Taking Away The Shine

It’s getting more difficult literally by the moment to remain a fan of the NFL.  The league is in a clear free fall and seems almost like it is making things up on the fly. If a league ever needed a war time consigliore it is now.  Tom Hagen, where for art thou?

What’s frustrating about all of this is that for at least fans in Cleveland it’s taken a bit of a shine of its first home opener win since the Truman administration.  Which is too bad because if there is anything much to like about a bad team in a good city it’s the over-the-top euphoria felt when the team wins a game it’s supposed to lose.  The sun shines, the birds sing, and every coach and player is the best we’ve ever had.

That would pretty much sum up fan reaction to the Browns unlikely win against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday if the league wasn’t so dysfunctional at the moment.  Indeed I’m not really sure how appropriate it is to even discuss the Browns’ win except as an afterthought.

The blame for this falls squarely once again on Commission Roger Goodell.  I was pretty certain for a great number of years that Bud Selig was the worse commissioner in the history of organized sports.  But at the moment Goodell is making Selig look like David Stern by comparison.  Goodell is Nero, fiddling as the league burns.  Other than a handpicked interview he conducted with CBS News and then botched anyway, Goodell has been in hiding managing the crises he’s creating by his own dithering.

To get a true measure of Goodell’s incompetence all you need to know is that he so mishandled the Ray Rice situation that most observers now have been grudgingly forced to sympathize with Rice, not for his deeds but for the simple fact that he’s now been punished twice for the same offense.  The legal concept of double jeopardy doesn’t technically apply to a private entity like the NFL but that’s beside the point.  It doesn’t feel right when someone is punished twice for the same offense if no new facts have emerged between punishments.

But it’s not just the Rice situation.  Goodell’s complete inability to manage a crisis has allowed teams to flounder about as they manipulate their own morals to justify why their best players shouldn’t be punished for offenses they’ve clearly committed. 

Adrian Peterson’s name is now as notorious as Rice’s thanks to Peterson’s rather candid admission and attitude toward how one may properly punish a 4 year old child.  The Minnesota Vikings at first deactivated Peterson and there he should have remained.  Yet he didn’t for a number of reasons.  He’s the Vikings best player was one.  The league couldn’t figure out what more to do was another.  After reinstating him and then looking like fools for doing so, the Vikings again essentially deactivated him.

In Carolina, they were essentially shamed into doing something similar with Greg Hardy, who actually has been convicted of domestic violence and yet, strangely, remains unpunished by league.  He may not be active for the games but he is getting paid.  In San Francisco, where the owner and the head coach know no shame, let Ray McDonald play on.

All this is going on while Goodell remains holed up and lawyered up.  A cabal of idiots describes them best.

Every league is going to go through these moments.  Baseball has had at least two of them, both around widespread illegal drug use and survived.  The NFL, too, will survive this mess one way or another.  The game itself is simply too popular.  What is most fascinating though is that the league, a multi billion dollar enterprise with virtually every resource at its disposal, can’t manage a crisis.

I won’t pretend that these issues aren’t complicated.  We do live in a just society and we do want to see people accused of crimes be treated fairly.  But the issues also aren’t nearly as complicated as the NFL is making them out to be, either.

Rice was an easy call at the outset that Goodell proved incapable of handling.  It’s actually hard to fathom how anyone seeing just the first video would still only assess a two game suspension.  The Hardy call is just as easy.  He’s already been convicted and the testimony against him is damning.  The Peterson case is easy mainly because Peterson isn’t denying the conduct, just the label.  And the McDonald case isn’t difficult either given that there were plenty of teammates present who actually witnessed what took place. 

Yet it seems that the NFL wants to deal more in nuance instead of the obvious.  The crime some prosecutor decides to charge the player with isn’t the issue.  Prosecutors are politicians who do things as much for political reasons as practical ones.  The facts are what they are and it’s on those and not the actual charge on which the NFL should be making its decisions.

I’m not surprised that Goodell remains popular with the owners.  But all you need to know on that score is that one of his more vocal supporters is Dan Snyder.  And why Snyder?  Because Goodell decided that the racially offensive name of Snyder’s franchise was not a league matter but one for Snyder to decide.  It’s a mutual backscratching society which is why Goodell’s job is safe when it should be over.

When people think of the NFL these days it’s not about the games, it’s about the league itself and that is the essence of the problem.  In Cleveland, the Browns won last Sunday not because of some fluke or quirk but because they were the better team on a given day.  The fans are talking, yes, but talking much more about Rice and Hardy and Peterson than Brian Hoyer.

That’s too bad.  Right now this Browns team doesn’t stink, at least like virtually every previous iteration.  A team that averages 5.6 wins a season for the last 11 years (a number that’s actually skewed by an improbable 10-win season in 2007) is pretty much exactly what it means for a team to stink.  So right now, at 1-1, the Browns don’t stink.

