History Is Not On His Side

At this point it seems like a question of when and not if, as in when will Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam clean house once again?

There is simply  no way a knee-jerk owner like Haslam tolerates regression, right?  Well, that’s probably true.  Still the dilemma he faces is a tad challenging to resolve, assuming you’re willing to give Haslam some credit for not being a total reactionary.

The mental gymnastics Haslam must be going through since watching this supposedly better version of the Browns get embarrassed nearly every week havsto be exhausting.  Haslam can’t like what he sees any more than any fans like what they see.  But the strong evidence tells him and you that the key to long term success in the NFL (and most businesses, actually) is stability, particularly at the top.

So does he stay the course out of the need to create stability within the league’s most unstable franchise or does he once again turn over the apple cart in the name of finding something or someone who can turn it back upright and get it going in the right direction?  With great money comes great responsibility.  The only thing worth gambling on is that whatever decision he makes will be wrong because, Cleveland.

The NFL out of necessity and union rules, treats most players as fungible commodities, a balance that takes into account absolute value, value about or below the potential replacement and salary cap impacts when deciding in any given season which players stay and which go.  Indeed teams turn over 25-30% of their rosters each year. 

The team’s that can perform the evaluation tasks well do so with good management that stays in place from year to year.  The New England Patriots are the gold standard.  The teams that perform those tasks poorly often are unstable franchises who hire poor talent evaluators and mediocre coaches.  The Browns are that gold standard.

While Haslam should prize stability but that only matters when you have the right folks in place at the top.  The Browns don’t and never do.  Let’s look at the last 15 years for the clues.

 Randy Lerner seemed to face a housecleaning dilemma every year and history has more than proven that in every case he actually fostered regression by hanging on to coaches and general managers who clearly were not suited for the job.  His biggest fault was that he couldn’t tell the difference between a Cadillac and a Camry.  As long as he had someone driving him around I guess it didn’t matter.

Since the Browns returned in 1999 only one fired head coach of the Browns went on to be a head coach again.  That would be Romeo Crennel who, incidentally, still has the longest tenure as a Browns head coach in the 2.0 ERA.  Crennel was an awful head coach overseeing typically awful Browns personnel.  He won 6 games his first season, 4 his next.  He should have been fired then as it led to what came next.  Perhaps his major accomplishment was to win 10 games in his third season, which made it look like Lerner was a genius even though the Browns are one of the few teams in NFL history to have won 10 games and not make the playoffs.  More to the point though is that while the NFL is a bottom line league, those 10 wins were soft.  Fans and history will recall that the Browns had a historically easy schedule that entire season, a point that was proven the following season when a Browns team supposedly on the come sank back to Crennel’s set point of 4 wins.  He was fired and instead of being two years into a new regime and direction the Browns were set back by those same two years.

And while Crennel did find a head coaching job again, that shouldn’t alter Haslam’s view.  After getting fired by the Browns Crennel ended up in Kansas City as a defensive coordinator, a job for which he was uniquely qualified and successful.  He became head coach when the Chiefs fired Todd Haley.  Crennel continued into the next season as well, his only full year as a head coach the second time around.  He promptly won 4 games with a Kansas City team many also thought was on the come and was fired. (Indeed that Chiefs team was on the come.  Andy Reid stepped in the next year and promptly won 11 games with essentially the same personnel.)

After that you have Butch Davis who never got another head coaching gig in the NFL but did land in college at North Carolina and was fired as part of the stench of an extensive academic cheating scandal that led to the Browns ultimately drafting Greg Little, but that’s another failed story for another day.

Then there are the various general managers all with the same awful track record and not a one of them hired thereafter as a general manager anywhere else.  That list includes Dwight Clark, Butch Davis (served as his own GM), Phil Savage, George Kokinis (although he was a mere puppet for the subordinate that hired him, Eric Mangini, who also hasn’t worked again as a head coach), Tom Heckert, Mike Lombardi and now Ray Farmer.

The point here is that these aren’t just trends to be interpreted.  The Browns have an unblemished record of hiring awful general managers and head coaches and every time they held on to one or the other longer than they should have it set the franchise back even further.  Crennel is an obvious example but no bigger than Mike Holmgren holding on to Eric Mangini despite the fact that he literally couldn’t stand him.

So as Halsam finds himself on the precipice of having to figure out when housecleaning should commence, the history he need rely on is not that of the wonderfully ethereal concept of stability but that of a franchise he owns that has been 100% wrong for 16 straight years.

I’ve already and repeatedly chronicled general manager Ray Farmer’s shortcomings.  His talent evaluation skills and philosophies are so misguided and inept, the results on the field can fairly be said to be inevitable.  Holding on to him is worse than holding on to Phil Savage and on par with holding on to Dwight Clark.   And yet to place all the blame on Farmer is to ignore Pettine’s massive shortcomings as a head coach. Those, too, are becoming more pronounced as the weeks roll by and here the parallels with Crennel are eerie.

In a sense, the first four games of the season, played against teams of similar caliber, provided a nice experiment where you can control certain variables to determine where the problems really exist. The debacle against the Jets, for example, highlighted the difference a coach can make on a bad team.  The Jets were a mess last season, similar to the Browns.  Yet week one the Jets, without any significant upgrades in personnel, came out well prepared and more than ready to play.  The Browns looked like they had just entered the second week of training camp and were essentially pushed around the field.  The game set a tone for both teams.  You wouldn’t be wrong to note that one of the hallmarks of Crennel’s teams each week were their lack of preparation.  There seemed to be little sense of a game plan or even a general direction.  To lose the number of games Crennel has consistently lost in his head coaching career takes the near perfect convergence of awful talent and coaching.

Switch over to Sunday’s loss to the middling San Diego Chargers.  So much of that loss stems from exactly what Pettine doesn’t bring to this team.  If Pettine is really as hard-nosed as we’ve been told, then his biggest failing comes from not instilling a similar mindset in his team.  That’s not his biggest failing.

As a side note “hard-nosed” is one of those grand football euphemisms, like “blue collar,” that’s supposed to conjure up an image of a team that relies less on smarts and more on brawn and work ethic to get the task of winning accomplished.  It’s a meaningless euphemism.  Less talented teams can and sometimes do succeed by the sheer force of their work ethic and tenacity.  But that’s rarely true in the NFL where personnel is remarkably similar team to team.  Put it this way and maybe exclude Cleveland in this sentence but if players at that level weren’t supremely talented, mentally, physically and emotionally, they would have never made it to the NFL in the first place.

Now what isn’t a euphemism at all and where teams often do reflect their head coach is in discipline and attention to detail.  One of the reasons Crennel took so long to become a head coach and then failed was his inability to bring the necessary attention and detail to the big picture.  Strong-willed miscreants like Braylon Edwards ran all over Crennel and it spilled onto the playing field in the form of one dismal penalty-laden performance after another.  The Browns’ failures in Crennel’s last season can most fairly be said to stem directly from Crennel’s loose grip on the reins of his team.

Pettine’s teams lack the kind of discipline those supposedly connote the hard-nosed team.  In Pettine’s year and a half tenure his teams have ranked near the top in the number of penalties per game, according to the website www.NFLPenalties.com  This ranking doesn’t even factor in penalties committed, only those accepted by the opposition. 

After 4 games the Browns are averaging nearly 9 penalties a game.   What’s as interesting is that the Browns also have one of the highest ratio of pre-snap penalties to overall penalties in the league under Pettine (and, frankly, basically every other coach before Pettine in the Browns 2.0 era).  That speaks to a revolving door of quarterbacks certainly and differing pre snap cadences.  But it also speaks to a lack of talent as its often overmatched offensive linemen seek to get a jump on their defensive counterparts.

Laying all of this at Pettine’s feet probably isn’t fair.  Much blame goes to the guy who employs him and supplied him with the players, and that would be Farmer. His handiwork was well on display against the Raiders a few weeks back.  That game showed the value of good drafting.  Amari Cooper and Derek Carr were excellent draft picks, particularly when compared to Johnny Manziel and Justin Gilbert.  The Browns could have had either or both and chose neither.  Farmer didn’t like Carr and seemingly hates all receivers.  That’s in essence why the Browns are still the Browns.

Pettine and Farmer are on borrowed time as it is.  Haslam may very well have already decided to clean house and now is just wrestling with whether it should be in season or the day after the season ends. Timing is tricky and keep in mind that midseason replacements kind of feel good for a minute but also tend to piss off season ticket holders who, in Cleveland anyway, like to hold on to the illusion that these games matter at least until the 9^th or 10^th game of the season.

It’s also possible that Haslam really is wrestling with another kind of dilemma.  He knows that if he holds on to Farmer and Pettine he’ll be trying to defy history that is absolute.  On the other hand, if he respects that history he runs head first into another absolute: he has no chance of getting the next decisions right, either. Ultimately, that’s probably what’s keeping him up most nights, the notion that buying the Browns may have been the dumbest idea he’s had since he set up a bonus program for the sales force at Pilot Flying J.

He's Not Number One

Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine on Wednesday confirmed what was obvious to the entire nation on Monday night.  Johnny Manziel should not and will not be opening the season as a starting NFL quarterback, even for a team as woeful and as quarterback-challenged as the Browns.

