Lingering Items--Big Face Edition

As the Cleveland Browns effectively enter year 3 of the Mike Holmgren era, a light bulb finally went off in the head of the namesake.  Speaking to a collected media that’s heard the same old same old for so long that it could write the stories before a word is spoken, Holmgren instead veered off script.  Offering a mea culpa of sorts, Holmgren acknowledged what had previously escaped him—that instead of being a steadying influence on the franchise, he was becoming one of its most suspect members.

Holmgren is now going to become the face of the franchise, just as he was hired to be originally.  The Big Show is now the Big Face.  His general manager, Tom Heckert, is affable but is as dynamic as a librarian.  His head coach, Pat Shurmur, is too busy trying to keep his head above water to have time for the external niceties that go along with that job like coddling the media with substantive answers to mediocre questions.

Holmgren admitted that he’s heard the criticism that focuses on his shadowy existence in Berea and his penchant for talking to his friends in the Seattle media market while ignoring his obligations locally.  As a result the Browns have had a void since Holmgren was hired (to go along with the void that existed before he was hired) that has left the fans disconnected to a team with whom they crave closeness.

It’s never too late to admit a mistake as long as you’re going to go about getting it corrected so for now let’s take Holmgren at his word and give him the benefit of the doubt.  This week’s press conference was a good start, peppered as it was with self-flagellation and some honest insight into what he really thinks about the team he’s constructing.

The fans really would prefer arguing the merits of drafting Brandon Weeden and debating whether to trade or release Colt McCoy or Seneca Wallace instead of wondering whether the architect of all of this regrets taking the job in the first place.  Holmgren said he stood in the background in deference to Heckert and Shurmur because as a former coach that’s how he would have preferred it.  But what Holmgren failed to appreciate is that he never worked for someone like himself, a figure that for good or worse tends to cast a large shadow over everything that has very little to do with his expanding waist line. 

Besides, having a semi-iconic figure like Holmgren talk to the media on a regular basis takes the pressure off of guys like Heckert and Shurmur who clearly understand the difficulty of the task in front of them and need as much energy as they can muster to focus just on that.

The Browns haven’t been terrible the last two seasons because Holmgren stayed on the sidelines, but his staying on the sidelines did tend to make the fans more paranoid about the situation.  At this point it’s hard to know how committed Holmgren has been to the team but it’s been easy to assume the worst.  He’s fed that beast.  If he stays true to his word then that at least takes one thing off the ever expanding list of things to bitch about when it comes to this franchise. 

One of Holmgren’s endearing traits as a public speaker is that he’s anything but a poker face.  He can be alternately charming and irritating.  He’s politic when he remembers to be but mostly he’s a guy that tries to be as candid as a person can be when talking to the media.  The problem was that Holmgren’s visits to the podium were too infrequent for him to develop a rhythm with the fans and so they became distrustful.

The Browns are an improving team that still has too many holes.  But if Holmgren keeps his word and explains it all like a mustachioed Clarissa then that’s a positive step for a franchise known more for walking backward.  And if there is one thing above all else that this team needs, it’s more steps up then back.

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One of the main questions Holmgren faced was over the prospect of having Weeden, Colt McCoy and Seneca Wallace on the roster for all of next season.  Holmgren said that they haven’t quite figured it all out at this point but it wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise if either McCoy or Wallace got traded.

Here’s a newsflash.  It wouldn’t surprise anyone else either.

If the issue is economics, then McCoy gets traded.  He’s got a trade friendly contract owing to his status as a third round pick.  But the Browns aren’t having salary cap problems and that puts Wallace in play but for different reasons.

Wallace isn’t a likely candidate to be traded.  Other teams may want him because he fits the profile of a serial backup, but with a salary of $2.4 million for next season most wouldn’t want him at that price.  If he’s gone it will be because he’s released with another team paying him league minimum and the Browns picking up the difference and absorbing it as a one-year hit to their salary cap.  Big deal.