And while I’m not here to throw cold water on a good win, let’s just say that we’ve seen this before. Last year’s team had a mini win streak of sorts early in the season and then regressed to the true level of its awfulness.  In fairness, in most other years no regression was needed.  The team started out bad and got worse.

Still, there was much to like about Sunday’s win but perhaps the biggest takeaway was its ability to carry over a relatively high level of play from one week to the next.  True the Browns looked like the 2012 Browns in the first half of the Steelers game two weeks ago.  But the second half was more productive and energetic even if it fell short.  To watch that productivity and energy get carried over was indeed rare in these parts.

It’s still too early to offer a fair assessment of head coach Mike Pettine and maybe, as owner Jimmy Haslam said in a flash of exuberance after Sunday’s win that the team got the right coach (a feeling he likely uttered last season about Rob Chudzinski as well as the Browns, under Brian Hoyer, won 3 straight early last season), let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Pettine does seem different.  He isn’t the wet blanket that was Pat Shurmur or the little dictator that was Eric Mangini or even the genial but befuddled grandfather that was Romeo Crennel.  He’s pretty much a square-jawed, look you in the eye kind of guy, akin in temperament to former head coach Marty Schottenheimer but without the soaring clichés and flowing tears.

What is going to take time is to assess whether Pettine truly has the make-up of a successful head coach.  A head coach sets the tone and in that regard Pettine has done a good job thus far.  But two games into the season where expectations were low anyway isn’t exactly trial by fire.  The measure of Pettine and hence this team will come in a million smaller ways but will boil down to his ability to keep this team together and competitive if/when the season, like virtually all others, starts circling the drain.

Soon, hopefully, fans can have exactly these kinds of discussions.  That’s what football is supposed to be about.  As long as Goodell remains in charge, as long as he continues to garner support from the owners with their own foibles to hide, the NFL will be less about the games and more about “the league.”  It’s not the welcome distraction that any one wants.

Moral Relativism and The NFL, Roger Goodell-Style

Do you feel a little dirty today?  I do.  Despite everything I knew and felt about the Ray Rice situation, despite everything I wrote about it previously, I still sat and watched Monday night football.  I watched it because I’m a fan of the New York Giants.  I watched it because I enjoy NFL football. 

That’s the essence of the conflict here.  The NFL has a product that I enjoy as a consumer to the point that I end up looking the other way at its moral relativism no matter how offended I otherwise might be.  That makes me complicit in the dirty business of a league that, first, only suspended Rice for two games and, now, keeps Roger Goodell employed.

That has to change and if it doesn’t, if we as users of their product don’t take a stand by not supporting the league, its games, its sponsors until the NFL decides to fundamentally change and stand for something other than its brand, then we too are as big a part of the problem as is Goodell.

Goodell should resign as commissioner and if he doesn’t he should be fired.  Goodell already said he won’t resign and the decrepit ownership of the league, many of whom have their own sordid problems, are so out of touch with what takes place on the streets of day to day life that they probably will award Goodell a bonus.

Goodell’s job is supposed to be about, above all else, the protection of the game.  The NFL is at its cultural nadir at the moment, even if its games remain popular, because Goodell failed at the most important job he had. It’s amazing, really, that he can’t or won’t see it.

As usual, Goodell took to a controlled setting to explain away how incredibly unfeeling he and the league are to victims of domestic abuse who suffer at the hands of the men the league employs.  He looked sincere even as he presented a strong face for the his and hence the league’s indifference to societal norms when he said, echoing the talking points that the Ravens clearly had been given a few days earlier, that seeing the video made all the difference.  I think Goodell is lying about not seeing the video previously mainly because it’s almost impossible to believe otherwise.  And while he gets no benefit of the doubt any more, let’s just assume he didn’t.  So what?  He knew what happened and it matters little that he felt misled by Rice and his attorney who suggested that Rice’s fiancée essentially had it coming to her because she was the aggressor that led Rice to half the further discussion with a well-placed punch.

What Goodell suggests, what John Harbaugh and Ravens owner Steve Biscotti suggest, as they were shamed into facing the almost incomprehensible wrongness of their prior actions is that they never really knew how horrific domestic violence was until they actually witnessed it.  More to the point, they expect the public to buy that explanation.  That’s how far out of touch the league really is and why Goodell has to go, now.

Goodell’s crimes go even deeper.  Foremost, he’s lost any hope of gaining the high ground on this issue.  He can announce a hundred new initiatives and it won’t matter because he’s doing it because it was forced on him and not because he wanted to. 

He could have taken a much more aggressive approach toward ridding the league of abusers in his CBS News interview and did not.  Indeed, right now and despite his letter to league owners about a change to its domestic violence policies, two players, Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald continue to play.  Hardy has actually been convicted by a judge of assault on a female.  He’s appealed so the league dithers as if it has no choice.  McDonald has been arrested and despite his head coach, Jim Harbaugh, proclaiming zero tolerance for domestic violence, McDonald continues to play.

