Lingering Items-Dead Money Edition

Roger Goodell must be pissed.  But then again so are a lot of agents.  In the annals of NFL free agency, which really aren’t all that far reaching anyway, this is easily the most pedestrian, indeed most boring, free agency period on record.  Put it this way, when the most exciting story in all of free agency starts and ends with a fax machine (a fax machine!), then it may be time to rethink the whole approach.

Goodell is pissed because in NFL World, there isn't supposed to be this kind of down period.  The whole point of creating a preseason, a regular season, a playoff season, a scouting combine, a free agency season, a draft season, and then off season workout season is precisely to advance the perception that the NFL is always in season.  The NFL Network is a 24-hour a day, seven day a week operation and it needs programming like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors needed humans.  The appetite is insatiable and yet all effort must be expended to quench it, sanity be damned.

But Goodell, in a rare act of self-sabotage, snuffed out any possibility of an active NFL free agency season when he put both the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, and by extension their impetuous, maniacal owners on the sidelines for acting all petulant and maniacal during 2010’s uncapped season.  By loading up salary in that year (and then getting nothing but dead money and no Super Bowls for the effort) despite the strong and probably illegally collusive suggestion that they not do that, the Redskins and Cowboys were fined millions in salary cap hits, effectively putting them out of business during this off season.  And a million player agents cried and the rest of the world paid attention to something else, like the wife of Florida Gulf Coast's basketball coach and Aaron Craft's hovering right foot.

Because the two biggest, free spending franchises have basically sat out free agency, agents are finding suckers in short supply.  Daniel Snyder and Jerry Jones usually use free agency as a way of measuring their manhood, at least since actual manhood measuring was outlawed by Paul Tagliabue at the 2004 Winter Meetings after an unfortunate incident involving a bottle of Captain Morgan and an electronic tape measure.  In their view, big always trumped quality and so they spent themselves silly so many times that they made George Steinbrenner look like an absolute model of restraint by comparison.

But without their participation this year, free agency has been boring with most teams following the example long established by Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots—let the market come to them.  Even now, the free agent market is still flush with inventory as one owner after another sees how far they can drive down the price of free agents.

Cleveland’s own Josh Cribbs may be the poster child for this year’s free agency class.  Not only has there been virtually no competition for his services, but the only team that’s even thinking about signing him, the Arizona Cardinals, said to check back in the next several weeks to see how that knee has heeled.  Meanwhile absolutely no other team has jumped into the fray.  It’s almost as if Cribbs couldn’t get signed if agreed to work for incentives only.

Behind Cribbs are literally dozens of other similarly situated free agents. Most of them aren’t brand names but some of them are.  They either are players that once were something but are old and/or banged up (you know, free agents that, if this were baseball, are exactly the kind favored by the Cleveland Indians) or younger players who for a variety of reasons didn’t pan out with their original teams.

In any case, this new found restraint within the NFL was brought about mostly, and perhaps unintentionally, by Goodell.  As a result, most teams are still in decent shape with respect to their salary caps while agents who were counting on big commissions to finance that new Porsche are finding that they may have to settle for a Nissan.

It's not what Goodell had in mind when he decided to punish Snyder and Jones for acting like Snyder and Jones.

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Something else, too, is happening this free agency season.  It's finally dawned on most owners and coaches that players are far more fungible than they originally thought.  Unless there’s an elite quarterback on the market, which happens about as often as players like Peyton Manning switch teams, free agency isn’t the place to cure what ails your franchise.  It’s the place to supplement your overall player acquisition strategy, not define it.

Let’s start with a few basics.

The conventional wisdom of NFL general managers is still that teams are best built through the draft.  But is that really still true?  Certainly it was in the days when free agency didn’t really exist, the days when a team signing, say, a Cribbs, would have to part with a couple of first round picks for that privilege.  Not coincidentally, the draft was 12 rounds, or nearly double what it is today.

What makes it less true today has been the growing importance of undrafted free agents.  There isn’t a NFL roster these days that doesn’t include at least 10 and sometimes as many as 13 or 14 undrafted free agents on its roster.  It’s those kinds of players that really are the backbone of the league because it’s on their backs that salary caps are managed.

A disproportionate amount of cap space is typically allocated to the quarterback position, unless you’re a team like Cleveland perpetually looking for a quarterback on whom to lavish too much money.  From there, a few skill players (including tough to find left tackles, for example) fill up another, smaller, but still disproportionate share of cap space.  Finally, the rest of the cap space is allocated among the 40 or so players, many of whom are either young, undrafted free agents (rookies, first or second year players) or aging veterans on cheap, one year deals.

What teams then do on an almost daily basis is assess their cap space by player and by that player’s overall value against the space his contract occupies.  When cap space exceeds value (as measured, generally, by a formula that takes into account the production of other similarly situated players in the league and their contracts) a player usually is asked to renegotiate.  Players that balk at the suggestion are cut.  In a few cases, generous soles like Tom Brady will voluntarily renegotiate a contract to something more cap friendly.  The bottom line though is the bottom line.  Teams live and die by their cap space.  Indeed there’s no one more important to a franchise than the cap specialist.

