The Human Stain

Whenever a societal hot button issue such as racism, sexism, gay rights, pick a similar topic, arises in the world of professional sports, confusion reigns.  Empty grandiose words flow easily from mouths and keyboards for a few days and then the conversation shifts once again.  Meaningful change isn’t discussed much mainly because most of the participants, from the players to the folks who cover them and the fans that watch them can’t reconcile the depth of the issue in the context of the frivolity of sports.

It’s why, really, when the Jonathan Martin story broke that so many knuckleheaded opinions got bandied about.  The incongruity of a physically big Martin playing in the most brutal of sports becoming overwhelmed by verbal taunting was hard to process for many.

Martin, a second year tackle for the Miami Dolphins, walked away from the team and potentially a lucrative career.  That he was willing to do so spoke volumes about the seriousness of the situation and yet many still tended to trivialize the conduct or Martin or Richie Incognito or, worse, compartmentalize the story in the safe, weird corner that is sports as if it had no larger implications.

NFL Commission Roger Goodell hired lawyer Ted Wells and his law firm to conduct an independent investigation and report the results publicly.  Goodell understood at least at a basic level the implications of the situation and its impact on the brand he was hired to protect.  Hiring Wells and commissioning him to publish a public report on his findings turned out to be a brilliant stroke, irrespective of Goodell’s motives. 

Wells’ report came out last week and as I picked through the ugliness of all the investigation revealed, I wondered first about the comments of some of Martin’s teammates like Brian Hartline, the Dolphins’ receiver, who came down hard and against Martin in the immediate aftermath of Martin’s departure.  He was hardly alone. 

I also wondered about the legislators at the local, state and national levels that have repeatedly opposed laws against discrimination as some sort of unnecessary burden on job creators.  And then I wondered about the job creators themselves, the ones who don’t want the administrative burdens of eradicating discrimination in their work place because they don’t see any relationship between human interaction and productivity and thus are all too willing to support politicians who will keep the political correctness police at bay.

The Wells report is much more than a simple report about an unfortunate situation taking place on one NFL team.  It’s a cultural touchstone, a reminder that there are real world consequences to the rhetoric that too many still accept as mainstream, both within and outside the workplace.

For me, I can’t help but see the Wells report and the conduct he uncovered as informed in part by the harsh words from those Republicans who strenuously and vocally oppose immigration reform that’s based on a principle that accepts the basic human dignity of those who entered this country illegally and are just looking for a path forward to rectify that wrong.  I also can’t help but see the Wells report and the conduct uncovered as informed by the ugly words of homophobics who use ginned up religious justifications for denying basic human rights to gays.  And I can’t help but see the Wells report and the conduct uncovered in the context of those who would claim they aren’t racist but are more than willing to have a laugh and pass along emails on a daily basis that make fun of the President of our country because of the color of his skin.

This country has a shameful and embarrassing history of discrimination that still courses through the veins of the mainstream.  Just last week, the legislature in Tennessee undertook consideration of a bill that would allow public servants (including police and fire) to refuse providing service to someone who offends their religious sensibilities.  That means, for example, that if you’re gay and getting beat up on the streets of Knoxville, a police officer can refuse to protect you because he, too, is offended by your gayness.  It won’t likely become law but the fact that it was introduced speaks volumes.

The state of Georgia recently and once again approved the issuance of specialty license plates that feature the Confederate flag, justifying it as a tribute to their southern heritage without even acknowledging the racially-charged and offensive aspects of that southern heritage.

The U.S. Senate, with bi-partisan support, passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would make workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity illegal but the Republican controlled House of Representatives won’t even bring it up for a vote.  They have their reasons but all roads go back to the same place—they value the interests of shop owners over the seemingly trivial concerns of a wide swath of the people these shop owners need to get the work done.

University of Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam declared his sexuality openly in hopes of eliminating the whisper campaign that undoubtedly would have devalued his draft status.  And of course the minute he did there were NFL officials who privately surmised that indeed his draft status would be impacted not because his skills suddenly lessened but because someone providing “those kind” of locker room distractions apparently deserved to be paid less.

I don’t need to get into all the miscreants who play professional sports, from the drug addled to the wife beaters, which are welcomed back into the fold to make my point.  The fact that even one NFL executive would privately assume that a gay athlete would be a distraction explains exactly how the Dolphins’ situation could deteriorate to the point that it did.

The essence of prejudice is misguided assumptions and as a society we allow those assumptions to repeatedly guide us down the wrong historical paths.  This is a country after all that fought a war over the existence of slavery.  This is a country that denied blacks and women the right to vote.  This is a country that prohibited interracial marriage.  This is a country that still won’t recognize the workplace rights of gays and transgenders, let alone their familial rights.

The prejudices in this country, whether or not openly and unabashedly practiced, are insidious.  It’s a narrow-mindedness, sure, but it’s not isolated.  It’s open, it’s common and too often it’s accepted.  We should literally be screaming from the mountains at all the Bible thumpers who oppose gay rights but we don’t because we’re either just secretly like them or don’t want to defend those rights for fear we’ll be ostracized as well.  God forbid.

I see Hartline and the other Dolphins who defended Incognito at the outset (and now suddenly silent) as a marker for what ails this country most.  They’d be the first to claim that they don’t condone racism, just ask them.  But they were completely blind to the simple fact that words matter and actions matter even more.  Consumed by their own worlds, they lacked the empathy necessary to understand the private torment of their own teammate.  They heard the language in the locker room, they may have even repeated it.  They just didn’t think anything of it and they certainly never bothered to look below the surface because it never occurred to them that there was anything below the surface to see.

Eradication of racism, sexism, prejudice requires much more than a drive-by interest.  You can’t declare that you have gay friends as proof that you aren’t homophobic.  There has to be more.  For the Hartlines of the world to become not just team leaders but fully realized members of the larger society they’ll have to stick their necks out once in a while.  You can’t criticize Martin for not standing up to an insecure bully like Incognitio when you weren’t willing to do that either.

It is important to be completely invested in the experiences of others.  This isn’t about lopping guilt on the white bread existence of people like Hartline.  Instead it’s about getting them to recognize that the world of others is often much different

What the Wells report underscores more than anything else is the complexity of these kinds of situations and the extreme difficulties inherent in eliminating them.  The Dolphins fired two assistants and a bunch of players will undergo sensitivity and diversity training.  It won’t be enough.

Martin was tormented by his teammates and no one bothered to rally to him.  It wasn’t just the racist language, although that was part of it.  It was the constant and graphic sexual taunts about Martin’s sister and mother that ate at Martin.  The words were tough enough.  But they also fed into a deteriorating self image that Martin had of himself, an image of someone not strong enough to defend the honor of the two most important women in his life.

