The Things We Know--Week 5

“It’s easy to grin, when your ship comes in and you’ve got the stock market beat;

But the man worthwhile is the man that can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat.”

Judge Smails, at the christening of the Flying Wasp.

There’s no easy grinning in Cleveland and no one’s ship is coming in. Pat Shurmur’s shorts are getting awfully tight in the seat, too, as he watches with increasing impatience as his quarterback makes stupid throws, his linebackers miss tackles, his defensive secondary leaves opposing receivers running free and the rest of his players walk around, hands on hips, wondering why they can’t be free agents at season’s end. And as Shurmur looks out over the horizon here’s what he really sees: 11 straight losses under his watch, an 0-5 mark this season, the very real possibility of this team going 0-16 and the increasingly greater chance that the first phase of his head coaching career will last as long as the second phase of Eric Managini’s head coaching career, if he’s lucky.

What we know definitively after an embarrassing loss to the New York Football Giants is that the Browns are the worst team in the NFL. We know that for simple reasons like the fact that they are the only team without a win this season. We also know it for the more complex reasons like the fact that the general manager figured it might be an interesting experiment to see how repurposing the roster to the equivalent of a minor league baseball team will work in the NFL. No credible franchise sends a team into a NFL season where most of the players have one year or less of experience. If you want to know why knowledgeable NFL types shake their heads at Cleveland, that is the reason.

I consistently hear fans who want to believe, just have to believe, that the Browns are working their way through the forest and that Heckert has put this team on the right track. But this team is demonstrably worse in so many ways than even last year’s miserable team that it’s getting harder and harder to defend Heckert.

He drafted Trent Richardson but that was because he failed to make the trade to secure Robert Griffin III, a player whose mere presence would have added legitimate hope to the team. Richardson is a nice player, makes some nice runs, but even Heckert has to have noticed that it’s far easier to get to an elite level in this league with a transformational quarterback than a big-time running back. Adrian Peterson wasn’t moving the needle that much for the Vikings, which is why they were so vested first in Brett Favre and now Christian Ponder (a younger Brandon Weeden).

I get on this rant after seeing a game like Sunday’s because as much as these losses seem to teach us the same lessons, it’s as if the Browns’ management can’t grasp the concepts.

Which is why Shurmur’s shorts are getting so tight. He knows this isn’t going well and that he and the team stand perilously close to their own fiscal cliff. A loss to the Bengals next week and it will be clear to everyone, including the new man in town, that Cleveland hasn’t seen a runaway train of this magnitude since the days of Chris Palmer.

Did you notice how Shurmur took on Weeden for that miserable game-turning interception near the end of the first half? Or maybe Shurmur was referring to Weeden’s other game-turning interception early in the fourth quarter when he said, essentially, that it’s time to stop using “Weeden is a rookie” as an excuse for not making good football decisions.

And I agree with Shurmur but then I also remember that Shurmur put Weeden in a position to fail, at least on that first interception. It was 3^rd and 1 and Richardson was running effectively enough so naturally Shurmur decided that rather than go toe-to-toe with the Giants for two downs in order to get one yard he’d have Weeden throw the ball. If Shurmur didn’t see that interception coming then he was the only one. The 14-year-old son of my girlfriend, a kid who is a Giants fan and knows nothing about the Browns, said matter of factly before the play turned into a disaster, “I can’t believe they would throw here. It will probably get intercepted.” Uh, yea.

Shurmur’s rather prickly response to being questioned about another questionable game-day call “we have to either run or throw here so we threw” or something to that effect. He didn't back off that assessment a day later. Frankly, as long as he was giving up why not just take a knee and then have Phil Dawson kick a field goal? But more to the point, why not at least look like you’re going to maybe run by keeping Richardson in the game? When Richardson trotted off the field and Chris Ogbonnoya ran on to the field, the ball already was intercepted.

In context, Weeden isn’t playing like he’s the worst quarterback or even the worst rookie quarterback in the league. The interceptions, either one of them, were killers and they both resulted because Weeden made bad plays. But the reason the Browns are so lousy in the first place is that there is virtually no support system in place. The team lacks the kind of players that can help lift others up when it gets rough.

Let’s contrast for a moment, shall we, the Browns/Giants game against a nearly identical game taking place in Indianapolis. They were almost parallel games. The Packers were the best team last season and they were taking on last year’s worst team. The Giants, the Super Bowl champs, were doing similarly, taking on the second or third worst team from last year. Both were obvious mismatches. The Browns got off to the fast start they needed, took the MetLife Stadium crowd out of the game and then folded before the two-minute warning of the first half. There was no coming back. The Packers had an 18 point lead at halftime. There was every reason for the Colts to fold. They didn’t. And then when the Packers regained the lead, 27-22, with just over 4 minutes remaining in the game, there was every reason for the Colts to fold again. They didn’t. Instead Andrew Luck, with a major assist from Reggie Wayne, played like a player with a pedigree, led his team on a clock killing drive for the touchdown they needed (and the two-point conversion) that ultimately gave them the victory.