Manziel was never going to open the 2014 season as the Cleveland Browns’ starting quarterback anyway.  Never, ever, ever was it going to happen.  Manziel should probably publicly thank Pettine for saving him from another embarrassing chapter of the tragicomedy that is slowing developing in Berea with Manziel as chief protagonist.

To say the least, Manziel needs seasoning.  To say the most, he needs to grow up.

Pettine will never admit that Manziel flipping the bird at the Washington bench on Monday night in the second half of a preseason game for goodness sakes tipped the scales.  And it probably didn’t, but only because it wasn’t as if the scales were otherwise in balance.  What Manziel’s act did do was highlight exactly the problem with him at the moment.  He lacks both the maturity and the mental makeup to take on the role of starter.

It’s actually pretty comical when you think about how Manziel responded to the taunting from an opposing bench in a meaningless game.  Lacking any wit or sense of subtlety he gave the typical 14 year-old R-rated non-verbal version of “oh yea?”   Clever stuff, Johnny.  I’d have more respect for him if he had made a joke about their mothers.

More to the point, though, is it demonstrated exactly how easily it is to get inside the head of Manziel.  That shouldn’t be such a surprise.  It’s clear there’s ample room if only, but not only, because Manziel didn’t exactly spend the filling it with anything remotely work related.

This little comeuppance for Manziel, as inevitable as it was expected, puts him at a crossroads now, perhaps the first time he’s actually faced one in his life.  What he does next, which path he chooses, could very well determine if he becomes just another wasted first round pick by the Browns or the one true player around whom this beleaguered team can finally rally.

The one thing working in Manziel’s favor on this score is that he does seem to understand how vast his shortcomings clearly are at the moment. In his interview with Jon Gruden broadcast on ESPN Manziel candidly pointed out how little grooming he really had at Texas A&M for the pro game.  His college team didn’t huddle.  He never took a snap behind the center.  The playbook consisted of plays whose proper execution relied mostly of Manziel running around long enough to either find someone, anyone who might be open or taking off himself.  That amazing lack of precision to the college game just doesn’t translate to the uber-scripted world of the NFL and Manziel knows it or at least he does now.

In his comments earlier Wednesday, Manziel was similarly candid, saying he didn't do enough well on the field to earn the nod.  Indeed he admitted he probably wasn't ready to be a starter.

What makes all this so curious then is why Manziel used his offseason so frivolously.  He seemingly knew how big of a learning curve he had to overcome and instead of spending as much time as possible to make that leap he spent most of his time dicking around various nightclubs around the country.  It’s the kind of approach that someone who feels overwhelmed by what he faces tends to take.  Gravitate toward what you’re comfortable with while avoiding what you aren’t.  And if anything about Manziel is crystal clear he’s comfortable at a party.

He also made that point in his remarks Wednesday and in typical fashion he zagged when he should have zigged.  He was definitive, if not a bit defiant, in defending his offseason conduct, claiming it made no difference in the outcome and didn't impact him at all.  Indeed he said he wouldn't change a thing and vowed to essentially spend next offseason doing the same thing.

It's difficult at times to harmonize the candid, contrite Manziel with the defiant borderline idiotic version.  He knows what to say except when he doesn't.  Immaturity, perhaps, but it's more than that.  It's the reason actually scouts were so mixed about him in the first place.

But let's get back to facts.  It’s not that Manziel didn’t put in work during the offseason.  It’s that he didn’t put in nearly enough, irrespective of what he says now.  No one expected Manziel to display veteran poise at this point.  But neither should fans have expected Manziel to look as lost as a guy off the street on Monday night.  There’s a reason Pettine used the middle of August to name Hoyer as the starter.  There was no effective other choice and given how far Hoyer still needs to come the time to stop taking away reps from his was now.

Nothing about the way Manziel has performed thus far suggests he’s even close to being a credible NFL quarterback anytime soon.    That’s not to say it couldn’t happen but short of an injury it won’t or at least shouldn’t happen soon.  The one thing Manziel doesn’t need now (not to mention Hoyer) is any sense from Pettine that the move to Hoyer is less than permanent.  If past is prologue, though, more time will be spent soothing Manziel’s rather fragile ego than giving the tough love he actually needs.

Look, the red flags are everywhere with this guy and rather than treating him like a savior he needs to be put in his place.  Pettine, general manager Ray Farmer, even embattled owner Jimmy Haslam, did an awful job this offseason reigning him in almost going to great pains to sanction the behavior as appropriately aged-based.  The behind the scenes story is that none of them were pleased with his antics and yet they waited until Manziel arrived for training camp, partied out and ill prepared, to tell him that.

Similarly, there is the issue of Manziel’s missing of a team meeting last week, reminiscent of his missing an early meeting at the Manning quarterback camp last summer and, of course, the middle finger incident.  In short, nothing about Manziel screams leader including his statement Wednesday that his partying ways would continue.

I’m sure Pettine would say that these matters have been handled internally but there’s nothing publicly to suggest that Manziel has gotten the message.  Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a coach taking a calculated approach to calling out a player publicly, particularly a player who is supposed to be leading by example instead of acting like one of the bad asses in the back of the bus throwing spit balls when the coach isn’t looking.  It worked well for Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick to publicly challenge a few players from time to time.

Manziel needs to see this moment for what it is and get on the right path, publicly and privately.  Outwardly he doesn't.  He needs to come out and candidly admit he didn’t work hard enough and just as candidly re-dedicate himself to living up to the trust and faith that has been placed in him.  He didn't.  

A bit of advice for the rookie.  The fans, particularly in Cleveland, are a forgiving bunch unless you’re a dick.  It’s why they still stick with Bernie Kosar through all his problems and still can’t stand Braylon Edwards.

A Shiv to the Ribs

It was a sudden ending to a game that seemed destined to end in the tie it was supposed to end up in. The Ryan Brothers, Rex for the New York Jets and Rob for the Cleveland Browns seemed locked in their own personal battle, as if fighting over the last turkey leg at the Thanksgiving table. Neither was willing to yield to the other but in the end it was Rob's defense succumbing to Rex's offense as Santonio Holmes caught a 37-yard pass from Mark Sanchez with just seconds remaining in overtime to win the battle royale, 26-20.

It could have been worse. It could have been Braylon Edwards with the catch, except for that to happen Sanchez would have had to have confidence that Edwards could make that catch. It's why he went to Holmes.

What set up that winning touchdown was an improbable turn of events that conspired to give the Browns their 6th loss of the season against 3 wins. With the Jets driving but out of field goal range and under two minutes remaining in overtime, Sanchez threw deep to Edwards but cornerback Joe Haden had the inside coverage and easily intercepted at the Cleveland 3-yard line. It was probably more effective than the likely punt would have been anyway.

That left 1:35 remaining in the game and the Browns decided, rightly, to try and win the game instead of milking the clock and settling for a tie, a tie that would have meant nothing as opposed to a win that would have meant everything. (Note: at some point someone will whine about how the loss cost the Browns position in the next NFL draft and then we can spend the next 10 years debating what decision the Browns would have made with that pick instead of the one they had and, well, you get the idea.)

Offensive coordinator Brian Daboll called for a pass on first down and Colt McCoy overthrew tight end Ben Watson deep, which stopped the clock. The Jets' defense was ready for the inevitable hand off to Peyton Hillis on second down and it yielded just 3 yards. With the Jets waiting to utilize their last time out, the Browns took the clock down to 41 seconds and called time. Then on third down McCoy dropped back to pass and as the pocket collapsed he darted back to the line of scrimmage, setting up fourth down. Reggie Hodges hit a 53-yard punt but returner Jim Leonhard returned it for 18 yards, back to the Cleveland 37-yard line, setting up the shiv that Sanchez and Holmes delivered to the ribs of the Browns and their fans, not to mention the bragging rights Rex now has over Rob.

It could have gone the other way. After the Jets were unable to score on the first possession, the Browns took over and seemed to be moving in for the victory. After gaining one first down, McCoy found Chansi Stuckey down the right sideline for what would have been another and then some as Stuckey danced his way to the Jets' 32-yard line and into the outer edges of kicker Phil Dawson's field goal range. As he was doing so, however, Stuckey had the ball stripped and it was recovered by Antonio Cromartie, killing the Browns' best chance to win the game.

The Jets weren't able to capitalize on the turnover when kicker Nick Folk missed a 47-yard field goal, his third miss of the day. The Browns took over at their 37-yard line but couldn't manage a first down and had to punt. On the Jets' next series came the Sanchez interception which, in retrospect, set up the victory.

As difficult of an ending as it was, the Browns did well to get to that point in the first place. Trailing 17-13 at halftime, the Jets took the opening kick in the second half and seemingly held on to it for the entire quarter. Actually it was a 19-play drive that covered over 10 minutes.

The only problem for the Jets is that they had nothing to show for it as Folk hit the right upright. As tiring as the drive was for the Browns' defense, the outcome had to leave them a bit energized. The Browns' offense, however, had been sitting idle and apparently needed more of a boost as it quickly went 3-and-out, giving the Jets the ball back once again.

