Lingering Items--Branding Edition

The Cleveland Browns’ Johnny Football is the new Johnny Paycheck, having just signed a 4-year $8 million contract with just over $4 million of it guaranteed.  That means we’re about 4 months away from someone, Manziel’s agent for example, looking to redo it on the heels of a couple of completed passes, one of which was for a touchdown.

But on the plus side we’re probably mere weeks, maybe days, away from Johnny Paycheck doing something completely stupid and over the top with his bonus money.  Think Steve Martin’s Navin Johnson character in The Jerk after he became famous, just gaudier.

The last time I visited the status of Cleveland’s premier party boy, Manziel, he was an unsigned gallivant building brand awareness as this generation’s Joe Namath, but with an Instagram account.  In the intervening weeks about the only thing that’s changed, other than a relatively modest rookie contract based on his relatively modest draft status is that his head coach, Mike Pettine, named Brian Hoyer the starting quarterback heading into training camp.

Ok, another thing changed.  Slowly, methodically, the players are aligning behind Hoyer to the exclusion of Manziel, lineman Paul Krueger being one, former Browns’ quarterback Brady Quinn being another. Neither were particularly negative but the first shots across the bow by players who have been there.

Krueger criticized by his constant positive references to Brian Hoyer.  It was telling.  Quinn was more direct, rightly noting that others in the locker room tend to look to the quarterback and how he conducts his business and right now most of Johnny Paycheck’s business is of the drinking, partying and carrying on variety.

Manziel will try the patience of his fellow players, the coaching staff and the fans on a daily basis.  He already is.  Every time a player or Pettine has to respond to a media inquiry about Johnny Paycheck is a minute that Pettine could have spent on almost anything else.  This is a franchise, a coaching staff, a roster that can’t afford any wasted minutes and Manziel has used up any reasonable allocation already.

The arc of these sorts of things is always the same.  An immature kid with too much money pushes the limits of his new found status.  At first it seems reckless but in a fun, vicarious sort of way.  Think Manziel on a floating fake swan, for example.  Over time it goes from amusing to bemusing to vexing as losses mount and interceptions, fumbles and injuries mount.

Eventually there’s a Come-to-Jesus moment where the bad boy, sans eye wink, tries to earnestly convince the fans that he’s reformed his hard partying ways before they got truly out of hand.  Finally there’s the real Come-to-Jesus moment where the career is in jeopardy and rapid maturity is no longer an interesting concept. 

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Manziel will follow this rather predictable arc.  He’s well into phase 1 with as he constantly reminds those who ask that he’s young, single and what’s the harm?  There is none until there is some and there will be some.

The only real question is how long it takes to get through this arc with Manziel.  He may think he’s working hard when he’s not otherwise playing hard but the truth has a way of revealing itself either way.  You can’t wing a NFL career.  You either take it seriously or it spits you out prematurely.

Training camp doesn’t open for another 5 weeks.  That means 5 more weeks of Manziel in borderline embarrassing situations and 5 more weeks of wondering whether this guy is hell bent on partying himself out of the league before he ever sees an actual field.

Manziel’s a young guy and should have his fun.  But he’s not a college guy anymore.  He’s taken his talents to the professional level and eventually needs to act that way.  He seems to have modeled himself after the New England Patriot’s Rob Gronkowski.  That hasn’t been working out too well for Gronk these days as he suffers through injuries one season after another. 

It’s a legitimate question and hope that Johnny Paycheck can stay on the field more than Gronkowski.  But the more immediate question is when he’ll see that field in the first place.  Each moment spent prostrate in an inflatable swan is another minute he’s losing ground to Hoyer.

**
With the NBA draft just over a week away, it remains fascinating, in a dysfunctional Cleveland Browns sort of way, that the Cavs still don’t have a head coach.  For the moment they seem to be following the rubric of the Browns, meaning they are interviewing anyone with a pulse in order to hire someone who wasn’t on anyone’s radar.  Or else they’ll hire a retread.  Dan Gilbert, the Cavs’ owner, has more than sufficiently demonstrated a mercurial almost random streak when it comes to presiding over his investment.

At this point there seems to be no use in hiring a coach before the draft.  Depending on who general manager David Griffin drafts, the potential pool of coaching candidates could greatly increase or shrink precipitously.

There are probably two absolute head shaking aspects to what’s happening to the Cavs.  First, Griffin seemed to be at best a reluctant choice by Gilbert to remain as general manager once Chris Grant was fired.  From that tenuous platform Griffin has parlayed himself into temporarily the most powerful man in the franchise.  With no coach from which to gain input on the draft, the Cavs’ future literally rests on his shoulders.  That’s fine as far as it goes, it’s just that you’d like to think the future would have been entrusted to someone in whom Gilbert had unconditional faith.

Second, if the current model for sustained NBA success is the San Antonio Spurs, the Cavs’ approach couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to it.  The turnover in the front office and coaching staff is the most obvious example but truthfully everything else does flow from that, just as it has with the Browns.

The NBA remains the most difficult sport in which to turn a franchise around.  You need a nucleus as both the Spurs and the Heat demonstrated.  But the difference really is the other 8 or 9 players that fill out the roster.  The Heat lost to the Spurs definitively because most of the roster after the big 3 has simply been cobbled together based mostly on salary and luxury cap considerations.  The Spurs have always been the most methodical team in the league, making sure that every spot had a defined role with a player specifically chosen for that role.

The Cavs right now have a shaky nucleus at best and an almost embarrassing array of players who fit together as precisely as the pieces of 10 separate jigsaw puzzles would if you put them all in one box and shook it.

Never has a franchise been given such gifts by the NBA gods these last several years and while it would be difficult to say that those gifts have been squandered completely it isn’t difficult to say that they’ve been misused.  A team with a more stable ownership and front office would have had a more methodical approach to ensuring that all these gifts were complementary.  Of course if the Cavs had that kind of franchise then they wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

**

There’s an interesting legal battle brewing at the most mundane of places in the federal government—the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  In a move that seems to have caught, certainly, the Washington Redskins and, likely as certainly, NFL headquarters off guard, the Patent Office invalidated the Redskins’ various trademarks as having been improvidently granted in the first place because they perpetuate racism.

That decision will be held in abeyance while the Redskins appeal, but make no mistake that the death knell on the most racist name in sports continues to sound ever louder.

It is honestly difficult to construct a compelling argument to support Dan Snyder’s dogged insistence on keeping the Redskins’ name.  He’s left with arguing tradition and sounds just as silly as those who argue for abolishing gay marriage. 

Times change as do one’s sensibilities.  The Redskins’ name has always been offensive.  What’s changed is the populace’s sensitivities to it and that’s not a bad thing.  Separate water fountains for whites and blacks were once commonplace and accepted aided by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1896.  Times did change then as did sensibilities and this ultimately was reflected a little more than a half century later when the Supreme Court outlawed it in its seminal Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

The point is that tradition is a flimsy argument because the only real tradition the Redskins name is perpetuating is overt racism.  If/when the Patent and Trademark Office’s ruling is upheld in court, the Redskins will have no choice.  The issue becomes economic and there’s nothing that will change a buffoon like Snyder’s mine more quickly than the lost money from not being able to commercially exploit the name Redskins or, stated differently, watching others do that with no legal recourse.

The more difficult question that’s now getting attention has to do with the Cleveland Indians.  There’s nothing blatantly racist about the name or what that name symbolizes.  A challenge to the Patent and Trademark Office probably wouldn’t be successful if the intent was to rid the team of the trademark “Indians.”

The real issue is the trademark Chief Wahoo, a clownish almost disturbing caricature of an Indian.  The toothy grin, the bright red skin.  Like the name Redskins, the real truth is that American Indians always saw Chief Wahoo as a racist symbol, just as African-Americans saw the Little Black Sambo character as racist.  The only thing that’s changed is that people are starting to better understand what they mean.

