The Things We Know--Week 13

There is any number of ways to approach the Cleveland Browns’ 3-game win streak, but familiarity isn’t one of them.  The Browns haven’t seen a winning streak since former head coach Eric Mangini made his mad-dash sprint at the end of his first season.  Even then, there’s wasn’t a whole lot to enjoy about it.  Mangini was hanging by a thread for a number of reasons, including the recent hiring of Mike Holmgren, and the Browns were so far from relevant that all a 4-game win streak then was to give them 5 wins overall.  And it wasn’t as if anything carried over from that streak into the following season.  The Browns started out 0-3 on their way to another 5-win season.

So excuse fans and players alike if they don’t know how to act in the face of a late season, but not season-ending, win streak.  The competition within that streak may not have been stout, but all a team can do is play the teams on its schedule.  The NFL is and shall remain a no-excuse league and besides there’s no way anyway on or associated with the Browns should ever be looking down their noses at any other team.  Remember, they’re still 5-8 and once again out of any real hope for even undertaking a perfunctory playoff loss.

The overarching story from the Browns’ easier-then-it’s-been-in-years 30-7 rout of the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday is that after giving up a freakin’ 80-yard touchdown run on the game’s very first play from scrimmage, a play that happened so quickly that it actually put the Browns defense on pace to give up 350 points Sunday, the Browns’ defense then pitched a shutout.  That allowed the offense, ably assisted on special teams by Travis Benjamin’s team-record 93-yard punt return at the end of the first half, to modestly do its job by outscoring what is the league’s worst team not named “Arizona Cardinals.”  The accomplished that modest goal by the end of the first half.

But if head coach Pat Shurmur is going to last beyond his second season in Cleveland and/or begin building a legitimate career as a legitimate NFL head coach, he’ll look back on Sunday’s win as the real turning point.  It wasn’t the fact that the team put together a mini-streak against teams in turmoil.  It wasn’t the ostensible opening up of the usually turgid and staid offense.  It was the classy move Shurmur made post game to correct a mistake that needed correcting and that, in the process, kept him in the good graces of a team that just wants to win.

Shurmur knew he blew it when he yanked Montario Hardesty for what turned out to be the final play of a drive that Hardesty almost single-handedly had conceived and led because Hardesty fumbled and then recovered that fumble at the Chiefs’ 1-yard line.  Shurmur, with the knee-jerk reaction of a coach who is both embattled and too by-the-book for his own good, sent Hardesty to the sidelines and inserted Trent Richardson to finish the drive and what little spirit remained of the Chiefs.

“Hmm.  Oh here it is, NFL coach manual, page 8.  When your running back fumbles, remove him immediately and then put your arm around him on the sideline and tell him you still have confidence in him as he stands safely on the sidelines.”  (I note that the high school and college coach manual differs on this point.  They suggest putting the running back right back in to restore his confidence.  In the NFL if you need your confidence restored, see a therapist.  There’s too much money at stake to take chances on guys that fumble.)

Football, indeed professional sports, is a cold-blooded bottom line endeavor and it can’t, it won’t, tolerate second string running backs that fumble, particularly second-string running backs that fumble at the goal line.  Couple that with Shurmur’s usual risk aversion to anything that could create a turnover in the red zone, and Hardesty never stood a chance.  But in what could become Shurmur’s biggest growth moment as a head coach, he self-corrected, apologized publicly to Hardesty for the apparent loss of faith, and then did so again privately.  It was noticed.

When you think about it, though, Sunday’s victory was all about correcting perceived wrongs.  Hardesty’s was just the most noticeable.  Shurmur also threw Josh Cribbs, the team’s most passive-aggressive squeaky wheel, a couple of bones by running a play out of the wildcat offense and then giving the green light to a weird looking and weirdly affective punt formation trick that in large measure sprung Benjamin’s punt return.  Well, Benjamin’s burner speed helped too but stay with the narrative, will ya?

Shurmur used Sunday and the breathing space accorded by playing an emotionally spent Chiefs team populated with guys that previously weren’t good enough for one of the league’s formally worst teams (I’m talking the Browns here, folks), to repay some debts of his own creation.  But it’s that willingness to repay those debts that will endear Shurmur to the team and, in turn, will give Shurmur the best chance to retain his job.