Martin’s upbringing, he theorized in particularly heartbreaking texts to his mother, left him soft when it came to street smarts.  In high school he felt bullied despite his size and it never got better for him.   That should sound familiar because it’s literally happening this moment still in every high school in this country.  There’s a black, a gay, a lesbian, a transgender, a nerd, a geek, a kid who’s too short, too tall, a girl who’s not pretty, someone who’s overweight, being picked on for being different and while we profess a willingness to stop it, while we pass anti bullying statutes and write rules, the truth is that we don’t stop it because we don’t really see it as the problem for what it is, a human stain on a society that isn’t so great. 

Heck, the Dolphins had well written anti-discrimination policies that Incognito and the rest of the players signed.  You can surmise that they didn’t take them seriously.  What’s more horrific to contemplate is that it never really occurred to them, to Hartline, to quarterback Ryan Tannehill, to head coach Joe Philbin, to the rest of the coaching staff, to most of the rest of the league and the people that cover it, that Incognito’s behavior on a daily basis for two seasons (and likely far longer) was violating every last principle behind those rules.

Some can handle taunts that way, others can’t.  But to celebrate those who can implies that the weaker among us deserve what they get.  Those who advocated, and there were plenty of them in the media and among current and former players, that Martin should have just punched Incognito in order to end the abuse see naked power as the answer.  It doesn’t occur to them that by standing by silently, they made Incognito who he was in the first place.  And if it occurred to them, then they just didn’t care enough to put an end to it for fear of upsetting some other delicate balance of a mediocre team.

Discrimination isn’t an individual problem.  It’s a shared problem over which all of us bear responsibility.

You can trivialize the Wells report or confine it to the context of professional sports, but that would be a mistake.  Human dignity is at the core of our principles as Americans and to suggest that the loss of it is more or less acceptable in some situations, because for example the participants make a lot of money or are bigger than others or don’t share what others consider to be mainstream beliefs, demeans us all.

Martin is today’s victim.  Tomorrow’s victim might be your brother, your sister, your nephew.  Maybe the best way to make sense of the Wells report is to remember the words of the poem by German pastor Martin Niemoller who was critical of the German intellectuals that didn’t rise up against Hitler.  They’re just as valid today:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me

 

 

 

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Intolerance Edition

When now former NBA player Jason Collins revealed that he was a gay athlete last year, it was hard, actually, to appreciate the courage it took.  To understand it, no better context exists than the circus that is the Miami Dolphins at the moment.

Richie Incognito, the hulking lineman who seems hell bent on trying to outlive the suggestion his last name would seem to mandate, is a crude, boorish, possible racist with deeply rooted insecurities.  He’s bullied his way through the NFL at various stops and while his behavior at times has caused a few teammates to just shake their heads, it’s always been in the “that’s Richie just being Richie” sort of way.  His past has been his prologue with no seemingly ill effects.

Jonathan Martin is a Stanford-educated second year lineman of some talent who put up with an unceasing amount of verbal crap from Incognito and other “teammates” until he could take it no more.  It seemed mostly related to his status as first a rookie and now a second year player.  He left the team last week and on the way out the door after an unspecified run-in during a team lunch he decided not to go quietly.

The stress of the abuse seemed to overwhelm Martin and by all accounts he has nothing particular in his background that elicited the attacks.  But could you imagine if he did?  Could you imagine if he had been Jason Collins?  Every person has a breaking point.  Yet, since then little sympathy has been generated his way, in particular little sympathy from “teammates” and others ensconced in and vested with the perpetuation of the unique culture of a professional sports locker room and its status as the last bastion of the all boys club.

There’s enough disappointment around about those who have stood silent or defended Incognito at the expense of Martin to fill up a book the size of a typical Stephen King novel.  Others better suited to that exposing that sort of outrage have weighed in.  Personally, though, I was disappointed in Brian Hartline’s reaction.  Rather than come to Martin’s defense or at least add a balanced perspective, Hartline evaluated the politics of the situation and his place in the locker room and came out squarely against Martin.  I would like to think an Ohio State athlete schooled under Jim Tressel would have reacted better than that.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming amount of analysis about this situation inevitably lands at the intersection of jock behavior and NFL culture.  But it’s not just NFL culture for the same kind of abuse takes place not just in NFL locker rooms but in the locker rooms housing male athletes in virtually every athletic pursuit from middle school to professionals all across the country if not the world.  The typical male athlete is infused with arrested development anyway so it shouldn’t surprise that the behavior that starts young carries over to well beyond the point it ceases to make any sense whatsoever.

Most “locker room behavior” isn’t clever.  It’s the same sort of derogatory abuse that picks first at the scabs of the most vulnerable.  Nothing Incognito said or did to Martin, for example, is any cleverer than the towel-snapping and wedgie escapes of high schoolers.  The only thing that’s changed really is the economic status and the physical size of the participants.

Until you can stop and consider this culture for a moment you can’t begin to fathom how difficult it would have been for Collins to be an openly gay athlete during the prime of his career.  Collins may have been wrestling with his own sexuality for years, conflicted by it, tortured by it, but all the while the overhang to the self-analysis was the unforgiving, uncompromising attitudes of his “teammates.”  The chances of acceptance were always slim and that is the real tragedy of the kind of culture that Incognito, Harline and all the others coming to his defense are trying to protect.  Collins, Martin and all the others deserve better.

To an extent, athletes reflect society, but only to an extent.  There is plenty of intolerance these days for anyone the least bit different.  Sarah Palin is on her latest book tour railing against religious intolerance by ginning up for profit a phony War on Christmas supposedly being waged by people who just want the same religious freedom to not have her beliefs mainstreamed on them.  Indeed we’re so accustomed to institutionalized intolerance that middle America is to willing to accept without even a sliver of the outrage we have for Incognito a Congress that wants to deliberately preserve the right of businesses to discriminate against gays and transgenders.

But yet in most workplaces where professional athletes don’t toil, the kind of behavior that Incognito attempted to justify in his shameless Fox Sports interview would never be tolerated. Most workplaces are even well ahead of Congress.  They already outlaw discrimination in any form.  If they didn’t, if they tolerated the abuse of others, productivity would fall at roughly the same rate that liability to a major dollar lawsuit would rise.

For some reason though, Incognito and all those who by word or deed support what he did to Martin are essentially trying to convince the rest of us that professional athletes (any athletes, really) should be held to a much lesser societal norm.  To that a simple question: to what end?

It’s not just the particular abhorrent words that Incognito used to refer to Martin that offend.  It’s the whole approach.  It’s the notion that a co-worker, someone supposedly working just as hard as Incognito to reach the same goal for their employer, should nonetheless be subject to unceasing abuse because of status that offends.  Incognito, quite frankly, is just too stupid to understand that concept.  Listen to his interview again and you’ll see what I mean.  I’d say his agent should be fired for green lighting the interview but an agent with integrity and a sense of decency wouldn’t be associated with Incognito in the first place.