To a certain extent the Indians have been de-emphasizing the Chief Wahoo symbol for the last several years and I’m certain that the Patent and Trademark Office’s ruling in the Redskins matter will accelerate this thinking.  If it didn’t, it should.  If the Indians end up in the Patent and Trademark Office with a similar challenge to a patently offensive symbol they’ll get a similar result.

It would be nice to think that the Indians owners would show some leadership and courage on the issue and declare immediately that the Chief Wahoo symbol is now in the past and won’t be used again to market the team.  We all should now call on them to do it.

I don’t think it will happen.  But I do believe the Dolans are more sympathetic to the issue than Dan Snyder is to his issue.  That means fans will see continue to see less and less of Chief Wahoo until the point where he’s disappeared altogether, not officially necessarily but effectively.  Once the team voluntarily takes any economic clout out of the symbol, its use becomes irrelevant.  The only real issue with this approach is that by not definitively eliminating it now, they leave open the possibility of future owners of the team taking a different approach.

Let’s avoid the circus.  Just do the right thing now and move on.  Chief Wahoo, it’s time to report to the front office and bring your playbook.

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Johnny Freakin' Football Edition

It’s always nice when a team like the Cleveland Browns gets the player it really wants in the NFL draft.  Who knew that player was Justin Gilbert?

Bouncing around the first round like he was a combination of Butch Davis and Eric Mangini, Browns general manager Ray Farmer certainly made things interesting for the fan base.  And when Farmer traded back up to only then draft Gilbert you could hear the loud sucking sound throughout Northeast Ohio.  Fans once again felt their usual abandonment as another general manager used the 8^th pick in the draft to select the 16^th best player.

But things ultimately broke Farmer’s way and through another bounce he was able to grab Johnny Freakin’ Football with the most cursed slot of the draft for quarterbacks, 22^nd.  That was the home of such previous notables as Brady Quinn and Brandon Weeden, and also J.P. Losman. 

When the dust cleared, the Browns had a new cornerback and a new, potentially franchising shifting quarterback in Manziel.  For all the jumping around Farmer did it’s hard not to shake the notion that simply staying put could have, likely would have, resulted in the exact same picks.  The advantage, and this is actually significant, is that for all that movement the Browns not only ended up where they would have any way without it but they essentially stole Buffalo’s first pick in next year’s draft for what amounts to a couple of extra later round picks.  It was a mild version of the movie Draft Day.

In that context, Farmer had a good, if lucky, night on Thursday and, frankly, it’s about time someone associated with the Browns had a lucky night.  It wouldn’t surprise at this point if the other shoe dropped and owner Jimmy Haslam found himself indicted on Friday.  The Gods never give to Cleveland what they can’t otherwise extract at a higher cost.

There’s a lot to like about Manziel.  Most of it is intangible and if there is one thing that most NFL general managers and even coaches hate is taking a player whose intangible qualities are greater than his physical attributes.  It’s exactly the reason that Jacksonville drafted Blake Bortles instead of Manziel.  Bortles is built like Ben Roethlisberger and is better looking.  Jacksonville went all in on that combination and we’ll see whether it was justified or whether Bortles will be the kind of guy who, in two years, is trolling for backup spots in Dallas like Weeden.

There’s no way to know Manziel’s real upside as a NFL quarterback until he gets under center week after week.  Weeden never lost the deer-in-the-headlights look.  Tim Couch had his spirit broken.  The game just moved too fast for Brady Quinn and Colt McCoy. 

In some ways, many actually, Manziel reminds me of Brian Sipe, another relatively weak armed, undersized quarterback whose greater gifts were mental.  There are ways to overcome a lack of size in the NFL and Manziel certainly carries himself as the kind of player who can overcome his lack of size.  Drew Brees was in a similar position.  If Manziel even ends up as a better version of Sipe then the pick will have been justified, particularly in context of all the other blown first round picks over the years.

But the dark cloud hanging over Johnny Football is whether he ends up as more of a Mike Phipps.  There’s an old story about Phipps that former Browns head coach Blanton Collier liked to tell.  When Phipps was drafted, Collier, who had retired, was brought back as a consultant to help school Phipps and get him ready for the NFL.  Collier was an offensive genius with a knack for quarterbacks.  He was everything that Mike Holmgren wanted to be.

Collier worked Phipps out and gave him the benefit of hour after hour of classroom instruction.  When the schooling ended several days later, Collier asked to looked at the notepad he had given Phipps at the beginning of their sessions.  Collier wanted to review the notes Phipps had taken.  When Collier opened the notebook, it was blank.  Phipps hadn’t written a thing.  It was at that moment, with Phipps still a long way from playing his first game, that Collier knew the Browns had made a mistake.

Which way will Manziel go?  Will he be an engaged student or the know-it-all jock with the attention span of a puppy?  There’s no good way to know before the draft because it can’t be measured.  Jon Gruden’s quarterback school is hardly a benchmark.  It’s a made for television farce that by design offers little insight about the player while extolling the perceived genius of Gruden.  Manziel’s heart will get measured from about this point forward as head coach Mike Pettine and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan figure out just what they got in Manziel.

The other thing about Manziel, and this is hardly news but still remains worth mentioning, is that his lack of size and lack of build is still a detriment in a league of physical freaks.  Manziel may be able to move around better than, say, Bortles, but he won’t be able to absorb the same kind of hits.  In other words, the chances of Manziel coming out of any season without at least one separated shoulder seems remote.  Pray that it’s his non-throwing shoulder.

Manziel proved himself to be a playmaker in college, not just once but several times over.  If there’s one thing that the Browns have lacked for most of their 2.0 existence is playmakers of any kind.  Manziel seems to have a knack for stepping in shit and coming out smelling like a rose.  For most of the Browns 2.0 existence when a player’s stepped in shit he rarely can get his foot dislodged let alone get the stink out of his jersey.

As for the drafting of Gilbert, I’m skeptical.  It was a reach and in exactly the most awful way possible.  Pettine said that Gilbert was the best corner for the Browns’ scheme.  Uh oh.  When a team as perennially awful as the Browns and with more holes to fill than a city crew filling potholes on Cleveland’s east side focuses less on picking the best player available and more on filling the roles imagined by a rookie head coach that no one wanted initially, everyone and I mean everyone should see that for the red flag that it is.

Does that mean Gilbert was a mistake?  That can’t be judged specifically.  It’s more the process of his selection that should worry the fans.

Farmer now enters the second day of the draft knowing that he did well on the first part of a multi-part exam.  But he can’t coast.  The rest of the exam awaits.  The reason the Browns are the Browns isn’t just that they made horrific first round selections.  It’s because they also made awful selections in most other parts of previous drafts as well.

Coaches like to say that defense wins championships, but that’s only half right.  What matters just as much if not more in the NFL is depth.  It’s great to have a shut down corner like Joe Haden, for example, but when he was out the drop off was precipitous.  No team can have two deep Pro Bowlers at any position but what’s hindered the Browns even more than a lack of a quarterback is the fact that the fall off between its starters and its backups is probably greater than that of any team in the league.  Indeed, most of the Browns’ starters would be the backups on other teams.  When a starter goes down in Cleveland they’re filling it with a guy that wouldn’t likely be on most teams’ rosters.

Let’s see how the rest of the draft turns out.  It’s off to an interesting, intriguing start.  And let’s recognize, too, how genuinely nice it was to see Browns fans celebrate the drafting of Manziel particularly after it looked like the worst thing in the world had just happened to them, they weren’t getting what they wanted.  But remember that if not getting what you want is the worst thing in the world, the second worst is getting what you wanted.  Now that’s a theme Browns fans should be able to rally around.

Putting the Adults in Charge

If you want to know how to simultaneously raise and then lower expectations, just follow the lead of Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren.

Intimating that Colt McCoy was the second best quarterback in this year's college draft, Holmgren talked about how fortuitous it was the McCoy fell into the team's lap in the third round. Then Holmgren proceeded to tamp down any expectations about McCoy for the upcoming season by saying rather strongly that McCoy's assignment this year is to watch and learn.