Because of the ever present black cloud that is the salary cap the NFL shrunk its draft in order to push more players onto the undrafted free agent market because it’s cheaper.  Such free agents rarely command any sort of bonus, they tend to sign relatively long, cap-friendly contracts, and they do all the dirty work, from carrying equipment to running down the field at break neck speed on special teams.  It’s also as cheap to cut those kinds of players as to keep them which is why so many are on the market every off season.

What this all says about NFL economics is that teams aren’t built through the draft nearly as much as they used to be.  Teams are really built through the draft and the free agency market that follows the draft.  Meanwhile the free agency season that precedes the draft, the one populated with veterans looking for a new home, is the place to plug holes n order to finalize your actual draft/post draft free agent strategy.

The Browns, for example, have spent the free agent season loading up on the defensive side of the ball.  They have needs at nearly every position but focusing at least on one side of the ball gives them a change to better manage the next two phases of their player acquisition strategy—the draft and post draft free agency.  That’s where the Browns will turn to offense so that when it’s all said and done the new regime, in relatively short order, will have put its mark on the franchise while simultaneously extricating it from the mistakes of the last regime.

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This isn’t to totally minimize the draft, by the way.  It’s still as important as it ever was to hit on players in the first three rounds.  Players drafted in those positions are far more likely to become the blue chip cornerstones of your franchise than players drafted later or signed as undrafted free agents.

Sure there are plenty of brand names in the NFL today who started as late round picks or undrafted free agents but not surprisingly the hit rate on them is far less.  You only need to look at the struggles of the Browns to understand how important the first few rounds really are.

Despite having almost unprecedented opportunities to improve through the draft, the Browns have mostly stayed in exactly the same place instead.  You could go year by year or simply map today’s hole-ridden roster against their draft position to see the unmistakable trend.  The Browns suck at the draft and have for more than a decade.  As it stands today they have exactly one cornerstone player, Joe Thomas, to show for their efforts.

Argue all you want for Brandon Weeden and Trent Richardson and maybe a few others, but until they actually perform like superstars they aren’t actually in that category.  Teams may pay on potential but games are won on performance and Weeden and Richardson both have to make significant improvement before they get simply lumped on the mile high pile of failed early round draft choices.

In other words, the Browns can improve by finding quality free agents but they can't take an incremental step forward without improving their early round drafting and not just intermittently but for the next several years.

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I started to write a column last week about how the Cleveland Browns’ brain trust decided not to take my advice and let the free agent market come to them.  But then I got the flu and lost interest.  The flu is better, my interest still lost.  Ultimately the Browns should have been market reactors not market makers but on the other hand they seem happy with who they signed.  They always do.

What did occur to me through the fog of the flu and the drugs meant to suppress its symptoms was that the Browns may be actually improving.  It’s less related to the guys they’ve signed and more related to those they haven’t.

Let’s talk about Phil Dawson for a moment.  Who doesn’t love Phil Dawson?  I’ll tell you who, Joe Banner.  I doubt it’s personal.  Banner looks at Dawson’s age, ignores his accomplishment, and consults a ream of statistics all of which tell him that 38 year old kickers are a lousy investment.  The fact that a Browns regime, any regime, is willing to make cold blooded decisions on players who are as beloved as Dawson might be a sign of progress, indeed improvement.  Forget about the players for the moment, another thing the Browns have to do to improve is take sentimentality out of the question and start making better business decisions.

Not to reopen old wounds, but let me do so for purposes of a small illustration.  Mike Holmgren, who knew the instant he was hired he didn’t like Eric Mangini, refused to make the right business decision and set Mangini adrift after one failed season.  For pure sentimentality’s sake, a “there but for the grace of God go I” calculation, Holmgren kept Mangini around for another year and then fired him for the offense of performing just as poorly in year two as year one.

That decision set the franchise back and not just a year but several.  The Browns acquired players and made all sorts of personnel moves during that year based on the schemes Mangini was running.  That blocked any progress on the schemes Holmgren and his crew wanted to run instead.  We can speculate on the players passed over during that lost year who could have been contributing now but that will just make me want to blow my brains out.  The point is that running a football team isn’t merely a year by year endeavor.  A franchise as lowly as the Browns can’t afford to take a year off like it did when Mangini was granted an additional year to show just how easy it is to win 4 games a year.

So in that sense watching Banner make no effort to sign Dawson is a sign of progress for the franchise.  That may seem counterintuitive when you consider that it was the 49ers, last season’s other Super Bowl participant, that signed Dawson.  But actually that it was the 49ers and not, say, the Kansas City Chiefs, actually makes my point.

The Browns have nearly as many holes on the roster as roster spots available. The 49ers need improvement on the margins.  They don’t have much cap space left or much need but certainly kicking was a need.  Getting Dawson on a one year deal takes care of the problem for now.  The Browns have more gaping needs and the cap space they have must be used to take care of those far bigger problems—like the rush defense, for instance, and the team’s overall depth at virtually every position.

There are more kickers available than jobs and even though Dawson signed cheaply (less, actually, than he made last season for the Browns), his age still counsels against him being anything more than a stop gap anyway.  The Browns need a longer term solution and, remember, better to release a year too early than a year too late.