But guys like Jason Collins understand better than anyone what a nitwit like Incognito never will.  It’s the notion that status is irrelevant.  Performance is what matters and those who are offended by status of any kind aren’t just lunkheads but cancers to the goal of the enterprise.  They can’t even see the small irony in calling themselves teammates of a player they can’t tolerate.

I’m not naïve to think that this problem is limited to the Dolphins.  I’ve covered sports and have been in plenty of locker rooms.  The fate suffered by Martin, for example, is commonplace.  Women, who make up an ever increasing segment of the working sports press, still get the occasional eye roll and sexist attitude from their subjects.  It’s improved, but it’s not been eliminated.

This is why above all else that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had no choice but to launch an investigation into the Dolphins’ farce.  It speaks to an entire multi-billion dollar enterprise and its own attitudes toward a diverse workforce.  The NFL’s bread is buttered on the backs of its multitude of corporate sponsors, none of which would want to be directly associated with any organization that openly tolerates the kind of conduct Martin exposed.

But Goodell has to do more than just punish the Dolphins and if past is prologue, he will.  Goodell showed an uncompromising approach to the New Orleans Saints that in large measure eliminated an analogous form of misconduct, bounty hunting of opponents, by subjecting it to significant consequence.  That, too, was a behavior initially justified by the supposedly singular nature of the NFL culture.  It was fraud as defense just as Incognito’s explanations are now.  And if, in his investigation, Goodell finds that Dolphins officials and/or coaches helped facilitate Incognito’s behavior then they should suffer a fate similar to that of Sean Payton, the New Orleans Saints head coach.

There’s no reason, no good reason anyway, that the NFL or any professional sports team should tolerate an atmosphere where racial slurs, derogatory comments about sexuality or family or friends, should be seen as just part of the bouillabaisse that makes our sports unique.  The Incognito situation can and should serve as a flashpoint for a sea change in behavior.  There are plenty of Jason Collinses in the NFL right now and even more that desire to play professional football but don’t dare dream for fear of the abuse they’d be subject to in the name of preserving an antiquated culture.

It’s time for the NFL to be a leader once again not just for itself but this time for a whole swath of our culture.

Why the Long Face?

When it comes to the Cleveland Browns of recent vintage, by which I mean at least the last 10 years, I’m used to a fair amount of debate about what they need to do in order to finally win a game. What will take some getting used to is the fair amount of debate about what they need to do to improve the quality of their wins.

Scanning the internets and listening to various talking heads around and about town, one would think that the Browns were 0-3 and headed for another season of abject futility. Ok, so the jury is still out on whether this season will end up in abject futility. But for now why the long faces?

All of this whining just proves the point that the two worse things in life are not getting what you want and getting what you want.

Fans have been pining for a team with both an identity and a chance. Both are clearly emerging and yet all many of them can think to do is curse their fate.

I understand that all the various folks covering this team have air time to fill and column inches to write. But if I see another column like Beacon Journal reporter Nate Ulrich’s weekly Browns Report Card, my head, as Rob Lowe’s character on Parks and Recreation might say, will literally explode.

This incessant need to grade things is what’s come to pass for real analysis these days, as if the subtlety and nuance of football (or any complex activity, actually) could be reduced to one or two pithy paragraphs.

What’s so funny about Ulrich’s report card (and the dozens like it) is that the Browns graded out to about a C in his book. Apparently there’s no extra credit given for winning the friggin’ game.

Maybe it’s because winning isn’t experienced much in these parts so we tend to forge that professional sports especially is a bottom line business and the fact remains that a Browns win, even if it looked like a loss, is still far better for the franchise then another Browns’ loss that looked like a win.

In this town there is no longer any upside to being a fan unless it’s always been your goal to be miserable. Maybe we come by the perpetual dark cloud hanging over us honestly, but it’s no longer sufficient to simply recall the bad ol’ days, it’s now mandatory that they inform even the smallest of points of success.

There’s no question that the Browns’ offense looked like crap on Sunday. As amateurs we’d like to believe that teams play one game a week so it’s not too much to ask for that team to play with sufficient emotion and effort. But it’s never as easy as it seems from the comfort of our comfortable chairs.

Maybe it was the absence of Peyton Hillis that knocked Colt McCoy off his moorings, but I doubt it. Lost in all of this is that McCoy was starting just his 9th pro game and just his third under this latest offensive system. For the most part, last season was a total waste of everyone’s time, including McCoy’s, and thus his progress (or lack thereof) must be judged in the context of all that’s taken place in his short career.

I’m not going to dwell on McCoy’s feeling that the Eric Mangini/Brian Daboll offensive dynamo machine treated him like a non-person. That was just Mangini’s way of letting high priced athletes understand that indeed their shit does stink. And I’m not going to dwell on how most of this is Mike Holmgren’s fault because, well, I just devoted an entire column to that very subject.

Instead I’ll just dwell on the more objective observation that neither Tom Brady nor Peyton Manning were Tom Brady or Peyton Manning after 9 starts. That’s not to compare McCoy to those two now but it is to compare McCoy to those two then because, like those two, McCoy was a pretty fair college quarterback.

So McCoy is playing unevenly in the way that newbie NFL quarterbacks tend to play. It’s one thing to know how to read a defense but reading it in the context of the NFL is far different. The players across the board are better. It’s as if the quarterback is facing a college all star team each and every week.

So it’s not a surprise that a young quarterback will have up and down weeks. There will be times when he looks great and other times when he looks like Derek Anderson and much of it has to do with the subtle changes and differences he faces by each week’s opponent.

But when it mattered most, McCoy stepped forward and led the team on a career-defining drive. McCoy was poised, found the right receivers at the right moment and made the throws he had to in order to put the team in a position to win.

Maybe it’s fair to complain about an offense playing new schemes that has been together for only 3 actual games. It’s what they get paid to do. But to micro-analyze each play while forgetting its most important function, which is to score touchdowns, is a fool’s game. You’ll never lose money taking the team that finds a way to win over the team that looks good losing.

There’s been some grumbling, too, about the defense. To me it looked like the Browns’ defensive line was getting manhandled most of the game by the Dolphins’ offensive line, but the statistics would indicate otherwise. Reggie Bush was mostly a non-factor, but Daniel Thomas did have 95 yards. Yet, quarterback Chad Henne was sacked 5 times. Yet when the Dolphins needed 1 or two yards, their offensive line gave them the push they needed, consistently and that seemed rather troubling, until it didn’t.

The fact is that no defense is going to hold any offense in the NFL to three-and-out consistently. Offenses have the benefit of knowing the play. Defenses can just guess. Things happen and teams move the ball (except those few years when the Browns would go weeks without scoring on offense).

What is far more important is how the team responds when it’s tested and on that the Browns’ defense on Sunday accorded itself well.