Frankly I’ve never quite understood the fascination that Holmgren has with Wallace.  It’s crystal clear that Holmgren doesn’t see Wallace as a viable long-term starter in the league or he’d be starting and Holmgren would stop taking quarterbacks in the draft.  The same is true for every other team in the league.  Wallace’s value seems to be limited to his knowledge of the offensive system despite a rather thin playing resume in his 8 seasons in the league.  Besides, Wallace is a whiner and he’s not all that good of a teammate.

Wallace made it very clear last season that he had no interest in helping out McCoy and then went about his business following suit.  It was a ballsy position to take for a guy making that kind of money but Shurmur let Wallace get away with it because he had much bigger fish to gut.  Now Wallace says he’ll help out Weeden but doesn’t want to stick around if he’s relegated to the third string quarterback behind McCoy, who he apparently detests.

Wallace is an expensive reserve and certainly not worth the trouble.  A team properly managing its salary cap can never overspend in anyone category, making McCoy a far better candidate to remain which is why he’ll probably be gone.  The better choice would be to cut ties with Wallace, the sooner the better.  But the Big Show likes Wallace and that’s a pretty powerful voice in the conference room when Heckert, Shurmur and Holmgren take on that debate in earnest.

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One of the odder moments of the Holmgren press conference was the few minutes he spent trying to reconcile with the Bob Feller of the Browns’ alumni, Jim Brown.  It was Holmgren who fired Brown taking away a half million dollar salary that Brown was getting for being some sort of consultant to Randy Lerner.  Brown didn’t much like losing his lucrative side gig and made his feelings known.

Now as part of Holmgren’s reinvention he’s welcoming Brown with open arms but not necessarily 

another paycheck.  For his part Brown seems to be open to coming back into the fold so it probably won’t be long before Brown starts singing the praises of Trent Richardson as he walks the sidelines of the Berea practice fields during training camp.

Having Brown hang around the facility is a net positive for the team.  He’s arguably the greatest running back to ever play the game and represents to the current crop of players a time when this franchise really was one of the league’s best.

But let’s not get all gooey wishing for some grand reconciliation.  Brown’s loyalty to the franchise is proportionate to the pay they give him and has been for years.  That’s not a criticism, just a fact.  If he’s back, great.  Welcome.  Hope you stay around a little longer this time.  But if he’s not, so be it.  Of the 2100 questions this team needs to answer, this one ranks about 1928^th.

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Here’s how ridiculous things have gotten months before the Browns play their first preseason game.  There was a story in your local newspaper about how Weeden and Richardson could both be in the conversation for NFL rookie of the year.  Technically, that’s true since they’re both rookies.  But shouldn’t someone at least see if either can actually play and play well at this level before wondering what accolades might follow?

But if we’re going to stupidly speculate about such things, wouldn’t it just make sense that Richardson is the more likely candidate?  All he has to do is run well.  That’s not necessarily an easy task on a team that doesn’t run block all that well, but it’s a mostly singular and hence simpler pursuit then what faces Weeden.

If there’s a harder position to play in professional sports than NFL quarterback I don’t know what it could be.  The best case scenario is that Weeden’s maturity matches his age and he’s able to adapt to all the nuances of the pro game more quickly than most rookies.  Even then he still doesn’t have much in the way of receivers to pass to.  No one gives rookie of the year honors to a quarterback simply because he can hand off well.  Weeden is going to have to display that strong arm and that advertised maturity in a way that yields at least as many touchdown passes as interceptions for him to get much notice as a budding rookie of the year candidate.

But why stupidly speculate about any of this?  I don’t much care how many interceptions Weeden throws  so long as at the end of the year the Browns have more than 5 wins to their credit.  That’s the only statistic that really counts anyway and will be the thing above all else that earns Weeden a second year as the putative starter.

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LeBron James if nothing else is one of the more compelling sports figures of the last 50 years and his presence in the NBA Finals once again leads to this week’s question to ponder:  If James had not made such a public spectacle about his free agency and his Decision to leave Cleveland, would the NBA Finals be less interesting this year?