From there the teams traded punches, counter punches and punts until the Jets pushed the lead to 20-13 with another clock eating drive that lasted over 8 minutes and ended with a Folk 24-yard field goal. It left just 2:36 remaining in the game.

With only 14 total yards under their belts for the entire second half and not having put together one scoring drive with 2 minutes remaining the entire season, McCoy put his own little dagger in the guts of the Jets as he led a stunning drive that ended with an 11-yard touchdown pass to Mohamed Massaquoi with 44 seconds remaining. Dawson's extra point tied the game at 20-20. On the Jets' next drive, they were content to settle for overtime and regroup.

The second half, with the Jets controlling the clock, lacked the intensity of the first half, at least until the last Browns' drive. But the first half had the kind of atmosphere that's been missing from this franchise for years now, an atmosphere that underscored that this was a game in November that had meaning. Heck, CBS sent it's number one broadcasting team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms to cover the game and at the very least they came away convinced that whatever this Browns' team lacks in talent it makes up for in chemistry.

The Jets won the coin flip and opted to kick off to start the game, hoping to establish its defense early. Not quite. The Browns' offense, at least for that first half, kept the Jets defense on their heels, just as they had with the New England Patriots' defense last week and the New Orleans Saints' the week before that.

After starting the drive on their 16-yard line, McCoy and Hillis led the offense to the Jets' 17-yard line but the Browns were forced to settle for a 35-yard Dawson field goal and the early 3-0 lead.

The Browns then tried to catch the Jets napping by attempting an on-side kick. The problem: some of the Browns' were napping as well. Haden looked as surprised as the Jets that the onside was being tried and was unable to secure the ball as it bounded out of bounds. It gave the Jets a short field which they converted into a 27-yard Nick Folk field game that tied the game at 3-3. Sanchez tried to find Edwards late in the middle of the field and the pass was broken up by T.J. Ward. Defensive back Abe Elam then gave Edwards a little shove, just because he could.

The Browns' next drive started promisingly but ended quickly when Hillis lost his 4th fumble of the season at the Browns' 31-yard line. Sanchez and the Jets couldn't convert a first down however and Folk's 48-yard field goal went wide right.

The Browns ended up getting the ball at their own 40-yard line or about 9 yards further than where Hillis fumbled in the first place. Hillis quickly made amends as he bulled his way through the Jets, eventually scoring on a 12-yard run that was sprung by a Lawrence Vickers block. It gave the Browns a 10-3 lead.

The drive was notable for another wrinkle the Browns' offense installed this week. It featured Hillis taking a direct snap, handing off to Cribbs who then gave the ball to Massaquoi on an end-around. It worked, but Hillis oddly was called for a hold and it put the Browns in a 1st and 20 from the Jets' 30-yard line. McCoy got almost all of it back on the next play when he hit Watson on an 18-yard crossing pattern, setting up the Hillis touchdown run.

But the Jets came right back as Sanchez hit a wide open Jeremy Cotchery on a 25-yard touchdown pass that again tied the game. The Browns' responded but not quite in kind, trading touchdowns for field goals. With the ball at the Jets' 42-yard line, McCoy hit Cribbs on a short route that Cribbs turned into a 37-yard play. It took the ball to the Jets' 5-yard line but Cribbs was injured on the play and did not return. The Browns were not able to punch it in from there and settled for a 23-yard field goal that gave them a 13-10 lead.

The Jets again came right back on the strength of LaDanian Tomlinson's running and eventually scored when Sanchez ran it in from the Browns' 1-yard line on what appeared to be a broken play near the end of the first half. It gave the Jets the 17-13 halftime lead.

Still the game was well within reach, never more so when McCoy led the Browns down the field to tie the game in regulation. But the Jets aren't an easy team to beat and did what good teams do, hung in there until someone, anyone could make a play.

If there was a concern that McCoy might eventually start to show the jitters a rookie is supposed to show, especially in a game like this, there shouldn't have been. Except for a fluttering sideline pass to open the game that missed its mark badly, McCoy again played above his experience level, the best evidence of which was that drive at the end of regulation. It helps certainly, just as it helped Ben Roethlisberger when he was a rookie, to have a running back that is difficult to bring down and an offensive line that can open holes for the run and protect the quarterback on the pass, but to this point McCoy still looks special.

For the game he was 18-31 for 205 yards and that late touchdown. Again, he went without an interception and took the best pounding the Jets' defense could dish out and came back for more.

Hillis, bottled up by a Jets defense that stiffened in the second half, still had 82 yards on 19 carries and the 1 touchdown.

For the Jets, Sanchez was 27-44 for 299 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 interception. Tomlinson and Shonn Green split the carries at running back with Tomlinson gaining 57 yards on 18 carries and Green gaining 72 more on 20 carries.

Oh yea, then there is Edwards. After some initial jawing early in the game, he was mostly quiet with 4 catches for 59 yards. A few of those catches helped the Jets continue drives but he was held mostly in check by an inspired Browns' defensive backfield.

It's a disappointing loss but there are a number of ways to look at it. But before getting to that let's dispense with any sort of talk about moral victories or trite phrases like “they have nothing to be ashamed of” though that is true.

The Browns have now shown enough as a team through 9 games of this season to be out of the moral victory category. When they win, it is not viewed as a surprise. And when they lose fans have a right to now be upset, especially when a game like this gets away from them.

That said, there still is context. The Browns went toe-to-toe with a far more talented Jets team for 74 minutes and 36 seconds. They did it with Cribbs on the sideline the whole second half and overtime. They did it with a rookie quarterback whose best, most reliable, most consistently open targets are tight ends and wide receivers. In other words, they did it without the benefit of the bevy of playmakers dotting the the Jets' roster.

It was that last 24 seconds, just like the dwindling minutes and seconds in the seasons' first few games, where the Browns' defense buckled when it needed to tighten. They'll learn, certainly, but it will also take some more firepower on this team before they start winning more of these types of games.

And so the Browns' enter another week of woulda and shoulda instead of on the backs of a momentum train that has been carrying the team to emotion-filled highs. But it was another week of character building, another week when they played with the league's best and gave them more than they had a right to expect. And the good news is, with a more favorable schedule in the second half, there still are plenty of reasons to get excited about the rest of the season, even if the playoffs are just a technical possibility at this point.

Lingering Items--Transformative Edition

Anyone who wonders why New York Jets receiver Braylon Edwards doesn't just shut up is asking the wrong question. The better question is will he ever shut up and the answer is no.

Edwards, you see, is an attention whore. He craves the spotlight like a Kardashian and has roughly the same level of societal value and accomplishment. He won't shut up because he can't. Everything about Edwards screams "look at me!"

Nothing Edwards said this week about Cleveland, the Browns or the fans should be much of a surprise. He is a wannabe trying to further the brand of the petulant loudmouth receiver that Terell Owens pioneered years ago. Edwards like so many of his colleagues these days thinks that the road to riches is paved with attention.

He's right and he's wrong.

If you're a Hollywood bimbo you can cultivate an increasingly needy entertainment media and get noticed. Eventually it will lead to a reality show where a few people will tune in a few times for the same reason people stop and look at car wrecks. The cable company will be happy because they need just a handful of viewers to survive anyhow.

But every such star burns out eventually and in order to keep it going as long as possible they have to find new ways to be even more outrageous. That’s the trajectory Edwards is on at the moment.

But if you're a professional athlete and not a real housewife of some glamorous city eventually you'll need some real accomplishments or quickly you'll be forgotten among the many others that actually have done something with their lives.

That's where Edwards is right now in his career. His one good season has mostly been forgotten because he hasn't come close to duplicating it since. Indeed, he's far more known for his drops than his catches which is the exact opposite of what a receiver should be known for.

So he's resorted to living large, running his mouth and otherwise being outrageous in order to remain relevant, angling for column inches in New York tabloids. Even Edwards' DUI earlier this season seems calculated in context.

That's why his statements this week in preparation for this week's game against the Browns is so laughable. Maybe he means half of what he said. Maybe he means all of it. But the larger point was to simply call attention to himself; make this game about him and no one else.

Indeed it's probably driving Edwards batty that too much focus is on the Rex Ryan/Rob Ryan dynamic. So he figures that if he can throw a few bricks through a few windows of a few Browns fans, he'll get the headlines he craves.

The best thing to do in this case is to avoid feeding the beast. The worst thing that could happen to Edwards is not a dropped pass or two, which would be typical. It would be walking back to the team bus knowing that the fans in Cleveland could care less about what he does or what he says.

I'm sure a good many fans have already taken the Edwards bait, painted some semi-humorous signs and plan on booing him every time he steps on the field. All that will accomplish is to create a headline for him that doesn't depend on the outcome of the game. It will be mission accomplished.

If you really want to get under Edwards’ skin, then there is no better way then to just yawn and move on. Remember, the opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference.

**

New York Jets head coach/class clown Rex Ryan opined this week that his twin brother Rob will be a head coach soon, perhaps even next year. It wasn't just a case of brotherly love talking.

