Lingering Items--Bengals Edition

Listening to Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon broadcast last week’s Cleveland Browns-Cincinnati Bengals game, you would have thought that the story of the Browns dismal season is wrapped up in merely a series of unfortunate injuries. If only that were the case.

The Browns do have 11 players on injured reserve at the moment, which is plenty. But on closer look, it’s hard for anyone to conclude that this is the reason the team regressed so dramatically from the year before.

There are 3 quarterbacks on injured reserve, but the season was long gone before the first one, Derek Anderson, found his way there. When Brady Quinn ended up there all it did was cut short the time he had to demonstrate that he should have been the starter all along. Ken Dorsey was placed on injured reserve just a few days ago.

Similar stories abound with the rest of the players. Indeed, of all the players on the list, the one that stands out as having the most impact is Ryan Tucker. Tucker, for all practical purposes, missed the entire season. He was out early, came back for a few quarters and was gone again. His absence disrupted the chemistry of a line that played nearly as well as any team’s line in 2007. This season, without Tucker, the offensive line is struggling to be average.

With Tucker out, the Browns were forced to play Rex Hadnot. All he did was underscore that the Browns have a new area of need—right guard. Hadnot is far more suited as a back up, nothing more. Tucker is a 12-year veteran and while he has vowed to return, counting on him doing so and then playing at a high level would be foolish. Age and injuries take their toll on everyone, no more so than linemen. If the Browns end up going into next season with Hadnot as the starter, don’t look for any significant improvement on the offensive line.

Some may argue that losing defensive lineman Robaire Smith early in the season hurt the team as well, particularly the running game. That could be, but Shaun Rogers and Corey Williams, the two players counted on to stop the run, played most of the season. Each suffered his share of bumps and bruises that at time limited their playing time and effectiveness. Having Smith around would have helped the depth.

But Smith’s injury wasn’t the reason the run defense fell apart. Simply, it was the fact that the Browns don’t have a credible complement of linebackers and that was before Antwan Peek landed on injured reserve. If the point of the 3-4 is to give the linebackers more freedom to make plays, then the counterpoint is that without linebackers plays won’t get made until opposing runners make it to the defensive backfield. It’s no coincidence that 5 of the top 8 players with the most tackles on this team are in the defensive backfield.

The overall point, though, is that injuries happen to every team. Teams built with some depth find a way to overcome them. Teams without depth underscore the injuries as a way of diverting attention from the far broader problems.

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Speaking of a lack of depth, it’s hard to fault a team for not being three deep at quarterback, but it’s still worth asking how Ken Dorsey has remained in the league since 2003.

Dorsey is the perfect example of why the position of general manager can be so trying at times.

On paper, Dorsey would seem to have everything it takes to be a star quarterback in the league. He had the pedigree of a major college program and nearly unparalleled success at that level. As every announcer has told us since Dorsey took over for an injured Brady Quinn, Dorsey compiled a 38-2 record as a starter with the Hurricanes. In short, he would seem to be a general manager’s dream pick, or at least the dream pick of every fan playing general manager in his own mind.

The real general managers in the league had Dorsey pegged as a late round choice, which is what he was. The San Francisco 49ers may have thought they had lucked into a gem in Dorsey when they picked him in the 7th round in 2003 but as it turns out, whoever had Dorsey being drafted at all was being overly optimistic.

Despite possessing a good football mind and the physical skills to compete at the NFL level, Dorsey lacks the one attribute that is absolutely critical, arm strength. He can’t throw very far down field and he can’t throw very hard across it either. More than anything else over the last three weeks, Dorsey proved that he doesn’t belong in the league, unless it’s on the sidelines in dress pants and wearing a head set.
It’s still rather stunning when you think about it that Dorsey was completely unable to lead this team to a touchdown while serving as its starter. In fact, he never really came all that close to getting the ball in the end zone. Had Dorsey been able to suit up this week, there’s little doubt that another shut out was inevitable. There simply is nothing about his game that an opposing defense needs to respect.