Let’s not lose sight of that fact that no one understands the power of the NFL’s brand better than Goodell as he wields it constantly in order to leverage any and everything he can from anyone.  He doles out limited access to select journalists who will further the league’s narrative in order.  He puts players at risk constantly, first by participating in the cover up of the impact concussions were having on former and current players and still by allowing Thursday night games despite all the medical evidence against such quick turnaround.  Goodell uses his bully pulpit for one thing only, to further maximize the league’s financial windfall while ignoring the cultural slide it contributes to in that pursuit.

Goodell’s abject incompetence at recognizing the broader implications of his decisions isn’t without precedence.  The real reason situations like this continue to come up, particularly in football, has everything to do with the culture of the sport that has been set by the NFL for decades, a culture that values winning and the spoils that come from it far above anything else, a culture that has found its way to the bottom of the feeding pools.

It’s coincidental at least, perhaps ironic, that on the same day that the NFL was finally shaken to its foundations by its own hypocrisy, the NCAA shed the vestiges of its high minded pretension by publicly removing the remaining sanctions from Penn State’s program, sanctions levied because of that school’s institutional coddling of a pedophile because of its desire not to derail its lucrative football program.  I guess because there’s no evidence of new pedophilia among the Penn State coaching staff that it’s time to simply burnish the previous penalties and act as if the entire matter never happened.

There is a common thread. 

Players don’t enter the NFL and then abuse women.  It’s a learned behavior over the many years in which their status is exalted because of their ability to run faster, throw better and tackle harder than someone else.  It starts in high school, continues through college and by the time these players reach the NFL their perceptions of societal norms is so skewed that they end up rallying around a player like Rice as the Ravens players did when all that was known then was that Rice dragged his unconscious girlfriend out of an elevator and left her like a discarded cigarette butt after he had snuffed her out in a fit of pique.

There isn’t a high school or college program in America that hasn’t found a way around punishing its better players in order to avoid potentially disastrous results on the field in the next game.  Florida head coach Will Muschamp suspended 3 players for the team’s opening game against Idaho but that game lasted one play because of the weather and was cancelled.  Florida was scheduled to take on a slightly gamer team in Eastern Michigan the following week so Muschamp lifted the suspensions and lashed out at critics who questioned his hypocrisy.

Muschamp can make all the excuses he wants but he did it because he felt he needed the players on the field for a game against Eastern Michigan.  That says something about how far Florida has fallen, certainly, but it says more about how a situation like Rice’s happened in the first place.

Players are coddled and ultimately made to feel like the rules of proper society are bendable in extenuating circumstances, like a big game on Saturday or Sunday.  Rice had no real fear that losing his temper and knocking out his fiancée and the mother of his child would cause him to lose his job.  He had no such fear because it’s never happened in the NFL.

Last week Sports Illustrated had a profile of Louisville coach Bobby Petrino.  I suspect that it didn’t make Petrino happy nor his fans for it laid out in subtle but definitive ways the institutional hypocrisy that creates the cesspool that ultimately lets scum like Rice float to the top.

Petrino is a complicated figure with an incredibly ethically challenged record both personally and professionally.  One thing he does, though, is win and for that he’s been rewarded again with a top college job.  Indeed Louisville’s athletic director Tom Jurich did a clever slight of hand by turning the question outward as to why he’d bring back Petrino after all the damage he’d done previously to at least 3 different football programs, including Louisville’s.  He couched it in near religious terms by responding, rhetorically with his own question, “who am I to not forgive?”  In other words, we’re all servants of God and if God forgives, how can we not model that behavior?

It’s all bullshit and Jurich must know it and if he doesn’t he shouldn’t be in his position.  It isn’t a question of forgiveness it’s a question of winning and losing.  He calculated that Petrino gave the school the best shot at keeping its program at a high level and he took it figuring he could just shower the grime off later.

That’s why players don’t fear consequences.  There’s always someone else to pick up the pieces for a guy who can help a team win.  Whatever publicly the coaches or owners say, what they do speaks more loudly.  Think about the McDonald and Hardy cases. Both continue to play because their absence would hurt the team.  The tired yarn of letting the legal process play out is ridiculous, particularly in domestic violence cases.  It puts the onus on the victim to recant or refuse to testify in order to save her abuser’s job.  That’s what the Ravens did to Janey Palmer and it’s what the 49ers and the Panthers are doing to the victims in their cases.

But of course there are other options to letting the process play out as they say, they just don’t include letting Hardy and McDonald play in the games.  Their teams could have simply deactivated the players from the active roster on game days.  Sure they’d still get paid but it would leave no doubt about how team management felt about their actions.  But that apparently would clash with the Panthers’ and the 49ers’ nascent playoff hopes and thus clearly wasn’t considered.