That isn’t to say that whoever the Browns find to do the kicking next year will be more effective than Dawson was last season.  In all likelihood that will be impossible.  But all they need is someone relatively close and finding him won’t be that big of a problem.  Teams may suffer for a season with a kicker they don’t like but it’s not like a lack of kicking game tends to be a lingering problem for any team.  Again, supply outstrips demand.  A new kicker will emerge and at a cheaper price.

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The Browns’ complete lack of effort in re-signing Cribbs is much the same thing.  The willingness to move on from a player that did so much for the franchise is a sign that the Browns are progressing past sentimentality and toward the business of actually putting together a winning brand.

As for Cribbs, I predicted the interest in him would be muted but I’m a little surprise it’s been almost non-existent.  Maybe the recent knee surgery made teams nervous, but I doubt it.  In the first place, it was a simple clean up of a torn meniscus.  As knee injuries go it’s about the mildest.  Indeed if Cribbs’ agent is to be believed he’s already passed an Arizona Cardinals physical even coming off of knee surgery.

It’s not the knee but Cribbs’ age and effectiveness as measured against the cost of getting someone who can do the same thing, just more cheaply.  The kick return has been significantly diminished by the NFL and teams are not now going to pay much money for someone just to take a knee three or four times a game.  The punt returner is more valued these days and Cribbs was 7th in the league last year in average yards/return, but at his age, his injury history and his salary is he really the better choice than Travis Benjamin?  That’s the question Banner asked and we know how he answered.

Arizona seems to have interest in Cribbs but they told him to check back in 5 weeks.  Ostensibly they are concerned about his knee but I wonder.  The Cardinals are using cornerback Patrick Peterson to return punts and in his two years his average per return is actually a yard more than Cribbs’ career average.  That’s not significant certainly but it doesn’t suggest an area of need for the Cardinals, either.

What’s likely going on can be found in the words of Bruce Arians, their head coach.  According to Mary Kay Cabot’s story in the Plain Dealer last Thursday, Arians could hardly contain himself when thinking of all the possible ways he could use Cribbs.  The last time I heard a coach get all warm and runny about a muti-threat player was a year ago when Rex Ryan went all in, during the off season, on Tim Tebow.  Eventually he found out what the other teams already knew.  Tebow’s effectiveness is as a diversion and not a steady diet.  The same is true with Cribbs.  He’s not without skills on offense but even in his prime, which he’s now well past, he was never good enough to be a quality starter.  That isn’t going to change just because Arians is talking extemporaneously about a player he won’t even consider signing for another month.

I’m not suggesting that the Browns gained by losing either Cribbs or Dawson.  What I am suggesting though is that by not giving in to the sentimentality of resigning two players who helped keep this franchise afloat for the last several years Browns fans may actually have a reason to believe this front office knows what it’s doing.

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Long column this week but still a question to ponder:  James Harrison, like Cribbs, is still looking for a team.  Is this karma or just the inevitable outcome of a very soft free agent market?

The Things We Know--Week 10

Josh Cribbs may be a disgruntled member of the Cleveland Browns but give him credit for being the team’s best analyst. Calling the Browns a team that “almost always almost wins,” Cribbs not only captured the essence of the Browns’ latest road loss, this time a 23-20 overtime loss to the Dallas Cowboys, but really the story line of most of the other 8 losses this season and the dozens of losses over the last 10 years.

The Browns almost always almost do something well enough to win but it’s their abiding commitment to failure that ultimately puts them in the position to lose week in and week out. This week it was the crappy play of the crappy defensive backs, a phrase that really contains a sort of double negative so, if my algebra is correct, the simplified version comes down to the play of the defensive backs. Two weeks ago it was crappy play calling or whatever. It really doesn’t matter much anymore. If there’s a game to be played, rest assured that the Browns will do their level best to find a way to come up just short of success.

Yet there may still be something to learn from Sunday’s near win. But how you feel about the Cowboys actual win and the Browns actual loss and whether it taught you anything new about this team depends mostly on how you come out of some of the key questions underlying the game.

For example, was the apparent competitiveness of the game a reflection of Pat Shurmur’s ability to well utilize the bye week or of Jason Garrett’s incompetence as a play calling head coach in Dallas?

Shurmur is 0-2 now following bye weeks so he's not exactly Urban Meyer. He hasn’t necessarily shown much growth as a head coach but yet the team seem well prepared, at least during the first half, following the bye week. There was a crispness to the offense that had been missing in recent weeks. A healthier defensive line was certainly taking the measure of a make shift Cowboys offensive line. The Browns put themselves in a position to score at least 3 times and ended up taking a 13-0 lead into the locker room.

And while the first half was fun and made the Cowboys look more like the Browns than the Browns, the highlight for me was the following exchange that occurred between Greg Gumbel, a usually reliable play by play guy, and Dan Dierdorf, the world’s best color commentator but only if the only person in the competition with him is Matt Millen, when the Browns approached the red zone for the first time:

Gumbel (noting that the Browns are 31^st in the league in scoring touchdowns when in the red zone, and probably at least 31^st in the league in scoring touchdowns from wherever they are on the field): This is where the Browns struggle. I wonder why it is that some teams do better than others when in the red zone?