It's nice to have adults finally running the franchise.

Holmgren as much as anyone knows the team he oversees isn't a Super Bowl contender at the moment. The running game still isn't what he wants to see even taking into account Jerome Harrison's 4-game breakout at the end of last season. The offensive line is decent, perhaps the strength of the team at the moment, but that simply isn't enough reason to unnecessarily start a rookie, particularly when your receiving corps is among the worst in the league.

With that kind of mixed bag and a couple of serviceable quarterbacks on the roster to help the team get through the season anyway Holmgren was merely reflecting reality in his statement, calmly, professionally.

Of course this is April and those kinds of things are easy to say. There are a lot of turns of the globe between then and now and probably a billion bumps and bruises to be administered, meaning all that can change for reasons no one wants to contemplate.

The perfect scenario for the Browns is that Jake Delhomme remains healthy all season but that isn't likely. The Browns do have a history and it suggests that not only will Delhomme get hurt but so too will Seneca Wallace when he backs him up.

Thus it isn't all that unlikely actually that McCoy sees action eventually this season. But for now it's good to have a high-profile quarterback on the roster almost completely unburdened by high expectations. It's the right way to nurture a career.

Fans in other cities have been somewhat spoiled in recent years as rookies have come in and played decently from the start. But that scenario usually involves a good team and a coaching staff that understands how to skinny down the playbook so that the rookie isn't required to win the game, just not lose it.

Brady Quinn, the latest deposed high-profile quarterback of the Browns never really got that kind of opportunity in Cleveland. There's enough blame to go around. Quinn shouldn't have foolishly held out. Derek Anderson became a one-year wonder. Phil Savage dithered on how to handle the situation. Injuries mounted. A new staff came in ill-equipped in the art of preparing a quarterback for the season.

Nonetheless it all amounts to the simple fact that another Browns can't-miss prospect missed, which is what eventually led the Browns to McCoy.

The other object lesson, of course, is Tim Couch, who presents a near perfect road map to the destination best to avoid. Playing behind an offensive line that would have made Dan Marino jittery, Couch was repeatedly beaten like an egg in a blender. He suffered injuries from which he never fully recovered and whatever promise he may have once held was permanently extinguished.

Holmgren understands full well the lessons of these two and sees it as his mission to avoid that with McCoy. This time it should be a lot easier.

The real trick in Holmgren's ability to effectively manage McCoy's career will be Holmgren's relationship with head coach Eric Mangini. For now, Mangini is Holmgren's coach. But even Mangini knows that it's a shaky existence given the events of last season.

Too often head coaches in football and managers in baseball are prone to short term decisions when they only see their careers in the short term. When you feel like your own career is hanging in the balance the tendency is to try and win now, irrespective of the cost down the road.

Thus Holmgren's task is to build confidence not only for his quarterback-in-waiting but his dangling head coach so that this kind of scenario doesn't develop. Mangini knows that the most popular player on the roster is the back-up quarterback and when things get tough and his relationship with the fans worsens it would be easy to pander by inserting McCoy. But if Mangini knows he's not dangling himself then he'll have no reason to pander.

There's no guarantee that any of this works out but you have to like the odds given the person running the show.

And assuming it all goes according to plan, that McCoy fell to the Browns in the 3rd round will end up being the story of this draft a few years from now. McCoy has an “it” factor that should serve him well in the NFL. You can look at the stats and discount them if you want because but for a handful of games among his 40+ starts, the Texas Longhorns were going to win those games even if Amos McCoy was starting at quarterback.

But that shouldn't diminish McCoy's accomplishments. Nor should the fact that he fell into the third round suggest that NFL-types aren't sold on his abilities. NFL executives are prone to group think and once a quarterback or any other high profile player starts to fall these same executives start questioning their own research thinking that maybe someone knows something they don't.

Perhaps feeding the group think is the simple fact that this just completed draft has such an uncertain labor situation as its overhang. Simply put, players in trenches are paid less than players at the so-called skill positions. The odd trajectory of this draft may be as much a factor of teams seeing a need to preserve cash as it was teams seeing the need to fill in critical spots on their offensive and defensive lines and defensive backfields.

Holmgren did talk about making a push to get the first pick in the draft in order to draft Sam Bradford. I'm not really sure if that means Holmgren is more worried about the quarterbacks he has on the roster or more impressed with Bradford's potential. It's probably some of both.

Yet I suspect that if Holmgren really wanted Bradford on this roster he would have found a way to make that trade. The only conclusion then that I can really draw about this aborted attempt was that getting Bradford on this roster wasn't as important as filling in the gaping holes in the secondary.

Whether it actually plays out that way will always be a question in the back of fans' minds, but it's hard to second-guess Holmgren at the moment. The most enduring image of the team on the field last season is of its defensive backs constantly chasing after opponents that had just blown past them. It may have only seemed like every game featured at least one long pass or run by an opponent, mostly because it did.

Concentrating the early part of the draft, and the somewhat limited movement in free agency, in the defensive backfield was the biggest no-brainer since the NFL schedule makers wisely decided that the Browns don't need to be featured on any of its Thursday, Sunday night or Monday night games. It's good for once to see the team not blow that lay-up.

The way this season is shaping up, it clearly will be one of transition. There is a real sense of reality permeating Berea at the moment and it's starting to filter to the fans. But for once, that sense of reality isn't as foreboding as the past. It's tinged with an optimism that finally the people in charge of the draft for this team actually know what they're doing. It's a nice, if foreign, feeling.

Finding a Pulse

When it comes to the Cleveland Browns, about the only question on anyone's mind is “who should they draft?” After pouring through all the various mock drafts and writings and ramblings of blowhards like Mel Kiper, Jr., I've come to one conclusion: anyone with a pulse would be a good start.

Browns' president Mike Holmgren, in his final pre-draft press conference last week didn't say much, but then again he is guarding nuclear launch codes. But yet he said just enough to make me realize that a little bit of candor sneaked into the organization when no one was looking.

Responding to a question of whether or not the Browns intend to focus more on defense than offense in the draft, Holmgren said “I think we were 31st on defense last year and I think we were 31st on offense. It’s like, I have two thumbs and there are five holes in the dike. How are we going to do this? That’s where you get into the discussion about not reaching for immediate help. Let’s get the best player. We know we are going to get a player that will help us be a better football team. Is there an area that needs more help or sooner help than others? Probably. As the board sets up now for us we have a chance to get a really fine football player on either side of the football.”

In other words, anyone with a pulse would be a good start.

What's a little disheartening about Holmgren's statement, though, is that some form of it has basically been true for this franchise since it returned to the NFL. Every year it's pretty much the same story: with needs this vast, almost any player should get you there.

And yet, that hasn't been true with this team thanks to a 10-year history too often dotted with players like Courtney Brown, Gerard Warren, William Green, Braylon Edwards and Kamerion Wimbley in the first rounds and Dennis Northcutt, Kevin Johnson, Chaun Thompson and Quincy Morgan in the second rounds. To paraphrase Homgren's words, this is a team with five holes in the dike and no fingers on its hands.

But enough about that. This is a whole new ball game, a whole new regime from completely different cities and a history of success. Thus this really is the year in which to best test the theory about whether or not the Browns have become the black hole of the NFL.

But irrespective of which way Holmgren and general manager Tom Heckert go with this draft, one thing is for certain, there will be raging disagreement among the fans no matter who's selected. Mainly that's because the fans, like the general managers doing the picking, aren't really in any position to judge how college performance might translate into the pros.

There are just too many variables. You can draw some conclusions, for example, about a player like Sam Bradford or Jimmy Clausen but the one thing you won't be able to tell is what he's going to be like perched behind center on a Sunday afternoon with his team 6 points down with 3 minutes left to play.