More to the point, let’s not act like anyone in the NFL actually cares about a due diligence process or is even bound by one.  They just pull it out when it’s convenient to them as cover for far more nefarious motives.  The NFL, despite having the power and money of a medium sized country, isn’t subject to the Constitutional protections of due process.  Goodell has told us many times that he can take action at any time for the good of the game.  Yet he and the Panthers and the 49ers in concert saw no reason to take any action yet on Hardy or McDonald and still don’t even as the league burns around them for the inept handling of the Rice situation.

Look at the shameful way that everyone associated with the Ravens handled the Rice situation.  The owner left it in the hands of the football people who calculated that the team’s playoff chances were less without Rice.  So the team president Dick Cass, the team general manager Ozzie Newsome and the team head coach John Harbaugh wrapped their swaddling arms around Rice, furthered his despicable implication that it was Palmer’s fault all along, and treated him as if he had accidentally run the car into the neighbor’s hedges.  Grounding him for two games stung about as much as a paddling does to a 6 year old with about the same impact long term.

What all of these demonstrate is that apologists exist at the highest levels to excuse player behavior because what they do isn’t about building men or character but about winning games and bringing money into the school, the city, the franchise, the league.

As should Goodell, the Ravens should be made to purge the franchise of its owner, its president and its general manager and its head coach.  The franchise’s culture can’t be fixed as long as any of them remain.  The same goes for the Panthers and the 49ers and any other team coddling the miscreants on their teams.

It seems like the only people that don’t know that the league is at a major crossroads is the league itself and all those apologists.  Just keep on the same road and they won’t need anyone calling for their heads.  They’ll have made themselves so irrelevant that they’ll fade away of their own accord.  If that’s the way this goes, then good riddance.  Finding another diversion from pro football won’t be nearly as hard as they think.

A Missed Opportunity

If you’re looking to professional sports to provide justice for the wrongs you think need to be righted, find a different hobby.  Professional sports doesn’t exist to bring you anything more meaningful than the highs and lows that accompany victory and defeat.  That said, it still provides an enormous capacity to fail you when you need it most.

The latest but certainly not the last case in point was NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s rather lightweight two game suspension handed down to Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for domestic violence against his fiancée, now wife, Janay Palmer.

Rice and Palmer were in an Atlantic City casino for fun and games when a domestic dispute turned horribly violent.  According to reports, both Rice and Palmer struck each other.  But you don’t need to speculate who came out of that fight unscathed, at least physically.  The video tape is crystal clear.  Rice was forcibly dragging a limp Palmer by her hair out of an elevator following whatever took place behind those metal doors. 

Physical violence against women is nothing new among NFL players.  The San Diego Union-Tribune maintains a database of all NFL players arrested since 2000.  You could review it if you have the time but suffice it to say that nearly every team in the league has had a player charged with domestic violence since 2000.  And that’s just the recent history.  Cleveland Browns’ fans with a memory can recall the number of run ins Jim Brown had with domestic violence during and after his career (with all charges either eventually dropped or resulting in his acquittal).  What set the Rice situation apart in the public conscious was the videotape.  It’s one thing to read about a player dragging an obviously injured woman around but a whole other matter to actually see the horror on continuous loop.

The incident gave Goodell and the NFL a chance to do two things.  First, he could take the most public stand possible against the NFL’s unfortunate history with domestic violence.  Second, he could send a message to all of the other players that violence against women in any form is now a zero tolerance offense that will threaten your livelihood.  And in some fashion Goodell did both by even bothering to punish Rice at all.  But what Goodell also did was place the penalty on a spectrum that’s hard to fathom—less than smoking marijuana, slightly more than wearing non-league approved cleats.  When Goodell had the power to do all he could he opted instead to do the least he could and keep a straight face.

There are plenty that would argue that Rice should have been suspended for a year.  There are plenty of others that would argue that a player smoking marijuana merits a 4-game suspension so at the very least, the very least, a player channeling his inner caveman dragging around his property by the arm ought to suffer the same consequence.

I’m not sure exactly what the right penalty should have been.  What I am sure about is that this penalty doesn’t feel right.  A two-game penalty tells you that the NFL sees other offenses as far more serious than those involving its players hitting women.  Just ask the New Orleans Saints players accused of participating in a bounty system against other players in the league.  But more to the point, it also offers absolutely no deterrent to the next offender.  A season long suspension clearly would.  A half year suspension just might.  And in the end, isn’t that at least part of the purpose of issuing a penalty?  Shouldn’t the impact it will have on deterring similar conduct be taken into account?

Let’s go back to the aforementioned New Orleans Saints bountygate as a proxy.  It wasn’t domestic violence but had similar attributes in that involved NFL players and coaches sanctioning or participating in specific conduct meant to injure another.  Goodell leveled significant penalties, suspending head coach Sean Payton for a year, indefinitely suspending another coach and issuing minimum 6 game penalties to others.  Goodell also suspended one player, Jonathan Vilma, for a year.  Three other players were suspended for a range of between 3 and 8 games.  In every case players and coaches suffered more significant penalties than Goodell issued against Rice.  (It’s worth noting that the sanctions against the players were overturned by Paul Tagliabue, who was hired as an arbitrator.  Tagliabue found that they engaged in the conduct but placed the blame on the coaches for incentivizing them to do so.)