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Speaking of respect, it’s possible that the Pittsburgh Steelers and their head coach, Mike Tomlin, will take it easy on the Browns this week, but don’t count on it. With nothing to play for, it would be hard to believe that the Steelers would still take the Browns lightly, for at least two reasons.

First, the chance to add on to a 10-game winning streak against the Browns is awful enticing, even for professional athletes. Second, even without that motivation the Steelers still well remember how they were the afterthought in the preseason while the Browns were the sexy choice to win the AFC North. The Steelers didn’t take well to that talk then and while they have more than answered the critics since there’s nothing wrong with rubbing it in, either.

The real problem with the Browns’ losing streak against the Steelers is that it has basically eviscerated a once great rivalry. Browns fans may still hate the Steelers but it has nothing to do with anything that’s happened recently. It’s simply tradition at this point with its genesis fading into distant memories.

Indeed, outside of maybe Hines Ward and Ben Roethlisberger, most Browns fans don’t even bother to get to know the names of their former rival anymore. My guess is that hard core Browns fans can name more Steelers from the 1970s than they can on this year’s team. At this point the Steelers are just another team that regularly uses the Browns to pad their own stats twice a year.

In many ways, what’s happened with the Cleveland-Pittsburgh rivalry is the same thing that’s happened with the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry. At any point in which one team becomes dominant in the series, it ceases to be a rivalry until the other team is able to mount a credible comeback.

The Browns-Steelers rivalry is not going to be resurrected by a Browns win every couple of years. It’s only going to be resurrected once the Browns become a credible franchise and the games between the two teams take on some legitimate meaning.

When the schedule makers put together this season’s slate they probably thought that a season ending Browns-Steelers game could very well be for the AFC North crown. As it turns out, it’s just another chance to remind Browns’ fans how long it’s been since the match up meant anything.

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Given that the Browns’ offense is plumbing the depths of history at this point with their scoreless streak, this week’s question to ponder was going to be some variation of how badly do you think the Browns would lose to the winless Detroit Lions? But that question already is getting a healthy debate on the various message boards and, personally, I think the score would be at least 21-0 in favor of the Lions.

Thus, we’ll turn our attention to all the holes that have been revealed on this team and simply ask: If you were the Browns’ new general manager, what would be your first priority?

Unfortunate Indifference

For however long Barry Bonds plays baseball and perhaps forevermore, steroids and baseball will go together like pizza and cheese. And if that’s how it must be then so be it. But just as any baseball record related to hitting and set during the so-called steroids era will always be suspect in most fans minds, it also beg a rather interesting question as to why those same fans shrug when it comes to steroids and other sports, particularly pro football.

For proof, look no further than the news that Cleveland Browns starting offensive lineman Ryan Tucker tested positive for the euphemistic “banned substance” late last week. It caused a bit of a ripple locally but was a complete non-story nationally. And the local ripple was due not to the fact that Tucker tested positive for steroids but more for the fact that the line will be that much thinner for the first four games of the season, a sort of “it figures” resignation from the local fans.

The reason steroid use by pro football players isn’t as big of a story is likely related to two key factors. First, football got out ahead of the issue and without any acrimony. It has been random drug-testing players since 1987. Baseball, on the other hand, pretty much had to be bludgeoned into a credible testing policy by Congress, a policy that only went into effect at the beginning of the 2005 season. To most fans, starting testing in 2005 was mostly a case of closing the barn door long after the horses, in the persons of Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, among many others, had left the stable.

Second, while football has literally had scores of players who have tested positive since 1987, most have been offensive or defensive linemen and the occasional linebacker, none particularly high profile, save for Shawne Merriman last season. Moreover, because of the types of players involved, like Ryan Tucker, there is at least an understanding, if not an expectation, that these players need to bulk up. It’s part of their job description.