Dierdorf (salivating at the inane question like my dog salivates just before I finish pouring his food in his dish): Better players. Better play calling.

Precisely. The Browns had a chance to have a commanding rather than pedestrian lead at the half and didn't because they don’t have good players and then they combine that deficiency with poor play calling. Shurmur is more concerned with not getting three points then he is with trying to get seven and Brandon Weeden is worried about throwing still another interception and hurting his chances to be named best rookie quarterback not named Robert Griffin III or Andrew Luck. Wasn’t that exactly the issue against the Ravens when the Browns didn’t throw even one pass into the end zone when they were in the red zone? Thought so.

All that said, let’s face it. The Cowboys knew prior to the pre-game warm ups that the Browns’ defensive secondary was pretty suspect and that’s with a completely healthy Joe Haden. Once Haden showed up in Arlington dressed more for raking leaves than doing battle with Dez Bryant, the Cowboys should have been lighting up the scoreboard. They didn’t. It was almost as if they wanted to prove that they could beat the Browns by deliberating playing to their weaknesses rather than their strengths, such as they are.

If I was Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones during his post-season meeting when he fires Garrett because the Cowboys again missed the playoffs, he should walk him through the first half of Sunday’s game each painful second at a time so that Garrett understands that instead of trying to establish a run game that they don’t have he should have had quarterback Tony Romo throwing on damn near every play. The worst thing you can do is let an inferior team believe it can play you straight up, but that's exactly what Garrett and the Cowboys did by strangely ignoring exactly what they were being given in the passing game.

Buster Skrine didn’t get the title of worst defensive back in the league through mere chance. He’s a fidget of a player with modest speed who probably couldn’t cover Brian Robiskie, let alone Dez Bryant. Yet it took the Cowboys all of the first half to figure out that when the Browns defensive backs weren’t giving 10-15 yard cushions they were interfering. The Cowboys had 10 freaking first downs on penalties, which has to be some kind of record. It would be hard to envision a more inviting passing scenario for any quarterback and yet the Cowboys acted as if the Browns had Frank Minnifield and Hanford Dixon in their primes back on every play.

On those plays were Skrine could establish contact with a receiver, he did, usually well beyond the 5-yard zone off the ball that defensive backs are allowed by rule. A flag inevitably followed. If Skrine wasn’t getting a penalty then it was only because he couldn’t even get close enough to the receiver to commit the foul in the first place.

If was actually quite fascinating when the CBS camera crew would focus on Skrine’s mug after a penalty. He didn’t look sheepish. He didn’t look indignant. He looked like a kid who knew he shouldn’t have been out there, like LeBron James at a Cavs fan party or Rush Limbaugh at a NOW convention. That the Browns had no other effective choice, or at least felt that they didn’t, than Skrine speaks more about how undeniably thin the team’s roster really is then it does about Skrine’s lack of talent.

It wasn’t just Skrine, though. Sheldon Brown did nothing more Sunday then demonstrate that he’s at least a year, probably more, past his expiration date. Because he’s been in the league as long as he has, let’s just assume that at one point in his career he had the speed and skill to cover a legitimate receiver. Not any more.

So when fans and the local writers bemoan how the officials made suspect calls late in the game and again in overtime against the Browns’ defensive backs and that this as much as anything is why the Browns lost, let’s keep that delusion in context. Browns defensive backs were committing so many legitimate penalties leading up to those situations that they had long since given up any hope of getting the benefit of the doubt during crunch time.

I’m not saying that the game wasn’t nearly as competitive as the final score and the fact that it went into overtime might indicate, but I’m not going to argue with anyone who feels differently. I suspect the Cowboys took the Browns too lightly early on. And I think that the Cowboys have their own set of issues to deal with, starting with the offensive line and their running game and moving on up to a lousy coaching staff. And while I’m at it, Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan called a strangely passive game until late. Put all that, the Browns players, the Cowboys various dysfunctions, in a stock pot, bring to a boil and stir occasionally and you have the full range of reasons that the game ended as it did.

So ultimately what we learned is that teams either play down to their level of competition when facing the Browns or the Browns players play up, again depending on your perspective. The reason it doesn't matter ultimately is that while teams with lesser talent occasionally eke out victories at every level of play, it's not the norm and that is why the Browns may be one of the better worst teams in the league, they're still one of the worst teams in the league.

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If there was an encouraging sign at all from Sunday’s loss it was the noticeable change in attitude of Shurmur while in aforesaid red zone. The Brown’s first touchdown, which was a 10-yard pass from Weeden to tight end Ben Watson, was a ball thrown in the end zone. Because it was early in the game, it serves as a far better measure of Shurmur’s relative increase in boldness when measured against his fear against the Ravens two weeks ago then the second touchdown pass Weeden threw, a 17-yard pass also to Watson.

It could be that the difference is simply that the Ravens have Ed Reed and the Cowboys don’t. But I think it’s more than that. The pass to Watson was thrown directly into coverage. Indeed, Watson was surrounded by three Cowboys defenders. Two weeks ago both Weeden and Shurmur specifically mentioned not wanting to throw into coverage in the end zone for fear of the interception, which is why Phil Dawson again is the Browns' offensive MVP. In that sense, this was a big step.

