Free Agent Follies--Browns Town Edition

   So ESPN’s Adam Schefter is mocking the Cleveland Browns because they lost four players almost as soon as the bell rung to start the free agent season?  

Welcome to the party, Adam.  Just know you’re a late arrival and all the good slams have long since been taken.

That the Browns lost 4 players to free agency doesn’t much qualify as news let alone as an indictment of the worst franchise in football and likely in all of professional sports.  The Browns already have so many indictments hanging over their heads that adding one to the mix doesn’t even move the needle, not even a little, not even at all.

For this to even be a concern someone, including Schefter, would have to tell me why losing any four players on this team could possibly be impactful to the Browns.  With these players the team has kept its yearly win average at around 4, an average that’s been as rock solid as anything can be when it comes to sports.  Are fans worried this team will actually take a step back?  I’ve got news for Schefter and the others who agree with him.  There are no steps back to take.  The Browns are at the very bottom, whether judged by culture or results.  There’s no place to which to sink and the loss of any 4 players isn’t going to change that one iota.

I guess the best argument one could must is that these four—Alex Mack, Mitchell Swartz, Travis Benjamin, Tashaun Gipson—are in some sense building blocks, players good enough to help the team take a meaningful step forward when surrounded by similar blocks.  A couple have been to the Pro Bowl, a couple are still relatively young.  All true, but so what?

Losing them does create new holes at a time when the latest regime is busy trying to plug the gaping ones that already existed nearly everywhere else on the team.  Nothing new in that, and besides, what’s a few more holes anyway?  Even with the latest escapees this team wasn’t going to be significantly, and perhaps not even modestly, better next year anyway.

Let’s try just once not to get overly involved in that grand Cleveland tradition of overvaluing the players on our perennially losing team.  At the price they played for last year the team was still awful.  It’s hard to imagine how giving them even more money will suddenly make the team better.

No one, including the teams these four signed with, are building teams around any of these free agents.  They’re nice haves, not have to haves.  Eating up cap space by overpaying your own free agents when there are probably cheaper alternatives with similar production is a better way to build a team in the long run anyway.  It’s just that in Cleveland fans have been so beaten down by institutional incompetence that they knee jerk their way to thinking that this team can’t sustain the loss of Mitchell Schwartz. Or Tashaun Gipson. Or Travis Benjamin. Or Alex Mack. 

Meanwhile had this happened in, say, New England, no one would be questioning Bill Belicheck’s wisdom.  And for what it’s worth, it’s pretty telling that none of these four signed with New England, to use but one example.

I’m still waiting for the argument that the Browns need to overpay average talent in order to prove themselves to their fans.  This organization needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up and if every player who donned a Browns uniform had been cut, I wouldn’t argue against that either.  At some point this team will get the total scrub down it really deserves and that doesn’t happen by holding on to the few flickers of talent it had, particularly at inflated prices.

It’s not that these aren’t nice players, but the league is filled with nice players.  Among the list of stupid things this franchise has done in the last 5 years alone, this doesn’t even make the top 20.

What’s of more interest is that the new regime absolutely added to the team and its culture through the subtraction of Johnny Manziel from this franchise.  Plenty of words have been written about this train wreck and I’ve written many of those myself commencing with the decision to draft him.  But never has a player in the history so deserved the fate that’s befallen him.

I have some empathy for Manziel because he’s an addict.  His ability to think often isn’t rational.  He got help last year and ultimately it wasn’t successful.  That’s not unusual.  Many addicts need multiple stints in rehab.  At this point though Manziel is his own worst enemy as he remains in complete denial about his problems, even as he spins further and further out of control.

To blame the Browns for not dumping Manziel as soon as the new league season started is odd.  At least they dumped him.  Professional sports, like most businesses, operates on the greater fool theory.  No matter how dumb a deal you’ve done there’s often a greater fool out there willing to bail you out of your problems.  When it came to Manziel, the Browns had to at least see if there was a greater fool willing to part with a draft choice, even one loaded with conditions.  That wasn’t to be.  Now they await to see if there’s a greater fool wiling to at least claim Manziel off waivers in order to get some cap relief on all the money they owe him.  That isn’t likely to be, either and Manziel will be left to scramble for a foolish team to take a chance on a player to this point who’s been poison.  That will happen.  Teams are always looking to catch lightning in a bottle, even if it’s a bottle of champagne being wielded by Manziel as he floats through a nightclub lagoon on a plastic swan.