Why can a team like the Colts, so awful a year ago, rise up when the Browns fold as if they had just been deal a 3 of spades and a 4 of diamonds in a game of 5-card stud? A big reason is that the Colts and Luck can rely on someone like Reggie Wayne while the Browns and Weeden can rely on, exactly who? Greg Little? Josh Gordon? Trent Richardson? Ben Watson?

When people talk about the Browns’ lack of depth, that’s exactly what they’re talking about. For a team to win it has to be able to go to the well for someone who has been there, won’t panic and will carry the rookies through the tough spots. But when Heckert gutted the team the way he did, he also eliminated that possibility and that, more than anything, is why the Browns lost. They also lost because they suck.

**

If Greg Little thinks this past week was an anomaly in his developing career, he ought to think again. The Browns had two receivers out and Weeden still basically refused to throw a ball to Little. His role was to act as a decoy which was about the only job he’s capable of doing at this point.

I loved Weeden’s quote when he said that Little had a great week of practice and that not throwing to him was just how it worked out. Yea, it’s exactly how it worked out. Little has proven himself to be completely unreliable as a receiver and while Weeden needs help in his decision-making and badly needs a win, he’s at least mastered that part that says “just because a guy’s out there doesn’t mean I have to throw to him.”

Indeed, the best way for Weeden to master the art of going through the progression of receiver options on every play is for Shurmur to call more plays designed specifically for Little. It looked as though Weeden consistently looked off Little in order to throw it someplace else. Maybe there is hope.

Now the ball really is in Little’s court. He’ll see far less throws and the few he does see will be flavored with far more pressure for if he drops any of those, his next step will be to hire Braylon Edwards’ agent and find another team willing to take a flyer on a receiver that can’t catch.

Don’t feel bad for Little, though. There’s only so much energy a person has and Little has decided that allocating most of it to establishing an online persona via Twitter and creating self-aggrandizing post-catch celebrations is far better for his brand. That’s left precious little (which is actually a nice little ironic nickname for him) energy to devote to developing receiving skills.

I really don’t think Precious Little will ever amount to much in the NFL. He seems to lack sufficient self-awareness to realize that it’s time to develop the kind of work ethic needed to succeed in football or, really, in life. Precious Little is never the last person off the practice field but he should be. He doesn’t do one thing more than he’s told to do and it shows.

**

The lingering thought that I keep returning to about Sunday’s game was how competitive it really wasn’t. The Giants were far superior coming in to the game and the Browns, already a bad team when fully healthy, were missing several starters anyway. When your starting lineup would at best be back ups on most other teams, what does it say about your back ups?

Which brings us right back to Buster Skrine. He couldn’t cover a hole in a wall with a piece of plywood if you spotted him the hammer and the nails. It’s stunning that of all the out of work and practice squad defensive backs out there that there isn’t someone better than Skrine. Let me rephrase that: it’s stunning that of all the out of work and practice squad defensive backs out there, general manager Tom Heckert continues to keep Skrine on the roster.

This is one you can’t hang on Shurmur. He doesn’t have any authority over picking or maintaining the final roster and apparently lacks sufficient clout or credibility to force Heckert to do something about Skrine. The Giants didn’t exactly have the full complement of their receivers available to Eli Manning but it hardly mattered. I suspect Skrine could even make Precious Little look like Victor Cruz and that’s giving full credit to the 6 or 7 passes Little would drop on his way to a 200+ receiving day against Skrine.

Shumrur isn’t doing himself many favors with respect to coaching but he’s also being undone by an inside job. At this point he’d be better off ordering Dick Jauron to put an extra linebacker in coverage than continue to throw Skine at opposing receivers and watch as those opposing receivers laugh all the way to the end zone.

**

The final thing we know about Sunday’s game is that the rest of the season should be stress free. Not that there really ever were but certainly now there are no must-win games on the schedule. Indeed and no matter what Shurmur or anyone else associated with the Browns would tell you, this team really is better off now losing any or all of the rest of their games and ensuring themselves next year’s number one pick, which they can immediately use on a quarterback whose not already older than half the league.

I don’t know whether Geno Smith or Matt Barkley is the next Andrew Luck but if the Browns do end up with the number one pick, and for the life of me I don’t know how they’ll blow it but I just know they will, it will be a choice to make. And let’s hope that if Heckert is still around he doesn’t try to ransom the pick like the St. Louis Rams did by thinking that the Browns are set for the next 10 years at quarterback with Weeden.

While this team can always use picks, they need a franchise quarterback more than they need anything else. Fourteen years into Browns 2.0 and this team still has no identity. There hasn’t been on person from the owner on down who the fans could honestly say represents what this team is trying to accomplish.