There’s two lessons here.  First, as much as we like to harshly judge others mistakes (while completely and totally rationalizing our own), what tends to infuriate is not the mistake but generally the poor efforts made to correct them.  Second, nobody keeps a head coach who’s lost the ear of the players.  That doesn’t mean players should decide who coaches them, which works out about as well as Eric Mangini getting to hire his own boss, but think Norv Turner.  Turner will be fired by the San Diego Chargers because the players stopped listening to him about two seasons ago.  It finally took a loss to the Browns several weeks ago for their ownership and management to finally notice.

The other lesson from Sunday’s win is that trying something a little different on offense isn’t always a bad thing.  The pitch to Greg Little, which he ran effectively until he somehow got stopped at the 1-yard line, was the kind of non-controversial wrinkle that fans have been waiting to see for two seasons.  Couple that with the wildcat and pistol formations that were run with less success and at least you have the makings of more diversity than the delegate section of a typical Republican National Convention.

Shurmur so often comes across as an automaton as a play caller that you wonder whether there’s anything else in the play book besides the following plays: off tackle left, off tackle right, fade left, fade right, look long for a moment and then dump off to outlet.  It could be that this developed because since Shurmur got to Cleveland he hasn’t had the full opportunity to install his offense.  In his first season, the players were locked out and the first glimpse he really got of his players was about two weeks before the season started.  This year, with the decision to go with Brandon Weeden as quarterback and mostly a new receiving corps and new running backs, all of whom are essentially rookies, it wouldn’t have been easy to install Army’s offense, let alone the complicated version of the West Coast that Shurmur favors.

Offense in the NFL is like pitching in baseball.  It’s most effective when the defense (or the batter) is off balance.  If Sunday was the day that Shurmur decided that the Browns’ skill players are actually starting to grasp the higher level math required by his offense, Shurmur can better keep opposing defenses guessing.  Now it’s true that having the Chiefs’ ragged defense doing the guessing is going to have about as much success rate as Kim Kardashian guessing her way through the MCATs or the New York Times’ Sunday crosswords, but as I’ve said before, no win in the NFL should be diminished.

If there was any area of concern with Sunday’s win it’s that Trent Richardson’s effectiveness continues to drop precipitously.  He had 18 carries for 42 yards, which is barely over 2 yards per carry.  Even Jerome Harrison is scratching his head at that.  Richardson is obviously still hurting and also appears to have hit the rookie wall.  The NFL season is longer and more arduous than a college season so it’s not unusual for rookies to hit the wall.  Maybe that’s what was really behind Shurmur’s mea culpa to Hardesty.  He knows he’ll need him to spell Richardson even more during the season’s last 3 games.

Back to the theme, though.  There simply isn’t a playbook for how Browns’ fans are supposed to feel in the midst of a legitimate win streak.  The win over the Steelers seemed more like the product of Charlie Batch effect and 8 Steelers turnovers that produced only 20 points.  The win against Oakland was a win against, basically, another version of the Chiefs.  Sunday’s win could likewise be attributed to a number of unique factors, from the Chiefs’ very weird roster to a team emotionally depleted by the tragic events of a week before that have now caught up to them.  That the Browns should have won all three still doesn’t diminish from the weight of actually having won all three.  If it shows them nothing else, the Browns team finally believes that they no longer are the worst team in the league.  From all outward appearances, particularly in a season where there seem to be an overabundance of really bad teams, their belief doesn’t appear to be misplaced.

**

Every win streak is a product of a number of factors, including luck and the Browns demonstrated that yesterday.  I’m not sure that anything could have helped the Chiefs on Sunday, but an improbable punt return for a touchdown, two dropped interceptions deep in Cleveland territory by Chiefs defenders and Hardesty getting his own fumble at the 1-yard line are the kinds of things that could have turned the game much differently.

Weeden was particularly lucky that Eric Berry had a cast on one hand.  It gave Ben Watson a chance to knock a sure interception out and kept a Browns’ drive alive that in fact produced a touchdown by Richardson 4 plays later.  The Hardesty fumble was a little different and arguably a close call.  On a day when the Browns had trouble in the first half scoring touchdowns (two in the same drive were nullified because of penalties) while settling for field goals, the Chiefs had a chance to make more of a game out of it.  That they didn't is the story of exactly why Scott Pioli is in deep doo-doo in Kansas City.

