. It’s become the cliché by which Cleveland sports fans live their lives, but it looks like it will be another year until the Browns actually start producing real results.

The Almost Closer

2011-09-18T17:28:00.005-04:00

It's far too early to call anyone on the Cleveland Browns “the Closer,” but if and when that time comes, running back Peyton Hillis will be the most likely candidate. Eschewing a trend where his team couldn't seem to close out games with 4th quarter leads, Hillis took matters into his own hands. With 4 minutes remaining and the Browns nursing a precarious 5 point lead, Hillis turned a simple off tackle run into a 24-yard scamper that helped push the Browns to a 27-19 win over the (wait for it) winless Indianapolis Colts.

A late Phil Dawson followed by the Colts' first touchdown in two games provided the final margin of victory.

For much of the game, it looked as if NFL films had used some technical wizardry to run a loop of last week's Browns-Bengals match up, colorizing the Bengals to look like the Colts. The Browns' defense looked flat-footed as the Bengals moved the ball twice early, giving the writers in the press box all sorts of really clever ideas about how they could say that the Browns looked to be as stuck in the mud as their charter plane was on the Hopkins airport runway.

But the Colts, like the Bengals the week before, had to settle for field goals when they really needed touchdowns allowing the Browns once again to stay close in a game that could have gotten out of hand early.

And while the Browns' offense wasn't exactly dynamic, it wasn't stuck in neutral either. Behind a far more efficient Colt McCoy, the Browns used the second quarter once again to great effect with two touchdowns to run out to a 14-9 half time lead which had to give some in the crowd a sort of “uh oh” moment.

This time the Browns' defense didn't get caught napping, Colts quarterback Kerry Collins couldn't channel Bruce Gradkowski, and the Browns were able to secure for Pat Shurmur his first win of his career with 13 fourth quarter points that sent Colts fans home miserable and scratching themselves.

But let's be honest with each other for a moment. It's not like this victory came easy, especially in contrast with the Houston Texans' beat down of this same, pitiful Colts team a week before. But the Browns needed a victory, especially one in which they demonstrated they can hold on to late leads, and it matters little whether it was frustrating or folly.

For any Browns fan watching the game (and gosh is it painful at times to listen to Marv Albert and Rich Gannon), the cameras panning a despondent Colts' crowd had to look familiar.

We know that look, don't we? It's the elbows on the knees, the chin resting on the hands feeling of resignation as your team runs one futile series after another. But no one in this neck of the woods is going to feel sorry for the Colts. Football tends to show no mercy and the Colts are being punished for building both an offense and a defense around Peyton Manning, who may not play again this season.

Collins, of course, is a big part of the problem. He's always just been good enough to stay in the league but never good enough to be a consistent threat. I'd say he looked like an aging Joe Bauserman (my second straight Browns' game story reference to Bauserman, by the way) but I actually think Bauserman might be older. In any case, Collins' inability to have anything resembling a grasp of the Colts' offense allowed the Browns' defense to mostly contain the Colts until the last gasp end of the game touchdown.

While the Colts these days aren't particularly stout opposition, let's at least acknowledge some progress for the Browns. As noted, McCoy was far more efficient. He was 22-32 for 211 yards and 1 touchdown, a nice 16-yard pass that McCoy squeezed into tight end Evan Moore in the back of the Colts' end zone. (Not to pick nits or anything, but in truth McCoy picked the tougher of the two throws on that play. Moore was open, but so too was Hillis near the goal line with no one near him. A simple pitch to Hillis would have resulted in a score as well.)

But perhaps the biggest improvement on offense anyway came in the simple fact that third down was not the enemy this week. The Browns were 8-16 on third down, a significant step forward from last week's rather Buckeyes' like 4-15. And it wasn't necessarily due to the Browns consistently being in short yardage situations on 3rd down although that helped. It was more due to good decision making by McCoy, some slippery running by receivers who caught the ball short and turned it into first downs and, occasionally some good inside running by Hillis.

The other thing that's trending for this Browns' offense is the emergence of both Cribbs and Greg Little as its two main receivers with Mohamed Massaquoi the third option. Brian Robiskie, though he did start the game, doesn't appear as though he'll ever figure out the pro game as he becomes increasingly irrelevant. Indeed if Robiskie sticks around and stays active for every game this season it will be solely because the receiving corps generally is among the thinnest groups on the roster.

It's sad, really, that Roskie isn't any sort of threat. He runs good routes and he has good hands. But there is no elusiveness in his game, he can't break out of a route to help his quarterback and he simply rarely is open. Oh well, that's fodder for another column. Let's stick to the main themes.

Heading into the game, the conventional wisdom was that the Browns would work the run and try to be opportunistic with the pass. And while they did work extremely hard to try and establish the run, the Colts were mostly ready for it. Look at it this way. Hillis had 26 carries for 70 yards and 1 carry for 24 yards.

Unquestionably Hillis is the Browns' best runner, but it will be interesting to understand the thinking of Shurmur, who, after all, serves as his own offensive coordinator, as to why Montario Hardesty only got three carries. Perhaps even more interesting will be why, when the Browns had the ball inside the Colts' 5-yard line early in the 4th quarter and the first real chance to put the game away, Shurmur had Hillis out of the game in favor of Hardesty. Two Hardesty runs that went for naught and then an incomplete pass on third down forced a Phil Dawson field goal that made it 17-12. A 21-12 lead at that moment would have been huge.

The Browns' defense, still themselves learning new schemes and likewise in need of more practice time, were in their usual bend but don't quite break mode. Of Adam Vinitieri's 4 field goals, three were from the 21-yard line or less and each followed drives of at least 9 plays. That's a testament both to the Colts, with Collins behind center, not being able to finish drives and the Browns' defense tightening at just the right time.

The Colts did have some success in the running game. Joseph Addai had 14 carries for 64 yards and Copley's Delone Carter had 11 carries for 46 yards,. But with Collins unable to connect with his receivers until garbage time late, the running game became mostly an interesting diversion.

The Browns' defensive line got decent pressure on Collins throughout the game. He was sacked twice, once each by Jabaal Sheard and Ahtyba Rubin, and pressured into fumbling deep in Colts' territory. That fumble, recovered by Sheard, led to a 23-yard field goal by Dawson with just over three minutes remaining. In fact, as much as young players like Joe Haden and T.J. Ward get most of the love from the press on defense, Sheard and Phil Taylor might be more talented. With Rubin in the middle, the Browns' defensive line is something other teams will have to scheme against. The Colts certainly did.

If there was one thing more than anything that was troubling was that the Browns fumbled four times, though they lost only one. That would be the fumble by Hillis at the Colts' 40-yard line on the Browns' first drive of the third quarter. It led to a Vinitiari field goal when, again, a Collins-led touchdown was needed.

Bad teams may not be able to overcome mistakes, but when one bad team plays another and they're both making those kinds of mistakes (Collins had a fumble and an interception) someone is going to overcome it. It's a measure really of the state of the Colts at the moment that it would be the Browns.

There is an adage in the NFL that the biggest leap teams make is from the first game to the second. For the Browns it wasn't so much a leap as it was a puddle jump. On the other hand, they didn't go backward and for the first time since 2007 they have won at least one game before losing at least three. That should keep the locals chomping for another week as an average Miami comes to town giving the Browns a real chance to have their first winning record after three games since 2002.