Then again, when the team is 2-7 and the head coach is a lame duck and the latest regime isn’t yet sold on the decisions of the last regime, maybe it was more an example of flying by the seat of your pants. When you have nothing to win, you have nothing to lose and if anything describes Shurmur’s fate at this point it’s that.

It's far harder to measure Weeden's progress. Unquestionably he's better now then he was earlier in the season, which is a positive. He doesn't lock on receivers nearly as much, unless he's throwing deep in which case he still locks completely on that receiver, and he can generally find the outlet guy. But Weeden is still awfully late on too many passes, which is a sign that he's still reacting first and then throwing instead of anticipating as he throws.

This too is explainable since Weeden is still pretty raw and he's not throwing to the most accomplished group of receivers. Ultimately, though, when new president Joe Banner and offensive coordinator Brad Childress talk about having to evaluate Weeden at year's end, this is what they'll look for. Does Weeden make the correct reads? Does he have the kind of trigger that is more instinctive than mechanical? Those are hard things to judge and nothing about the Dallas loss added much insight except one thing.

Weeden still has horrible touch. He not only missed a wide open Josh Cooper (though in fairness, Cooper did drop a pass right in his hands earlier) and he threw about the worst pass you're ever likely to see on 4^th down near the Dallas one yard line. Not knowing if the Browns would see the ball again and needing a touchdown on what could have been their last effective play, Weeden absolutely had to give his receiver a chance to catch the ball. He didn't. The throw to Jordan Cameron was well out of bounds.

As it is, Weeden wasn't helped much by the play calling. I can understand trying to force Richardson down the Cowboys' collective throats but what I can't understand is why there was no play action on that 4^th down play. The Cowboys had 42 players in the box and had completely sold out on the rush. It was the exact time to fake the dive to Richardson and have the tight end on the right side release to what surely would have been open field on the right side of the line. Instead the Browns went all in on an iffy fade route to the left side of the end zone. Weeden had virtually no room to work the play and to prove it and his lack of touch, he lofted the ball at least 5 yards out of bounds.

Weeden was helped, too, by his receivers all day. Here's the place where it's time to say something nice about Greg Too Little. He made two very fine catches on poorly thrown balls and then didn't stop to celebrate either one. That's significant progress actually. How that translates to the rest of the season is hard to say although Jeff Schudel at the News-Herald seems to think that Little has completely matured and is now a leader on the team. If that's the key, no one needs Clarissa to explain it all. It explains itself.

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The Browns next take on a wounded Pittsburgh Steelers team. With Ben Roethlisberger out, this simply isn't the same Steelers team that has owned the Browns like the Buckeyes own the Hoosiers. This also isn't exactly the same Steelers team because defensively it's more suspect then it has been in years. It would be nice to imagine that the Browns go all Ralphie on the Steelers and unleash a few year's worth of frustration on the bullies that torment them and it could happen that way. But past being prologue all too often with this team, they're likely to add another chapter to the almost always almost victories they've compiled against that team and the rest of the league for years.

Buh Bye Week

Maybe the Cleveland Browns serving a 4-year league imposed bye prepared me for it, but honestly I look forward to the team’s bye week each year. Timed right, it not only gives me the opportunity to finish up the outdoor chores I tend to ignore in those agonizingly painful days between the end of golf season and the onset of snow, but it gives me the opportunity to watch football through a much different prism.

Unencumbered by another Browns’ game to break down and analyze for the moment (which, believe me, is not nearly as fun as simply watching it with your buddies while being over served Bud Light), I get to instead focus on what the rest of the NFL is up to.

The good news, indeed the great news, is that the Browns are hardly the most troubled franchise in the NFL at the moment. In fact, it’s not even close. As bad as things have been in Cleveland, at least we haven’t been burdened lately with overwhelming expectations. The last time that happened was in the pre-Twitter days of 2008, nearly a lifetime ago, and we saw the Browns handle it like a cheap lawn chair from Sam’s Club handles your overweight brother-in-law at his kid’s soccer game.

On full display Sunday was the Dallas Cowboys who are essentially reliving the Browns’ 2008 season except for a few small details. The expectations for the Browns were the playoffs, modest but exciting in context. For the Cowboys it’s the Super Bowl or bust. The Browns play in a nice stadium but the Cowboys don’t just play in a stadium, they play in a Parthenon, a monument to excess that, I think, cost somebody somewhere about $6 billion. The Browns had a diffident owner who hid from the media like Howard Hughes in the final throes of dementia. The Cowboys have one of the most visible owners in the history of the NFL. He hides from the media like a Kardashian hides from the media.

But with 7 games under their belt the Cowboys are 1-6 and looking every bit as disinterested, unorganized and out of sorts as any Browns’ team in the last 10 years, including that woeful 2007 bunch. Head coach Wade Phillips has assumed the role of Romeo Crennel, the nice guy who expects grown men to act like professionals and give their best effort because that’s what their paid to do.