I’m not really referring to the lack of touchdowns by the Dolphins’ offense when it approached the red zone. It’s pretty clear after three Dolphins games that Dolphins’ offensive coordinator Brian Daboll loses his nerve when he needs it most. The Dolphins don’t score touchdowns because they don’t take chances, more concerned with preserving any scoring opportunity then they are with maximizing those opportunities.

What I am referring to is that final drive by the Dolphins. Based on the ebb and flow of the game, there was no reason to think that the Dolphins wouldn’t move the ball into reasonable field goal territory. Chad Henne had been incredibly efficient and despite the 5 sacks, which were due more to coverage than pressure, the offensive line was protecting him.

But that was precisely the point when the defensive line stepped forward and put enough pressure on Henne to force him to throw more quickly then he had been used to the entire game. Three incomplete passes and an interception later, the game was sealed and, not coincidentally, the complaining began.

There isn’t any real question that this Browns team needs to continue getting better in order to be an actual force in the NFL, but the key word in that sentence is “continue” and not “better.” It’s already a better team.

The step between better and good can be huge but that’s no reason to bemoan the process it takes to make it. There is a point at which it makes more sense to admire the forest and ignore the trees. This is one of those times.

Just In Time

The official reason the Cleveland Browns are now 2-1 instead of 1-2 is because defensive back Mike Adams intercepted a crucial 4th and 10 pass from Miami Dolphins quarterback Chad Henne with 21 seconds remaining as the Dolphins were attempting to angle their way into field goal range to kick a game winner. But the real reason the Cleveland Browns are now 2-1 instead of 1-2 is because it was the Browns quarterback, Colt McCoy, who made plays when plays had to be made, tossing a game winning 14 yard pass to an acrobatic Mohamed Massaquoi that helped push the Browns to a 17-16 victory.

It's not like any aspect of the win was easy, but let's just start where it ended. McCoy, struggling most of the day under the pressure of the Dolphins' defensive line, put together a career-defining 65-yard drive that culminated with the pass to Massaquoi. With the Browns trailing by 6 with 3:23 remaining and appearing mostly stagnant all day, McCoy pulled it all back together at just the right moment.

Starting from the team's 20-yard line after a Dan Carpenter 38-yard field goal had extended the Dolphins lead to 16-10, McCoy started first by finding Greg Little who turned what should have been short passes into longer gains to keep the team moving forward. By the time the two-minute warning was given, the Browns were on their own 46-yard line and sitting with two time outs.

Little then turned another short pass into a first down and, for good measure, stopped the clock by going out of bounds. Then came the first real gut check moment. McCoy threw incomplete to Brian Robiskie (suspend the disbelief). A pass to tight end Ben Watson yielded 6 yards but a comebacker to Watson fell incomplete. With 4th and 4 at the Dolphins' 37-yard line, McCoy found Montario Hardesty wide open in the flat and Hardesty turned it into a crucial 10-yard gain and first down.

McCoy then threw incomplete twice to tight end Alex Smith. On third down, an aging Jason Taylor tried to get a jump on Browns' left tackle Joe Thomas and went offsides. It nullified an incomplete pass to Josh Cribbs that would have been another pucker-inducing moment. McCoy used the opportunity to find tight end Evan Moore for 8 yards and another first down. Then, with 45 seconds remaining, McCoy found Massaquoi in the corner of the end zone. Massaquoi leaped and, like Cribbs on an earlier touchdown pass from McCoy, caught the ball, got two feet in and fell to the ground. Dawson added the extra point to give the Browns their margin of victory.

Here's where things got strange. As bad as the Browns' offense struggled all day, especially on offense, the officiating crew struggled more. They called personal fouls on both sides of the ball that demonstrated that they were watching the game about as closely as Don Criqui. (Let me stop progress for a moment to tell you one of the great unintended but funniest lines I've heard in awhile. Criqui referred to Dolphins' guard Robert Incognito as underrated. What else could he be with a name like that?)

But here is where the officiating crew's foibles almost cost the Browns. After Massaquoi caught the ball, he fell to the ground, by himself, exhausted but exhilarated. Watson, by himself, came over to the prone Massaquoi and congratulated him. The officials threw a flag claiming that this was essentially an impermissible group celebration. Television replays demonstrated just how poor of a call it really was.

It was a 15-yard penalty that forced Dawson to kick off from the Browns' 20-yard line, assuring the Dolphins an opportunity for a decent return. To make matters worse, Dmitri Patterson was then flagged for a horse collar tackle on the return (a questionable call as well as it appeared that Patterson had kick returner Clyde Gates by the left shoulder pad and not the back) giving the Dolphins the ball at the Cleveland 47-yard line.

But Henne, who was efficient early but not when it counted, threw incomplete three straight times and then threw it into the arms of a waiting Adams to send the Dolphins and their beleaguered head coach Tony Sparano to an 0-3 loss.

Had Henne been able to move the Dolphins into field goal position and win the game, you could almost count the seconds it would take for the league office to issue an apology to the Browns because they were victimized but such an awful call. Now it will probably be dealt with behind the scenes.

Where it all went wrong for the Dolphins is both simple and complex. The Dolphins aren't really a very good team. They have some skill players but lack the ability to put it all together in a cohesive manner. Henne runs hot and cold but even when he's hot he's just very average anyway. Brandon Marshall is a good receiver but is mentally weak and easily distracted, particularly when the ball isn't coming his way. Reggie Bush is a change of pace back masquerading as a feature back and Brian Daboll, who's charged with coordinating all this mess, is probably going to be out of work at the end of the season. He's not very good at what he does and I'm being nice here.

And yet the Dolphins for the most part controlled the game, which says something as well about the Browns. Games are supposedly won in the trenches but this one was not. The Dolphins controlled those trenches on both sides of the ball. Their offensive line mostly had its way with the Browns' defensive line despite giving up 5 sacks. Most of those were on Henne who tends to alternately hold on to the ball too long or scramble around just enough to get sacked.

Meanwhile the Dolphins' offense was dictating the pace of the game. Henne, stepping outside himself early, completed pass after pass, helped tremendously by a lack of pressure, and seemed to move the ball almost at will. Couple that with a poor tackling day by the defense generally and it's difficult to explain exactly why the Dolphins only came away with 16 points. They just did and heads will roll in Miami. Good.

It's not all that hard though to explain why the Browns only had 17 points. Perhaps they were undone just a bit from the outset by the inability of Peyton Hillis to play due to strep throat. Hardesty though showed some of the same flashes both as a runner and as a receiver. He had 14 carries for 67 yards and 3 receptions for 19 yards.

Mostly though McCoy was just off on his throws. He missed open receivers and through to the wrong sides of others. He tried repeatedly to squeeze in passes that looked ill advised. He was only 19-39 for 210 yards. As a result the West Coast offense was mostly a Dead End offense except on three drives, the most important of which was the last.