Rob Ryan will indeed be a head coach. Unless the Browns' defense falls into the lake during the second half of the season, his work here in Cleveland is approaching Anne Sullivan territory.

With 8 games under their belts there are some conclusions we can draw about the defense. The linebackers are a solid group, the best group in a generation in fact. The defensive line is average. The secondary is average at best.

But the unit is playing better than the sum of its parts and that leads back to Ryan. His combination of brashness, recklessness and hubris has caused this group to play better than they are. That’s always the best measure of a coach.

There's also a bit of mad scientist about Ryan. He takes unadvisable risks repeatedly, which is what makes him dangerous to opposing teams. Yes he is crazy enough to leave Eric Wright on an island again. He tinkers with formations as if he's choreographing an off Broadway show of experimental dance. With Ryan there is no conventional wisdom.

In the process, he’s confused some of the best quarterbacks in the league. That kind of stuff gets a person noticed, in a good way.

But the reason he'll be viewed as more than a crazy uncle has everything to do with his brother. As Rex noted in his press conference, his success will pave the way for Rob. They are both a little off center and that tends to clash with the conservative sensibilities of most owners. But watching it work for Rex in New York will go a long way to convincing some other button-downed owner to take a chance on Rob.

As it looks now, Eric Mangini's job is safe in Cleveland, which means there won’t be room for Rob to move up any further.. And as big of a task as Mangini has in front of him just trying to turn the franchise, one of the keys to his success will be finding an appropriate successor to Ryan. That planning needs to start now.

**
Tony Grossi of the Plain Dealer is theorizing that a victory over the Jets this weekend could very well be the transformative victory that Mangini needs to essentially cross an important threshold. It begs the question: what, then, was the victory against New England?

Grossi's hypothesis is mostly premised on Mangini's relationship with the Jets both as a former employer and as a person who essentially handed them Edwards and quarterback Mark Sanchez.

The problem with the hypothesis is that those matters are not really baggage that Mangini is carrying, at least when compared to the complex relationship he has with his former mentor, Bill Belichick.

That's why Grossi's analysis is about a week late. Mangini’s transformative victory was over the New England Patriots. Watershed events can’t be easily predicted, they just happen. The way the New England game unfolded a number of things became much clearer. First, the Browns are a much better coached team then most of us were willing to admit. Maybe it was a trap game for the Patriots, but the Browns beat the Patriots not because they were taken lightly but because they were better prepared.

Second, the Browns looked like they may have found a quarterback. Colt McCoy, whose performance thus far has been minimized in some quarters, put together defining drives late in the game that build the kind of confidence that simply can't be manufactured. Third, despite an overall lack of talent, the Browns present a unified front, a kind of us against the world mentality. The players for the most part are on the same page and that kind of cohesion can carry a team to far greater heights then a better talented team that is running in different directions. All you need to do is compare the Browns to the more talented Cincinnati Bengals to see the difference.

All of those elements seemed to coalesce against the Patriots. That doesn't mean the Browns are going to win the rest of their games this season. They could very well lay an egg against the Jets on Sunday. But when the story of this season and the next are written, it won't be the Jets game that people look to as the turning point. It will be the Patriots game.

**

Watching Wes Welker and then Ndamukong Suh kick extra points last week because the starting kickers were hurt on this team leads to this week's question to ponder: If Phil Dawson got hurt during a game, how likely is it that Josh Cribbs would be called on to kick?

Lingering Items--Replacements Edition

Twice this week head coach Eric Mangini has called out his own players publicly for the mounting mistakes they’ve been making. He’s done it in the most emphatic way possible, telling them publicly that if you fumble the ball, if you forget the snap count, if you can’t get two feet in bounds on a pass, you’ll find a spot on the bench.

If nothing else, these kinds of mini-tirades certainly appease the fans. It lets them know that the coach sees the same things they do and that he’s taking care of it. It’s a refreshing approach given how former head coach Romeo Crennel would just let these little things linger, holding no one accountable.

But these kinds of public tongue lashings also signal a bit of desperation on Mangini’s part. He knows that what he’s telling his players during the week isn’t sinking in so he’s taking that bit of dirty laundry public in hopes that a little embarrassment goes a long way.

Beyond all that, though, is a much more pragmatic question: who is Mangini going to play instead? If Jerome Harrison is the best running back on the team and Peyton Hillis is second, that leaves basically James Davis left to carry the ball. Maybe Davis can catch Boyce Green-like lighting in a bottle for a season, but I tend to think that if Davis was better than either of the two in front of him, he’d be starting.

Still, for a team that’s been running in place for more than 10 years now, Mangini could start Davis Love III at running back and the fans probably wouldn’t much notice, so used are they to watching a constantly changing carousal of players act exactly the same way that it makes one think that there must be something else in the water in Berea besides staph.

As bad as the situation is at running back, it’s even worse at receiver. Mangini can try to pump up Josh Cribbs as a receiver knowing that Cribbs is a fan favorite, but the more he does that the more it looks like he’s trying to deflect attention away from the fact that the actual professional receivers on the roster, all of which he brought in, aren’t very good at the moment.

There were some veteran receivers available for the Browns to bring in but general manager Tom Heckert and Mangini undoubtedly decided to instead try and develop what they have on the roster. That makes sense, but it’s also the same road that former general manager Phil Savage went down when he decided to start two rookies in the secondary a few seasons ago. Eric Wright developed but Brandon McDonald did not and, not surprisingly, the Browns are not any further ahead. Indeed they ended up having to once again replenish the secondary this last off season.

There is no right answer to any of this. But it is these little things that are the most frustrating part of a team that is still in the early development stage playing against teams far more mature.

**

To be a member of the Cleveland Browns once is to be a member for all time. Browns fans will celebrate with almost equal passion the greats like Jim Brown or Leroy Kelly as they will revel in the awful players that have passed this way.

That’s why Browns fans can’t get enough news about the failings of those ex-Browns for whom there were previous high hopes. It’s why so many fans have their eyes on Arizona for the moment. They want to see if Derek Anderson is missing open receivers half a continent away. He is.

But distance and a different conference make it tough to keep track of Anderson. Not so with one of the league’s most mercurial, most miserable personalities, Braylon Edwards.

For reasons only Edwards could articulate, he has been wearing what looks to be the recently discarded beard of Joaquin Phoenix. Ok, it’s a personal style choice. It makes him look ridiculous, as if he’s trying to advance his own Amish-chic style, but if he thinks it’s enhancing his rep with the lady folk, then have at it.

That’s the least of his sins. The most, which means the latest, is his recent DWI arrest at approximately 5:16 a.m. Tuesday when he was caught driving around a few of his fellow Jets back from wherever it is that Jets go at 5 a.m on a Tuesday while having about .16 blood alcohol content. Just a guess here, but Edwards may have been acting as the designated driver. Oy vey!

It’s not a surprise that Edwards tried to wrangle his way out of the arrest that was about to come his way. It’s an age-old tradition for boorish celebrities who, when not talking about themselves in the third person are telling those trying to hold them accountable “do you know who I am?”

Maybe the arresting officer was another one of those Michigan haters. Maybe the officer, stuck with the miserable task of riding the streets of Manhattan in the early morning hours for a measly $25 an hour wasn’t impressed with Edwards and his New York flash and attitude. Maybe the officer was just a Giants fan. Whatever it was, Edwards once again finds himself on the wrong side of the law, meaning that he’ll probably run to his mommy once again to get her to defend her misunderstood little boy to the local media.

Believe me, Edwards isn’t a misunderstood anything. He’s a marginally talented football player with an entitlement complex that runs deeper than the Atlantic Ocean. He never accepts responsibility for his own misdeed, blames others for his misfortunes, and has little if any respect for anyone. I’d say he’s a misanthrope but I don’t want to insult the misanthropes among us.

Edwards has given the perfunctory apology to his fans, his team and his current city but as Browns fans know full well, Edwards is as sincere as a Vegas stripper.

The Jets are being rightfully criticized for not taking a much harsher approach to Edwards. They are punishing him in the most symbolic of ways possible. He’ll have to sit out the first series on Sunday. When did Rex Ryan turn into Rich Rodriguez?

It will now be up to the league to send a message to Edwards that the Jets won’t. Edwards has a history and should get a suspension. If the NFL takes a different approach then by proxy they are undercutting the message they tried to send to Donte Stallworth via his suspension when he killed Mario Reyes while driving drunk. Remember, Edwards was drinking with Stallworth a few hours prior to that tragic accident.

And if none of that is reason enough to suspend Edwards, then the NFL should do it simply because that’s the only message the most of these knuckleheads truly understand. They only thing they have in their lives, really, are the games. Give them a taste of what it feels like on the outside looking in and it tends to bring them back into focus, especially when it costs them a game check or two.

On the other hand, what’s the chance it will have any impact on Edwards other than to embolden his “me vs. the world” attitude? Just be glad he’s in a Jets uniform. On this Browns team at this moment, it’s far better that Edwards stays firmly entrenched in the ex-Browns category and that we enjoy watching this car wreck from afar. Just hope that nobody innocent gets hurt in the meantime.