It didn’t work out well for Crennel then because he gave the inmates the keys to the compound. And when given the chance the inmates will absolutely take over the compound. They’ll imprison the guards, change the locks on the door and put nothing but desserts on the lunch menu. The Cowboys, like the Browns in 2007, are in full revolt at the moment and all Phillips can do is stand by, grimace occasionally and hope that his favorite Pandora station starts playing through the headset he wears on the sideline instead of the incessant noise from an assistant who knows he’ll too be out of work soon.

Although quarterback Tony Romo is injured and gone for the next several weeks, it’s hardly an excuse for the kind of mail-it-in performance they had against Jacksonville on Sunday or even against the New York Giants a week before when Romo was playing. First of all, Romo may very well be one of the most overrated quarterbacks I’ve seen in the last 10 years. He has skills, but not Peyton Manning skills. Romo’s accomplishments pale in comparison to the attendant hype. He’s an above-average quarterback with the bad luck to be on a team where above-average is never going to be good enough.

The other thing is that the Cowboys defense is pitiful. Given how the Browns’ defense has played all season, even with Sheldon Brown and Eric Wright spending a good portion of the first 7 games watching receivers fly past them like a stranded driver watches semis whiz by on the Shoreway, the Cowboys might very well be at least 4-3 and in the playoff hunt if they had that Browns’ defensive unit. The Cowboys can’t stop the run or the pass, just like the Browns in 2007.

This will not end well for Phillips just like it didn’t end well for Crennel. The difference is that Phillips will not survive the season. Crennel survived mainly because it took owner Randy Lerner that long to realize that yes, he was witnessing a car wreck as it was happening. Let’s just say that Jerry Jones is a little more self-aware.

I also had the chance to watch another overrated team, the New York Jets, put on an absolutely horrendous performance against the Green Bay Packers. I’m still not quite sure what kind of team the Packers have but I am pretty sure that the Jets will once again disappoint the fans of New York. To that I say welcome to the club. Browns fans have been charter members of it for the last 10 years.

The reason the Jets ultimately will disappoint is that they have a head coach who can be as reckless as he can be inspiring, kind of like the Browns’ defensive coordinator. No small coincidence then that the two are twin brothers, is it?

Rex Ryan literally cost the Jets a victory because of hubris couched in mismanagement. It’s the fatal flaw of the Ryan brand. They trust their instincts too often when they should trust their research.

On 4th and 18 early in the game, Ryan let punter Steve Weatherford try a fake punt. I understand the surprise factor, although fake punts are all the rage this season, but Reggie Hodges running 60 + yards last week for the Browns on a fake punt is a once in a lifetime sort of thing. Weatherford had as much chance of getting the first down as Bill Belichick has being inducted into the Browns’ Ring of Honor. (Note: Weatherford was originally ruled to have gotten the first down but on replay the call was reversed. He missed by at least two yards.) It gave the Packers the ball deep in Jets territory, which they converted into a 20-yard field goal. The Jets didn’t know it at the time, though they should have, that it would be all the points the Packers would need.

But that little sneak attack that blew up in their face was a minor blip compared to the strangeness of the play calling and decision making in the last 6 minutes and 36 seconds of the game that beat them over the head With the Jets deep in their own territory and trailing 6-0, they were able to get one first down before Ryan and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer went into brain freeze mode.

After a Mark Sanchez swing pass fell incomplete, Ryan and Schottenheimer eschewed any desire to move the ball methodically, instead putting Sanchez in a situation where he couldn’t succeed. Two deep passes were incomplete (it wasn’t even close) and the Jets were forced to punt.

With 4:12 remaining and the Packers with the ball, Ryan decided to use all 3 of his remaining time outs. It worked, except when it didn’t. All it did was really accelerate the inevitable outcome.

The Packers were forced to punt and the Jets took over with 3:50 remaining, instead of the two or so minutes they might have had had they preserved at least 1 time out. An off tackle run by LaDanian Tomlinson, which kept the clock moving, was followed by another deep pass that fell incomplete. Sanchez was then sacked on third down as he held the ball too long while looking for an open receiver on another inexplicable deep route. The clock kept moving. Forced to go for it on fourth down and in their own territory, Sanchez again looked deep again and in the direction of Braylon Edwards. That pass, predictably, fell incomplete. Not once did Ryan, Schottenheimer or Sanchez seem to even consider the possibility that getting a few first downs and putting the Packers on their heels might be a good idea. The Packers then moved in for another field goal effectively ending the game.

It was the kind of play calling that Browns’ fans may be used to but the real comfort is that this kind of stuff doesn’t just happen in Cleveland except, of course, when Rob Ryan is calling blitzes and leaving Eric Wright to fend for himself.

Bye week football is not to be ignored but to be relished for what it is. A confirmation that things aren’t as bad as it seems in Cleveland even while it serves to show how far this team still has to go.

Jerry Jones and His Deal with the Devil

It’s one thing to dodge the potholes in the road as they come along, it’s a whole other thing to put them in the road yourself. Yet that’s exactly what the Dallas Cowboys are doing by selling whatever might be left of their souls by trading for disgraced former Tennessee Titan’s cornerback, Adam “Pacman” Jones.