Before that, it wasn't until the Browns' fourth drive of the game that they looked like they were even all that much interested in playing the game. On that drive, McCoy hit Watson for 13 yards on a 3rd and 12 play for only the second first down of the game. Two plays later, McCoy, rolling to his right, threw the ball purposely high to the back of the end zone and in the direction of Cribbs. Either Cribbs was going to jump and get it or it would fall incomplete. Cribbs jumped and got it and the Browns pulled to a 7-7 tie. It more than made up for a bad drop Cribbs had on an earlier drive. In total it showed why Cribbs is still a work in progress as a receiver and also why patience when it comes to Cribbs is a good thing.

The Browns offense wouldn't get going again until its opening drive of the second half. Looking fresh after the 15 minutes rest, the Browns moved from their own 20 to the Dolphins' 20-yard line. But then Watson had a false start penalty, pushing the Browns into a 1st and 15. Watson got 13 of those yards back on the next play on a toss from McCoy but then a Hardesty run gained nothing and McCoy threw incomplete to Watson, setting up a 30-yard Dawson field goal that tied the game at 10-10.

From that point forward, which was, sadly, the 10:37 mark of the 3rd quarter, the Browns defense went back to sleep. Fortunately they woke up just in time, with 3:23 remaining, and it made all the difference in the game.

It's a measure of progress in some ways that fans can now complain about how a win was more difficult than it had to be. There was certainly a time (and if you have the time I'll be glad to recount it again in excruciating detail. Didn't think so.) when any Browns win was a reason to overturn cars and set couches on fire. Now we're being just a tad picky, which is definitely a more fun place to be.

Though this wasn't a beauty, it was certainly all right. Besides, it's not like there wasn't something substantial accomplished. For all the missteps in the game, McCoy demonstrated what comes of hard work and study. When the Browns and head coach Pat Shurmur needed McCoy most, the product of that hard work and study was at hand.

McCoy wasn't improvising at the end so much as he was running an accelerated version of what he well understood the offense to be. There wasn't panic and there wasn't confusion. It was mostly methodical, which is what these things are supposed to be.

It may be awhile before the value of McCoy's clutch performance will be properly appreciated, but rest assured that time will come. The next time the Browns and McCoy face a similar situation, and in the NFL that's an almost weekly occurrence, they won't do so with their hands on their hips and a defeatist “here we go again” thought running through their heads. The Dolphins won't be able to say the same thing and that's why the Browns are now 2-1 and the Dolphins are 0-3.

A Small Bit of Redemption

The game didn't carry the same cache as the other Cleveland-Miami game that took place earlier in the week, but at least the result wasn't the same. Giving Cleveland fans a small level of redemption against all that is South Beach, the Browns beat the Miami Dolphins 13-10 in a game noted more for its tedium than its elegance.

Usually when a game features a kind of tit-for-tat where one team's scoring effort immediately is matched by the other's it can result in some pretty exciting football. This game featured plenty of tit-for-tat. What it didn't feature, though, was anything approaching exciting football. Each inept offensive series seemed to be matched in kind by the other team. The few scoring drives that there were likewise were quickly matched making one wonder why each team felt so compelled to merely mirror what its counterparts were doing.

Nonetheless, the dam had to break at some point, though most would have bet it would have been in overtime. For a second it looked like the break would be in the most predictable way possible when Browns' quarterback Jake Delhomme, under pressure with less than two minutes remaining and needing to convert on third down, gift wrapped a pick-6 pass to cornerback Roland Carroll. But Carroll apparently hadn't fully read the script and dropped the ball, forcing the Browns to punt.

After Reggie Hodge's 9th (yes, 9th) punt of the day left the Dolphins at their own 25-yard line, Henne missed on his first two passes and then put the ball in the hands of defensive back Mike Adams off of a David Bowens deflection. Adams returned it to the Dolphins' 3-yard line. It was Henne's 3rd interception of the day. With the Dolphins having only one time out remaining, the Browns positioned themselves for a game winning field goal as they wound the clock down to 4 seconds. Phil Dawson, making up for a miss earlier in the game, nailed the chip shot 23-yarder for the victory that now puts the Browns' record at 5-7 with 4 games remaining.

Until this late turn of events, the game tapes of this match up seemed destined to be sold on some late night infomercial for natural sleep aids. It was nearly as boring as a Friday afternoon lecture on microeconomics.

Indeed if you hadn't realized that both the Browns and the Dolphins actually had more or less their full complement of players, you'd swear that the NFL lockout had already taken place by the way this game was played. Depending on whether the person talking is an offensive or defensive coordinator, there was either great defense taking place on both sides or poor offense. I watched it. The offenses were a problem.

Consider, first, the Browns. With a game plan that read, “hand off right to Peyton Hillis, pitch left to Hillis, screen pass to Hillis, punt” the Browns seemed content apparently to bore the Dolphins into submission. It didn't work, which is why the Browns ended up punting 5 times in the first half and 4 more in the second..

Consider next, the Dolphins. They have two good running backs in Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams and seemed content to run them with reciever Brandon Marshall out. It was mildly effective. What wasn't was quarterback Henne's passes which is why Brandon Fields had 3 punts in the first half. What's misleading there is that one of Miami's drives ended in a blocked field goal attempt and two others ended abruptly with interceptions.

One particularly underthrown pass by Henne to a wide open Brian Hartline resulted in cornerback Joe Haden getting his 4th interception in the last 4 games and his 5th of the season. But the Browns, naturally, followed that up with a quick 3-and-out.

A particularly overthrown ball by Henne landed in the hands of safety Abe Elam and that led to Cleveland's first points off a Phil Dawson 31-yard field goal. The Browns' drive that ended in the field goal offered its own measure of frustration even as it gave the Browns the lead temporarily.

Either offensive coordinator Brian Daboll was skittish about giving Delhomme anything but safe passes to ponder or Delhomme was too skittish to to anything but throw underneath unless it was safe passes long that couldn't be intercepted, like the overthrown pass to Chansi Stuckey in the end zone or the underthrown sideline pass to Mohamed Massaquoi.

The Browns' lead didn't last long as the Dolphins, naturally, tied the score on their next drive, a drive that was mostly a marker for the entire first half. A few decent plays and a Matt Roth roughing penalty put the Dolphins on the Cleveland 40-yard line with 1:25 remaining. From there the Dolphins went backwards thanks to a sack by Shaun Rogers and an offensive pass interference penalty. After Henne threw short on a 3rd and 27 yard play, Carpenter came in an nailed, barely, a 60-yard field goal, a Dolphins' record, to tie the game with just a few seconds remaining in the half.

It was only fitting that a game this tedious should remain as tied as it was when it started.

If you were looking for adjustments at the half, at least by the Browns, your time would have been better spent looking for the ghost of St. Nicholas. The Browns took the opening kick of the second half and proceeded to run exactly the same things with exactly the same way results, including another Hodges punt.

The Dolphins likewise didn't go in much for the adjustment thing either and matched the Browns with their own ineffective drive to start the second half.