My guess is that Goodell sees the distinction between the bountygate situation and Rice’s as a matter of one threatening the integrity of the game and the other a singularly personal matter.  But can that dichotomy alone explain the massive difference in Goodell’s thinking, especially when once a penalty is issued the outcome of a game, in this case a future game, is potentially altered?

If Goodell really is parsing these situations that closely then he is losing sight of the reason he’s taken such a strong stand on personal conduct issues in the past.  Maybe Goodell felt chastened when Tagliabue overturned the penalties on the bountygate players, but that’s hardly a reasonable excuse.

Nothing gets done in a vacuum and I suspect Goodell levied a penalty that he knew Rice would not appeal without looking like an even bigger idiot.  I’m sure, too, that Goodell had to balance the inevitable outcry from the union had he levied a penalty with real sting.  Goodell, as commissioner, is as much a politician as an executive.

But not every incident calls for a political solution.  Sometimes a line has to get drawn and let the consequences flow from that.  The players’ union is like the NRA.  There is no penalties on its members that they’d ever agree to on the record.  Besides, their interests are not at all aligned with Goodell’s.  He has to protect the integrity of the game and all that it stands for.  The union, particularly this union under the misguided leadership of DeMaurice Smith, cares not a whit about the good of the game, only the good of the dues paying members.  Given that, Goodell’s thought process should have been first and only to do the right thing.  Instead he looked to do what was expedient, what would make his life easier.

It would be interesting to understand Goodell’s actual thinking but he’s taken the coward’s approach and gone radio silence, allowing the furor to dissipate.  It hasn’t yet.  At some point, maybe at a press conference during Hall of Fame week or some other low key moment down the road he’ll elaborate, but I doubt it will be much.  He’ll say that the league took a stance by bothering to punish Rice at all and then dangle out there that reasonable people can debate the severity of the punishment.  All true, technically.   Practically, it’s a load of crap.

There’s just no sugarcoating the magnitude of Goodell’s misstep here.  His supplicants in the media, like Peter King, will dribble out tidbits to suggest that Goodell tried to do the right thing by, for example, talking to the victim, getting her input, making sure her voice mattered.  But in even making that gesture, Goodell conducted that meeting with Rice sitting right next to her, the dominator and the dominated.  What exactly did Goodell think Palmer was going to say in that meeting?

The culture of this country in these matters still tilts wildly in favor of the perpetrator.  Rice was applauded when he walked onto the Ravens practice field the other day as if he’s some kind of hero to be honored for what exactly, not killing Palmer?  Notably, in his press conference on Thursday, Rice was appropriately contrite and apologetic.  It would have been more noble to have chastised the idiot Ravens fans that gave him the applause in the first place.

Victims of domestic violence, like victims of sexual assault and victims of sexual harrassment, on the other hand, face questions about their character and motivations, fair questions in the context of due process but certainly not the only or even the main questions to ask.  And they’re also often put in the awkward position of feeling responsible for the ultimate punishment levied.  That’s a lot to bear.

Had Palmer, for example, been allowed to speak freely and confidentially, neither of which occurred here, she might have had a different story to tell.  We’ll never know but it isn’t a stretch to suggest that Goodell, a lawyer by trade, knew exactly what he was doing by interviewing Palmer with Rice present.  As it is, though, because Goodell and King and others dribbled out the information about her role in Goodell’s deliberations, a harsher penalty on Rice would inevitably brought a harsher scrutiny on her from all those Ravens fans who can’t stomach the thought of being without Rice for an extended period of time.

There is a war on women in this country and it shows no signs of abating.  Goodell just contributed to the fray when he had a real chance, using this country’s most popular sport and his position in it as the ultimate bully pulpit, to emphatically declare that there is absolutely no place for domestic violence.  Goodell had an obligation to think globally and instead deliberately thought small and in doing so called into question his ongoing ability to lead the sport.

The fight for women’s rights will go on as it always done, by fits and starts.  The inroads women have made in the last 25 years or so are impressive but for all the gains made it just takes an incident like this and the shocking outcome to remind us all that until we take care of everyone on the same footing we don’t really take care of our own.

The Inevitability of it All

So much about the way the Cleveland Browns game against the Baltimore Ravens played out on Sunday seemed inevitable. Whether it was the inability to stop a good running attack, the inability to put points on the board, the untimely interception or even the early injury to quarterback Colt McCoy, it all seemed so predestined.

And the 24-10 final score in favor of the Ravens? Yea, that was inevitable, too.