Assuming as we must that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones approved this pending transaction, what this proves is that Jones secretly harbors an inner desire to be the NFL’s new Al Davis. Jones, always a bit of a maverick anyway, is further confirming that status by deliberating infecting his team with a cancer that the Titans are only to happy to cure themselves of.

Sure, we’ll hear the usual manure from the usual suspects, in this case Jones as owner and as Cowboys general manager, that he’s both spoken to Pacman and is convinced he’s sincere about turning his life around. It’s essentially the same line George W. Bush used when he said he looked into the soul of former Russian president Vladimir Putin and that’s not working out too well either.

You don’t have to venture too far into the realm of the internets to appreciate the liability that the Cowboys are attempting to take on by essentially taking over the cleanup of this toxic dump. In terms of rap sheets, Pacman’s alone rivals that of the current roster of the Cincinnati Bengals. And that was before the revelation earlier this week that Pacman was paying hush money in connection with his little, ahem, incident in Las Vegas.

Anyone who listened to even a part of Pacman’s radio interview a few weeks back with Michael Irvin, himself no stranger to trouble, couldn’t possibly have come away thinking that “yea, this is the guy we need to have on our team.” Anyone, except maybe Jerry Jones. Someone get him a transcript. Better yet, to appreciate Pacman is to hear him speak, so get Jones the tape. Pacman didn’t so much as own his former troubles as diminish them by laying blame in a somewhat whimsical fashion to his completely understandable obsession with strip joints. Except he likely couldn’t spell obsession and couldn’t define whimsical.

There are any number of variables that go into putting together a successful season. Talent is a given, but it isn’t the end of the rainbow. In a sport that depends on the ability to put a large number of players on the same page, the last thing a team needs is a bunch of rugged individualists, even ones with immense raw talent. One of the great secrets to the success of the New England Patriots hasn’t been overwhelming talent, but overwhelming teamwork. Whether it’s because the players unite behind the common theme of hating head coach Bill Belichick or some other reason, the Patriots are a team first.

The Cowboys, on the other hand, seem hell-bent on disproving the notion. They brought on serial gun nut Tank Johnson while he was still suspended. They also already employ one of the biggest distractions in recent memory, Terrell Owens. All Owens has done over the years and everywhere he’s been is burn every bridge he’s ever crossed, taking a fair share of collateral damage in the process. The fact that Owens hasn’t fully torched all of Irving, Texas thus far is more luck than maturity.

Then there is the matter of the traveling circus that vastly overrated quarterback Tony Romo has become. So proud, apparently, is he of having Jessica Simpson to squire around town that he seems incredibly oblivious to the distractions he’s foisted on his teammates in the process if the little side trip to Mexico he took with the vocally-challend Ms. Simpson during last season’s playoff bye week is any indication.

Sure, Romo would be a fool not to avail himself of the opportunity that his fleeting celebrity status has given him to take the measure of Simpson on a regular basis. But every question he has to constantly answer from a press that can’t tell the difference between news and fluff—“are they engaged?” “is she really as dumb as she seems?”—is another chance he doesn’t have to concentrate on more pressing matters of the day, like how to solve the Packers secondary.

But the Owens/Romo sideshows are about to seem like the halcyon days of yore once Pacman and his entourage arrive in Dallas, which may still be awhile if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell decides he’s still offended by the fact that Pacman felt the urge to frequent a Manhattan strip joint the night before his come to Jesus meeting with the league last year.

Pacman’s mere presence is going to force virtually every person associated with the Cowboys, save maybe the third string ball boy, to constantly respond to what will surely be an endless series of Pacman-related questions. The Dallas media might tire of asking the same questions and getting the rote answers somewhere around next December, but the questions will dog the Cowboys at every stop they make during the season. And that’s assuming Pacman heads straight home after practice. Pacman being Pacman isn’t Manny being Manny. Pacman being Pacman involves late nights, people getting arrested, lawyers being retained and pleas being bargained. In other words, the chance that Pacman won’t be involved in something somewhere is roughly the same as the chance that a clock won’t tick.

Jerry Jones has always come across as the kind of guy so impressed with himself that there is no problem too large for him to handle. Pacman promises to test the depths of Jones’ seemingly unlimited supply of self-esteem and the utter patience of Cowboys fans that have been sorely tested the last two seasons.

This all is good news, of course, for the rest of the NFL East. While Jerry Jones is making deals with the devil, the rest of the division is just going quietly about their business of actually improving the team dynamic.

And if this Pacman thing doesn’t quite work, there’s also some good news for Jones. Odell Thurman was recently reinstated and is probably available and Rae Carruth has to be up for parole sometime in the next several years.

Follow the Money

On the surface, the two stories wouldn’t seem to have much in common. Chicago Cubs owner Sam Zell said earlier this week that he would definitely consider selling the naming rights to Wrigley Field. At roughly the same time, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was heard saying, again, that he believes NFL owners will vote to opt out of the current labor agreement.

Two different sports, two completely unrelated issues. Hardly. Like everything else in sports these days, the two stories share a common parent: money. In particular, the root is the ever spiraling cost of owning and running a professional sports franchise and what to do about it.