Going into the 2000 draft, no one projected that Tom Brady, for example, would be one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. You can give some credit to Bill Belichick for discovering Brady's hidden talent after being around him for a few seasons, but to say even Belichick understood what he had when he drafted him would be wildly inaccurate. If he did, he wouldn't have waited until the 6th round and used the second of his two 6th round picks at that to grab him.

Localized, look at a player like Josh Cribbs. He played for one of the consistently worst programs in the country, Kent State, and in a conference, the MAC, that produces some decent NFL talent but not otherwise highly competitive teams.

You can give former Browns' general manager Phil Savage some credit for at least giving Cribbs the opportunity when he signed him as an undrafted free agent, but so much of that signing smacked of a kind gesture to a local program. It turned out, of course, that Cribbs is in the conversation for best kick returners of all time. In fact, he's in the conversation for best special teams player of all time, so valuable is he to this team that the Browns likely didn't even consider for a moment grabbing Ted Ginn, Jr. when the Miami Dolphins dumped him a few days ago for a measly 5th round pick.

These two and plenty of others have a certain “it” factor that simply can't be measured at the NFL combine or the vaunted private workouts that teams conduct. When coupled with supposedly can't miss players like Gerard Warren or Tim Couch, you start to understand why NFL types are so reluctant to talk about their draft plans: it limits the criticism until after the decision already is made.

Part of the problem in trying to judge college talent has to do with the fact that the consistency of competition at the college level is lacking. Even in glamor conferences like the Big Ten, the SEC and the PAC-10, the competition is uneven, at best. Consequently general managers are constantly trying to draw multi-million dollar conclusions on the basis of a handful of games each year.

Once players get to the NFL, of course, it's far easier to figure things out. The difference between, say, the New Orleans Saints, at the moment, and a bottom feeder teams like Cleveland is far more narrow than the difference between Ohio State and Indiana, year in and year out. That's why a team like Miami bites the bullet on Ginn and gives him away. A different regime drafted him anyway and with the benefit of a little perspective the new group has decided that Ginn perhaps should never have converted from defensive back in college.

Meanwhile, in Cleveland, the Browns similarly dump Brady Quinn on the Denver Broncos. They got more for Quinn than the Dolphins got for Ginn, at least on paper. Whether it works out that way remains to be seen. Far more interesting, though, is the similar arcs to their careers.

Quinn probably doesn't end up in Cleveland if the Dolphins didn't surprise everyone by drafting Ginn instead of Quinn. It's still not clear why the Dolphins went after Ginn with a roster that featured quarterbacks Joey Harrington (another high profile bust) and Cleo Lemon on the roster. But when that happened, Quinn went on that infamous free-fall until saved by Savage and the Browns.

Yet consider what would have happened had Quinn been taken by the Dolphins. Whether he would have been successful is the great unknown but he certainly would have had far more opportunities to establish himself than he had in Cleveland. Ginn, meanwhile, would have probably slid into the second round somewhere else and perhaps been more successful with less burdensome expectations.

But given the vagaries of the NFL, both Quinn and Ginn now find themselves saddled with the same sort of “bust”-like baggage. And whether or not that moniker on either player is far from certain. The only thing certain, of course, is that to this point neither lived up to their draft status but given the situations each entered, that isn't a surprise.

All this points to exactly why it isn't worth spending a whole lot of time as a fan wringing your hands over whether or not the Browns go after Eric Berry or trade up or trade down. It's not that it doesn't matter it's more that you just never know whether it matters. Too much happens from the draft onward to let conclusions be definitvely drawn.

I still wonder, for example, exactly what head coach Eric Mangini was thinking when he took both Brian Robiskie and Mohamed Massaquoi in the second round last year. I still wonder what Mangini was thinking when he buried Robiskie for most of the season as well. What I don't wonder about anymore is whether or not last season was a waste of a season for both. It was.

While Massaquoi played far more than Robiskie, the way Mangini handled the offensive side of the ball made it difficult for either player to succeed. First he diddled with the quarterback situation until he was absolutely certain that neither Quinn nor Anderson had any comfort behind center. Then he went into a Woody Hayes-like offense late in the season. All together, it wasn't just a wasted season for Massaquoi and Robiskie, but for any player that held the position of receiver, and this was on a team with almost no credible receivers on the roster going into the season.

Under a different head coach, either or both of Massaquoi and Robiskie might be much further along in their development and entering their second season with far less question marks. Instead, they are teetering as potential busts.

But this scenario, frankly, plays itself out all over the NFL. Teams make strange draft decisions and then do a lousy job on executing whatever strategy it was that drove them to make those draft decisions in the first place.

It's intriguing to think that this new regime has it all figured out and the old ways of doing business are now behind this franchise. But the draft isn't really much of a panacea particularly if the follow up is so poor. That's why it's not so much who the Browns draft but how they go about using the players they get. In other words, it really is true, anybody with a pulse is a good start.

Any Road Will Get You There

Standing among all the trees, sometimes it’s best to remember, first, that you’re in a forest.

As I listen to various reporters and columnists debate the fine intricacies of the Browns’ recent activities around Jake Delhomme, Seneca Wallace, Brady Quinn and Kamerion Wimbley it seems like they all forgot that this team, even with a season-ending four game winning streak only finished with five wins.

This isn’t a very good team to begin with. If anything, this team hasn’t made enough moves. The Browns have won only 38 times in the last 7 years and have lost 74. Is this really the time to debate the relative merits of Wimbley?

Not to single out Marla Ridenour in the Akron Beacon Journal on Monday, but reading her kvetch over whether or not these trades have made the Browns better makes me wonder whether she actually sat through every miserable game the way the rest of the fans are. Nitpicking the trades of both Quinn and Wimbley makes it seem as though team president Mike Holmgren and general manager Tom Heckert are breaking apart the New England Patriots.

Hardly. They are breaking up the concrete on one of the league’s consistently worse teams, meaning that Ridenour isn’t even asking the right questions. These trades and their other moves are far more than the sum of their parts. They are an indication that play time, finally, is over.

If the release of Derek Anderson and the trade of Quinn didn’t send that message then certainly the trade of Wimbley to Oakland for a third round pick had to. Wimbley may be a former first round pick, but fans are sick of hearing about whether or not the next season will finally justify his draft status.

In truth, Wimbley played well as a rookie and has been mostly MIA since. Saying he’s the best linebacker on this team is like saying Jake Westbrook is the best pitcher on the Indians. It’s a relative measure on a scale that’s abysmally low. Wimbley wasn’t worthy at the time of a first round pick by former general manager Phil Savage and his play year in and year out since has driven home that fact. Frankly the Browns were lucky to salvage a third round pick and I don’t care whether it was the lower of the Raiders’ two third-round picks.

That doesn’t mean Wimbley wasn’t a good guy to have around. But his production is easily duplicated by players making far less. You have to balance the budget somewhere.

As for whether or not Delhomme and Seneca Wallace make the Browns any better at quarterback than the duet of Quinn and Anderson, that’s one of those classic and meaningless bar stool debates. It may not be completely fair to judge Anderson and Quinn in the context of this team because the talent they had to work with was so poor, but what it is completely fair to conclude is that neither could rise above that wreckage, either.

You can make the case that every quarterback, even Tom Brady, needs talent around him to look good and be correct. But the case is also made that the good quarterbacks make those around them better. Brady, for one, has made an awful lot of average receivers look good.

Neither Quinn nor Anderson seemed to have that gene. Anderson certainly looked good in 2007 but when Braylon Edwards went off the rails, Kellen Winslow wasn’t available to him and Jamal Lewis was proving that he was done, Anderson couldn’t overcome the greenness of their replacements. If anything Anderson proved he’s a system quarterback at best and not someone who can thrive under any circumstances.

Quinn will always be more of a mystery. The knock on him is his accuracy and often times it was easy to see why. But he seemed to play better out of a no-huddle offense meaning that the players looked at him as a leader. He could get guys in the right spots. Yet he never could completely take the reigns of the job and mold it into his own.