Lingering Items--Public Relations Edition

During most weeks of the year, but most certainly the regular season, one NFL player or another runs afoul of some league rule.  Maybe he tested positive for a banned substance.  Maybe it was an illegal hit.  But in every case the league levies a punishment, the player appeals and eventually it gets resolved through the arbitration process.  And as that’s all taking place no one much pays attention, let alone complains about the process.

I mention this because in very large measure the punishment the league handed down to 4 current and former New Orleans Saints players for their alleged involvement in a pay-to-injure scheme are of the same ilk.  The allegations are a bit more salacious certainly but otherwise it doesn’t command any sort of resort to media handwringing.

Yet whether it’s Mike Florio over at ProFootballTalk.com or any number of other like-minded moralists, this situation is different and in their view the league should be handing over to the public all of its evidence against the accused so that everyone can pass premature judgment.  We don’t even demand such things in the prosecution of real criminals, but this is football so this kind of transparency obviously is much more important.

It’s a false argument and one the league most certainly will ignore.  The NFL doesn’t owe the public that kind of transparency any more than the Plain Dealer or ProFootballTalk or Yahoo or ESPN or the guy running the local 7-11 does in terms of how they deal with internal disciplinary matters.  There is an orderly process that will ultimately test the value of the league’s evidence against the defenses proffered and a decision will be rendered and we can all go about the business once again of wondering exactly why the Browns hate wide receivers.

The far more interesting dynamic in this Saints debacle is that of exactly how the union resolves its massive conflict of interest.  There’s no question that certain Saints players, including the Browns resident outhouse lawyer Scott Fujita, put money into a pool to reward other Saints players for playing with a certain, shall we say, intensity.  Fujita admitted this openly.  The dispute is whether the rewards were doled out for hits intended to injure the competitors.  Fujita’s spin is that they were simply for good, clean hits because, apparently, a million dollar salary isn’t enough of an incentive for a professional to perform as required, which means make good, clean hits.  Other players and the league say that it was a bounty program.

Common sense would indicate that the league has a good case if only because Fujita’s rationalization is idiotic.  But who knows?  The league has had seemingly open and shut cases before and they’ve managed to blow it so anything’s possible.

What really rubs the wrong day is as usual the strident views taken by a union run by an individual, DeMaurice Smith, who cares not a whit for the good of the game.  He fancies himself more in the vein of Marvin Miller when it comes to his role, as if protecting and defending his members is always at odds with acting in the best interests of the greater good.

This isn’t to suggest that the union shouldn’t mount a defense on behalf of the suspended players.  It’s their legal duty to do just that.  But to not denounce, even in the most general terms, any players who might have participated in a bounty system is reprehensible.  Smith and the cronies and lawyers that report to him are so blinded by their distaste for commissioner Roger Goodell and the owners that pay their salaries that they cannot even comprehend the awful message they are sending to the vast majority of their members with their odd defense of the Saints’ players.

Eli Manning, for one, had no such qualms in denouncing any of his fellow union members who would deliberately set out to injure another.  Same, too, for Aaron Rodgers.  But apparently Smith has forgotten that he is supposed to represent Manning, Rodgers and Brett Favre (the target of one of the alleged bounties) just as equally as Jon Vilma or Will Smith.  And because he has forgotten that charge, Smith has set up an internal civil war within the union that will not just hurt the union but also hurt the greater good.

I’ve been consistent in my views on Smith.  It was a mistake to hire him as the head of the union because he had absolutely no experience in labor-management relations.  He then proceeded to foolishly incite a lockout with a completely failed legal strategy, which wasn’t a surprise.  He didn’t negotiate any better deal then what he was offered before he pushed the union off the cliff.  That hurt his members most of whom are so disconnected to these matters anyway that they awarded Smith with a new contract.