**
The Browns have lost two very winnable games already this season. If they’re going to reach the even modest expectations that fans had for them going into the season, they’re going to have to now win two games they aren’t supposed to win.

One of those games potential wins is this week’s game against the Baltimore Ravens. There’s a pretty good chance that the offense may actually get shut out this weekend and if that happens it’s going to be difficult to win, not impossible. But if the offense can score just a little, there’s a far better chance for the Browns to win than most might think.

The Ravens are once again defense strong and offense weak. Joe Flacco is playing like he’s wearing a Browns uniform and it’s kept the Ravens’ offense as stuck in the mud as the Browns. No surprise.

The Browns also represent a breather on a tough opening schedule for the Ravens, making it more likely that they’ll be overlooked The Ravens had tough games against the Jets and the Bengals to open the season and then next play the Steelers, the Broncos and Patriots before they get another breather against Buffalo. In other words, the Browns appear on the Ravens’ schedule at exactly the right moment for them to be taken lightly.

If the Browns can pull off the win, it will certainly turn brighten the pall over the franchise after the first two weeks. A loss, on the other hand, and it’s a long time until week 12 when the Carolina Panthers come to town.

**

According to Friday’s Plain Dealer, Jake Delhomme has a high ankle sprain, although the Browns haven’t and won’t confirm as much. Assuming it’s true, it’s likely Delhomme will be out a few more games at least.

It begs the question that will serve as this week’s question to ponder: are the Browns really going to enter into the meat of their schedule with Seneca Wallace as the starter and Colt McCoy as the back up?

Lingering Items--Preseason Opener Edition

Generally speaking, the less said about preseason games, the better. It's easier to understand the underpinnings of the movie Inception than it is to draw conclusions about most preseason games.

So when the Cleveland Browns beat the Green Bay Packers on Saturday night 27-24 thanks to a quick start and the able leg of Phil Dawson, the knee jerk reaction of most fans likely fell into one of two themes: hmmm and start printing the playoff tickets.

It's early so let's just say that Saturday night was more of a hmmm.

What struck most was the opening series. When it was over it was a head slap moment that said "so that's what a real drive looks like."

Indeed it does. Who knows how much is left in quarterback Jake Delhomme's tank? But so long as there's something, you get the feeling that there will be more drives like this down the road.

For most of last season, the Browns offense looked like it did in Saturday night's second half. That's no knock on Colt McCoy. He's a rookie. But neither Derek Anderson nor Brady Quinn ever seemed like they could calmly go through their reads and then find the open receiver like Delhomme seemed to do so casually in his one series.

The contrast was that dramatic.

Meanwhile, Seneca Wallace looked like an interesting option should Delhomme get injured. Not exactly a run first quarterback, Wallace is still  clearly more comfortable using his scrambling ability and strong arm as his choice of weapons than he is dropping straight back.

Wallace's strong throw on the run to Brian Robiskie for the Browns' second touchdown was a thing of beauty. But in the NFL a quarterback has to learn when to restrain that kind of bravado.  Throw late over the middle too often and you'll find yourself on clipboard duty faster than you can say "Tim Couch."

Nonetheless watching Wallace gave good insight into exactly why head coach Eric Mangini suggested that Wallace will see game action even if Delhomme is healthy. Wallace is an excellent change of pace whose abilities should actually open up the running games as teams attempt to utilize extra defensive backs to counter his scrambling.  

McCoy, as mentioned, looked every bit the rookie as he played more than most fans anticipated. But if he does develop he'll actually be a nice blend between Delhomme and Wallace. Barring an injury in preseason, Brett Ratliff will be the odd man out.

It was actually fun to watch a professional quarterback like Delhomme in action. It gives fans hope that the days of one stuck in the mud drive after another will be a distant memory. That alone is reason to celebrate.  

##

The defense on the other hand looked to be still in fire drill mode, just like most of last season.

With Eric Wright out and two rookies, TJ Ward and Joe Haden, starting it looked unsettled. It was deja vu all over again.

Brandon McDonald showed once again that he's at best a minor talent, prone to occasional good play and long stretches of mediocrity. His future depends on injuries to others.

The best case scenario is for Haden to develop quickly so that McDonald at most can be relegated to nickel and dime situations. He just can't consistently cover a receiver and spends much more time than he should with his front facing the opposing end zone.

Haden didn't do much in his first game to either impress or disappoint but then it won't take much to break in the starting lineup. Meanwhile Ward could be one of the better draft picks in recent Browns' history. He's fast and plays physical. When he learns that running backs in the NFL need to be wrapped and not tapped, he'll be a force.

The linebacker and line play was just so so, which means not much has changed there either. Overall, about the only conclusion worth drawing Saturday night is that the offense is ahead of the defense, which actually might get people to pick up the phone and buy some tickets.
**

I really thought we were done with Braylon Edwards but he's the gift that keeps on giving.

His interview with the New York Times last week was like tossing a cup full of food into a pond full of carp. So I'll take the bait.

At the very least, the interview was one of the more fascinating reads you’re likely to come across when it comes to understanding the psyche of the professional athlete.

Running through Edwards’ mind, certainly, was that this interview would somehow further establish his brand and rehabilitate an image that to this point is more poser than accomplished. Instead, all he did was cement the notion that he’s a misanthrope with an ego that no matter what he may ultimately accomplish will always run 100 steps ahead.

I’m sure he felt comfortable trashing Cleveland given the hits its taken lately because of James. In that portion of his diatribe there wasn’t much new. There’s nowhere to have fun, the people are boring, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard worse from better.

But the further insight surrounds Edwards’ need to build himself up by tearing others down. Not able to stand on his own very limited merits, he found a convenient straw man as if all that stands between him and worldwide acknowledgement of his awesomeness is to place his Cleveland years in the proper context.

Edwards has done this before, it’s just that he’s expanded his game a bit. It used to be that the people in Cleveland didn’t like him because he was from Michigan. That’s still there, according to Edwards, but it’s also because he had the audacity to show up to training camp in a Bentley! The gall of the fans to begrudge a young, successful athlete.

The only thing Edwards didn’t trot out to make his case is the race card. I suspect that will come with the next interview. But for now Edwards wants Cleveland to be viewed as a town that can’t handle a player with a New York attitude.

Actually, there may be something to that. Cities like Cleveland tend not to like loudmouth athletes, particularly loudmouth athletes that don’t perform. Basically Midwestern in its sensibilities, Cleveland and its kissing cousin cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, place a premium on results. That’s why players like Joe Thomas will always fit in and players like Edwards will not.

If I’m counting correctly, this is at least the 5th time that Edwards has tried to shape his brand and none to this point have worked and for reasons that aren’t all that complex: he simply can’t hold on to the damn ball. For all the introspection that Edwards feigns every time one of these profiles comes out, he still is remarkably clueless as to what he really needs to do in order to be successful.

Edwards can hang out in the clubs of New York where he feels most comfortable, though that doesn’t sound like it’s gone all that well for him, at least when it comes to trying to send champagne over to the Rihannas of the world. But until Edwards actually becomes a complete receiver, someone who blocks and someone who can be relied on to catch the ball, he’ll always be far less than the sum of his parts.

**

The Browns are clearly in upgrade mode, which leads to a question to ponder: Who will be cut first, McDonald or Ratliff?

Finally, Closure

The Cleveland Browns may have finished playing earlier this month, but the season officially ended on Sunday in the form of the Indianapolis Colts’ 30-17 victory over the New York Jets.

As long as the Jets remained in the playoffs, Browns fans were never going to get peace of mind, given the seemingly endless series of stories about, take your pick, Eric Mangini and how he feels about it all and Braylon Edwards and how he feels about it all.

Just this past weekend, for example, the stories about Mangini ranged from those in the New York papers basically thanking him for failing and paving the way for Rex Ryan to that in the Plain Dealer in which Mangini expressed his pride in having a hand in the Jets current success. Two sides of the same coin I guess or, as a professor of mine used to say, “it all depends on whose ox is being gored.”

Then of course were the stories about Braylon Edwards. Mostly I think Edwards is the embodiment of the modern-day “me first” athlete. Selfish to a fault and even more clueless, Edwards almost stubbornly refuses to miss an opportunity to give someone a chance to dislike him.

But on the other hand, sometimes I get the sense that he’s actually bi-polar and just forgets to take his meds.

Here’s a taste. After Sunday’s loss, Edwards, discussing his touchdown catch, said “I got the team excited.” That’s the Edwards we’ve all come to know and love. Giving praise where praise is due, to himself. Quarterback Mark Sanchez had nothing to do with getting the team excited on a ball that was thrown exactly where it needed to be. It was all Edwards all the time.

But then Edwards went on at length, actually, about how being part of the Jets has made him come to appreciate what it means to be a team player, his previous quote notwithstanding apparently. He claims he now understands, for example, what it takes to get to a championship game. “I just really learned about team, what it means to play on a team, what it means to be a team player….”

Call me a cynic if you must, but that sounds like Edwards already working on his next contract. The real Edwards is the one who felt it was he who got the team excited. And for the record, Edwards had exactly one more catch in that entire game. That got us all excited.