The larger point, anyway, is that the Browns are going in a completely different direction on so many different fronts that it’s beginning to get difficult to keep up.

Consider the players the Browns designated as restricted and unrestricted free agents. Rex Hadnot and Hank Fraley were decent contributors to an indecent team. Yet both are now gone. Holmgren and Heckert have indicated that they’re willing to say goodbye to Jerome Harrison who holds the franchise record for most rushing yards in a game. This is a polite way of saying that the Browns have thrown up a heavy construction zone and wearing a hard hat alone may not be enough to keep you safe.

The cutting of Anderson was foreseen by everyone, including, I think, Nostradamus. Less seen, though, was the signing of both Delhomme and Wallace and the trading of Quinn. The trade of Wimbley seemingly came out of nowhere and yet it didn’t.

Meanwhile the Browns have overpaid a bit in free agency for a linebacker, an offensive lineman and a tight end. And while it’s never a good idea to overpay any player in a sport with a salary cap, it is offset by the stockpile of draft choices, nearly all of which will cost them less.

Holmgren didn’t necessarily offer a lot of insight in explaining the recent surge of activity but he did confirm the more salient point: action was needed. To really accomplish that goal requires a stockpile of draft choices as they serve as the currency on which NFL action really takes place.

NFL executives value draft picks more than their own family and right now Holmgren and Heckert are sitting at a poker table with a pile of chips that the other participants covet. For once the Browns are in an enviable position and have people actually capable of taking advantage of that.

Here’s the only variable fans really don’t know at the moment: Where in the name of Spergon Wynn is this franchise headed? Admittedly, that’s a pretty big question and one that isn’t easily answered by the disjointed threads of what’s taken place so far.

Even Holmgren didn’t offer much insight on that question, sensing, I guess, that at the moment what matters more is that the franchise is actually moving and dramatically so. In the past what’s passed as movement has been movement around the edges. Head coach Eric Mangini’s dumping of Edwards and Winslow weren’t nearly as dramatic as what’s currently taking place. They didn’t signify any particular move as they did a parting of ways with two known malcontents. That’s a move anyone can make.

Moving your starting quarterbacks and two starting offensive linemen? Dumping a starting linebacker, a former first rounder at that, on the league’s worst defense for a third round pick? That’s a statement.

There’s a saying that if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there. For too long that seemed to be the underlying mission statement of this franchise. Now, even without any great insights from either Holmgren or Heckert as to their current thinking, you still get the sense that this franchise as a far clearer direction. The fun part for Browns fans now will be figuring it all out.

In with the Old, Out with the New

Of all the sentences I imagined myself writing about the 2010 version of the Cleveland Browns, the least likely was “now starting for the Browns, Jake Delhomme.” Ok, that's not true. That's the second least likely. The most unlikely was “now entering the game at quarterback, Seneca Wallace.”

Yet that's where the Browns now find themselves a week or so into free agency and still several weeks from the 2010 draft.

The agreement the Browns reached on Saturday with Delhomme on a two-year deal makes some sense in that it was obvious that nobody associated with the new Browns' regime, team president Mike Holmgren or general manager Tom Heckert in particular, seemed to have much fascination with either Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson. Inside of the span of just a few days, both quarterbacks who couldnt' wrest control of the starting position here find themselves elsewhere. For Quinn, that's Denver. For Anderson, who knows.

Whether Holmgren and Heckert are right or wrong is irrelevant for the moment. The two were brought in exactly for this reason--to make the hard decisions and move the franchise forward. You can't criticize a bird for flying.

But lest anyone think that the signing of Delhomme and Wallace settles the quarterback position, it doesn't. All those signings really represent is a stop gap measure for a season or two while Holmgren and Heckert go about fixing the league's worst defense.

Delhomme is 35-years old, which isn't ancient when compared to someone like Brett Favre who, I believe, is 164 years old at this point. But Delhomme is on the back side of a career that has seen some decent highs and fairly typical lows. This past season was a struggle for Delhomme illustrating how a team's golden goose can suddenly look expendable as the number of golden eggs laid decreases precipitously.

Indeed Delhomme seemed nearly ready to ride out his last few years as a backup for Drew Brees, so despondent was he following his release by the Carolina Panthers. But the Browns' willingness to pay him starter's wages for 2010 changed him mind in the way only money could and now Delhomme gets a chance to spend his next few summers and falls in Cleveland instead of his hometown of New Orleans. At least he's no stranger to humidity.

There's a theory that perhaps Delhomme may be coming in to mentor Wallace, but no matter what Holmgren says about Wallace's upside it's doubtful even Holmgren sees him as the long-term answer either. More likely is that the intention with Delhomme is that he starts in 2010 and then mentors whatever young quarterback Holmgren and Heckert eventually set their sights on.

Maybe that young quarterback is Brett Ratliff, a third stringer that head coach Eric Mangini actually traded for last season. But I doubt that, too. Holmgren may have been impressed enough with Mangini's coaching acumen, if not results, to give him another year but everything both Holmgren and Heckert have done since arriving screams that they didn't think much of Mangini's personnel decisions or acquisitions.

All of which means, of course, that the Browns probably are on a quest for a young quarterback at some point soon. With the options that their stockpiled draft picks gives them this year, maybe the Browns have targeted someone like Dan LeFevour from Central Michigan or even Cincinnati's Tony Pike as a second or third rounder. If that's the case, the Delhomme signing makes even more sense.

But how the Delhomme signing actually fits into the longer range plan won't become completely clear until the draft. Meanwhile, Quinn, finds his career once again overshadowed with uncertainty as he heads to Denver. It's been that way since draft day in 2007.

At various points Quinn was projected as the number 1 overall pick in the 2007 draft. But with the Oakland Raiders sitting at the top spot that year nothing was certain and they proved that by making Jamarcus Russell the top pick instead, a mistake they're still paying for.

After the Raiders' drafted there were two other teams that really needed quarterbacks, Cleveland and Miami. But former general manager Phil Savage smartly targeted left tackle Joe Thomas with the third pick instead. It was the Dolphins that threw Quinn the real curve ball. While most thought they'd go after Quinn, they instead made Ted Ginn, Jr. their top pick. That allowed Quinn to free fall further until he literally was rescued by Savage, who made a trade in order to get Quinn with the 22nd pick.

It ended an agonizing day for Quinn but little could he have foreseen that his troubles were just beginning. The next part, really, was self-inflicted. Quinn stupidly listened to his agent as he tried to wrangle top 10 money out of the Browns. He wasn't successful and the 10-day hold out essentially cost him any chance to start that year.

That misstep opened the door for Derek Anderson who then went on to have a Pro Bowl season while Quinn watched from the sidelines with a clipboard. When Savage decided to re-sign Anderson after the 2007 season instead of parlaying it into more draft picks, that too cost Quinn valuable development time. With Anderson in the fold for 2008, Quinn would once again be relegated to backup status. Former head coach Romeo Crennel really had no other choice.

Quinn was able to get playing time late in the season as Anderson first faltered and then was injured, but then Quinn himself got injured. He showed enough promise, or maybe it was just that Anderson was so awful, that Crennel in his own waning days actually named Quinn the starter for 2009. But as with everything else to that point in Quinn's career, it wasn't to be. Crennel was fired and Mangini came in and declared an open competition between Quinn and Anderson for 2009.

Mangini's handling of the quarterback situation was ill-conceived from the outset as his open competition only assured that neither Quinn nor Anderson would be adequately prepared for the 2009 season. Quinn “won” that competition though it was mostly be default. Quinn outplayed Anderson during the preseason but that's niggling. Neither played well.

With another new offense to learn and limited talent available at the skill positions, it wasn't a surprise that Quinn struggled at the outset. Then Mangini panicked, benched Quinn and inserted Anderson. Of course Anderson fared no better. In fact he was actually worse and then Mangini once again went back to Quinn, telling the fans that Quinn had actually improved while watching from the sidelines. Whatever.