Maybe Jimmy Haslam III can be that person. To this point the spot is wide open and there isn’t any line forming to fill that spot. Randy Lerner never wanted it. Team president Mike Holmgren isn’t up to that task and Heckert prefers the background. For now it falls to Shumur and he’s got his hands so full just trying to get the players dressed for Sunday that he’ll never find the time to take the spot. The vacuum remains and that as much as anything is why this team can’t pull itself out of its tailspin. No one wants to be the leader. They also can’t because they suck.

Self-Inflicted Gratification

As much as the Cleveland Browns may have had to gain in their game against the New York Giants Monday night, they really had nothing to lose. With a season on the verge of spiraling completely out of control, the Browns came out ragged but loose and almost carefree surprising the Giants and a national television audience with a dominating 35-14 win against last season's Super Bowl champs.

The record will reflect that the fatal blow was delivered by cornerback Eric Wright when he took Giants' quarterback Eli Manning's third interception of the game 94-yards with just over 8 minutes left in the fourth quarter. Browns quarterback Derek Anderson and receiver Braylon Edwards finished the job with a two-point conversion that gave the team an insurmountable 21-point lead.

But the real story of the game was a team rejuvenated on both sides by a bye week that came not a moment too soon. The offensive line, working better than it has all season, welcomed back Ryan Tucker at right guard and it had a settling effect. Anderson, though pressured at times, wasn't sacked and had enough time to constantly find open receivers. Anderson's ability to put together a vertical passing game kept the Giants' defense from stacking the box near the line of scrimmage. In the process, the running game opened up for 144 yards, 88 of which were by Jamal Lewis on 21 caries. Maybe the Browns ought to petition the league to schedule more bye weeks.

The Giants tried to make it interesting near the end with a quick drive that took them deep into Browns' territory. But like most of what the Giants did all night, that drive, too, ended in frustration as the Browns held on 4th and two and took over on downs at their own 6-yard line with just under four minutes to play. The Browns then closed out the game on two rushing first downs by Lewis.

The Browns' performance as dominating as it was unlikely stood as redemption of sorts for the pitiful performance they put on this same national stage against this same team during the preseason. The win doesn't turn them suddenly into competitors but it does give them something far more to build on then if they had simply played well in another loss. It also sent a bit of a message to the rest of the league that whatever else the Browns might be, they aren't the Cincinnati Bengals, the Detroit Lions or the Kansas City Chiefs.

As entertaining of a game as it ended up being for the Browns and their fans, it certainly didn't start out that way. Kick returner Josh Cribbs fumbled the opening kickoff, quarterback Derek Anderson through his first pass poorly and at the feet of Donte' Stallworth, and Tucker lined up illegally, which was declined. It set an ominous tone.

But before that emotion could even take, receiver Edwards caught a short pass from Anderson and turned it into a 49-yard play and suddenly a sign of life appeared, like a blade of fresh grass popping through the Browns' dry cracked soil of a season. The drive fizzled however first on a false start penalty and then on a fumbled exchange between center Hank Fraley and Anderson, forcing the Browns to settle for a 26-yard Phil Dawson field goal as a smattering of boos in a homage to more red zone futility. It wouldn't last.

Meanwhile, the Giants weren't quite out of sync but they weren't exactly hitting on each cylinder either. During their first drive, Manning was picked off by Brodney Pool near the Browns' goal line. Pool took the ball back to the Browns' 29-yard line but the Browns weren't able to convert the turnover into points when a Dawson 51-yard field goal fell short. The drive did feature the debut of the Browns' "Flash" formation, so named for former Kent State Golden Flash Josh Cribbs. Cribbs took a direct snap from center and ran around left end for 12 yards.

The Giants then temporarily got back on track to take their only lead at 7-3 with a 6-play 58-yard drive that culminated with a 6-yard run by Brandon Jacobs, who almost pushed himself clear through safety Mike Adams on his way to the end zone to help give the Giants the 7-3 lead. It was enough to make Browns' defensive lineman Corey Williams rethink that "tiptoe" comment he made about Jacobs earlier in the week. The key play on the drive, though, was the Giants' conversion of a third down and 4 from the Browns' 11-yard line to set up the Jacobs touchdown run.

Whatever confidence that drive gave the Giants dissipated quickly. Anderson immediately hit Edwards on the Browns' next play with a 70-yard pass that saw Edwards, who was sprinting past cornerback Aaron Ross down the right side. Edwards actually had to wait oh so briefly for Anderson's pass to arrive, allowing Ross enough time to recover and tackle Edwards at the 4-yard line, temporarily saving a touchdown. This time, the Browns were able to convert, with Lewis taking it in from there to help give the Browns a 10-7 lead. It was the real kick the team needed.

Suddenly a sideline that had looked mostly befuddled and frustrated all season was instead smiling and looking as if they finally were enjoying themselves. The defense meanwhile was doing its part, forcing the Giants to punt in a drive that was hurt by Giants penalties and some outstanding coverage by cornerback Brandon McDonald on Giants' receiver Plaxico Burress.