Smith has once again taken his charges down the exact wrong path and that has nothing to do with whether or not the suspended players are guilty.  If Smith thinks it’s wrong for one union member to target another union member for injury, it’s his duty to say so and as publicly as possible.  Until Smith takes a stand as a real leader and finds a more elegant way to balance the sometimes competing interests of his members, he’ll continue to fail as a leader and the union will continue to look like the overmatched boobs they’ve become.

**

Colt McCoy showed up to work out for the Browns and a consensus seems to be emerging that mixes both surprise and bewilderment.  They’re surprised because McCoy didn’t kick up a fuss about the drafting of Brandon Weeden.  They’re bewildered because the Browns didn’t immediately trade McCoy in order to pave the way for Weeden.

To that I would add my own surprise and bewilderment but not for anything that either the Browns or McCoy have done but for the simplistic reactions of those being paid to write about it.  What exactly about the current situation immediately demands that the Browns part with McCoy?  Stated differently, what about McCoy personally suggests that his default reaction would be to bitch and moan and demand a trade?

I sometimes wonder whether many in the media that cover professional athletes for a living have any real clue about what makes athletes tick.  Their view of the McCoy/Weeden dynamic suggests they don’t.

If there’s one thing professional athletes understand by this point is that they aren’t long for professional athletics if they can’t stand a challenge.  Nearly every aspect of their existence is built on competition.  They are constantly fighting off others for the right to be the starter and the moment they think they have it made is the exact moment they need to worry the most.

McCoy is under contract with the Browns.  That’s why he showed up to work out.  He didn’t bitch about the drafting of Weeden because he’s been fighting off competition since Pop Warner.  It’s the nature of the job.  McCoy might fall short as a quarterback because his physical skills aren’t quite sufficient for a league of all stars.  But he won’t fall short because he lacks the desire to compete.

Besides, there’s no specific reason for either the Browns or McCoy to conclude at this point that it’s best for McCoy to ply his trade elsewhere.  If you believe that Weeden should be the starting quarterback, then by default having McCoy as the backup is far better than having it be Seneca Wallace, who couldn’t even beat out McCoy for the starting job.

The other benefit is that McCoy may burn with the desire to remain a starter in this league but he’s not the kind of personality that would publicly undermine Weeden like Wallace did with McCoy last season.  And as a final measure, there’s little chance that if Weeden starts next season he’ll make it through the season unscathed.  He’ll likely suffer an injury if only because every quarterback seems to.  There’s also every reason to think that he’ll hit some real low points where it will make sense to go to the bullpen even temporarily.  Wouldn’t you rather have McCoy in that bullpen then Wallace?

When the Browns signed Gary Danielson to mentor Bernie Kosar it worked because Danielson was still a serviceable starter in his own right while simultaneously not just recognizing but embracing his role as a placeholder for the next generation.  McCoy isn’t Danielson, but then again very few are.  If the Browns in theory could find a Danielson clone to mentor Weeden then by all means have at it.  But that player isn’t out there for if he were every team with a young quarterback, and there are plenty of them, would have snatched him up by now.

Until that kind of player emerges there’s no reason to run McCoy out of town and deliberately undercut the one area on the team where some depth is finally starting to emerge.

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In the last 9 seasons, the Browns have won as much as 6 games just twice.  The rest of the time they’ve been in the 4 and 5 win category.  This isn’t just a garden variety losing record of a club that just lacks a few breaks.  It’s long term incompetence running head long into long term mismanagement.

In that context it’s understandable that the fans are excited about anyone who might promise something more than 6 wins in a season.  Still, doesn’t the exuberance around Weeden seem a bit, well, irrational?

At any time other than perhaps the last week and a half, not just the average Browns’ fan but nearly any Browns’ fan couldn’t have picked Weeden out of a lineup let alone talked confidently or intelligently about his accomplishments at a near second-tier Big 12 college or how the hell it could possibly translate into NFL success.