Quinn once again got hurt and finished the season on the injured list. During his second starting stint, though, Quinn began to show some flashes that he belonged in the league. It wasn't enough, apparently, to sway Holmgren or Heckert and so he's off to Denver and in return the Browns get another fullback, Peyton Hillis, a 6th round pick in 2011 and a conditional pick in 2012. The only real surprise is that it took Heckert nearly 24 hours to consummate the trade after signing Delhomme.

It will be interesting to see what the future does indeed hold for Quinn. The recent past hasn't been so kind. Maybe Denver will be that right situation and he'll flourish. More likely his career will be forever shrouded by bad timing as he competes against Kyle Orton, a Derek Anderson clone with less of an arm. Once a player develops a reputation in the NFL, it's hard to shake it. Quinn will forever be known as the guy that dropped like a rock on draft day and then couldn't beat out Anderson in Cleveland. And if that wasn't enough, he's got a weak arm, just ask anyone.

Whether or not any of that is unfair is beside the point. As Holmgren himself said the other day, the NFL is a big boy league. Players that spend too much time wallowing in self pity may as well move on to another profession. Quinn's not that guy, of course, and so he will move on to Denver where his potential will intrigue another fan base. But you can't help wondering if, 10 years from now, when the NFL paragraphs of Quinn's Wikipedia entry are complete, if the only thing people ask is whether or not he was that guy that used to play for Notre Dame.

A Bitter Goodbye

Talk about a noisy withdrawal.

Former Cleveland Browns quarterback Derek Anderson was sent packing by the team on Tuesday and he let the door hit him in the ass on the way out. In an email to the Lake County News-Herald, Anderson unloaded a few years worth of frustration by dumping not on the team that won’t be paying him nearly $10 million for the 2010 season but the fans who suffered through one awful performance after another for the last two seasons.

Anderson has since apologized, more or less. He claims he was just frustated. I'd call it bitterness. Either way it's a minor debate. His statement though stems from his supposedly getting cheered when he was injured in a November 2008 game against Indianapolis. Give the guy this, he can throw verbal zingers as hard as he throws a football. Unfortunately, though, it comes with pretty much the same completion rate.

Since Anderson has no appreciation for context I’ll set it. It was a home game on the last Sunday in November. The season was already mostly lost as the Browns entered the game with a 4-7 record. Brady Quinn, who had been starting after head coach Romeo Crennel had finally, mercifully had pulled the plug on Anderson, had been injured. Nonetheless, Crennel had anointed Quinn his starter and said it would remain that way for the upcoming 2009 season.

But with Quinn now injured, Anderson had still another opportunity to change Crennel’s mind. The Colts were a good team, but not necessarily great that seasons and the Browns were playing them close on this particular Sunday, mainly because Peyton Manning was very average, at best, on this day He had thrown two interceptions and fumbled twice. The Colts were gifting the game to the Browns and yet Anderson, in what became a very disturbing pattern, couldn’t get the offense in a position to capitalize.

There were 10 minutes remaining and the Browns were nonetheless clinging to a 6-3 lead, a lead that shoulda coulda been much larger. Anderson dropped back to pass and lost his grip on the ball. Colts defensive end Robert Mathis picked it up and, in the words of Chris Berman, rumbled, bumbled and stumbled 37 yards for the game’s only touchdown.

It was an exquisite metaphor for all of the team’s and Anderson’s struggles that season. The Browns lost the game, their second straight and the second straight in which they couldn’t score a touchdown. The fans were frustrated. They had a right to be.


When Anderson then went down near the end of the game with an injury, some fans cheered. But what Anderson still apparently fails to appreciate is that the smattering of cheers wasn’t for his injury but because that appeared to be the only way Crennel would make still another quarterback change. The fans had watched Anderson fall all over himself for nearly two straight games, playing one ineffective series after another, and had seen enough.

Maybe Anderson has blocked all of that context out of his mind, but the fans haven’t. A season that promised so much had spiraled out of control on the wings of a selfish, undisciplined receiver in Braylon Edwards who figured if he just showed up he’d be great; the worst free agent signing ever in the form of Donte Stallworth who milked a quadriceps injury for most of the season; and, a quarterback in Anderson who simply couldn’t perform under the weight of the expectations created by his 2007 season.

There were more culprits responsible for that lost season, of course, like Crennel. But Anderson was as much to blame as anyone when he couldn’t marshal the leadership skills his position requires to help right a ship that was drifting aimlessly from almost the first pre-season game forward.

It’s interesting that Anderson in his email blast admitted that “at times I wasn’t great” but he’d have been far more honest with himself if he would have eliminated the words “at times” from his email. Anderson’s cause wasn’t helped much by the loads surrounding him like Edwards and Stallworth, but Anderson also struggled mightily with both his decision making and his accuracy, particularly on short passes.

No one will ever be able to take from Anderson the one great season he’s had in the NFL. For Browns fans, it was a season for the ages and, in truth, one of the greatest seasons ever by a Browns’ quarterback. And while performing at that level is difficult enough, the harder work comes in following it up. Anderson, like Edwards, simply couldn’t do it and, like Edwards, that’s on him.

It’s refreshing to hear (or read, in this case) a player speak his mind, even if he is misguided. Fans and media clamor for it after being fed a near non-stop diet of pabulum by athletes who have been taught to make inane and safe statements. But if an athlete is going to expose himself like that, he at least ought to get the key facts right.

It’s interesting that Anderson spared from his wrath the massive mismanagement by the Browns, from the owner to the coaches, for the impact that may have had on his career. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense. The team enriched him well beyond what his talent deserved. When former general manager Phil Savage picked Anderson off the Baltimore scrap heap and brought him to Cleveland, it literally made the guy’s career.

Indeed, but for Savage deciding sometime around the first series of the first game of the 2007 season that Charlie Frye wasn’t a viable NFL starter Anderson would have found himself carrying a clip board until the inevitable injury to Frye gave him an opportunity halfway through another lost season. Then, at season’s end, the Browns would have simply cast Anderson adrift as an unrestricted free agent after drafting Quinn.

Anderson, to his credit, took advantage of the opportunities 2007 presented and was able to then parlay his impending free agency into a multi-million dollar contract. Good for him. But the down side of his club friendly contract was the deferral of a bonus of a nearly $2 million bonus until 2010. Clauses like that always serve as off ramps for teams to get out of relationships that just aren’t working out. This one clearly wasn’t.

It’s understandable that Anderson might be a tad angry about missing out on that $2 million bonus, not to mention the nearly $8 million salary he would have been paid for 2010. But he’d garner much more respect if he instead had simply acknowledge that he didn’t come close to earning either payment.

Now Anderson finds himself looking for another team and there will be one for him. Anderson is the near perfect backup, like Kelly Holcomb. In small doses and when expectations are slight, he occasionally can perform. He crumbles when the stakes are raised and as a result he’s just not anyone’s solution as a long-term starter.

At the rate that starting quarterbacks get injured, a viable backup is essential. As long as Anderson recognizes that this is his destiny, he’ll make decent money from a variety of teams over the next several years. If he thinks he still deserves to start then he’s likely to carry an unhealthy grudge for the rest of what will end up being a much shorter career.

The real pity in all of this is what it’s done to the Browns’ quarterback situation. Anderson’s 2007 season certainly presented the Browns with a dilemma since they had just drafted Quinn as the starter-in-waiting. Savage’s sin in all of this was not the contract he gave Anderson (it was club friendly) but the fact that he didn’t parlay Anderson’s season or Quinn’s lofty draft status into a decent trade opportunity. That set the team back as much as anything.

Instead Savage dithered and it ultimately led to where the Browns are now seriously considering Seneca Wallace, eh gads, as their starter.