That series breathed further life into the offense in general and Anderson in particular. Displaying a confidence that has mostly been missing all season Anderson led the Brown on an efficient 9-play, 77-yard drive that ended with an Anderson to Darnell Dinkens, 22-yard touchdown play. The Dawson extra point pushed the Browns lead to 17-7 with just over two minutes to play in the half.

The Browns had a chance to take that lead into the locker room but a costly illegal contact penalty on Adams on the Giants next drive nullified what looked like a Manning fumble that was recovered by linebacker D'Qwell Jackson at the Browns 21-yard line. It gave the Giants the ball at the 16-yard line and from there a quick first down followed by a three-yard touchdown pass from Manning to Burress helped narrow the Browns' lead to three. The Browns also had another chance to kill that Giants' drive but Eric Wright couldn't quite haul in a pass headed for Domenik Hixon, a mistake he more than made up for later in the game. If it gave the Giants hope in a game that was closer than it should have been at that point, it didn't last long.

Whatever play the Giants imagined to start the second half went quickly awry when Manning was intercepted by McDonald on the Browns 33-yard line on the half's first play. The pass was intended for Burress who turned inside as Manning threw outside and into the waiting arms of McDonald. McDonald returned the ball 21- yards to the Giants 46-yard line. It was symptomatic of everything that plagued the Giants all evening.

The Browns' offense then added its own razzle dazzle with a double reverse, Anderson handing off to Cribbs sprinting around left end who then handed off to Jerome Harrison running in the other direction. Harrison sped around left end for a 33-yard run. But two running plays and an incompletion to Stallworth in the end zone forced another 26-yard field goal for Dawson and pushed the Browns lead to 20-14.

After forcing the Giants to punt, the Browns had a chance to essentially put the game away late in the third quarter. In one of the strangest drives imaginable, the Browns ultimately scored on an Anderson to Edwards 11-yard touchdown pass to help give them a 27-14, but it was hardly a thing of beauty. The drive was 14 plays long and consumed over 8 minutes, neither necessarily by design. For nearly every good play executed, the Browns found themselves marching backward after a penalty. In all the drive featured three false start penalties, one holding penalty and a delay of game for good measure. To their credit, the offense overcame the self-inflicted adversity and the drive had its intended effect, essentially breaking the Giants' spirit.

That doesn't mean the Gants went down without a fight. Despite being pinned back near their own goal line as a result of a poor kick return and an offensive face mask penalty, the Giants and Manning were seemingly on their way to closing the gap to 6 points when Manning threw his third interception of the game, the backbreaker that Wright took back 94 yards for the touchdown and the 33-14 lead. The two-point conversion to Edwards was the final margin of difference.

The evening featured not only a return from a lengthy absence by the Browns on Monday night football, but a return from a lengthy absence by an offense that was so potent last season but mostly impotent this season. Edwards had his best game as a pro, catching 5 passes for 154 yards and a touchdown. Anderson, despite playing without tight end Kellen Winslow, managed his best game since last season's win against the Seahawks in that season's eighth game. He completely outplayed Manning, and it wasn't close. Anderson went 18-29 for 310 yards and two touchdowns. Just as importantly, he didn't throw an interception and finished the evening with 121 rating. Manning meanwhile looked flustered and played unevenly. Pressured, he may have had as many completions as Anderson on just one more attempt, but it was for only 196 yards and one touchdown. The difference, though, was the three interceptions that kept him from finishing off drives.

It was, unquestionably, as gratifying of a performance as the Browns have had in years. It was the kind of win that in some small sense justified some of its early season hype. There is still a significant amount of work for the Browns to overtake the Steelers, let alone make the playoffs. But at least on this night, the hill looks far less steep than it did just a day or two ago.

A Giant Reality Trip

Well, at least the new uniform pants looked good and the final score was close.

Other than that, it would be hard to find much positive about the Cleveland Browns national debut on Monday night against the New York Giants. Good thing it was preseason, though, otherwise the Giants would played their starters far later into the game and the final score would have been much worse. Instead, after the domination was secured late in the second quarter, the Giants rested. The final score may have been 37-34, but anyone who thinks it was that close was clearly watching the Olympics or The Closer. Either would have been a better choice, actually.

Demonstrating why they are the Super Bowl champs and the Browns are merely wannabes, the Giants’ starters were pretty much able to do most anything they wanted at almost anytime they wanted. The Browns’ starters on the other hand, though missing a few key pieces, weren’t able to do much of anything except cause themselves a healthy dose of embarrassment in about every way a team can be embarrassed outside of the regular season.

With less than a minute gone in the second quarter, the Browns’ starters were down 30-3 due to a combination of penalties, mistakes and simply bad play. That 27-point differential is far more representative of what really took place than the final score.