There would be no surprises this week. No chance of the Ravens taking the Browns too lightly. No early Ravens turnovers to give the Browns unexpectedly good field position and a few quick scores. Instead, inevitably, just another butt kicking at the hands of team on a far different trajectory. At least the loss gave the Browns the rather dubious bragging rights of having been dominated by both Harbaugh brothers in one season. So there is that.

The game certainly carried the whiff of nearly every other loss that preceded it, right down to the deceiving final score.

Helping early on to keep the score closer than the game was a couple of factors. There was the rain, which kept the Ravens from throwing too much. Then there was Ravens head coach John Harbaugh eschewing a field goal early for an unsuccessful fourth down attempt and then Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff missing two short field goals late in the second quarter. Had the Ravens piled on the points then, the score and the game being witnessed would have been perfectly in sync. That would come.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let's focus for a moment on the things we knew were coming before the coin was even tossed.

First was Ravens running back Ray Rice, channeling a young Jamal Lewis and running through the Browns' defense like a deer darting cars on a country two-lane. On his first 6 carries he averaged 10 yards per. He couldn't keep up that pace but the pace he maintained was brisk enough. He was well over 100 yards rushing in the first half and only the presence of Ricky Williams, who took some carries from him, and slightly better play by the defensive line kept Rice from running for 300 yards.

That untimely interception? It came late in the first half, during a two-minute drill of sorts and followed two previous passes from McCoy that could have been intercepted. But more to the point it was then followed by what else, an inevitable pass interference call near the goal line. But in something that is becoming inevitable but on the good side is a successful goal line stand by the Browns' defense. That makes four in two games.

Still, after the defense held Cundiff made it a bit of an adventure but did finally convert a short field goal and gave the Ravens a 10-0 halftime lead.

So while the that score looked perfectly manageable, it really wasn't. It might as well have been 30-0, which it could have been considering how the Ravens otherwise seemed to be dominating the game, if you define dominating in terms of plays run (17 more than the Browns), time of possession (7 and a half minutes more), yards gained (170 more), you know, that sort of thing.

It was the kind of trends that tend to eventually pay dividends at just about the time you start to get heady and think you are really in the game.

And yet, there the Browns found themselves, midway through the third quarter and still within the same sort of striking distance and breathing anew. When Jabaal Sheard stripped Joe Flacco on a great individual effort and the ball was recovered by Jayme Mitchell, suddenly the Browns found themselves at midfield. The unexpected turnover!

It all looked so inevitable in the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished sort of way when McCoy took a sack on first down. But on second down, Peyton Hillis found himself all alone downfield and in the midst of a Ravens blown assignment on defense. McCoy saw it, hit Hillis and the play covered 51 yards down to the Ravens' 3 yard line.

But inevitability once again reared its ugly head as the offense couldn't find a way to put it over the goal line, a Hillis run stuffed at the line and two incomplete passes. In fairness to McCoy, though, tight end Evan Moore dropped a well thrown pass in the end zone and Greg Little looked to be interfered with on a third down pass. Phil Dawson converted the 21 yard field goal without incident and the Browns were back to within 7.

Now remember those things that tend to come back and haunt you? They did, just that quickly.

On the Ravens next play, Rice scampered for 67 yards, giving him 187 on the day with plenty of game still to play, and Ricky Williams cleaned up two plays later to push the lead to 17-3 and just like that it was back to reality. That meant lots more of Rice, lots more time of possession for the Ravens and the inevitable march to the inevitable Josh Cribbs post-game crabbing about his role, which was non-existent on this particular day.

Indeed, the fourth quarter more or less resembled a pre season intra squad scrimmage. Neither team looked to be doing anything more then trying to hone some new formations, keep the clock moving and get the hell out of the rain. But Ravens' punt returner Lardarius Webb threw a bit of a monkey wrench into that when he returned a Brad Maynard punt 68 yards that pushed the lead to 24-7.

As I said, inevitably the score and the game being witnessed would come back into sync.

That forced the Browns to do what they inevitably do in late games that are out of reach. Score a meaningless touchdown. This one was from McCoy to a wide open Moore, who held on this time probably because it mattered so little. I guess it showed that McCoy doesn't give up even when the game is over but maybe it just shows that by that point in the game the other team is just bored.

On a macro level, and irrespective how they got there, really there was nothing particularly knew or different here that gave you a sense that much had been learned by this Browns team from the several other iterations of this game that fans have already seen this year. But that's not a surprise. Lacking talent in most areas and also banged up pretty good, there's no reason to have expected anything different. That's why it all seemed so inevitable in the first place.

But let's not completely let that spoil the party. Let's go micro, briefly.

Here's one thing I am starting to like: Jordan Norwood. He can get open and catch. He only had 3 catches on the day for 29 yards, but he's one of the few players you can actually point to and say that there's been real progress this year.

