Lessons of the Past

History isn’t always repeatable, but it is instructive. Cleveland Browns, 2010 edition, meet the Cleveland Browns, 1985 edition.

Though the current NFL season is just past its midpoint and there is enough that can happen in the remaining 7 games to make any sort of historical evaluation impossibly premature, enough has happened so far to give dying fans enough water to actually begin quenching their thirst.

The Browns have completed a very difficult portion of their schedule against the league’s elite teams and came out of it a very respectable 2-2. The formula for getting to the playoffs in football is more or less the same as it is in baseball: beat up the bums and split with the contenders.

The reason the Browns aren’t in the playoff hunt right now is because they haven’t beaten up the bums, at least not yet. They are, however, more or less splitting with the contenders and it’s that fact that has gotten everyone’s attention. The clues to whether or not they can follow the formula more closely comes in the form of that 1985 season.

While the 1985 and 2010 Browns aren’t quite identical twins, they at least are fraternal. There are plenty of parallels on which reasonable conclusions can be drawn.

Both seasons were set up with miserable seasons the previous years. In 1984, the Browns went 5-11 and Sam Rutigliano was fired mid year and replaced by Marty Schottenheimer. The 2009 Browns certainly weren’t any picnic with things getting so bad at one point that Randy Lerner decided to essentially demote head coach Eric Mangini and hire Mike Holmgren as team president late in the year. In each case, that set the table for what followed next.

The 1984 Browns had significant building blocks already in place. Ozzie Newsome was in his 6th season. The offensive line was still relatively solid, although it would be the last seasons for Doug Dieken and Joe DeLamielleure. Earnest Byner was a rookie.

The defense was solid, featuring the likes of Bob Golic, Clay Matthews, Chip Banks, Frank Minnifield, Hanford Dixon and Al Gross and rookie Don Rogers. Matt Bahr and Steve Cox were the kickers.

Indeed when you go through that 2004 lineup, you’re left scratching your head as to how it won only 5 games. Oh yea, now I remember. Paul McDonald was the quarterback. They used the offseason to remedy that glaring weakness, manipulating their way to getting Bernie Kosar in the supplemental draft.


The 2009 Browns didn’t have nearly the same number of building blocks as their 1984 counterparts and thus their record makes much more sense. But there were some decent pieces in place, including players like Joe Thomas, Josh Cribbs, Phil Dawson and a young but developing linebacking corps. They lacked receiving talent (still do) but perhaps more importantly, they lacked a credible quarterback.

The Browns took a short, mid and long-term approach to solving that problem in the offseason. They signed Jake Delhomme as a short-term answer. They brought in Seneca Wallace, a 6-year veteran back up, with the idea that Cleveland might be his best shot to earn the status of starter. They then drafted Colt McCoy in the third round. McCoy was certainly high profile, but the NFL cognoscenti convinced themselves that he had a weak arm so he dropped in value and into the Browns’ laps.

The Browns also tried to address their running game. Despite his accomplishments, this coaching staff, like the one before them, never quite felt the love for Jerome Harrison. They decided that Peyton Hillis, as hard-nosed of a runner as exists in the game at the moment, was more to their liking and went out and got him by trading Brady Quinn.

The signing of Bernie Kosar, the drafting of Kevin Mack, the emergence of Brian Brennan, the leadership of Gary Danielson and the maturing of the blocks already in place helped turned the 1985 Browns into AFC Central champs, albeit with a very modest 8-8 record.

While the signs were certainly present during that season that the team was turning back around from the disaster of 1984, it still wasn’t quite yet a winner. The entire season was played around the .500 mark. It was just that a very mediocre division allowed the Browns to emerge as champs.

But that emergence was actually the key to its ascent. It allowed them to face the mighty Miami Dolphins in the first round of the playoffs. The Dolphins had finished the season 12-4 and were favored to win the Super Bowl. But in that playoff game, the Browns raced to a 21-3 third quarter lead mostly on the strength of Byner’s running. But the Dolphins’ defense finally stiffened, the Dolphins’ offense work up, and the Browns ended up losing the game 24-21.