The story of this game occurred from about the middle of the first quarter until quarterback Derek Anderson was sacked and left the game with a potential concussion with 13:17 left in the second quarter. In that brief time, the Browns put together some of the worst football you’re likely to see. Consider the evidence:

• At 8:47, Giants quarterback Eli Manning connected with the University of Akron product Domenik Hixon for the first of two touchdown passes. Manning’s pass came at the expense of Eric Wright. But to be fair to Wright, Manning was working on a short field. Of course that was due to a 53-yard pass interference penalty on Wright three plays earlier, but why pick nits?

• After the touchdown, the Browns immediately went three and out. Adams, not wanting to be upstaged by Wright, interfered with the returner leading to another penalty. On the plus side, it was only a 15-yard penalty.

• The Wright penalty though did lead to Manning’s second touchdown pass to Hixon, this one for 24 yards. But at least it wasn’t at the expense of Wright. This time Hixon beat cornerback Mike Adams by a mere five or so yards on the play. Of course it could have been more but for an entertaining interlude on the play proceeding the touchdown. Linebacker Andre Davis took a swing at an unidentified Giants player and missed. For that effort, he cost his team 15 yards, which only would have given Hixon even more room to run by Adams. Had Davis connected on his ill-advised swing, he undoubtedly would have had an earlier exit. Maybe that was his intent.

• The Browns responded well to this second touchdown by throwing another three-and-out at the Giants, though they did gain three yards.

• The Giants, perhaps showing mercy or perhaps wanting to now work on their running game, gained only one first down in its next possession. It was a tease because then things got interesting…

• Anderson hit fullback Charles Ali on a short pass. Tight end Kellen Winslow nullified it with an offensive pass interference penalty. A Jamal Lewis run for -2 yards and two incomplete passes later, the Browns were forced to punt from their own end zone. Officially, Reuben Droughns was credited with the inevitable blocked punt. In actuality, it was blocked by Browns rookie Travis Thomas, whom Droughns merely pushed into punter Dave Zastudil. Fortunately the ball took a favorable bounce for the Browns and the Giants only got the safety.

• On the ensuing free kick, Zastudil kicked it to, guess who?, Hixon, who immediately returned it virtually untouched for an 82-yard touchdown. Then things got even more interesting…

• On the kickoff, and with Josh Cribbs in the locker room, Syndric Steptoe took the ball to the Giants 9-yard line. Anderson passed to Ali who took it down to the three-yard line. It was Anderson’s high water mark. On the next play, Anderson and Lewis couldn’t execute a simple handoff. Safety James Butler picked up the ball at the 5-yard line and went almost untouched for a 95-yard return. Game, set and match.

Eventually, though, things settled down once Anderson got hurt, though it wasn’t necessarily because he got hurt. Mostly it was because the Giants, thankfully, had seen enough of most of its starters by the time Brady Quinn went in for the injured Anderson. The Browns, on the other hand, were mostly playing their starters, if only to provide an added measure of confidence. It seemed to work, to a degree.

Quinn was able to move the team in his second possession and close the gap to 30-10 with two minutes left. Then on the Giants next possession, and with perennial back up Anthony Wright at quarterback, the previously malinged Adams and Wright combined to close the gap to a mere 13 points at the half. Adams, on a corner blitz, forced Wright to launch a duck that fell ever so gingerly into the hands of Wright. Wright proceeded to high-step into the end zone for a 15-yard touchdown return. Why Wright was hotdogging it is anyone’s guess.

Most of the rest of the game went pretty much as expected, meaning it when it wasn’t outright painful to watch it was otherwise boring, and vice versa. Rookies and undrafted free agents littered the field like discarded hot dog wrappers, moving about and committing all manner of mistakes. Quinn, for example, was credited with a 44-yard touchdown pass to Steptoe that brought the Browns to within six at 30-24, but it the ball was underthrown. Giants’ cornerback Kevin Dockery actually had the interception for a moment then bobbled it back into Steptoe’s arms as he was entering the end zone.

Quinn, for his part, didn’t embarrass himself, though which is a good thing. He was 7-12 for 124 yards, but it was mostly against the opposing team’s second and third string players, as usual. Ken Dorsey made Bernie Kosar proud by leading the Browns to their final touchdown, an 8-yard pass to fellow Hurricane Lance Leggett, a play that the ESPN crew didn’t seem to realize had taken place until the Browns kicked off. The Giants were able to run out the clock afterward, officially drawing the curtain on a game for which the real curtains had been drawn far earlier.

To the extent there is anything meaningful to be gleaned from this entire mess, it came when both teams played its starters early on. And the most salient of all points is that the Giants are quite comfortable in the limelight. The Browns? Not so much.