**

As important as all of those plays were to the outcome of the game, perhaps the luckiest break, the one that more than anything changed the rhythm of the game came on the Chiefs’ second drive of the game.  After holding the Browns to what essentially was 3-and-out (the Browns got a first down on first down and then went backward from there), the Chiefs took over from their 21-yard line.  Brady Quinn completed a short pass to Dwayne Bowe that turned into 23 yards and then completed a 47-yarder to Bowe in front of Joe Haden that put the Chiefs at the Cleveland 4-yard line.

Quinn then tried to complete two passes over the middle that were both well defended and poorly thrown.  The Chiefs were forced to try a 28-yard field goal which promptly dinked off the upright and fell to the ground.  That the Chiefs didn’t score any points in that drive was lucky.  That they couldn’t score a touchdown was the sum total of the Chiefs’ season and Quinn’s career.

When Quinn was in Cleveland, it seemed like he was never given a real opportunity to be the starter.  Some of that was his fault (the idiotic contract hold out), some of it was circumstance (Derek Anderson’s career year) and some of it was injuries.  But ultimately when he left Cleveland it felt like it was more related to cleansing the facility of anything Phil Savage related then it did an indictment on Quinn’s abilities.

Watching Quinn on Sunday, though, you get the sense that he’s just not a legitimate NFL starter.  There are starts of greatness and fits of frustration.  There isn’t anything he does that is particularly bad.  But there’s nothing he does that is particularly good, either.  Modest is the best description of the skills he brings to the table.  When the season ends, Quinn will still find work in the NFL, but he’ll be a back up.  I expect that the Browns will run into him again, perhaps playing for the Steelers next season wearing the jersey that Charlie Batch was forced to turn in at this season’s end.

**
And finally, in what is turning into a late season bout with good fate and clean living, the Browns are both injury free and running into a team with an injured quarterback.  From the looks of things, when the Washington Redskins come to Cleveland next Sunday, Robert Griffin III, the player that should be starting for the Browns but for the poor poker playing by Holmgren and Tom Heckert, was set to start.  He's the league's highest rated passer.  But an injury in the form of a sprained knee is likely to keep Griffin out and Kirk Cousins in. That means that the Browns have an honest to goodness chance of making it 4 in a row.  All I know is that these kinds of things never happened under Randy Lerner's ownership.  Just sayin'.

Same Old Same Old

Leave it to the Cleveland Browns to pose the musical question, can a center really lose a football game? If you answered yes, then you're in the camp that blames Alex Mack's ridiculous roughing penalty late in the first half of Sunday's Browns' 16-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs as the reason Phil Dawson was unable to convert a field goal that would otherwise have been the difference in the game. If you answered no, then you're in the camp that blames a stagnant and undisciplined offense that once again failed to score in the game's second half.

Mack's penalty, coming as it did off two plays after Ahtyba Rubin's interception of a tipped Matt Cassel pass, cost the Browns 15 critical yards relatively deep in Kansas City territory. But on the other hand, Dawson is usually reliable even from 42 yards (he's 46-68 lifetime on field goals between 40-49 yards) so it's not as if that particular penalty really cost the Browns the victory.

Besides, a case could be made that Seneca Wallace's ill-advised pass to Chansi Stuckey earlier in that quarter that was picked off and returned 33-yards for a touchdown by Brandon Flowers was far more costly.

But really, none of that matters because the bigger picture is that once again the Browns were simply not good enough in any phase of the game as they handed the sell out crowd the usual dose of home opener blues, this time made a little more bitter coming on Ring of Honor day.

If the Browns ever run out of players to honor, and considering the last 10 years it is a distinct possibility, and start honoring individuals games instead no one will have to root through the archives for a tape of this disaster, assuming they can get their hands on last week's tape from the Tampa Bay loss. The two games were remarkably similar.

Both games featured critical interceptions in the second quarter. Both featured an offense that either made no adjustments at the half or could not counter the adjustments made by the opponent at the half, take your pick. And both featured enough other mistakes and penalties to make one wonder exactly what are the Browns working on during the week.