Though baseball hasn’t caught anybody of note in the two years it has been testing, unlike football some of it’s highest profile players have nonetheless been implicated including Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and the aforementioned Bonds, McGwire and Sosa. And these aren’t just mere implications either.

Canseco has been extremely forthcoming about his use, even if it was for profit. Giambi seems to have been tortured by his use and his admissions have come slowly and begrudgingly, but surely nonetheless. Sheffield is an admitted user, though he claims it was unintentional. McGwire got out of the game before he could be tested and then refused to answer any questions about his past while testifying before Congress, thus raising suspicions in the minds of those who were previously uncertain and confirming for those who figured as much anyway. Sosa took a sabbatical from the game as the spotlight got hotter, even claiming a sudden loss of his command of the English language in front of Congress to avoid answering tough questions. In the process, Sosa and his inflated head became a national joke. When he did come back to baseball a few years later he was literally half the man he was before he left. Bonds, like Sheffield, has copped to the unintentional use of the “clear and the cream.”

But it’s not just the implication of high profile players that has fans in knots; it’s the association of those players with some of the most sacred records in all of baseball, home run records that has fostered the deep dissatisfaction. When it comes to these records, fans are incredibly protective. For years, Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in 1961 was a record with an asterisk because he set the record in a season that was eight games longer than when Ruth set the record in 1927. Though no such asterisk has ever accompanied Hank Aaron’s setting of the career home run mark, he was nonetheless subject to racist death threats as he was closing in on Babe Ruth’s career mark of 714 home runs. That’s a pretty volatile environment and these involved players who were never suspected of cheating.

At the time McGwire and Sosa were engaging in their chase of Roger Maris’ single season home run record (which both broke), it was a feel-good story after a contentious strike and performance-enhancing drugs were not really part of the conversation. But the revelations since have clearly tarnished fans’ memories of both players as well as that season, to the extent that they even think about that season at all anymore. By 2001 when Bonds reset the mark with 73, steroids were being openly whispered about but Bonds also had other problems, mostly related to a cranky personality that made him only slightly more fan friendly than Hitler. As the whispers about Bonds grew louder, the fans became even more suspicious and disdainful, except of course for the Pollyannaish fans in the Bay Area. Even as he sits on the precipice of the most cherished record of all, he’ll never escape the cloud.

In this context, it’s no wonder that baseball suffers from such a sordid reputation with steroids while football has mostly been given a pass. This is unfortunate.

It may be true that in football, the players involved in steroids aren’t themselves breaking any records, sacred or otherwise. But it’s also true that a steroid-enhanced player is probably helping contribute to the achievements of a team’s skill players who are breaking records, which in some fashion makes those records suspect. But fans aren’t apt to make such connections and until a high profile skill player, say a Peyton Manning, Tom Brady or LaDanian Tomlinson is linked with steroids, football fans are never going to see the impact steroid use has in football like they do in baseball.

Instead, what you will continue to see is the general indifference on display in the case of Tucker. To his credit, Tucker hasn’t torn a page from the Sheffield/Bonds playbook and claimed any sort of unintentional use. He’s been pretty forthcoming, actually. But the fact that he used and is now suspended was not the kind of distraction that the Browns needed in what is shaping up to be a make or break year for the franchise.

Tucker, like the many other football players who have come before him, will pay the price of their use through a suspension. But when it’s over, it will mostly be forgotten. Heck, fans and players alike were so forgiving in the case of Merriman, he made the Pro Bowl last year despite his four-game suspension. The NFL may have instituted the “Merriman” rule to keep that from happening again, but the truth is that when it comes to steroids in football, fans aren’t holding players to the same standards being applied to Bonds and his cohorts. In the end, this is why, despite the fact that football has had its program in place for so long, players continue to get caught and steroid use continues to plague the NFL just as much as it does baseball. And, like they do with football, it’s time for football fans to hold the players and the league more accountable. After all, only the credibility and the integrity of the league are at stake, if that means anything anymore.