The lure of trying to minimize the destruction by focusing on the final score is tempting. There are now injuries to wrestle with, including those to Anderson as well as Josh Cribbs and Brodney Pool, though the extent are not yet known. But for however meaningless the game might otherwise be, the fact that the Browns starters were pushed around like college kids by the physically superior Giants is going to linger, especially when these two teams meet again in mid October. That will be the real coaching challenge for head coach Romeo Crennel. His team knows that the butt whooping it took wasn’t the result of coming out flat. His young team with high expectations will be looking to him for answers and a way to rebuild some of the confidence it had surgically removed on Monday night. If Crennel can’t find those answers, it will be a long season, just not the kind originally envisioned.

Lingering Items--Super Bowl Edition

The euphoria Cleveland fans are probably feeling at watching the Bill Belichick-coached New England Patriots get their comeuppance in Sunday’s Super Bowl will probably be replaced by frustration as soon as it occurs to them that the New York Giants had a record of 10-6, the same as the Browns, entering into the playoffs.

The big difference, of course, is that the Giants got a chance to parlay its 10-6 record into a Super Bowl ring while the Browns were left once again watching from the sidelines.

This isn’t to suggest that the Browns could have made it to the Super Bowl. Hardly. The Browns, even at 10-6, were a seriously flawed defensive team that would never have survived the AFC playoff meat grinder. But on the other hand, the Giants win, coming off an 8-8 season the year before and a bad start that almost got its head coach, Tom Coughlin, fired three weeks into this season, demonstrates that indeed anything can happen come playoff time. This year, anything did happen.

The Giants playoff march was instructive for the Browns and their fans. Playing as underdogs on the road for three straight weeks, the Giants disposed of three supposedly superior teams in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. The Packers win was particularly impressive coming as it did in such frigid weather and adverse conditions.

What’s interesting about the Giants 10-6 record is that they lost only one game on the road and five at home. Having become road warriors during the regular season it served them well for the playoffs. Compare that with the Browns. This past season, the Browns failed to reach the playoffs as much as for their inability to win a few very winnable games on the road as anything else. A victory in Oakland, Arizona or Cincinnati would have put them in the playoffs. Two or more victories would have given them a home playoff game. Having finally figured out how to win at home, the next step for the Browns is to win on the road. It’s hard to get to the Super Bowl otherwise, let alone win it.

The other point about the Giants playoff success is that it demonstrated exactly why the worst thing a franchise can do is listen to the insane demands of fans when their ill-conceived and outsized need for instant gratification is not met. If the Giants fans had their way earlier in the season, Coughlin would have been canned during week three and Manning would have been benched. In fact, when it comes to Manning, it’s charitable to say that this year’s Super Bowl MVP had an uneven season, at least until the regular season’s final game. Manning was no better, and in some ways worse, than his previous seasons.

Maybe it was because there were no immediately available viable alternatives or maybe it was because Giants owners tend to be old school, meaning they prefer to make such dramatic changes in the off season. Whichever it was, or even if there was another reason, patience ultimately prevailed and the team and its fans were richly rewarded.

As much as many Browns fans dislike it, that’s the exact message that Browns general manager Phil Savage has been preaching since he arrived and at every opportunity since. The recent extension he gave to head coach Romeo Crennel was done to drive home that point to the team and its fans. Argue all you want about whether or not Crennel deserved the confidence, but from Savage’s perspective he did and he now has the example of the Giants to point to when fans continue to call for Crennel’s ouster and not his coronation. There is something to be said for stability, even mediocre stability.

The faith that Coughlin continued to show in Manning even as he struggled is also helpful context to understanding the Brown’s current quarterback conundrum. Coughlin really didn’t have a viable Plan B at quarterback so in some ways he had no choice but to stick with Manning. But Manning also had a decent pedigree so it made sense that the team would wait as long as possible for him to develop. And when the light finally went on for Manning in the regular season’s final game against New England and then stayed on throughout the playoffs, that patience was richly rewarded as well. Now Eli Manning is as solid in New York as his brother is in Indianapolis. That is something that no one would have imagined even halfway through this season. Again, there is something to be said for stability.

The Browns have two reasonable candidates in Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn but it is simply unrealistic to expect that there won’t be struggles, irrespective of who, ultimately, is anointed the quarterback for the future. But if those kinks are to get worked out eventually, and if stability is to be achieved at that position, it will take an unwavering commitment to allowing the process to take its natural course. Keeping that commitment with young quarterbacks is difficult under the best of circumstances and can be nearly impossible for the coach to keep and the fans to understand when there is another viable quarterback just licking his chops in the background. It introduces a dynamic that Manning, for example, didn’t have to contend with.

Despite what Savage says publicly, it is difficult for any NFL team to tolerate having two starting quarterbacks. It’s true that a team needs depth, but what it really needs is a situation where it has a starter and an established back-up. There is simply no way that either Anderson or Quinn at this point in their careers will be happy carrying a clipboard and waiting for an injury much longer. The Browns may be able to maintain peace, love and harmony with this situation for another season, but not beyond. Given that, it makes more sense now to commit to one, move the other, and find an established back-up who is more than happy to collect a paycheck for taking a few snaps during the week and running the scout team. It’s also the example from the Giants that Savage has to internalize to move this team forward.