On their next possession the Browns did seem to be putting together a decent drive when Delhomme thanks to a down field pass to Watson that went for 22 yards that got the ball to the Miami 26-yard line. But a short pass, a run that went for no yards and a sack forced the Browns to attempt a 47-yard field goal. Dawson's kick hit the left upright squarely and bounced away benignly, leaving the score tied. Meanwhile the Dolphins' thumbs kept twiddling.

The Dawson miss was actually a measure of synchronicity with Dolphins kicker Dan Carpenter whose 41-yard field goal off the Dolphins' first drive of the game was blocked by Rogers.

The Browns finally put a touchdown on the board on their next possession and it came, not surprisingly, by throwing a change up at the Dolphins in the form of some down field passes. Starting with the ball at their own 6-yard line following a Fields punt and a holding penalty on the kick, Delhomme found Massaquoi downfield for 37 yards, quickly moving the ball to their 46 yard line. Delhomme then found Watson for another 15 yards. But it was a short crossing pattern by Massaquoi where the Dolphins' defender fell down that took the ball to the Miami 3 -yard line. Then Delhomme found Watson at the goal line for the touchdown that helped push the lead to 10-3 with just over a minute remaining in the third quarter.

The Dolphins tied the game on their next possession, naturally, by putting together their only effective drive of the day as well. It covered 80 yards in 11 plays and marked the first time the Dolphins had been in the red zone all day. It culminated with a Henne pass to tight end Anthony Fassano for 11 yards that helped tie the score 10-10. They didn't get in the red zone again.

That touchdown occurred with over 10 minutes remaining and from there it was a race to see when this thing might end because how was more or less predicted.

It's probably a measure of the fading confidence that Daboll and head coach Eric Mangini have in Delhomme that they kept him in check most of the day. It's probably also a measure of Delhomme's own fading confidence that he abided dutifully. It was only when he was forced into relying on his own instincts near the end of the game that the real Delhomme returned and it was almost a disaster.

Still Delhomme didn't turn over the ball and was 24-34 for 217 yards and one touchdown. Hillis, bottled up all day by a Dolphins defense that had little to do other than key on him, had only 57 yards on 18 carries. He did have 7 more receptions though but for only 22 yards. If there was a star on offense it was Watson who had 10 catches for 100 yards and the one touchdown.

On defense, as long as Brown and Williams were kept in check, and they mostly were, the Dolphins didn't present much of a scoring threat. The defense did tackle well and cornerback Joe Haden had his best day as a pro as he pounded more nails in the coffin of former starter Eric Wright. And though Henne was only sacked once, he was harassed all day and never could find a rhythm.

Henne had a forgettable day certainly with the 3 interceptions, particularly the late one to Adams. He was only 16-32 for 174 yards. More to the point, though, Henne seems to lack the arm strength necessary to stretch a defense anyway. It certainly didn't help that Marshall was out and Hartline missed the second half. But the other side of that is that the Browns have been playing without wide receivers all year so the sympathy for Henne is limited. Brown had 50 yards on the ground while Williams added 48.

The Browns are in spitting distance of having a winning record and travel to Buffalo next week. But if they are going to finish this season like they did last season, they will need more of a spark than Delhomme can provide. If Colt McCoy isn't ready, it may be time once again to see what Seneca Wallace has to offer because with the Browns' game plan so obvious, it's going to take something more than a steady diet of Hillis to finish this season strong.

The Safe Pick and the Right Pick

If former Michigan offensive tackle Jake Long really wants to show some gratitude for the Miami Dolphins making him the number one pick in this year’s NFL draft, he could start by sending a few hundred thousand of the 30 some million dollars he’s getting in guaranteed money to Joe Thomas of the Cleveland Browns. If Thomas hadn’t made such a lasting impact at left tackle in his rookie season, the Dolphins would still be negotiating with either Darren McFadden or Matt Ryan.

It’s likely that many will read into Dolphins general manager Bill Parcell’s decision to make Long the first pick as a way of avoiding the lengthy holdout that is common these days when skill players are selected number one. Sort of like when the Houston Texans took defensive lineman Mario Williams with the first pick over Vince Young and Reggie Bush, two far more glamorous players.

There’s probably some of that, just as there’s probably something to the notion that linemen, even those selected first, cost a little less. But the breakout season that Thomas had in Cleveland cannot be overlooked either. When Parcells looks at the roster he inherited, he sees several holes that need to get filled. He could have gone in several directions, including quarterback. Most experts believe, for example, that the upside on Boston College’s Matt Ryan far exceeds that of current Dolphins quarterback John Beck.

If that’s true, it’s true in the same way that Brady Quinn’s upside seems higher than Derek Anderson’s. But when Parcells sees how Thomas (with a huge assist from Eric Steinbach) solidified a Cleveland line that had been a joke for 10 years, he starts to realize that the presence of Long is going to make Beck look a whole lot better, too. In fact, even newly acquired Josh McCown is going to look less like the journeyman he is playing behind Long.

One of the absolute truisms of football from the day it was invented until the last day it’s ever played is that games are won at the point of attack. Control the line, you control the outcome. I’d take a team with a good offensive line and Spergon Wynn as the quarterback every time over a team with a bad offensive line and Tom Brady behind center. You can’t run if there aren’t any holes and you can’t pass with a defensive lineman tugging at your underwear every play. The offensive scheme hasn’t been invented that can overcome an incompetent set of offensive linemen.

The strange thing though is that as surely as virtually every general manager knows this, it’s just as sure that most general managers wouldn’t take an offensive lineman with one of the first 10 picks in the draft, even with a loaded gun shoved into their eye socket. The last time an offensive lineman was taken with the first pick was nearly 40 years ago, in 1970 when the St. Louis Rams took Orlando Pace. The Packers came close when they took Tony Mandarich with the second overall pick in 1989. But exam the USA Today database on players drafted since 1988 and you’ll find far more offensive linemen drafted in the middle to late rounds than in the first three rounds.

Bernie Kosar had his career cut short well before he should have in large part due to general manager Ernie Accorsi’s dogged insistence that offensive linemen are made, not drafted. In Accorsi’s world, indeed in the world in which he operated, drafting an offensive lineman before the fifth or sixth round was, if not folly, then certainly an outrageous luxury. Accorsi continued to try and build a line with late round picks and undrafted free agents because it probably worked for him once or twice. All the while, Kosar took a pounding that beat him out of three or four extra seasons.

While Parcells was probably looking at recent Browns history in deciding that Long was a far less risky pick, he could also have looked a little deeper to see how the Tim Couch pick worked out if he needed further convincing that Ryan, not Long, would actually have been the luxury pick.