As for Anderson, I wonder when reality will set in. As he said in his email exit “I hope and pray I’m playing when my team comes to town and roll them.” That could happen of course but if he’s playing, then his team is in trouble because it will already be down one key starter.

Sanford and Son, NFL-style

It’s early March on the NFL calendar which can only mean one thing: the world’s costliest flea market is open for business, limited time only.

Every year beginning in late February, just after the NFL combine closes and general managers and coaches have had their fill of poking, prodding and testing the new meat, each NFL team heads to the fair grounds and sets up a swap meet of sorts to poke, prod and test the old meat.

Each booth features a team’s cast offs in the form of restricted and unrestricted free agents just looking for a new buyer. And as these teams are arranging their slightly-worn trinkets just so, they’re also gazing out at what’s going on in the other booths. Sure, I don’t need this lamp shaped like a bowling pin anymore but that picture of dogs playing cards over in the next booth would look great in the den.

Welcome to Sanford and Son, NFL-style.

The Cleveland Browns aren’t any different than any other team. After carefully setting out their white elephants like Rex Hadnot, Hank Fraley, Brodney Pool, Jerome Harrison, among others, they’ve gone shopping for someone else’s gently-worn gems in the form of unrestricted free agent linebacker Scott Fujita and offensive lineman Tony Pashos. And they may not be done shopping, given the relative lack of furniture in their house.

This isn’t a knock on either Fujita or Pashos. Indeed both are upgrades for this team in the way that a full size mattress is an upgrade from a twin. But isn’t it just fascinating to watch year after year teams tire of players and cast them adrift only to see other teams become absolutely giddy at the chance to sign them?

In one sense, this can be attributable to teams using free agency to either rebalance or paper over the sins of the past. If a team has too many linebackers and not enough defensive backs, free agency gives it a chance to correct the disparity. If a team consistently drafts poorly in the second round and finds itself with gaping holes in key spots, free agency affords a chance to catch up with the pack.

But more often than not, free agency is far more about teams not wanting to overpay their current players so that they can overpay someone else’s.

Fujita is a good example. From a personal standpoint, he’s a class act, a pillar of the New Orleans community, the kind of guy any team should want on its roster. From a player perspective, he’s 31 years old in a league where players usually have a shelf life of about 5 good years and making too much money, at least from the Saints’ perspective. In other words, speaking strictly from a production standpoint, the Saints feel they have younger players making less money that can produce a roughly the same level. They’d rather use his money to potentially overpay someone else, such as a draft pick who’s yet to prove himself.

The Browns, on the other hand, aren’t so lucky. Sure, they have younger players. But stacked end to end these players can’t produce at roughly the same level Fujita projects for the next few seasons. Indeed, even though the young linebackers on this team chew up less salary than Fujita will be making, the drop off in production is too dramatic. Hence Fujita becomes a member of the Browns and general manager Tom Heckert can sing the praises of how a linebacker whose been productive in the 4-3 defense can suddenly be that missing inside presence in the Browns’ 3-4 scheme.

Pashos is in exactly the same spot except that he leaves a team in the San Francisco 49ers with nearly as many problems as the Browns. Indeed, if you follow Pashos’ career, he’s come from mostly marginally productive offenses in both Baltimore and Jacksonville as well.

This is the part of free agency that actually worries me. When a team like the Browns signs a player from a team with as many issues, I’m suspicious. I don’t need to look at the stats to know that the 49ers can’t possibly have a plethora of offensive linemen that can easily replace Pashos unless they are of the “can’t be any worse” variety. When I look at the stats, I become truly convinced.

The 49ers weren’t a rushing team last year, averaging just 23 attempts per game as compared to Cleveland’s 31. With similar yards/carry averages, the number of attempts accounts for the fact that the Browns averaged 30 more rushing yards per game than the 49ers.

When I look at the 49ers passing statistics, they were a fourth quartile team, just like the Browns. Sure, the Browns were at the bottom of the league when it came to passing, but the 49ers weren’t lighting it up, either.

All of this is a circuitous way of getting to the point that the 49ers themselves could use help on the offensive line, just like the Browns, and they don’t see Pashos as part of that process. They may be lacking in skill players, such as at quarterback and receiver, just like the Browns, but as we’ve seen in Cleveland when the offensive line plays well even Derek Anderson can be a Pro Bowler.

This makes me even more suspicious about Pashos except that I remember that the Browns still have Floyd Womack and John St. Clair anchoring, as it were, the right side of the offensive line and can’t help but think that Pashos has to be an upgrade, he just has to be.

The missing variable in all of this Pashos’ contract with the Browns. Unlike Fujita’s $16 million/3 year/$8 million guaranteed contract, I haven’t seen much said about Pashos’ contract. That means it’s either bigger than it has to be, which would be embarrassing to the Browns, or smaller than Pashos and his agent would like it known.


But this is the minor stuff. The real splash at the swap meet will be coming in the form of a new quarterback. Team president Mike Holmgren has said he’s still evaluating both Anderson and Brady Quinn but he’s also been quite candid in saying that he’s also looking elsewhere. That elsewhere will take up one of two forms: a veteran to help mentor Quinn or an up and comer to take over the team.

When I heard the Browns were interested in David Carr, the veteran-as-mentor concept seemed clear. Among the many problems with having both Anderson and Quinn on the roster is that both are still learning the position and are backed up by someone even more green in the form of Brett Ratliff. Having someone with significant NFL experience on the sidelines to back up someone still learning the position has always made more sense.

But then the Browns traded for Seneca Wallace, the back up in Seattle. That just muddles the situation even further but probably means Quinn will be traded along with Anderson and the Browns will then still be searching for a veteran quarterback to serve as a back up.

I can’t quite determine why the Browns would want Wallace. He’s a 29-year old, 5’11” career backup. Think Troy Smith without the Heisman. Five years in the league, he has exactly 12 starts under his belt, or exactly 20 less than Holmgren says are necessary for a proper evaluation.

Having obtained Wallace it's reasonable to presume it's with the intent to give him those 20 additional starts because he’s certainly not at that stage of his career or his development where he can mentor anyone. It also tells you plenty about what the Seahawks think of Wallace's chances as a long-term starter, which is something to chew on as well.

Which takes us right back to where we started, scouring the flea market for a priceless or at least pricey antique masquerading as a piece to tchotchke.

As a long-term strategy, it’s flawed. Just as the Indians’ Mark Shapiro whose used the strategy for years to little effect. For now, hope that it’s being used here only because the options are so otherwise limited and not because it’s a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Lingering Items--Quantitative Analysis Edition

In the infamous words of Alex Baldwin in “State and Main”, well, that happened.

The Cleveland Indians signed Russell Branyan, against all sense and logic and this is what qualifies as good news in Cleveland. Back problem, schmack problem. If he can just somehow repeat his career year (and I’ll disregard the inherent oxymoronic nature of that phrase) then the Indians have a chance to, what, win 73 games instead of 71?

Branyan is an awful player living off a singular ability to hit long home runs on occasion. As a player, he’s less dimensional than even Mel Hall. I could spend the next several paragraphs providing the iron clad case against Branyan but at this juncture what’s the point? Indians-President-In-Waiting Mark Shapiro already struck the deal.

Here’s the issue with the Indians as I see it. They operate in an economically-depressed market in an ethically-challenged league led by a thin-skinned commissioner with the business sense of a Russian peasant. They are owned by folks committed to conflicting goals of winning a World Series while maintaining a modest payroll. To accomplish these goals the only competitive advantage they can muster is to find off-the-radar players through their use of quantitative analysis about any and every professional and amateur player in the universe. The problem is that irrespective of what that analysis tells them, they still end up with players like Branyan.

I’ll challenge Shapiro and General Manager-In-Waiting Chris Antonetti to make the statistical case for Branyan. Go ahead, I’ll wait. The truth is, they can’t. Sure, you can highlight some things, downplay others and come up with a scenario that paying Branyan $2 million for the numbers he projects is a relatively low risk proposition in the context of the bizarre economics of baseball.