***

One of the keys to the Browns success this season was the rebuilt offensive line, anchored by Joe Thomas and Eric Steinbach. Savage is to be commended for the improvements made and the results were dramatic. That being said, the Giants victory underscored the importance of the defensive line and highlighted one of the biggest differences between the Browns and the Giants, despite the teams having the same regular season record.

In the regular season, Tom Brady, like Anderson, was one of the least sacked quarterbacks in the league. The Giants, on the other hand, led the league in sacking the quarterback. When the irresistible force met the seemingly immovable object in the Super Bowl, the object moved. The pressure that Brady felt from the first play forward disrupted the Patriots rhythm and was the main reason history’s most prolific offense could manage only two touchdowns instead of the five they had averaged throughout the season.

Having a top offensive line will continue to serve the Browns well. But watching the performance of the Giants defensive line, Savage now knows beyond any doubt where he must concentrate his efforts this off season for the Browns to really take the next step.

***
Complain all you want about Belichick, but give the man his due when it comes to the rules. Until yesterday, you’d be hard press to find anyone, in or out of football, who knew that you could challenge a non-call.

Facing a fourth and two with 11 minutes left in the third quarter, the Patriots were in punt formation. As the ball was snapped, the Giants Chase Blackburn still was in the field of play, but just barely. Belichick threw the challenge flag, the replay confirmed, and a retroactive penalty was called. The five-yard penalty gave the Patriots a first down and allowed them to continue a drive. It didn’t result in any points, but had it made the difference you can bet that this move would be hailed near and far as the call of the game. You can bet just as much that the NFL’s competition committee would have worked to change the rule for next season. For now, it will probably just remain an interesting footnote.

***

The Browns’ Anderson and tight end Kellen Winslow II ought to send the Patriots Brady and Randy Moss postcards from Hawaii. It’s easy to see how the loss on Sunday soured Brady and Moss on playing in the Pro Bowl next Sunday, allowing Anderson and Winslow to make the trip instead. Sounds like a nice vacation for the two, but it also emphasizes how absolutely meaningless the Pro Bowl is and always will be. The players don’t care and the fans don’t watch. With nothing on the line and only injuries to be avoided, one wonders why the league even bothers with this charade. But on the plus side, at least the few fans that care won’t have to put up with Paula Abdul lip-syncing her way through another dreadful song in order to watch the game.

***
And finally, since this is the last “lingering items” for the season, a question to ponder this off season: If Danny Ferry was the GM of the Browns, would that mean the Browns would have to stand pat going into next season?

A Desert Disaster

The scene is eerily familiar, only this time the local fans don’t have the same rooting interest.

It was a little over a year ago when an undefeated team with but a few close calls during the regular season found its way playing for a championship in the Arizona desert. That team featured the top quarterback, indeed the top player in the game at least that season, and enough skill players surrounding him to make opposing coaches drool. To the extent that the media can ever reach a consensus on anything, it did this time. No doubt this team would finish what they had started and would be anointed one of the great teams of all time.

Making matters seem all that much more inevitable, its opponent was not highly regarded and was thought, at best, to be maybe a year or two away from being a serious contender for a championship. The opponent featured some intriguing players, to be sure, but had barely won its conference. There was also a double digit point spread to contend with. In short, but for a few contrarians dotting the landscape, mainly in the team’s hometown, no one else gave them much of a chance.

But the Florida Gators turned into the little team that could and handily wiped the carpet with the Ohio State Buckeyes at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, capping an improbable year for the Gators and its coach, Urban Meyer.

In many, many ways, this Sunday’s Super Bowl featuring the New England Patriots against the New York Giants is playing to all these same themes. New England is the consensus number one team in the league with the consensus superior talent. The Giants seem lucky to be there.

The parallels, of course, don’t all work. For example, in most ways, Buckeyes head coach Jim Tressel is the anti-Bill Belichick. Tressel isn’t exactly a quote machine himself, but he is very accessible to the media and hardly treats reporters’ questions as if they are an intrusion. As passionately as he wants to win, Tressel hardly seems motivated by the kind of hate and rage that tends to fuel Belichick’s engine. Probably because he’s coaching college kids, Tressel maintains a much healthier perspective on not only what a game means, but what it doesn’t.

Meyer, too, is hardly Tom Coughlin, the Giants head coach. Where Meyer is cool and collected in every situation, Coughlin wears his emotions on his sleeve. Meyer has been nothing but successful at each stop along the coaching trail with no one ever threatening to run him off. Coughlin’s career has had at least as many downs as ups. When the Giants lost their first two games this season, the New York media and Giants fans were already calling for Coughlin to be fired, particularly coming off an 8-8 season that should have been much better but wasn’t because so often the coach and his players seemed to be at each other’s throats all the time.