But this isn’t so much about continuing to flog the dog that is Edwards. With the Jets’ loss, he’s now someone else’s problem officially. Even if Edwards had remained with the Browns all season there was virtually no chance that the Browns would re-sign him. He is, after all, a Michigan guy and you know how Browns fans feel about that, just ask Edwards’ dad.

So close the book now on Edwards. He’s just another chapter in a book that will always be bigger than he is. Edwards’ chapter now is no less nor more important than those devoted to, say Mike Junkin or Reuben Droughns. If Edwards actually does mature and become the force that his athletic skills seem to promise, then good for him. Just know that it would never have happened here and it will probably only happen as it’s been--sporadically. Good luck, goodbye.

For Mangini, the Jets’ loss now lets him and Jets and Browns fans close the book on his New York experience. In some ways, this year’s Jets were as much Mangini’s team as Ryan’s. A number of key contributors on that team were brought in by Mangini, directly, in the case of someone like Nick Mangold, and indirectly, in the case of someone like Sanchez. Conversely, a number of other players were extracted from that team and brought over to the Browns with Mangini. Coming and going, Mangini had a heavy hand in what the Jets did and did not do this past season.

But from this point forward, the impact Mangini has on the Jets will be muted. Ryan is clearly established as the head coach and the success of this past season will allow him to make an even greater impact on what the team looks like next year. Browns fans, too, will stop looking back. Mangini is here now for at least another season and his Jets experience is becoming merely a speck in the collective rear view mirrors of all concerned.

It was interesting to see many draw the analogy that Mangini has basically become Pete Best to Ryan’s Ringo Starr. It’s somewhat appropriate if you take the view that Mangini, like Best, wasn’t given any particular reason why he was fired. Where it falls apart is that Best never really did anything else after that whereas Mangini is now ….waaaaaiiiitt a minute. If the analogy holds true, then that doesn’t bode well for Browns fans. Name me one song that Best recorded after he left the Beatles.

Given how the Jets finished the season, the analogy that comes to my mind is that of John Cooper and Jim Tressel. When Cooper was fired, the Buckeyes were in disarray. They had loads of talent thanks to Cooper’s skills as a recruiter but organizationally they were a mess.

After Tressel took over, the first thing he did was instill discipline and pride back into the program. Though he went 7-5 his first season, he did have that improbable victory against Michigan that seemed to reinvigorate the program. The next year it went undefeated with most of Cooper’s talent and became national champions..

Admittedly that analogy isn’t perfect either, but stay with me for a moment. The Browns of 2008 under Crennel had some talent (they won 10 games in 2007 with much the same players) but organizationally they were an undisciplined mess. Inmates like Edwards and Kellen Winslow were running roughshod on the guards while the rest were content to freelance without being watched 24/7.

Along comes Mangini and while not exactly Tressel in more ways than I have time to document, he at least did restore discipline to the team. Moreover, the Browns late season surge was jump started by the improbable victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, their equivalent to the Wolverines, and it seems to have set them in the right direction for the next season. It certainly turned the fan base.

Does that mean the Browns have a Super Bowl in their near future? Doubtful. If you watched the 4 remaining playoff teams you got a good sense of how far behind the Browns really are. But organizationally this team is light years ahead of where it was when it started the season and eventually a certain level of success will follow like night follows day.

The best teams in the league got that way because they adhere to certain fundamental principles that seemed to escape Browns owner Randy Lerner until recently. Now that the Browns have finally put into place credible day-to-day leadership coupled with a methodical approach toward acquiring players, the talent level on this team will improve. Perhaps quickly.

And just as important to all of that is the ability to get closure on the remaining hangover from this past season. With that now behind the team, fans can finally look ahead. It’s not clear what’s ahead, but at least it’s ahead.

The 2009 Cleveland Browns Retrospective--Intallment #1

Note: The Cleveland Browns 2009 season was one for the ages. It could be summed up in as little as one word “oy” or 100 million. I’ve opted for somewhere between the two. It may be that all of you, or most anyway, are so tired of this past season that you’d rather have your toe nails pulled than read another word about it. Believe me, I understand. But for those brave few willing to go along on one final journey with me, just know that I appreciate your courage and have tried to make it worth your while.


Part I. This is the Part Where the Browns Franchise Finds Itself Walking Alone, in the Middle of a Storm, on a Road to Nowhere, Again.

There are probably a million or more ways to look at the Cleveland Browns’ 2009 season and probably even more conclusions that could be drawn. But one thing that is undeniable. It’s been a long, strange trip indeed.

I promised to write a book about the season, and that might come in time. But I thought the best thing to do first was to try and make some sense of what we all just experienced. I wanted to follow the journey, really, that new club president Mike Holmgren had to take to get himself up to speed before deciding whether or not to keep head coach Eric Mangini.

In more ways than not, the 2009 season was worse than the 2008 season, although it’s a pretty close call. The Browns entered the 2008 with lofty expectations from the national media and ended up crashing and burning on the heels of 4 years of abject mismanagement on and off the field.

That was a season that had Braylon Edwards as its poster child. A Pro Bowler in 2007, Edwards developed the swagger and entitlement mentality reminiscent of most of today’s professional athletes. But Edwards never did develop the professionalism he actually needed to sustain his one good season. Instead he was lackadaisical in approach and it showed on the field in the form of one dropped pass after another. It was the story of the entire team, actually.

Edwards’ failures fairly summed up the end of the road for Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage, but I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. The story of the 2009 season actually starts with Crennel and Savage still in charge, sort of.

A lot about placing the 2009 season in context depends on when you think last season ended. For me, it was December 28, 2008. That was when the Browns played their last game of the Phil Savage/Romeo Crennel era and it ended, exquisitely, with a 31-0 pasting at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team’s most hated rival.

In that game the Browns set the NFL’s record for longest streak without scoring an offensive touchdown and also had the dubious distinction of being the first Browns’ team to be shut out in consecutive games.

In my recap of that game I noted that by hitting what looked like rock bottom (and it was, but for that year only) in that manner they did, the Browns guaranteed that their fans would be dealt a steady diet of Kevin Harland and Rich Gannon as announcers for 2009. It’s exactly what they got, with the occasional Randy Cross thrown in for good measure.

The loss to the Steelers and the dispirited way that season ended raised the most obvious question, where do the Browns go from here? The worry then, fully justified soon thereafter, was that owner Randy Lerner hadn’t managed to get anything right yet and was now putting himself of overseeing the next makeover. Would it end well? How could it?

As it turned out, Savage’s fate was already sealed before the kickoff of that woeful Pittsburgh game. Lerner had fired him prior to the game but didn’t bother to tell anyone until after, apparently not sensing the irony in claiming that Savage’s termination was due, in part, to poor communication skills.

The mistake Lerner had made in Savage was a common one for Lerner. When hiring based on established track records was called for, Lerner instead opted for hope. Lerner figured Savage could fit comfortably into the general manager’s job simply because he had sat at the feet of Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore. What Lerner never realized was that Savage was more comfortable with stats than people. Newsome probably is still laughing at that miscalculation and thanking God during every waking moment that he left for Baltimore when Modell did.

Savage left a legacy of some decent draft choices (virtually every key contributor for the Browns this season, for example, was brought in by Savage) and a bevy of botched ones as well. Ultimately, it was Savage’s inability to be a steady, calming influence and face of the organization that was his undoing. He had embarrassed Lerner and the Browns in nearly consecutive weeks with his handling of the news of Kellen Winslow’s staph infection and compounded the problem first by issuing a perfunctory apology and then by sending a profane email in response to one written by a disgruntled Browns fan fed up with what he had been seeing on the field. Again, his apology was perfunctory, as if he’d done nothing wrong in the first place.

As for Crennel, the shoe dropped on him after the final game. In typical Lerner fashion it was through a written statement and again without any appreciation for irony in that he claimed he fired Savage a day earlier, in part, due to his lack of leadership skills.

Crennel was a very decent man. Approachable and serious minded, Crennel treated the players like men and found himself being rewarded in the same way parents are rewarded for trusting that their 17-year old won’t break into the liquor cabinet while they’re away for the weekend. His teams lacked discipline of almost every sort and his tenure can be summed up in perhaps the two words that described the team’s most common penalty, “false start.”

Lerner’s first thought in trying to replace Crennel was a good one, Bill Cowher. But Cowher told Lerner before that fateful Pittsburgh game that he didn’t plan to coach in 2009 and stuck to his word. Lerner found himself thus at a crossroads. Having failed by hiring a lifelong assistant like Crennel, Lerner could either find someone who had head coaching experience or someone who had head coaching ability. Naturally, he opted for the former when he needed to opt for the latter.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, too. Certainly Lerner’s first task surely would be to find a general manager before tackling the issue of who might be the Browns’ next head coach. That’s the right order, isn’t it?

As it turned out, it wasn’t the right order at all. Shortly after the 2008 season ended, the New York Jets apparently did Lerner the biggest favor of all and fired Eric Mangini as its head coach. Mangini was given the nickname of Mangenius when he took a 4-12 Jets team and turned it into a 10-6 playoff team in his first season.