Ultimately, real, sustainable improvement for the Browns is years away and that’s assuming the latest group of geniuses running the franchise can actually live up to that description.  That improvement is not going to come by over emphasizing the marginal value of newly expensive players, none of whom would be nearly as productive as they are right now by the time this team is really ready to compete.  And likewise it won’t happen by holding on to sociopaths like Manziel.  The Browns were neither good nor bad this past week.  In Cleveland that actually counts as improvement. 

The Numbing Sameness of it All, Again--Lions Edition

Football, as in life, is all about balance.  In that sense then it’s no surprise that the Cleveland Browns found themselves at 3-3 after a 31-17 shellacking at the hands of one of the NFL’s most interesting teams, the Detroit Lions.

It’s hard to know whether the Lions are good or just looked that way Sunday.  In fairness, the Browns have become somewhat of a cottage industry when it comes to making other teams look good so it’s always hard to judge the level of competition.  Still a team with Matt Stafford and Calvin Johnson is a team worth looking at occasionally.

But we’re not here to praise the Lions and we’re not here really to bury the Browns.  It’s about balance, remember?

So in the interest of balance what this team and its fans know after 6 games is that Brandon Weeden is 0-3 as a starting quarterback and the team is 3-0 when he’s not.  That’s balance, right?  The trouble is that the Browns have little choice at the moment but to continue starting Weeden which can only mean that the heady feeling new head coach Rob Chudzinski had after a 3-game win streak is about to become a pounding migraine the likes of which everyone of his predecessors in Browns 2.0 has felt on most Sunday evenings.

Part of the context of Sunday’s loss was borne just a week ago, the Thursday night win against the Buffalo Bills.  The unfortunate, season-ending injury to Brian Hoyer resonates but not as much as the marked difference in what Hoyer brought to the team vs. what Weeden has to offer.

Though Hoyer's play was limited in the Bills game, his brief moments, coupled with his play the previous two weeks, crystallized why Rob Chudzinski likely has the chance to succeed where Pat Shurmur and company failed.  It also crystallized why Norv Turner may not be much of a head coach but he’s a real asset as an offensive coordinator.

Hoyer has a quicker mind and a quicker release.  Those are two traits needed in any offense by any quarterback, certainly, but what they illustrated best as executed by Hoyer was both the innovative quality of Chudzinski’s plays and Turner’s play calling and how those things can be leveraged to effective use even on a team with a suspect set of a receivers and a running back who more resembles Jamal Lewis in the last throes than Adrian Peterson in his prime.

It was a fun team to watch.  Wins help but so does just the possibility that not every series will end in a punt unless it first ends in an interception.

Weeden came in to relieve Hoyer last Thursday and made a decent, almost workmanlike accounting for himself.  He didn't do enough organically bad to lose the game.  He was important in the win, in fact.

But there is a much different Weeden in the midst when he appears as a starter.  In the first half of Sunday’s game against the Lions, Weeden at first resembled the Weeden of last week’s Buffalo contest.  He executed just well enough so that fans could appreciate, for once, the real benefits of a clever offensive coaching.  Travis Benjamin’s 45 yard end around was a bit of a spark of course but more to the point there was a decided rhythm to what was happening on the field as the Browns built a 10-point half time lead.

Then whatever fluids Weeden took during the half returned him to the form that fans have become frustrated by.  With Weeden at the controls, the offense is turgid.  His execution on even the simplest passing plays is as crisp as month old lettuce.  He holds the ball like he’s afraid the refs won’t give it back to him when the play is over.  It almost doesn’t matter what Chudzinski and Turner draw up.  They know it’s a crapshoot whether or not it can get executed with any sense of precision.

I suspect that Weeden’s career in Cleveland will last only as long as it takes for team president Joe Banner to heed the cries of Chudzinski and Turner to find someone, anyone who can play better than Weeden.  Banner’s faced tougher tasks.  Making sure there are enough beer vendors on game day comes to mind as one.  Until he’s gone though Weeden will surely be defined by his fourth quarter interception that absolutely sucked the air and the crowd out of FirstEnergy Stadium late in the game.

In the pantheon that constitutes interceptions, let’s acknowledge first that except for the interception that a defensive back absentmindedly makes near his team’s goal line on a ball thrown from the opposing 35 yard line on 3rd and 20, there is no such thing as a good interception.  But there are degrees of bad.