Improbably, though, the Giants turned it around enough to finish at 10-6, the same record as the Browns, and now find themselves in the Super Bowl mainly because they got hot at the right time. The remaining question, of course, is whether the Giants are laying in wait, like the Gators, to deliver another disaster in the desert to what many consider to be an incredible mismatch.

This is where it gets tricky. In the first place, the differences between college and pro football are so vast that at times the only thing the two games seem to have in common is that the scoring plays in each count the same. For example, barring injury you’re never going to see either Belichick or Coughlin use a two-quarterback system just to give the other team a different look.

But the big difference is that it is much easier to make apples to apples comparisons in pro football than it ever will be in college. When the Buckeyes and Gators finally met in the national championship game, what they knew about each other is what they could see on film alone. Not only didn’t they play each other during the regular season, they didn’t have any common opponents. Thus, despite all the talk about the difference in speed in the SEC vs. the Big Ten, it was nearly impossible to tell if that really was the case with respect to these two teams.

Moreover, the talent level from team to team in college football, even when played at its highest levels, is wildly inconsistent. Even really good teams in college aren’t good top to bottom. Thus, what a coach observes on tape about his opponent is difficult, at best, to translate. That stud defensive lineman who seems to dominate may just be a case of facing relatively weak offensive linemen from week to week. That quarterback who never seems to get sacked may just have been playing against relatively poor pass rushing teams most weeks.

In the NFL, the talent level is far more consistent. In a sense, every NFL team is a college all star team. There are differences in talent levels from team to team, but they aren’t substantial. Using this year’s Browns team as Exhibit A, the difference between a team with a losing record and one who went 10-6 is usually one or two players, not 10-12.

But perhaps the biggest difference is that it is not all that unusual for the Super Bowl participants to have played already played each other in the regular season, and if not the current season, then the previous one. One of the most memorable games of this year was the Patriots/Giants game during the final week of the regular season. It not only had historic overtures, but it also essentially sparked a resurgence of the Giants, even in defeat.

But the larger point for this discussion is that each team is well aware of what the other can do, having just played each other a few weeks ago. Each team knows the other’s strengths and weaknesses not just based on what they see on film but what they personally experienced. For each team, their game plan for the Super Bowl will be based far more on actual knowledge than mere guess work than either Tressel’s or Meyer’s game plan for the national championship game.

In a way, Sunday’s Super Bowl is but a continuation of that final regular season game, with the two week run-up to it serving as an extended halftime. Given what each team already knows about the other, the difference maker is less likely going to be pure emotion, as it was when the Gators faced the Buckeyes, and more so on which coach can make the right adjustments.

Indeed, if that is the criteria, the Patriots have a decided advantage. Using just this season as an example, the Patriots have outscored their opponents by a large margin in every quarter. They were +93 in the first quarter, +103 in the second, +46 in the third, and +73 in the fourth. The Giants, on the other hand, were a remarkable -24 in the first quarter, +28 in the second, +1 in the third and +21 in the fourth.

Some simple conclusions that can be drawn from this are that the Patriots were a far more dominant team than the Giants, within each game and from game to game. It also tells you that the Patriots were not often challenged whereas the Giants often played from behind and that their 10 victories were highly dependent on their ability to eke out close games.

It’s also fair to suggest that these figures also underscore that Belichick’s teams were far better prepared for their opponents going into each game than the Giants given the point differentials in the first quarter. Coughlin and his staff eventually made adjustments throughout that helped them ultimately be successful, but Belichick and his staff got off to great starts each week and kept the pressure on throughout. By doing so, the Patriots were able to dictate the tempo of the game and force teams to adjust to them, not the other way around as was the case with the Giants.

It also says something about the game-day coaching abilities of Belichick and Coughlin. An interesting article posted last summer on the web site NFL Stats sought to quantify the impact of game-day coaching by taking the number of wins that a team could expect in a season based on its on-field statistical performance and comparing it to actual wins. When actual wins exceeded expected wins on a consistent basis, the author surmised, one differentiating factor was the head coach and his ability to squeeze more out of the talent at hand.

In that analysis, which did not even include the 2007 season, Belichick in New England (as compared to Belichick in both Cleveland and New England) led the pack. In New England, his teams consistently win over two games more per season than on-the-field performance otherwise bears out. Indeed, anyone watching the Patriots this season had to marvel at the team’s ability to win when not playing its best. Coughlin’s teams, in both Jacksonville and New York, tended to win slightly less games than expected. Neither of these results is much of a surprise.

None of this means that Coughlin is a lousy head coach and thus the Giants have no chance. But it does point to an X factor to consider when placing your Super Bowl wagers. And while all this may be just another elaborate set up for the ultimate downfall of the seemingly superior team, this isn’t Ohio State vs. Florida either. There very well could be a disaster in the desert. Just don’t look for it from the underdog this time.