Seneca Wallace, subbing for an injured Jake Delhomme, became the 15th different starting quarterback of the “new” Browns. He wasn't awful but there was nothing about the performance that gave him a leg up on any of the other 14 either.

Like Delhomme last week, Wallace was able to complete a long pass for a touchdown. Delhomme's was to Mohammed Massaquoi. Wallace's was to his offensive kindred spirit, Josh Cribbs. It came just a few plays after the Flowers return for a touchdown and came, coincidentally enough, when Cribbs got behind Flowers in the secondary.

But from that point forward the Browns offensive fell asleep. They finished the half with two straight punts and the Dawson missed field goal. In the second half, every Browns drive ended in a Reggie Hodges punt and only four plays, including a Hodges punt, took place on the Kansas City side of the field.

In all, the Browns had a dismal 55 yards in the second half, 39 of which came through the air. And yet, despite all that, the Browns had the opportunity for one last gasp had the defense, which otherwise played well once again, been able to stop the Chiefs from gaining a critical half-yard late in the fourth quarter.

With 2:41 remaining in the game, the Chiefs took over at the Browns 45 yard line as the result of a Hodges 37-yard punt from deep in Cleveland's own end zone. With only two time outs remaining, the Browns were forced to use them as the Chiefs kept the ball on the ground in order to keep the clock moving.

After Thomas Jones was held for a 2-yard gain on 3rd and 3, the Chiefs faced a critical 4th and 1 from the Cleveland 36-yard line with two minutes remaining.

Knowing that the Browns only needed a field goal to win the game, Chiefs head coach Todd Haley eschewed a pooch punt and instead decided to try and win the game right there. Cassel handed the ball to Jones and he dove far enough on top of the pile that formed at the line of scrimmage to get the few feet he needed. A review was no help and with the first down, the Chiefs were able to run out the clock to secure the victory.

That's not to suggest that the Browns would have been able to move into field goal position anyway. Indeed, it's fair to suggest that it really wasn't much of a gamble for Haley. Still it served as a gutsy call at that moment, one that gave the Chiefs an unexpected 2-0 start and one that could buoy his team for the rest of the season.

Meanwhile, there was no need for gutsy calls on the Browns' side of the ball. The offense never really gave the coaches that chance. While offensive coordinator Brian Daboll ran a very balanced attached, it's fair to ask what happened to the Browns' running game that literally shredded the Chiefs last season. With Jerome Harrison getting the bulk of the carries, it was mostly non-existent. Harrison carried 16 times for a total of 33 yards. Peyton Hillis had 35 yards in just 8 carries.

In his post game comments head coach Eric Mangini credited a major overhaul in personnel in Kansas City's front seven for the stunning turnaround from last season. Maybe. Perhaps it was just the return of Romeo Crennel to the job that suits him best, defensive coordinator for the Chiefs that was the real reason that the Browns offense couldn't get out of its own way. We'll never really know because Crennel wasn't in Tampa Bay last week and the offense still couldn't perform.

As bad as the offense was again, it's not as if that was the only problem. For the game the Browns had 9 penalties for 78 yards. Mangini wouldn't say directly that a team like the Browns, suffering as it does from talent deficiencies, has to play a nearly perfect game in order to win, but had he no one would have disputed the point.

The Browns mistakes were too numerous for them but not necessarily too numerous for an otherwise decent team to overcome. So much of what happens on Sundays is about overcoming the unexpected. The Browns at this point can't even overcome the expected.

As much as the Browns' two losses seemed to be mirror images, arguably the offensive performance this week was actually worse. Last Sunday the Browns could always point to poor field position for most of the second half as an excuse for playing so conservatively. This week, with Kansas City doing its level best to keep Josh Cribbs from breaking a return gave the Browns decent field position most of the afternoon, including the second half.

But a very ineffective Harrison and a very average Wallace could not make the one or two plays needed to keep any drive going.

On the day, Wallace was 16-31 for 229 yards, the one touchdown and, of course, the one crucial interception. Cassel wasn't anything special, completing just 16 of 28 passes for 176 yards and two interceptions, one by Rubin, the other by Sheldon Brown.

The defense should be credited for handcuffing Cassel and mostly keeping a decent Chiefs running game in check. Indeed once again it played well enough and put the offense in a position to win the game and once again the offense failed to cooperate. If the defense can hang in long enough, at some point they'll be rewarded. But since this is the Browns, there is every reason to believe that if an offensive explosion ever does occur, the defense will probably fall apart in that game.