The exuberance too seems in large part manufactured by the public relations department of the Browns who are selling attributes like his advanced rookie age as a benefit without mentioning that if Weeden is indeed successful he’ll be the first.  Age does bring maturity but let’s face it, Weeden’s old because he couldn’t make it as a baseball player, his preferred occupation.

I’m not down on Weeden because it would be impossible to have formed that opinion given absolutely no body of work on which to draw any such conclusion.  Which is the point, isn’t it?  

I don’t mind the Browns’ p.r. department doing what it should be doing.  But it seems incredibly premature to anoint Weeden the starter let alone the savior of this dysfunctional franchise.

I’m not sure when the Browns fell out of love with McCoy but it was somewhere around the time that Pat Shurmur was hired as head coach.  That’s fine because every coach has his views on what it takes to execute his vision.  But the reason this franchise has performed so miserably is completely related to its reaction to Weeden before he’s had even one practice.  It’s always cart first and then horse with this team and in simple terms that’s why the results for the last decade have been consistent and awful.

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When people talk about Scott Fujita, it’s always in glowing terms.  And while it’s not always fair to judge someone by one mistake, including a mistake that lasted for years, it does lead to this week’s question to ponder:  If Fujita really has the stand up image he’s cultivated, wouldn’t he simply take his relatively mild medicine, apologize and vow to work even harder to improve player safety?

A Position of Strength and Weakness

In football as in life, it’s always best to deal from a position of strength. The corollary is likewise true: it’s never best to deal from a position of weakness. But as bad as that may be, it’s always worse to deal from a position of weakness that is contrived, which is why the Washington Redskins’ stupefying trade for the rights to presumably draft Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III is so, well, stupefying.

The Redskins, like much of the NFL frankly, wanted an upgrade at quarterback. Believing that Griffin is the next coming of fill-in-the-blank, the Redskins over exaggerated their need to the point where they made a deal unlike anything the NFL has seen since Mike Ditka traded away every one of his draft picks in order to obtain Ricky Williams. Does anyone remember how that worked out?

When desperation meets stupidity, bad things often happen to a franchise.

You could analyze the trade in every conceivable way but keeping it simple illustrates how completely dumb Redskins owner Dan Snyder really is. It’s something we’ve known for years but still appreciate the occasional reminder.

If you believe, as most likely do, that RGIII is a better quarterback prospect then Sam Bradford, the St. Louis Rams’ quarterback, then the case could have and should have been made that the Rams should have held on to the pick and traded Bradford, a fine prospect with some significant but not RGIII-caliber market value.

But the Rams, knowing that good is good enough at quarterback in the NFL, felt it was far better to stand pat with the quarterback already in the fold and work from a position of strength by picking the pocket of the addle-brained Snyder. It kept them from having to perform the more complicated calculus of building around RGIII, who would have arrived with the same sort of limitations that (along with injuries) plagued Bradford last season, namely a flimsy supporting cast.

As it is, the Rams now have 5 first round picks in the next 3 drafts, courtesy of the Redskins. Even for teams with mediocre drafting ability, those kinds of odds bode well for creating massive improvement, particularly when compared to the work the Redskins will have to do without the benefit of decent draft choices in the next several years.

Just watch how much better Bradford suddenly will get with blue chip talent around him.

I’m sure that Snyder mollified himself with the bromide that if RGIII is who they think he is, the first round picks he gave up will be late in the first round anyway and hence less valuable. Could be, but let’s remember, they’re still first round picks, which always trumps them being second round picks.

The Redskins end up with RGIII (presumably) and now will have to overpay in the free agent market over the next few years if they are to have any hope in creating a credible support system for their new asset. And let’s just be charitable and say that under Snyder, the Redskins have participated in the free agent market with disastrous results. If we were being unvarnished, we’d point out that the reason Snyder is so disrespected as an owner has everything to do with the ridiculous bets he’s made in free agency. Another column for another day, I suppose.