Here's another thing I'm liking better each week: the play of Jabaal Sheard. It's hard to single out anyone on the defensive line on a day when Rice had 200+ yards rushing, but the play Sheard made in stripping the ball from Flacco was a thing of beauty. He was getting pressure but Flacco stepped up in the pocket. Sheard didn't give up on the play, closed quickly and knocked the ball loose from Flacco just as he was beginning his throwing motion.

On the other hand, here's something I'm really starting to hate: that play where McCoy takes a 5-step drop, pirouettes, takes three more steps back and then throws a screen pass to a running back with a linebacker draped on him like an oversized suit. The next time it's successful will be the first.

And here's something else I'm really starting to hate: the numbing sameness of each and every game. It matters little who the running back is, who the receivers are or even who is or isn't playing on defense. It matters little, really, who the opponent is.

Now the Browns find themselves on a short week having to face the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night. Chances are it will go exactly the way you think it will so there's probably no reason for you to look so tired come Friday morning. You can be fast asleep by 10 knowing full well how it all turns out.

Run Over

If the Cleveland Browns season is lost, fans and players alike can look back at Sunday’s 37-27 loss to the Baltimore Ravens as the reason why. Needing a victory to both pull even with the Ravens in the AFC North and to even their divisional record, the Browns instead couldn’t solve a pair of rookies and one savvy veteran. Now, instead of evening their record, the Browns find themselves firmly locked in third place in their division and again wondering why and where things went wrong.

The rookies, running back Ray Rice and quarterback Joe Flacco, were primarily responsible for sending the Browns to another home loss. But without several key third down catches by receiver Derrick Mason, the Ravens might instead be the ones questioning themselves.

That Rice, Flacco and Mason were the primary reasons the Browns lost Sunday is beyond question. But a huge momentum killer could be placed once again in the stone hands of receiver Braylon Edwards, except he’d probably drop that, too. Edwards, with a step on a Ravens’ defender, dropped a critical and perfectly thrown pass at the Ravens’ 25-yard line early in the fourth quarter with the game tied that quarterback Derek Anderson launched from inside his own 20-yard line. It was the last time the Browns came close to scoring in a game that until then had as many lead changes as this year’s various presidential polls.

The Browns did have two opportunities late to get in position to either tie or win the game. But their first attempt was a harmless three-and-out and the second ended with Anderson’s first interception in four games, a rather unfortunate softball to linebacker Terrell Suggs that he ran back for a touchdown for the final margin of the game.

When the Browns look back at this game, they’ll wonder how it got away from them so quickly. The inability to contain either Rice or Mason will figure prominently, as will the Edwards drop. But a defense that had bent all season finally broke at all the wrong times and allowed the Ravens to run up 30 points on them. What was most disappointing about that is that the Browns had a 14-point second half lead that evaporated under an onslaught, yes onslaught, of 24 unanswered Ravens’ points. Offensively, the Ravens aren’t exactly Texas Tech.

The game wasn’t necessarily without a handful of Browns’ highlights. It’s just that there weren’t nearly enough. Indeed, all looked well when the Browns went into the half tied. But then again, the Browns led 10-7 at the half when the teams met earlier this season and we all know how that one turned out. It was foreshadowing.

A Josh Cribbs 92-yard kickoff return after Ravens’ quarterback Joe Flacco hit Mason on a 47-yard touchdown pass obscured a mostly dominating Ravens’ defensive performance in the game’s first half. The Browns were limited to two Phil Dawson field goals, one from 23 yards after the Browns’ best drive of the half stalled at the Ravens 7-yard line, and another from 54 yards late in the second quarter.

That second Dawson field goal actually seemed to give the Browns a lift heading into the half. After the Ravens answered Dawson’s first field goal with a 32-yarder of their own by Matt Stover, there was only 29 seconds remaining in the half. Seemingly ready to take that lead into the locker room and assuming Cleveland wouldn’t risk a turnover so late in the half, the Ravens relaxed enough on defense to allow Anderson and the Browns to move quickly into Ravens’ territory. With three seconds left in the half, Dawson then hit the 54-yard field goal, with plenty of room to spare, to knot the score once again, this time at 13-13.

For what seemed to be the first time in way too long, the Browns finally came out of the half as if they really had made adjustments. They seemed to have the Ravens on their heels, both offensively and defensively. After a quick Ravens’ three-and-out to start the second half, Cribbs took a line drive Sam Koch punt back 32 yards, to the Ravens’ 28-yard line. Anderson pump faked on the first play and found Edwards in the right corner of the end zone. Cornerback Frank Walker nearly had the interception but Edwards wrestled it away and held on for the 28-yard grab, helping give Cleveland the quick 20-13 lead with the half barely two minutes old.

On the Browns’ next drive, the middle of the field was wide open for Anderson as he first hit Edwards for a 18-yard play and followed that with a 12-yard pass to Winslow that got the ball to the Ravens’ 15-yard line. Though not a great red zone team all season this time the Browns were able to solve those woes. A 7-yard run by Lewis set up an Anderson to Jason Wright 7-yard touchdown pass that replays showed may have been a bit of a gift. That pushed the score to 27-13. It seemed like a rout might be on.