Still, the disappointment of that loss, a loss that was expected, buoyed the team and its fans. They entered the 1986 season still basking in the previous season’s afterglow and went on to win 12 games. Kosar had a game for the ages against the New York Jets in the first round and well, we all know what happened the following week against Denver.

This year’s Browns aren’t likely going to win the AFC North. They have 6 losses already and their division is much stronger than the 1985 version. Indeed, it is more likely than not that this team will end up with a losing record.

But games like the last three, especially the last two, have a way of transforming a franchise. Much like 1985, various events this season have coalesced to create a kind of excitement in this team that has appeared only sporadically in the last 10 years.

The injuries to Delhomme and Wallace conspired to put McCoy in a spot even top management wasn’t relishing. And instead of things going predictably bad, they went better than anyone had a right to expect. Whatever McCoy’s physical shortcomings might be that caused him to drop in the draft, he has more than made up for them in the form of a presence, an “it” factor that suggests that for once the Browns are off the market for a quarterback.

But he’s also aided by Hillis, who likewise has exceeded even the most optimistic projections that anyone could dare conjure. Together, those two are aided by an offensive line that is actually getting better, not worse. And all those elements are being aided by a defense that is better than the sum of their parts, week in and week out. In other words, the elements that need to work together are doing just that. The bugs are still being worked out, but the finished product can actually be clearly imagined.

As a result, this team enters each subsequent week with a swagger, a confidence that suggests it clearly understands that better days are ahead.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that these Browns will go on to become one of the league’s elite next season like the 1985 Browns did, but the fact that the concept can be contemplated without garnering a derisive laugh says something about where this team is headed.

Let’s just hope, for all our sakes, that if these Browns eventually do end up going down those same roads, they aren’t facing today’s equivalent to John Elway in the backfield. Another 25 years of purgatory would be difficult to take, especially at my age.

Road Games

There’s any number of roads one might consider going down after Thursday night’s Indians loss to the Boston Red Sox. But they all lead to the same place: The city of Boston with the Tribe up three games to two.

The first and far more traveled road in this town is the Negativity Boulevard. It’s hard to find it exactly on a map, but considering where the key sports venues are in this town, it has to be somewhere between East 9th and Ontario. At one time or another we’ve all been on it, many of us recently. Everyone by now knows this road, right?

It’s the road where Manager Eric Wedge convinced all his old naysayers Thursday night that he really isn’t a very good manager because he sent C.C. Sabathia out for the 7th inning Thursday night when it was clear that Sabathia was lucky to get through six after only giving up two runs. It’s also the place where a different group of naysayers are screaming for Travis Hafner to be dropped down in the lineup because he’s sucking the life out of this team with one lousy at bat after another. And while we’re here, how the heck did Kenny Lofton misplay what should have been a routine fly ball in the first inning Thursday? It led directly to Boston’s first run.

Hanging out on Negativity Boulevard can actually be quite fun, for a limited period of time. It helps cleanse the sole of the pent up anger over the fact that the Indians didn’t get it done in their own ball park, denying their fans to collectively rejoice in the exact moment that the Indians received their invitation to the 2007 World Series.

But hanging out on Negativity Boulevard is hardly recommended even if that’s where many Cleveland fans like to call home. In a sense, it’s hard not to empathize. Cleveland hasn’t had a championship team in any major sport in over two generations by this point. There have been any number of close calls which most can recite in painstaking detail. Indeed, it may not be the nicest place to live, but it’s the nicest place we know. It has a certain perverse comfort in the same way that pounding your head against the wall does—it feels so good when it’s over.

And far be it from me to stop someone from visiting an old friend every now and again. But as the brokerage houses like to tell us all the time when hawking their mutual funds: past results may not be indicative of future performance. Indeed, other than as interesting footnotes, nothing about what has taken place with prior teams in any sport in this town has any bearing on whether the Indians will advance to the World Series this year. Accept it.