But that nickname quickly faded when the Jets reverted back to form the following season at 4-12 and then, in Mangini’s last season, started 8-3 and then lost its last 5 games to miss the playoffs. It was time, general manager Mike Tannebaum said, to move where all teams eventually need to move to, destination new direction. That’s pretty damning stuff, actually, just 3 years into the direction they were on with Mangini.

For Lerner, Mangini had the two attributes he most coveted: a connection with Bill Belichick and head coaching experience. That was the sum total of the due diligence he performed. But that may not have been even Lerner’s biggest mistake. That would be reserved for letting Mangini pick his new boss, which he did in the form of George Kokinis, the former Baltimore Ravens pro personnel director.

On the surface it sounded like Kokinis was Savage redux, right down to the resume. But that wasn’t exactly true. As a pro personnel director, Kokinis’ focus was on current players in the league, not college players. In other words, he wouldn’t be much help in the draft.

Putting aside the problem with letting the subordinate hire his own boss, Kokinis was an odd selection because the Browns’ biggest trouble area was the draft. What we didn’t know at the time was that Mangini hired Kokinis specifically because he lacked that skill. It let Mangini wander free around the draft. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, too. I’ve got to stop doing that.

Mangini’s official hiring came on January 9, 2009 and marked the first time, probably, that any NFL team had elevated its former ball boy to head coach. Lerner, of course, didn’t announce the decision personally. That task fell to Mike Kennan, the club’s president, a title Kennan would relinquish once Holmgren was hired.

The courtship of Mangini was quick, particularly so considering that no other team looking for a head coach at the time had even given Mangini a second thought. At his introductory press conference Mangini said all the right and usual things. But the proof, as I noted then, would be in whether he does the right things. Call it foreshadowing. But even greater foreshadowing came in the form of a question posed by the Jets fan who ran the FireEricMangini.com website: who in their right mind would replace one ex-Patriot flop with another ex-Patriot flop? Destiny, thy name is Lerner.

Part II. This is the Part Where Mangini Settles In and Others Suddenly Become Unsettled

After the hiring of Mangini and Kokinis, the rest of January was relatively quiet, unless you happened to work in the Browns’ front office. Blaming the economy, Lerner approved the layoff of 15 employees, including the public relations staff. Meanwhile, there were a host of castoffs able to ride out the economy in slightly better fashion in the form of Lerner castoffs still owed millions, castoffs like Carmen Policy, Butch Davis, Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel.

Maybe these 15 layoffs were part of a tanking economy. But to say that they weren’t in part the result of a makeover being overseen by Mangini would be wrong.

At the time Lerner was having staffers clean out their desks, he was allowing Mangini to have the Berea complex physically overhauled at a considerable cost. Of all the changes that occurred, the one that caused the most controversy, though, was his painting over a mural of Browns’ legends. Some saw it as Mangini purposely trying to break with the past. Others saw it as Mangini wanting to let everyone know who was calling the shots. They were both right.

Meanwhile, Mangini was keeping many of Crennel’s assistants dangling, insisting that they be held to the letter of their contracts while preventing them from interviewing elsewhere. Part of that was because he hadn’t yet finalized his own staff. Part of it, maybe the bigger part of it, was the simple fact that it was saving the Browns money. Per league rules, if the Browns fired the coaches before their contracts were completed and the coaches found other employment elsewhere at a lower salary, the Browns would be on the hook for the difference. A coach that resigns, however, has no such luck.

At the very least, it set a tone. In retrospect, it was the beginning of a number of blunders Mangini would make that made him one of the most unpopular hires in Browns’ history, at least for the first 3 months of the regular season, anyway.

As February dawned, Mangini gave his first full press conference. It was a virtuoso performance as he talked often and said nothing. He mentioned the mural and how that was all one big misunderstanding and said a few nice things about D’Qwell Jackson and Josh Cribbs, but not much else. Actually it was unclear why Mangini had the press conference in the first place, unless it was to set the ground rules with the media for what was to come. It did and Mangini never got the media back on his side for the rest of the season.

Kokinis wasn’t much better. A few weeks after the Mangini press conference came Kokinis to publicly declare that he and Mangini were on the same page without ever giving anyone a clue what page that actually was. As it turned out, they didn’t know themselves.

But one thing was clear from the Kokinis press conference. Mangini had placed him on a short leash. Kokinis wouldn’t discuss, for example, whether the Browns planned on placing the franchise tag on safety Sean Jones, about their only free agent worth trying to keep. Likewise, he wouldn’t discuss his thinking on Derek Anderson other than to say “you really have to fit Derek within the whole structure of the whole football team.” It’s still one of my favorite quotes ever because it precisely captures the guise of saying something while actually saying nothing at all. But to Kokinis’ credit, it was exactly what Mangini wanted him to say.

Someone who was far less shy in talking substantively was Scott Pioli, the new general manager in Kansas City. Talking freely at the combine in Indianapolis, Pioli went on to praise in almost over-the-top fashion Detroit’s hiring of Jim Schwartz as head coach. It wasn’t just that this was praise at the exclusion of Cleveland’s near simultaneous hiring of Mangini so much as it was insight on why Pioli wouldn’t take the general manager’s job in Cleveland.

Pioli and Mangini are like oil and water at this point owing mostly to Mangin’s role in the whole Spygate affair while Pioli was in New England. But more to the point, speculation is that Pioli wanted Lerner to consider hiring Schwartz in Cleveland as part of the package of bringing Pioli in but Lerner instead was fixated on Mangini. It was the deal killer of all deal killers.

As for Mangini and Kokinis at the combine, they were their usual insightful selves. The Browns were either interested in a running back or maybe it was a defensive end. They were going to keep Anderson or maybe trade him. They’d consider moving Josh Cribbs to safety or maybe running back. What the two didn’t realize is that the only ones interested in the Browns’ plans were their fans. The rest of the league and billions worldwide could have cared less.

Already getting off on the wrong foot with the fans, the media and the holdovers from the front office, Mangini decided to go for the grand slam by taking on the players. In the most highly publicized snub since Don Knotts wasn’t nominated as best actor for his role in The Incredible Mr. Limpett, Mangini ignored the hulking Shaun Rogers at a charity function in late February, claiming he just didn’t see him.

Mangini’s explanation wasn’t believable because the two almost literally bumped shoulders in their bids to ignore each other. Rogers claimed he felt disrespected but what was really going on behind the scenes was that Rogers (and other players) had gotten a letter from Mangini a few days earlier that they would be required to report for the team’s upcoming workouts in mid-March at their playing weight.

Rogers, who struggles with weight issues and never met a Boston crème pie he could resist, felt disrespected because he always answered the bell during the season.

To some, Rogers was just acting out his nickname of Big Baby. As it turned out, it was just another misstep by Mangini; a failure to understand the pulse of his new team.

Meanwhile, in an effort to reclaim some of the draft picks lost by the previous regime, Mangini (or was it Kokinis?) traded Kellen Winslow, Jr. to Tampa Bay for a second round pick in the coming draft and a fifth round pick in 2010. Ultimately, it was a trade of mutual convenience. Winslow wanted his contract renegotiated and Mangini wanted draft picks. Tampa Bay was the willing dupe.

In some sense, Winslow was missed. Mostly, though, he wasn’t. Winslow wasn’t happy with the Browns for a number of reasons and wanted a fresh start elsewhere. Whatever skills Winslow still has, they aren’t ever going to be what his college potential promised due mostly to injuries. A team rebuilding didn’t need someone like Winslow. Of course either did Tampa Bay but they went on to re-do his contract anyway, making him about $20 million richer. Meanwhile, somewhere Josh Cribbs steamed.

When the NFL’s mid-winter meetings hit in early March, the Browns were mostly bystanders. That was a good thing. It was a refreshing assessment that signing a high-priced free agent wasn’t what this team needed. There were just too many holes and not enough cap space to go around. It was something that Savage never really understood as he went about throwing money at the likes of Donte Stallworth the season before.

Lingering Items--Bengals Edition

For a team that’s been serially awful for so long, the Cleveland Browns sure don’t act like it, or maybe they do. Each week, miserable loss by miserable loss notwithstanding, this team puts its fans through their paces. Fans emerge each week, tired and beaten down, as if they’d just finished another final exam in advanced chemistry.

After the game against the Baltimore Ravens, all the talk was about whether or not head coach Eric Mangini would survive to see another week. It was exhausting. Now, after the Bengals game, fans have had the chance to bat around the implications of Braylon Edwards’ tough-guy act outside a Cleveland bar only to then have those implications realized by his subsequent trade to the New York Jets. It’s been exhausting.

The only one that didn’t see wide receiver Braylon Edwards getting traded was probably Edwards himself, although it’s also not beyond the realm that Edwards orchestrated his exit by purposely not conforming to the “Mangini way.”

But however this exit ultimately was accomplished it was an act more than any other thus far that serves as Mangini’s signature moment. The trading of Kellen Winslow, Jr. happened in the off-season when people were still under the reflected glory of a magical Cavaliers seasons and dreaming of great moments that were not to come with the Indians. The cutting of Shaun Smith early in camp raised an eyebrow but not much else. No one liked him much, anyway, including, apparently, the Detroit Lions.