The pick 6 tends to be at one end of the continuum, the desperation heave at the end of the first half at the other.  But every once in a while there is an interception so puzzling in its construction, an interception so visually abhorrent, that it causes you to question the meaning of life.  Weeden's interception on Sunday, the second and not the first, was just such an interception.

It’s brief life belies its everlasting impact.  It showcased nearly every wrongheaded element of Weeden's ill considered switch from baseball to football.  The game was still in the balance.  The Browns had just absorbed a 51-yard field goal by David Akers that put them behind by 24-17.  Greg Little, maybe the single worst kickoff returner in the history of the game, fielded the ball 5 yards deep in the end zone and decided to run it out, relying apparently on the same gut instincts and decision making that caused him to lose his senior year of college.  He returned it to the 16 yard line.

Let’s pause for a moment and focus on just this small point.

One of the things that make bad teams bad is poor decision making by mediocre players.  Little has repeatedly put his team in a bind by fielding kicks deep in the end zone.  Lacking either the trait of top speed or the skill of elusiveness, Little struggles to get the ball out to the 20-yard line under even modest circumstances.  When he took the Akers kickoff 5 yards deep in the end zone, these weren’t modest circumstances given the lateness of the game.

You could almost see the thought bubble dancing above Little’s head.  “This is when players make plays,” he appeared to be thinking.  The problem is that between thought and deed he has no filter.  Little is not a “player” in that sense of the phrase.  He can’t catch and he can’t field kicks.  Seizing the moment, Little did what Little does and returned it to the 16 yard line.  If there is  any quarterback in the league who needs to be put in a hole less than Weeden, stand up and defend your choice.

But there was Weeden, asked to put the team on his back, march 80+ yards and tie the game.  Two of the first four plays were positive.  There was a 15 yarder and later an 18 yarder to Josh Gordon that put the ball on the Lions’ 44 yard line.  Then panic set in.

Weeden went back to pass and was pressured by former Browns defensive back C.J. Mosely among others.  Weeden already struggles to make good decisions when he has time.  He has almost no natural instinct on how to handle the rather common occurrences of pressure.  Moving around the pocket with the footwork of Bernie Kosar, Weeden had long determined he wasn’t going to be able to complete a pass downfield.  He also had determined that he didn't want to take a sack.

At that point the standard quarterback playbook calls for a pass out of bounds.  Rolling to his left, Weeden would now be required to throw across his body to get the ball out of bounds.  According to his dissection afterward, Weeden supposedly decided to throw the ball enough over the head of running back Chris Ogbonnaya and, apparently, out of bounds.  I say apparently because I’m not sure Weeden is being perfectly candid.  I think he tried to muscle the ball to Ogbonnaya with a semi side arm shuffle of a pass that ended up sailing harmlessly out of Ogbonnaya’s reach and gently into the arms of DeAndre Levy who immediately was tackled.

It was no pick 6, but that hardly mattered.  There were barely 4 and half minutes to play and the Browns were done to death.  Stafford piled on with another touchdown pass, this one a 10-yarder to Jospeh Faurier, for what turned out to be the final measure of victory.  It was the culmination of 24 straight points against a team that was struggling just to get first downs.

The interception wasn't necessarily unexpected.  With Weeden such can never be the case.  But its suddenness hit with every bit the same force as the double play ground out from Asdrubal Cabrera’s against the Tampa Bay Rays in the wild card game.  It was the clarity of the moment that the Browns had reverted to pre-Hoyer form that sent the fans scurrying for the exits like they had just contracted food poisoning.  Weeden’s play is making fans sick.

You could lay some blame for the defeat at the feet of the defense and that wouldn’t be wildly off the mark.  Entering the game cornerback Joe Haden said that the match up against Calvin Johnson, which didn't really materialize as much as anticipated due to Johnson’s injuries, would allow Haden to measure himself against the best.  Haden's two pass interference penalties in the first quarter are the better measuring stick.  They led to Detroit’s first touchdown.