Things don't get better for the Browns next week, or for the next five weeks for that matter. The Baltimore Ravens may be having their own set of issues on offense but if the Browns can't move the ball against two of the league's more mediocre defenses, one wonders what the over and under for total offense might be against the Baltimore Ravens. One hundred yards and take the under seems a pretty good bet.

There were a lot of pundits that called this week's game a near must win for the Browns. In truth it wasn't. In fact, the Browns haven't played a must win game in years unless it's a must win for a coach to hang on to his job and don't look to play in any this year either.

All you can expect from a team this bad is progress. Unfortunately, two games into the season it is, as the kids like to say, the same old same old.

Winning Historically

With nothing to play for but their futures, both the Cleveland Browns and the Kansas City Chiefs had about equal number of reasons to both mail it in and give it their best shot. They opted for the latter and the Browns, on the back of historic performances by running back Jerome Harrison and kick returner Josh Cribbs, hung on for a 41-34 victory, giving them a modest two-game win streak.

Even with Harrison setting the Browns single game rushing record and Cribbs becoming the NFL’s all time leader in kick returns for touchdown, the Browns had to survive a late scare by the Chiefs to secure the win.

After going ahead by 7 with 44 seconds remaining after Harrison’s 3rd touchdown of the day, this one a 28-yarder, Chiefs’ quarterback Matt Cassel hit receiver Mark Bradley for 34 yards and nearly a touchdown before Bradley was tripped up. He then got the Chiefs down to the Browns’ 26-yard line but his final desperation pass in the end zone was knocked down as the game ended.

Harrison’s performance was simply brilliant. With the kind of running backs this franchise has had, it’s nothing short of amazing that the mostly forgotten 5’9” Harrison now holds the single game rushing record. On this day he ran for 286 yards on 34 carries and shattered Jim Brown’s previous record of 237 yards set in 1961.

Cribbs was nearly as brilliant, running back two kick returns for touchdowns, the first for 100 yards and the second for 103. That gives him 8 kick returns for touchdowns for his career and placing him first in that category on the NFL’s all-time list.

With Harrison quietly running for 73 yards in the first half, the game seemed to be setting up early on as a dual between Cribbs and Chiefs’ running back Jamal Charles, who ended the day with 154 rushing yards and 1 touchdown. But Harrison got hot in the second half and was the focal point for both teams. He had a 71-yard touchdown run early in the third quarter, an 8-yarder early in the fourth quarter and then the 28-yarder as the clock was ticking down in the 4th quarter, vexing fantasy league players everywhere who kept him on their bench.

Before that final Harrison touchdown it looked like the teams were heading for overtime after Kansas City tied the game at 34-34 on a Cassel-to-Bradley 12-yard touchdown pass. Cassel was able to get the Chiefs in position for the tie after the Browns’ Phil Dawson missed a 52-yard field goal that ended up giving the Chiefs the ball at their own 42-yard line and put them in position to move quickly for the score.

Even with a 41-point outburst, early on it looked like it was going to be an offensive struggle for the Browns. Despite taking an early 3-0 lead on a 47-yard field goal by Dawson, the offense couldn’t quite find its rhythm. Indeed, if not for Cribbs’ two kick off returns, the Browns might have been left wondering how they got run over by the Chiefs.

After Charles took a simple run around the left side for a 47-yard touchdown, the kind of play that’s burned the Browns’ defense all season, the Chiefs were up 17-13. The Browns then went 3-and-out on their next drive and then couldn’t execute perhaps the one play they should have had perfected by week two, the punt.

As the Browns lined up inside their own 20 yard line, long snapper Ryan Pontbriand snapped the ball before the team was set. The ball hit up back Nick Sorenson on his right leg, bounded into the end zone and was recovered by Alex Studebaker for the Kansas City touchdown and the 24-13 lead.

The Browns were clearly out of sorts, a state that ended quickly when Cribbs took the ensuing kickoff 103 yards for the score, helping bring the Browns back to within 4 at 24-20.