And while I’m at it, accept the fact that you can change out of your so-called lucky shirt or stop aligning the remote control just so on your coffee table. If you really have that sort of dominion over the outcome of an Indians game by the shirt you wear or the chair you sit in, then there are probably even greater uses for such power, such as making that speeding ticket you got for going 85 down I-77 two weeks ago disappear.

For those who do occasionally leave Negativity Boulevard, it’s a short trip over to Indifference Alley. Most folks don’t like walking around in a bad mood all the time. Convinced, however, that ultimately nothing good could possibly happen in Cleveland sports, they eventually take a side trip down Indifference Alley, flipping the remote, for example, from the game to The Office even though the game is only two innings old, trying to convince themselves that they really could care less what happens in the game.

As if that ever works. Eventually they put on the picture-in-picture, just to keep an eye on the game in case something happens. And with the very next Indians hit, they get sucked right back in. So much for Indifference Alley. It’s only permanent residents are the wives and girlfriends who’d rather be shopping anyway.

A far less traveled road is Optimism Avenue, not to be confused with Naïve Street. See, on Naïve Street, a person doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Even though there is no cause and effect between Earnest Byner’s fumble and Edgar Renteria’s base hit, you can’t appreciate success without understanding its disappointing run-ups. The residents of Naïve Street just sort of believe everything will work out just fine even as the parking lot vendors are picking their pockets for nearly double the price during a playoff game.

Those on Optimism Avenue, on the other hand, have a clear understanding and healthy respect for the past. They know that in September it cost $20 to park in one of the lots on Sumner just off of E. 9th and now it is $30 but pay it anyway because it’s a small price to be part of history. These folks, too, believe everything will work out just fine because, sooner or later, it’s our turn, right? Right?

The final road is reserved for the remaining few who can place events into context. These folks live on Realistic Road. The reason you find so few fans living here is because it’s inconsistent with the concept of being a fan in the first place. As we get reminded from time to time (and as I’m doing for you right now), fan is short for fanatic, meaning someone whose emotions tend to run in extremes.

While you may not find many fans living down this road, it’s absolutely critical that the players live there. Boston’s Manny Ramirez received great criticism on Thursday for publicly extolling the credo of those who live there when he said, quite simply, that if Boston didn’t win the series, it wasn’t the end of the world. Dismiss that as Manny being Manny, but what he’s really saying is that as professional athletes, they can’t afford to be too optimistic, too pessimistic or too fatalistic. The only thing that works, that keeps them sane is to be realistic. Anything else and it is hard to perform.

In Thursday night’s game, one of the lessons learned for this young Indians team, frankly, is that they need to be more like Manny, except without the ill-fitting pants, the mile-long dreadlocks and the uneven facial hair. It wasn’t so much that the Red Sox did anything different so much as it was simply that they had been in this position before and thus were able to remain realistic about what would come next. They’d either win or they wouldn’t but no matter they were still going to play the game the only way they knew how. It’s what they came to do.

Fortunately, it isn’t necessarily a long learning curve in professional sports and won’t be for the Indians. By the time most athletes have reached this level, they’ve been in enough pressure situations for enough years that processing a new experience is second nature.

The other thing that’s important to remember, indeed what Manny and the Red Sox clearly understand, is that in reality this is a very good Indians baseball team even if it didn’t appear that way Thursday night. The Red Sox are neither intimidated nor overconfident, just realistic enough to know that their future can’t be predicted so no use trying. Simply stay in the moment.

This is the reality, too, that Wedge has drilled into his group over and over this past season. It’s what allowed them to overcome the harsh reality that good pitchers sometimes struggle and good hitters are still only successful slightly more than 30% of the time. Along with having hearts the size of Montana, it’s also what will ultimately allow them to apply the lessons learned and prevail in a series they should win, whether in six games or seven.