Couch may not have ever become a top tier NFL quarterback under the best of conditions, but he never really had much of a chance either. By selecting Couch to play behind a line that was about as skilled as a collection of beer truck drivers pulled from the local union hiring hall, the Browns set themselves up for failure. By then ignoring the line literally until last season, the Browns continued to compound this massive mistake. (To be fair, Browns general manager Phil Savage did try to address the line before last season. The freak injury that still keeps LeCharles Bentley sidelined was a huge blow that was compounded when he then traded Jeff Faine.)

It’s hard to believe that Anderson is a Pro Bowl quarterback but the fact that he is speaks volumes about how quickly the fortunes can turn with a competent offensive line in place. If the Browns would have had any semblance of a defensive line (the other point of attack), they could have gone deep in the playoffs.

There’s a chance, of course, that Long will be much more Tony Mandarich than Joe Thomas, but that chance seems small. For one thing, this isn’t 1989. Steroids use is much easier to detect these days. Long may be viewed as the safe pick, just as Thomas was, but if he plays like Thomas, he’ll prove to be the right pick. With Long, there’s no reason to think that Beck can’t have something approaching the year like Anderson. Without Long and with Ryan instead, there’s no reason to think the Dolphins wouldn’t be back on the clock the minute the next season ends.

Fool's Gold

There’s nothing like a little success to screw things up.

The Cleveland Browns, to the surprise of everyone, find themselves sitting at 5-3 heading into their game with Pittsburgh and suddenly everyone is talking crazy. And for point of clarification, I refer not to any playoff talk. In reality, a relatively soft schedule in the second half, at least as compared to the first half of the season, make it a legitimate chance that the Browns can with nine or 10 games this season, either of which could be enough to get into the playoffs.

Instead, I refer to other crazy talk, particularly that surrounding the suddenly emerging problem of what to do with Brady Quinn. The answer of course is nothing.

On these pages here and elsewhere, the specter of having two young quarterbacks with talent is a submarine controversy that begs for resolution, if not now then soon for no better reason than the fact that some people can’t stand a little uncertainty. Admittedly, given Derek Anderson’s play during the first half of this season (emphasis on the first half), a situation is developing that is arguably similar to that which the San Diego Chargers faced a few years ago when they traded their first round pick, Eli Manning, to the New York Giants for Philip Rivers and a handful of draft choices, only to see Drew Brees emerge as a legitimate NFL starter.

There is a column this week in Pro Football Weekly by Matt Sohn suggesting that the Browns trade Quinn if not now then as soon as the season wraps, in order to recoup first-round value. According to Sohn, at that point Quinn will still have enough mystique, coupled with a year in the NFL observing from the sidelines, to make him a more attractive acquisition for a quarterback-starved team than spending a first round pick on college players like BC’s Matt Ryan, Louisville’s Brian Brohm or Kentucky’s Andre Woodson.

There is probably some logic in that, but only in the sense that Quinn was a legitimate first round pick this past season and is probably a better prospect than any of those three anyway, even if he were in the same draft class. There is probably some logic, too, in the notion that trading Quinn gives the Browns the opportunity to recoup the first round pick they spent to get him in the first place.

But either of those are only points in what is surely a healthy point/counterpoint argument. What doesn’t seem to get mentioned these days in this debate are some of the more obvious arguments against trading Quinn now or anytime soon, and by anytime I mean even going into next season.

In the first place, as well as Anderson has played, and he has played well, let’s let him get a full season under his belt. In fact, let’s let him get two full seasons under his belt before we start comparing it to the situation the Chargers faced. Instead, there are better examples anyway. I hate to bring up the specter of Scott Mitchell but do so only to damper premature enthusiasm with a solid reality check.

Mitchell, like Anderson, was big quarterback (6-6, 230 pounds) with a strong arm from a team, Utah, not necessarily noted as a pipeline of NFL talent. He was drafted in 1990 in the fourth round by Miami (Anderson was a 6^th round pick of Baltimore). After seeing limited action in his first two seasons, he played most of 13 games in 1993, his free agent year, when Dan Marino was injured. All Mitchell did was come in and light it up, completing 57% of his passes, throwing 12 touchdowns and getting intercepted eight times. Browns fans may recall Mitchell leading the Dolphins to a 24-14 victory of the Bill Belichick-coached Browns that year.

Mitchell led the Dolphins to a 9-7 record, but missed the playoffs due mostly to a late-season collapse that saw the team lose their last five games. But prior to that collapse, Mitchell was certainly the feel-good story of the league even to the point where some were speculating that perhaps the Dolphins should re-sign Mitchell and let Marino, who was already in his 11^th season, finish his career elsewhere. Again, sound familiar?

But Dolphins head coach Don Shula didn’t get to the Hall of Fame by being stupid or getting carried away by fool’s gold. He rightly surmised that Marino had some gas left in the tank. Marino returned the following season and all he did was earn another Pro Bowl berth. In fact, Marino played for another five seasons thereafter.

As for Mitchell, he did the whole star-turn thing by exploiting his free agency status in the off-season. The Detroit Lions bit and signed Mitchell. By Lions standards, it wasn’t a disastrous signing by any stretch, but Mitchell proved merely serviceable, not phenomenal. His best year was 1995 when he led the Lions to the playoffs, aided greatly by an offense that featured Barry Sanders and Herman Moore. Still, Mitchell was a big part of the story completing 59% of his passes for 4338 yards, 32 touchdowns and only 12 interceptions. It sounds like the kind of season Anderson his having for the Browns this year.

The rest of the story with Mitchell is that his career was basically average, at best. Other than the two breakout seasons, 1993 and 1995, there isn’t much to distinguish him from any other quarterback who has kicked around the league for 10 years. In fact, he really only was a starter for four seasons, one of which was due to the aforementioned Marino injury. After being replaced by Charlie Batch (another mediocre quarterback) in 1998, he spent one season in Baltimore and two in Cincinnati before retiring. By the way, he only outlasted Marino by two years and those two years was as a back-up in Cincinnati.

This isn’t to necessarily suggest that Anderson is the next Mitchell as much as it is to suggest that short-term success in the NFL doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything. Mitchell in 1993 looked to be every bit the real deal as does Anderson in 2007. Even in Detroit, Mitchell wasn’t a major disappointment for a few seasons, but neither did he ever fully deliver on the promise of his potential.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans and San Diego where the Rivers/Brees drama continues to unfold, there is still not enough evidence to suggest who got the better end of that deal. Brees played well last season, but is struggling a bit this season. The same goes for Rivers. It may be that in the end both quarterbacks end up being closer to Mitchell than Marino, meaning that the self-created controversy would have been much ado about not much at all.

All this really does is underscore that even assuming Anderson continues to play at the same high level throughout the rest of the season, it will still be too early to tell about the future. The problem, of course, is that like Mitchell in 1993, Anderson is a free agent at the end of this season, forcing the Browns to make a decision before they’d like.