There was a time not all that long ago when old white men bought sports teams for the pure ego and hobby of it. That era was characterized mostly by the alarming lack of business acumen these owners brought to their hobby. Whatever rigor they applied to their “real” businesses, the ones that made them all the dough, was thrown out the window when they dabbled in sports.

But this didn’t necessarily cause them any great concern because the value of their teams continued to climb ever higher, seemingly defying all the laws of economics. Owning a sports team became the ultimate boom enterprise. But the downside, at least from a fan’s perspective, is that the economic health of their sports eventually grew worse. Most owners, more interested in stroking their egos than making good business decisions with their teams, wouldn’t hesitate to sign the next great superstar to an even more outrageous contract then the last great superstar. Ticket prices rose.

But eventually a different breed of owner started making their way into pro sports. Buying at ever increasing prices and taking on the kind of crushing debt that made the old white guys shake their heads, this breed grew up on budgets and business plans and didn’t see any reason not to translate that into their sports properties. Indeed, it was a necessity. This breed has no less of a desire to win than their forbearers; it’s just that given what they paid for their team, they aren’t as comfortable dipping into their personal fortunes any further in order to meet their debt payments, let alone such trivial matters as player acquisition expenses.

Zell and Jones are two such owners. Zell is a somewhat reluctant owner of the Cubs, having acquired them when he purchased the Tribune Co., the Cubs’ previous owner, last April for more than $8 billion. Zell’s interest seemed, at least at the time, much more focused on the media properties under the Tribune banner and not, necessarily the Cubs.

Most expect Zell to sell the Cubs sooner rather than later if only to retire some of the massive debt he took on to buy the Tribune Co. in the first place. But Zell is letting it be known now that he will sell the Cubs when he’s good and ready and, by the way, he plans to maximize his recovery by selling the Cubs and Wrigley Field separately.

There is good reason for Zell to wait and to sell separately. According to Forbes, the value of the Cubs franchise has been increasing at an average annual rate of 14% and increased a whopping 32% just between 2005 and 2006, not atypical figures whatsoever in either baseball or football. Needing money is one thing, but given these returns it compels Zell to wait a little longer to sell. In the meantime, why not create a tidy little revenue stream by selling the naming rights to one of the most famous stadiums in the world? For an owner more interested in money than history, it makes perfect sense.

For the baseball purist out there, Zell’s plans may be sacrilege but don’t blame Zell. Baseball’s ownership fraternity has never been all that keen on sharing revenue among themselves and thus it’s not a surprise that left to their own devices things like this would happen. With baseball having created an economic mess of itself for the last several years with no appreciable end in sight, now is hardly the time to begrudge even Sam Zell from making a little more money on the backs of fans. There are much bigger issues to solve in that sport first.

At first blush, it seems that’s what Jones and at least 23 other of his fellow owners are trying to do by opting out of the labor contract early, solving the big problems. Under its terms, the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement is supposed to expire after the 2012 season. But either the owners or the union can opt out of the final two years by giving notice by November 8th of this year. If that occurs, 2010 becomes the final year of the contract and it would be sans a salary cap.

But lest anyone think that this tactic has anything to do with eradicating the sport of a salary cap, think again. Though the owners once fought the concept, the presence of a salary cap does, from their perspective, achieve the desired result by acting as a sort of lifeline or net to those among them who would otherwise try to scale a mountain they have no business climbing in the first place.

What Jones and his brethren really want is a re-working of the cap. It’s no secret that the owners feel that the current collective bargaining agreement, which was actually an extension of the previous contract, was rammed down their throats by then commissioner Paul Tagliabue after several months of hard bargaining with the union. In fact, it’s not a coincidence that Tagliabue’s retirement announcement came just days after the contract was signed. He knew he had lost the support of many of the owners.

It’s not hard to see why. Putting aside the contract’s complexity just know that in 2010, assuming the contract were to stay in place, the players share of projected total revenues (itself an incredibly complex calculation) rises to 58%. That’s a pretty long arm into the owners’ rather deep pockets. Keep in mind, too, that the definition of total revenues was further expanded so that virtually any income that the owners generate gets included in the calculation.

Ever since Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, he’s been trying to find ways to increase his own bottom line. When he tried striking his own marketing deals built off the Cowboys brand, he got cut off at the pass. Since then he’s been working from inside with an ever-changing fraternity that used to see him as a no-nothing maverick. Now he has the ears of a majority of owners who see the players getting an ever bigger piece of what they consider to be their pie. And the bigger the piece that goes to the players, the less that goes to the owners, many of whom are juggling huge debt.

None of this makes Jones or any of the other owners bad guys, but it does set football up for the kind of labor disharmony that is at the root of some of baseball’s biggest problems, including the lack of a legitimate, wide-ranging drug testing program. Upshaw has vowed that if the cap comes off, it will never return, a big promise that he probably can’t keep. Football owners aren’t quite the patsies that permeate baseball’s ownership ranks.

Whether Zell ultimately sells the naming rights to Wrigley Field and whether there is a period of labor unrest in football ultimately are just the visible and transient outcomes of a larger unspoken issue. But all you need to remember when trying to connect the seemingly unrelated dots in such matters is what the “Deep Throat” character kept telling Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward character in All the President’s Men: follow the money.