The Ravens, meanwhile, still seemed stuck somewhere between their locker room and the tunnel leading onto the field, with two quick three-and-outs to start the second half. And just when the Browns seemed poised to take away the Ravens’ sea legs for good, Flacco found Mason on 3rd and 16 with a 20-yard pass to keep the drive alive. Just as a similar Mason catch had done earlier in the game, this catch by Mason seemed to ignite the rest of the team. The Ravens then went into a no-huddle offense that had the Browns struggling to make substitutions on defense. Rice peeled off an 11-yard run, then fullback Le’Ron McClain added another 8 yards. Mason helped keep it going with another key catch and then Rice took over, first with an 8-yard run and then an 18-yard run that initially was signaled a touchdown before it was overruled by the sideline judge. Two plays later though McCain barreled in from the 1-yard line and the Ravens were within a touchdown.

It was the momentum shift the Ravens needed. The Ravens’ defense held the Browns to another quick three-and-out and then returner Yamon Figurs took a Dave Zastudil punt 23 yards back to the Browns’ 42-yard line. Flacco hit Clayton for 14 yards and two plays later found Mason with a pass at the 20-yard line. After the catch Mason made a nice inside move on cornerback Eric Wright and then waltzed the rest of the way into the end zone. A game that the Browns were well in control of was suddenly tied at 27.

With the Browns now reeling, they had the chance to turn it back around on their next series, but the Edwards drop ruined that party and the Browns were forced to punt, again. It was either Edwards’ 11th or 12th dropped pass of the season, depending on who’s counting. Either way, he still leads the league in that dubious category. Rich Gannon, doing the commentary for CBS, suggested that the Browns get vision therapy for Edwards. Hire that man.

Still, the game was tied even if the Browns’ body language suggested otherwise. After holding the Ravens on their next series, the Browns got the ball back but deep in their own territory. An interference call on Winslow, which was actually a smart play in order to avoid an interception, pushed the ball back even further. After Zastudil’s punt put the Ravens at their own 37-yard line, Rice galloped 60-yards down to the Cleveland 3-yard line. But the Browns’ defense stiffened, forcing a 22-yard Matt Stover field goal.

The Browns still had two shots to either tie or win the game. They could have had 41 shots and by that point the result would have been the same. The game was effectively over. The Suggs interception was just some unneeded icing.

Though it arguably didn’t figure into the final outcome, Stover’s first field goal, a 41-yarder that came on the Ravens’ first possession of the game, bears some mention somewhere in the chronicling of this game. A promising Ravens’ drive had stalled at the Cleveland 23-yard line. On third and 11, the Ravens were caught holding. Inexplicably Crennel declined a penalty that would have put the Ravens into a 3rd and 21 from the Cleveland 33-yard line and a potential 51-yard attempt for Stover which seems beyond Stover’s range at this point in his career.

Indeed this was underscored a short time later when the Ravens, facing fourth down from the Cleveland 34-yard line elected to punt instead of attempting the long field goal. But then again, what would a Browns game be without a questionable call by Crennel?

The Browns aren’t necessarily finished for the season, but they aren’t exactly in the catbird seat either. With the erratic play of this team serving as its calling card, there’s every indication that the rest of the season will be a similar ride.

Anderson perfectly captured the vibe. He wasn’t exactly terrible in the game just erratic. At times he looked like the Anderson of last season, or at least early last season. At other times, he looked like the Anderson that most fans now see in their nightmares. In all, he completed 17 of 33 passes for 219 yards and two touchdowns. He also threw the rather unfortunate interception to Suggs that sealed the Ravens’ win and was booed mightily for it. His counterpart, Flacco, was far better. He was 17-29 for 248 yards and two touchdowns. He wasn’t intercepted.

The Ravens’ defense, which hasn’t let an opposing running back rush for over 100 yards in a game, left with that sting in tact. Lewis had 19 carries for 49 yards. Rice, on the other hand, was busy impersonating the Lewis that used to carry the ball for the Ravens against the Browns. He had one big carry after another to keep drives alive. He finished with 21 carries and 154 yards.

The Ravens now appear to have the team that the Browns’ coaches envisioned for themselves. They have a quarterback who can consistently manage a game, even if he is a rookie. They have a running attack that can actually shred a team that is otherwise built to stop the run. They have a lockdown defense that for every body blow it takes it delivers two in return. It’s why, ultimately, the Ravens have the Pittsburgh Steelers in their sights and the Browns don’t.

It’s a short work week for the Browns and then back at it on Thursday night against a Denver Broncos team with a shaky defense. If the Browns’ offense can’t find a way to solve them, then at 3-6 all that’s left is a run toward a low first round draft pick. Like Sunday’s game against the Ravens, it certainly didn’t seem like that would be the case when it all started.