Undoubtedly, GM Phil Savage probably wishes now that Anderson was signed for a few more years but that’s just not the case. And just as undoubtedly Anderson’s agent will be shopping the quarterback based on the strength of his play this year and getting more than a few teams interested, particularly the way the quarterback situation has played out in the NFL this season.

The question facing Savage is thus the same that faced by the Dolphins. When Savage drafted Quinn he did so believing that Quinn was a better long-term prospect than anyone else on the roster, and that included Anderson. Will Savage stick with that belief or become seduced by the one-year performance of Anderson? These are difficult decisions, but whichever direction he goes, Savage does so knowing that the final chapter on this story is still years away from being written.

Baby Steps

It may be that you get better by playing better teams. But if you want to know if you are better, play someone inferior. That’s exactly how it set up for the Browns on Sunday and based purely on the final score, the Browns clearly are getting better, beating as they should have a bad Miami Dolphins team, 41-31.

Showing the capacity to learn from the mistakes they made in Oakland earlier in the season, the Browns appeared prepared, if only because they didn’t take the Dolphins too lightly. Aided greatly by a Dolphins personal foul on the opening kickoff, the Browns found themselves up 7-0 five plays and 2:14 into the game following Jason Wright’s bull rush into the end zone and to the stomach of the umpire, Undray Wash. That cost Wash the rest of the game. The Dolphins weren’t so lucky.

Despite making a game of it entering the third quarter, the Dolphins demonstrated exactly why they are winless. Too many mistakes and too little talent won’t get you very far in the NFL. Just ask the Browns. Until this season it’s been their m.o.

The Browns, in winning a game it should have, kept their focus and minimized their mistakes, at least offensively, for much of the game. And as the game got close, they moved the ball and scored points at just the right moments to thwart any momentum the Dolphins were able to generate when they had the ball.

Indeed, looking back the story of this game is that the Browns do have a legitimate offense that will allow them to compete with any team in the league. The defense? A different matter altogether.

A victory over the Dolphins is never going to be nearly as satisfying as a victory over the Steelers or the Ravens. But at this point in their existence, neither the Browns nor their fans can afford to quibble.

Quarterback Derek Anderson, who has made amazing progress since nearly being cut at the end of training camp, had his best day as a professional. He was a very efficient 18-25 for 245 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed for another. As importantly, he committed no turnovers. In fact, he didn’t even come close to throwing an interception.

Receiver Braylon Edwards, who prior to this season was known more for his mouth and surly attitude then his actual performance, is making the thousands who have bought and publicly wear his jersey to the game look like geniuses. He tied the Browns franchise record for most touchdown catches in a game, three. As importantly, his presence now commands sufficient attention from the defense that the field has become much more open for players like Joe Jurevicius and Kellen Winslow II.

While the Anderson to Edwards combination has turned potent, the offense is more than a one-trick pony under coordinator Rob Chudzinski. Despite the absence of running back Jamal Lewis, Chudzinski didn’t abandon the run, relying instead on Jason Wright and the seldom used Jerome Harrison to carry the load. And the two responded, leading the Browns to 140 yards on the ground, split nearly evenly between the two.

The ability to control the ball on the ground ultimately allowed the Browns to ice the game late, even as they were otherwise making puzzling choices, like the squib/on-side kick after going up by 17 with 4:34 left in the game. It may be that the Browns were nervous about kicking again to the Dolphins’ Ted Ginn, Jr., whose run back for a touchdown at the start of the third quarter was nullified by a holding call. But given another woeful performance by the defense, taking a chance on a long run back would have been a more reasonable risk than giving the Dolphins a short field.

This Browns offense may not be the football equivalent of the Cleveland Indians in the mid ‘90s, but like those teams they have enough weapons to go toe-to-toe with the opposition and simply out slug them for a victory. It’s something, frankly, they’ll need to in order to win given the overall lack of progress by the defense.

Cleo Lemon, a fourth-year player out of Arkansas State, was making his first NFL start—ever. But apparently not much about the Browns defense rattled Lemon as he completed 24 of 43 passes for 256 yards and two touchdowns. He also ran for two more. That’s four touchdowns plus a field goal to a team averaging only 19.4 points per game.

Maybe the Browns’ defense instead was more focused on stopping running back Ronnie Brown. If so, that didn’t much work either. He went over the 100-yard mark for the fourth straight week and had nine catches for 69 yards. In fact, if not for the vastly improved offense of the Browns, coupled with a Dolphins defense that is every bit as woeful as Cleveland’s, the Browns may very have found themselves on the wrong end of this game.

But as it stands, the Browns do find themselves at 3-3. For perspective, this is the most victories the Browns have had this late in the season since 2003. Of course, that didn’t end so well for the Browns as they won only two more the rest of the way. Thus the better measure may be the 2001 season when they had their “new” Browns peak after six games, 4-2, again under Davis. That was a season where they went 7-9 and parlayed that the following season into the playoffs before imploding under the great salary cap purge that ultimately resulted in Davis’ panic attacks and the Romeo Crennel years.

The Browns’ .500 mark entering the bye week is as unanticipated as nearly anything when the 2007 schedule was announced. Running a close second is the 3-1 home record. Though not at the season’s halfway point, the remaining 10 games now provide a mixed bag of opportunities for the Browns to demonstrate that they are no longer a league doormat.

But before that happens, they simply have to find a way to improve on defense. Whether it is a rash of new players, new schemes or a combination of the two, something has to change or a team with a decent chance to finish 8-8 will end up with, at best, six wins. The difference may not seem like much but it is significant in this league. It’s the difference between ending the season with momentum for the next and ending the season knowing that a full third of the team needs an extreme makeover before the playoffs are realistic. Knowing how long it’s taken the Browns offense to look this good demonstrates that such makeovers are not a one-year task.

The other drama that’s really starting to take hold with this team is at quarterback. Given Anderson’s shaky performance during the pre-season, the Browns’ best case scenario seemed to be that Anderson would hopefully play well enough to keep quarterback-in-waiting, Brady Quinn, on the sidelines until at least the break. As it stands now, barring an injury, Quinn isn’t likely to see much action except in mop-up for the rest of the season.

Anderson’s play, even more than that of Edwards, has been the most pleasant development in this franchise in years. He has 14 touchdown passes after six games and is on pace to break Brian Sipe’s franchise mark of 30 for a season. After Sunday’s performance, his quarterback rating will put him in the top half of the entire league. More importantly, he continues to show the kind of progress that makes one wonder what this coaching staff ever saw in Charlie Frye in the first place. There is a real chance that the Browns may very well find themselves in the same position as the San Diego Chargers did a few years ago with Drew Brees and Phillip Rivers—two able quarterbacks and only one ball.

It’s a good problem to have, of course, but a problem nonetheless. Fortunately, solving it ranks low on the priority scale. On this day and at this break, this franchise should feel good about the baby steps forward it has taken, but only if, at the same time, it understands that the real key to success is not offense, it’s defense.