Thus for now and for the near future anyway jettisoning Edwards will serve as the official stake in the ground for Mangini’s tenure and from the sounds of things anyway, this one act bought him more goodwill than even he probably anticipated.

In the last few days, I’ve received more emails than I could have imagined not only supporting the move but praising, yes praising, Mangini for having that uniquely New York trait of chutzpah for pulling it off. I can see their point although it’s not exactly unheard of for the new guy in town to take on the biggest mouth first in order to snap the others back in line. It’s Arthur Fonzarelli 101.

And in Edwards Mangini certainly was taking on the biggest mouth. That is, the biggest mouth after Smith was cut. Cutting Edwards off at the knees is something that had no chance of going unnoticed.

I always believed that Edwards’ exit, whenever it would come, would be addition by subtraction. The Browns may be short on veteran talent at receiver, but don’t think for a moment that a new day hasn’t dawned with the troops.

Don’t take my word for it, read the quotes yourself and make sure to read between the lines. Start with Mike Furrey. Talking to the media on Thursday about the impact of Edwards being gone, as reported in the Plain Dealer, Furrey said: “We don’t have maybe the superstar that everybody’s looking for, but we have quality guys that are out there who want to play and make plays and are looking forward to start gelling.” Hmm.

But there was more from Furrey: “You saw New England [win without a star receiver] for a long time. Guys just go out there do what they’re supposed to do and keep their mouth shut and make plays and win games.” It’s such a great quote both for what it says and what it doesn’t say.

Indeed that’s the vibe out of Berea and even among a lot of fans, a circumstance that that didn’t seem likely just a week ago. Edwards and his attitude toward all things non-Edwards was like a steady stream of air inflating a balloon ever closer to its breaking point. Mangini sensed that too and acted before the balloon did break. Extricating Edwards provided just the release valve both the franchise and the fans needed in the wake of the million other things that have gone wrong this season.

The argument for keeping Edwards seems based mostly on theory. Edwards may possess the requisite talent but he’s in the last year of a five year contract and his one Pro Bowl season essentially puts him in the Zagar and Evans category, a one-hit wonder.

Maybe Edwards will strike it big in New York and the hits will start coming again. Truthfully, that’s up to him. He has the talent. He lacks the heart. But even if he New York becomes his Oz this tin man will never be the Browns’ equivalent to CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Manny Ramirez or Jim Thome. Edwards never wanted to be here and had he stayed would have been on the first plane out the day the season ended. Those former Indians at least had sustained success here and acted as if they wanted to stick around.

If the players now feel like they have something to look forward to with Edwards gone then it seems appropriate for the fans to share that same sentiment, at least a little.

**

It’s hard to know what to make of the fact that with the trade of Edwards the Browns now have essentially become the Jets, one season removed. The 10 former Jets now on the team represent 20% of the active roster. Remind me again, what was the Jets’ record last season? Why was Mangini fired?

In some ways this must have been what the Denver Broncos fans felt like in 2005 when virtually the entire defensive line plus backups found their way to Denver. The Broncos had virtually no defensive line to speak of and hired former Browns defensive line coach Andre Patterson to perform the makeover.

Revamp he did by bringing in Courtney Brown (free agent), Gerard Warren (4th round draft pick), Ebenezer Ekuban and Mike Myers (trade for Rueben Droughns). It didn’t help the Broncos all that much and while they did get decent contributions from Ekuban and Myers for a bit, none are active in the NFL at the moment. Ok, that’s not technically correct. Warren plays for Oakland, but given both the initiative he’s shown over his career and the team that currently pays his salary, can anyone really claim that makes him active? The gamble ended up costing Patterson his job as well.

The parallels with the current Jets aren’t exact. The Browns need players at nearly every position. The former Jets were brought in to not only fill a slot but more so to seed the locker room and school it in the Mangini way. If/when they fail, no one will much notice anyway and Mangini certainly won’t lose his job because of it.

The addition of Chansi Stuckey and Jason Trusnik are a bit different. Both are relatively young players and both appear to have far longer prospects with the team than players like Abe Elam, for example. They will always be judged in the context of the Edwards trade, along with the two draft picks that the Browns ultimately receive.

Historically, the addition of a bunch of players that the new head coach is comfortable with is commonplace. It’s like bringing a few trinkets from your mom’s house when you finally move into your own place. Eventually this trend will run its course and new things get bought just as here when Mangini begins to build the club through the next several drafts, assuming he gets that far.

**

At his various press conferences during the week, Mangini can be as dull as dirt in discussing everything from what happened to what will happen next. The same goes for offensive coordinator Brian Daboll’s weekly Friday press conference. Daboll has been an excellent student in the Mangini move-your-lips-but-say-nothing school of public relations that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two. Then there is Rob Ryan.

The Browns’ defensive coordinator is at least entertaining. He may not be as outspoken as his twin brother and Jets head coach Rex Ryan, but maybe that’s because the Browns’ Ryan only gets to speak to the media once a week. Here’s a vote that he becomes the Browns’ official spokesman.

This week Ryan had two gems that have gone viral on the internets. First was his contention, unprompted, that he thought that Bengals’ kicker Shayne Graham missed the game-winning field goal last Sunday. I had exactly the same thought at the same time. It did look wide right.

The problem is the placement of the camera at the time of the kick. While it was in the center, both its height and its depth makes it nearly impossible to tell if the kick passed through the uprights. But the fact that two referees were positioned under the cross bar and both signaled it was good, without hesitation, might seem like pretty good evidence that perhaps the camera in this case did not provide the best visible evidence.

Not to give Ryan a hard time, but maybe, just maybe he brought it up as a way of deflecting any questions about why his defense couldn’t hold the Bengals on that crucial 4th down play in overtime that led to the Graham field goal. In that case the camera provided more than adequate visible evidence of the miles this defense needs to travel before it escapes the bottom of the rankings.

It also is probably worth mentioning that the reason a kick that looked a little iffy wasn’t reviewed stems from the fact that it is not reviewable. According to the NFL’s rule book, only kicks that may or may not have gotten over the crossbar are reviewable. That certainly wasn’t the case with Graham’s kick. It was far above the uprights, which is why it was so difficult to judge.

Recall that Phil Dawson’s field goal against the Baltimore Ravens two seasons ago was reviewed because the issue was whether or not it went over or under the cross bar. The officials got that ruling correct, eventually. But in the case of Graham’s field goal, it wasn’t a question of whether it went above the crossbar, only through the uprights.

NFL officials have discussed in the past extending the uprights to make it easier on officials and that would certainly help. But it’s not as if this issue comes up much, unless you count the Rich Karliss kick against the Browns n “the Drive” playoff game against Denver, but why dredge up that old thing?

**

Back to Ryan. His other gem had to do with Bills quarterback Trent Edwards. Again, unsolicited, Ryan seemed to violate one of the key tenets of coachspeak, saying something controversial about an opponent.

Basically, Ryan said that the Browns aren’t exactly facing either Brett Favre or Carson Palmer this week in Edwards, which is as obvious as it is true. But then Ryan added: “This guy [Edwards] always seems to have a lot to say, so I'm going to say the same thing. Let's go. Let's get it on, see what he's all about this week.”

Now calling out Edwards for having a big mouth is a fascinating juxtaposition given that it was Ryan doing all the loud talking. It also seemed a little odd because Edwards isn’t Favre either when it comes to talking to the media. What apparently has been grinding at Ryan is that Edwards did lead the Bills to a game winning drive against Ryan’s Oakland Raiders last season and then had the temerity to suggest, merely suggest, that maybe Ryan’s team was a little tired on that last drive.

My guess is that Ryan’s team was a little tired on that last drive. Heck, Ryan’s team was a little tired in the second half of the Browns’ first game this season against the Vikings so conditioning may be an issue. But putting all that aside, is that really something to get into a verbal slap fight about?

Again, not to give Ryan too hard a time or else Mangini may suddenly make him unavailable on Fridays each week, but I’d much rather he fix the Browns defense before putting additional pressure on it to back up his words.

In terms of rankings, the Browns are pretty much where you’d figure a 0-4 team would be, at or near the bottom on everything that counts. As bad as the offense is, ranked 29th overall, the defense is actually worse. It is ranked dead last in overall defense, 31st in run defense and 27th in pass defense. Maybe that’s because those statistics are based on total yards surrendered that the defense looks so bad. The Browns’ offense hasn’t exactly helped the defense in staying off the field but then you could argue why the Browns’ defense is so adept at keeping opposing offenses on the field.

Everyone knows the Browns are bad in every way a team can be bad. That’s what makes Ryan’s words so fun. He has to know he’s setting himself up for these kinds of comments and forges ahead anyway. If Mangini really wants to deflect the focus on all things wrong, he shouldn’t just trot Ryan out once a week, he should give the guy his own reality show.

**

Running long this week, but blame it on the vast amount of news a team this bad can still manage to generate. Quickly, then, this week’s question to ponder: What’s the over/under in weeks before Ryan is suddenly unavailable to speak to the media?