On most days the malfunctioning of Snyder’s stupidity alarm would be the top story in the NFL. Right now, though, it’s competing with storylines involving a handful of other quarterbacks, such as Matt Flynn, Peyton Manning and perhaps Tim Tebow for adequate air time. That’s because teams like the Browns, who made a spirited push for the draft’s second pick, are impacted by all the other machinations involving quarterbacks, including the bonehead move the Redskins just made.

All this demonstrates once again that left tackles are prized and speedy wide receivers are coveted, quarterbacks are still the most important assets in the NFL. But even as the most prized, their value has a limit.

When Browns’ general manager Tom Heckert decided not to pull the trigger on giving up both of this year’s first round picks in order to be able to draft Griffin, it served as a reminder that the only way to cultivate the most important asset in the NFL, you have to surround him with adequate weapons. As important as the quarterback is, he’s not so important as to sacrifice the rest of the offense.

It means, too, that Heckert likely reached the same conclusion of McCoy that St. Louis reached of Bradford. Good often is good enough.

It’s amazing, really, how good or bad a quarterback can be based on the players around him. McCoy hasn’t yet sold himself to Heckert, Mike Holmgren or head coach Pat Shurmur. But it’s pretty clear that McCoy’s done enough to keep Heckert from having to deal from a position of complete weakness in trying to craft an acceptable trade for the Rams. Limits do get drawn and Heckert, far better than someone like Snyder, understands that constructing a good team has much in common with completing a 1000 piece jig saw puzzle then it does in finding one corner piece.

Heckert, in just two seasons, has demonstrated that his ability to draft good, solid football players eclipses any other who’s held a similar role with the Browns in the last 12 years, at least. Granted, it’s not a high bar he’s had to scale, but he’s scaled it nonetheless.

The fact that Heckert set a reasonable price to trade up for RGIII and then wisely got out when Snyder went all in is reason enough to continue to trust that Heckert is doing the right things for this franchise now and for the next several years to come.

Heckert is correct, for example, when he underscores the simple fact that free agency is no way to build and sustain a football team. There are gaps that can and should get filled but it’s rarely done by overpaying for a superstar.

Yet if Heckert had made that trade, he would have been forced to dip deeply perhaps in the free agency pool to get Griffin a viable supporting cast. It wouldn’t have been a one and done dip in that pool, either, but a sustained effort for the next few seasons in order to bridge the gap created by surrendering so many draft picks in the first place. That gets expensive fast and hasn't proved to be successful for any team, including those aforementioned Redskins.

This is what brings it all back around to Snyder. The NFL has watched in both horror and amusement as Snyder has run the Redskins franchise in the ground for a variety of reasons, including one imprudent free agent acquisition after another.

Indeed the case could be made that the Redskins were so desperate to get Griffin because of all the personnel screw ups they’ve made in the last several years. Yet here they go again, seemingly covering up one mistake while simultaneously opening up new holes.

It reminds me of when the Texas Rangers and owner Tom Hicks signed Alex Rodriguez to a contract worth in excess of $250 million. Unencumbered by a salary cap, Hicks went all in and then spent what he didn't have without even stopping to consider two important points. Rodriguez couldn’t play all 9 positions at once and it takes even more money to surround Rodriguez with enough talent to actually win a World Series. Hicks more than demonstrated that an endless bankroll does indeed have an end.

It’s not an accident that the Rangers got better after they unloaded Rodriguez on the Yankees. And it won’t be an accident when Snyder wakes up some time in the next few years and realizes that he was a tad impetuous when he mortgaged his team’s future for one player. That will probably come when his fortune dwindles and he's forced to sell the team like a junior Art Modell.

RGIII has every chance to be a very special player in the NFL. But there isn’t a scenario where it would have made sense for the Browns to match the Redskins’ offer or, God forbid, better it for the Heisman Trophy winner. The Browns are far more likely to get better faster without Griffin then with him, at least at the price he would have cost both directly and indirectly.

Another Season on the Runaway Train

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Double Digit Failure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business As Usual

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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