That provided the springboard for Harrison’s second half heroics. He opened the scoring quickly in the second half with his 71-yard run on the Browns’ first possession. From there the Chiefs defense could never seem to find the right formula for containing Harrison as he added over 140 more yards in the half and two more touchdowns.

Despite Harrison’s historic performance, the victory was anything but easy. After taking a seemingly insurmountable 10-point lead at 34-24 off of Harrison’s second touchdown, the Chiefs quickly moved down the field but couldn’t capitalize and had to settle for a 27-yard Ryan Succop field goal.

It was a drive that easily could have yielded more for the Chiefs but also could have been disastrous as Cassel threw late over the middle near the goal line. The ball landed in and then bounced out of the hands of linebacker Kaluka Maiava. With the way Harrison was running, an interception at that moment would have given the Browns the opportunity to run out the clock. As it was, even Harrison’s 3rd touchdown didn’t provide sufficient breathing room.

With the hiring of a new grand wizard of football operations lingering over this team like a stack of dirty holiday dishes from the party the night before, the last few games of the season have turned into mostly an extended interview process for just about everyone associated with the Browns except owner Randy Lerner. But no one has more at stake than head coach Eric Mangini.

The irony now is that it may be two players with their own checkered histories with Mangini that save his job. In the case of Harrison, Mangini has basically kept him mostly buried on the bench even though he’s performed every time he’s been given the ball. In the case of Cribbs, the team’s most inspirational player, Mangini has kept him dangling all season over a new contract despite his being promised one before the season started.

Though Sunday’s victory comes against a lousy Chiefs team, it was an important win nonetheless. After beating the Steelers a week ago, a step backward in Kansas City would have taken any shine off that victory and halted the incremental progress that’s been made. Instead, the Browns were able to follow it up with a solid effort and another baby step forward.

If nothing else, the Browns are establishing themselves as a running team. While Harrison was phenomenal, credit too should go not only to the offensive line, but also to fullback Lawrence Vickers for consistently do what a good lead back should and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll for sticking with the running attack. On the day, the Browns only threw 18 times while running an astounding 49 times.

Although quarterback Brady Quinn statistically was awful, 10-17 for 66 yards and 2 interceptions, he was able to maintain his poise at critical moments. For example, on the Browns’ first scoring drive, Quinn threw to Chansi Stuckey for 11 yards. Stuckey made a very questionable catch but the Chiefs never had a chance to look at it again as Quinn hurried the team to the line and snuck it forward for 2-yards.

Then, in that wild last few minutes of the game, Quinn ran for 24 yards on a bootleg on a crucial 3rd and 1 play from the Browns’ 39-yard line. If not for that run, the Harrison touchdown might not have happened and the game may have gone to overtime and all the uncertainty that entails.

The Chiefs fighting the Browns for AFC inferiority struggled much of the day with Braylon Edwards disease, a malady in which receivers can’t seem to hold onto balls that hit them in stride. Despite what seemed like a dozen dropped balls, Cassel still went 22-40 for 331 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Cassel’s first touchdown pass came after the Browns took a 13-3 lead on a 30-yard field goal by Dawson. Charles’ ability to grind out tough yards set up the pass perfectly as Cassel, utilizing the no huddle offense twice found receiver Chris Chambers, the first for a 39-yard gain over Eric Wright and then for a 9-yard lob pass for the touchdown that helped pull the Chiefs to within 3 at 13-10.

Cassel’s second touchdown came after the Dawson missed the 52-yard field goal attempt with just over 4 minutes remaining and the Chiefs trailing by 7. After the Browns had forced the Chiefs into a 4th and 6 from the Cleveland 12-yard line, Cassel, out of the shotgun, was able to step up into the pocket and avoid the rush long enough to find wide receiver Mike Bradley coming open in the end zone. The Succop extra point tied the game at 24.

The Brown, 3-11 on the season, now have a chance to make it three straight victories with the Oakland Raiders coming in and sporting a whole host of quarterback problems. But before that takes place, it looks to be an interesting week in Berea.

Mike Holmgren appears to be on the precipice of getting the keys to the Browns’ football operations, a dubious Christmas present if ever there was one. With all the questions that raises for the future of this franchise, the best way Mangini and his staff can answer most of them is by putting together two more similar performances. And as Browns fans saw on this day in Kansas City, even when things are working nothing comes easy.