But Branyan is simply a baseball vagabond, nothing more. He’ll drift from city to city year after year and won’t take root anywhere. He’s not good enough to invest in long-term and apparently isn’t awful enough to move on to his real life’s work.

What good, though, is the Indians’ so-called competitive advantage, its front office smarts, if they are put to this kind of use? Maybe Branyan’s name was spit out by some hybrid program Antonetti cobbled together, but if he is the end result then it may be time to develop a new program.

There is just something about all of this that I find terribly depressing. For the last two seasons the Indians have been dumping nearly every asset of value as if the Dolans were trying to re-enact the movie Major League. In doing so they’ve stripped the fans of any real semblance of hope and replaced it with a lingering sense of dread.

But every year is a new year and no sport regenerates faint feelings of hope more than baseball. And yet the Indians are barely in camp and they’re already dropping turds in the punchbowl, saying, basically, Branyan is the best that we can do.

This season and the next several are now officially being played for the baseball purists, that rare breed of person that loves the poetry of the game and would be just as content to watch the Washington Nationals play the Kansas City Royals as they would be to watch the Indians play anyone.

For them and maybe a few others, watching some young players get good enough where they'll be too pricey to sign long-term is about all that's on the horizon to keep them satisfied. Meanwhile the more meaningful games will be played elsewhere once more.

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The NFL combine is open for business which means, of course, that the NFL’s official Disinformation Campaign is in full swing. The combine has morphed into a traveling circus, except that it sticks around longer and is even less entertaining.

Teams approach it like an amateur approaches a no-limit Texas Hold’em tournament in Vegas, as if the point of it all isn't to win but to bluff well. So scared are teams of tipping their hand about what they plan in both free agency and the draft that instead of really using it for its intended purpose it's now just about showing how uninterested you really are in the guys that interest you most.

I’ll make this easy for any fan who is trying to glean insight about the Browns’ plans from what’s taking place at the combine. Turn off your television set. Hide your morning Plain Dealer (if you still subscribe to it, which you probably don’t). Ignore WKNR (which you’re probably doing already). Nothing that takes place at the combine has any relevance to who the Browns might sign or draft. It’s really that simple.

If you don’t believe me and instead want to follow the arc of the various Tony Grossi musings on this subject, then drop me a line in another week or so and let me know how accurate the following is: the Browns are interested in a quarterback, or they aren’t. Maybe they really want a right tackle to bookend with Joe Thomas on the left. They like Sam Bradford if he’s not hurt. Same goes for Colt McCoy. Jimmy Clausen reminds them too much of Brady Quinn or maybe he doesn’t. The Browns are going to trade down or else trade up. They will package some of the draft picks they got last year for even more next year or else they’ll concentrate on the defense.

There you have it. Your update from the combine. Plan accordingly.

**


I continue to remain puzzled as to exactly why general manager Mike Holmgren retained head coach Eric Mangini. Most of what Holmgren's said lately, particularly as it concerns Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn is a flat-out repudiation of how Mangini ran the team last season.

From nearly the day he arrived on campus last season, Mangini set up an ill-conceived quarterback competition. He never affirmatively settled on either and as a result made both unprepared and tentative.

From nearly the day he arrived on campus, Holmgren has intimated how ridiculous the whole situation really became. Speaking to reporters at the combine, Holmgren couldn't have been more dismissive of Mangini's handling of the situation. As reported in the Akron Beacon Journal, Holmgren said “whoever's playing has to believe you have his back. That confidence level, even though you make a mistake, 'I'm still OK. I'm going to get better.' He's got to feel that. It's all part of coaching that position.” Ouch.

But there was more. “Someone's got to play a full season, not two games here, off two games, three games, off two, that doesn't work. Because whoever's playing, the first interception, everybody in the stands yells for the other guy. And then you switch them. It doesn't work. So pick one, commit, coach them up, build confidence, make them better and go. And surround them with good people.”

That's about as opposite of an approach as one can get to how Mangini handled the situation last year. Much of what Mangini does, actually, is to prey on a player's insecurities as a means of motivating him, as in “if you don't want me to keep yanking you out of there, don't throw an interception.”

It sounds, though, that Holmgren is going to make it easier on Mangini. Rather than leave him with the decision on who to start, Holmgren has removed Mangini completely from the process and put it in his own hands and those of general manager Tom Heckert.

In a more subtle way, Holmgren and Heckert also have repudiated Mangini by indicating that they tend to make a tender offer to running back Jerome Harrison. On the surface that may seem like an easy decision given what Harrison accomplished at the end of last season. But just remember that Mangini almost steadfastly refused to give Harrison an opportunity at all until he was forced to because of injuries. Mangini was more infatuated with the rookies he brought in and with Jamal Lewis, even though Lewis clearly was washed up. Even when Harrison would excel in spot duty, as he did in the first Cincinnati game last season, he found himself buried the next week.

It's a nice outcome for Harrison, a back that former head Romeo Crennel also didn't treat particularly fairly. As for Mangini, it's once again a reaffirmation that his input into personnel decisions will be limited at best.

**


I actually believe Holmgren when he says that he hasn’t made a decision yet on whether to keep or jettison Anderson and Quinn. I also think that this is the lynchpin decision for the Browns. If you really want a clue into their thinking, the next key date on the calendar is March 19. That’s when Anderson is owed his next roster bonus, a tidy $2 million.

Former general manager Phil Savage has been bashed by many, including me, for a whole laundry list of sins. But his handling of Anderson and his contract situation isn’t one of them. Anderson had the good fortune of having a breakout, Pro Bowl season during a free agent year. Even with Quinn lurking in the background, Savage was able to sign Anderson to a very club friendly contract that has had all sorts of convenient off-ramps attached to it. March 19th is just the latest.

For a team still building (you can’t rebuild something that wasn’t ever built right in the first place), it helps when you aren’t saddled with the previous regime’s baggage. Savage may not have been able to foresee his own demise but he was at least able to foresee the likely scenarios involving Anderson and Quinn and plan accordingly.

In much the same way as he did with Anderson, Savage also signed Donte Stallworth to a club friendly contract. Stallworth proved himself the worst free agent signing in history in his first season and yet head coach Eric Mangini still pulled the trigger on him for a second season, only to see that blow up in his face the very next day.

There are two points to all of this. First, it’s so much more myth than reality that Savage left the franchise a mess. Savage had a spotty history in the draft and left this team without much talent, but from a business perspective, the team was not being run like the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin as Mangini implied all last season. Second, because the franchise is not the mess that Mangini liked to say it was, it is actually well positioned to build in earnest and in the right way far more quickly than most realize. Having, finally, a credible head of the organization was all that was needed and now that box has been checked.

**


Speaking of cleaning up the last few dirty dishes, the other news of the week from Browns camp is that, surprise surprise, the Browns and former general manager George Kokinis have settled their differences.

There was no way this wasn’t going to get settled. Terms are confidential, of course, but just know that Lerner is parting once again with a boatload of money for another former executive. Call it the high cost of his own mismanagement.

The only thing that bothers me about all of this is the whisper campaign that’s been going on about Kokinis. According to reports he was overwhelmed from day one, came into work late, left early and occasionally would nap at his desk like George Kostanza.

I don’t know whether any of this was true but it’s hard to imagine they are given how little time Kokinis was on the job. But let’s assume it is true. What does that say about Mangini, the person who handpicked his own boss? The kinds of things being said about Kokinis are major red flags. How could Mangini have missed them?

I rather doubt he did miss them. I just consider the vested interest of those spreading those rumors and place them into that context, just I place it into context that Mangini has a distinct patter of burying former close friends when it furthers his own interests.

Putting all that aside, though, this was a distraction that’s now been resolved, allowing the Browns to truly look forward. It’s about time.

**
Here's a question that keeps me pondering as I read more and more about the upcoming NFL draft: why is Jimmy Clausen considered a first round pick?