But this too is where balance comes in.  The defense was on the field most of the second half because their counterparts on offense were incapable of anything resembling ball control.  They were tired if not dispirited.  The Browns’ first four possessions of the second half were all of the 3 and out variety.  The fifth possession featured the Weeden interception.  Then came a mop up possession to end the game which comically ended when Weeden, needing to throw into the end zone instead dumped off a 1 yard pass to tight end Jordan Cameron.  I suspect that wouldn't have been Tom Brady’s first choice or even Brady Quinn’s or even Quinn the Eskimo's.

As an overall matter, the Browns being 3-3 isn't cause for futile screaming in the wind.  It’s better than most anticipated.  Yet why does it feel like 10 games from now the final ledger won't look so balanced?  It's because Browns fans know this movie better than anyone.  The likely outcome, indeed the expected outcome now is that the Browns will still be standing at 3 wins as Chudzinski tries to explain in a post season press conference why he and his charges deserve another year at the helm.

Chudzinski will get his second year and likely more than that.  It will come at the expense of Weeden who if he survives the season in tact, will be a pre-draft trade for a late round pick.  And when Chudzinski gets the opportunity to balance his defense with the offense he's designed led by the quarterback he needs, the Browns for once and maybe more will end up on the right side of the ledger.

The Numbing Sameness of it All, Again--Bengals Edition

Irrespective of venue, the surest way to lose money in a high/low game of poker is to choose the middle course, or worse to shift course once committed.

When the Cleveland Browns traded Trent Richardson (20 carries, 60 yards on Sunday, a tidy 3 yards/carry, again), it seemed that they had committed to go low to improve their lot in next year's draft. But with another improbable win against a supposedly improved Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday the Browns find themselves tied for first in a poor division and probably pondering whether to shift course and now go high.

I liked the version of the Browns that had committed low because it met perfectly with overriding expectations that the NFL universe had for them. Who but the Browns keep building for a tomorrow that never comes? I mean who other than nearly every Cleveland sports team of the last 30 years.

But there they were again, stodgy for long periods of time on offense and stout on defense as they gave another team a case of the Mondays. That makes an actual but modest win streak for a team that looked not just lost but buried for its first two games. Now fans are left to contemplate how a season that was supposed to be spent planning for future seasons yet unplayed went so horribly wrong. It is a shock to the system.

The Browns confound when they win because even the fans can’t believe what’s happening. An incredibly long and effective drive in the fourth quarter to seal a win against what was supposed to be an otherwise formidable (and favored) opponent is not how fans in these parts are used to spending the run up to the 4 p.m. games. That time is usually reserved for a quick bit of yard work or sandwich making before watching the league’s better teams and players square off.

So now the Browns do face a dilemma of sorts, don’t they? The first quarter of the season has all but eliminated the Owen Steelers to jockeying for draft position. The Baltimore Ravens gutted a Super Bowl team of most of its best players, either by design or retirement, and now rely on a misplaced faith in Joe Flacco to impersonate Tom Brady and make due with a cast of rejects. Yesterday's loss proved that's a flawed approach. And the Bengals, who knows what to make of them accept that they couldn't solve a Browns team that hasn't been much of a puzzle to anyone except their fans.

It really is a season the Browns, even a 7-9 Browns, could make the playoffs if only somewhat by default. The AFC North is that winnable at the moment. But doing so or even getting close comes at the expense of the draft choices they coveted. The answer, I suppose, lies in the fact that players and fans are in it to win as much as they can now and let the future roll out as it’s meant to when it’s meant to.

It’s the rare set of circumstances that line up just as they should to yield a result that was too speculative to contemplate. The Cleveland Indians of this season are probably the best example of that in a generation. So holding the eggs for a basket that might never come anyway isn't worth the chance. The only advice though is if the Browns are now committed high stick with it for awhile. Keep any further trade talk in check. Clean out the deadwood if you must, but keep this crew more or less in track and Brandon Weeden on the bench. Let at least another quarter season take place. Tanking the last 8 games, which is easily accomplished by re-inserting Weeden if/when necessary, can still yield powerful results for the future.

Here’s what informs that decision and admittedly it's a series of slender reeds. There’s the aforementioned weakness of a division that is actually worse than the American League Central was this year. But next and not insignificantly it’s the team.

Whether quarterback Brian Hoyer is the real deal or just Kelly Stouffer remains to be seen. What is far clearer is that receiver Josh Gordon does make a distinct difference and that Bill Belichick is somewhere today plotting exactly how to wrest tight end Jordan Cameron from the Browns’ grip. Cameron is the kind of talent that Belichick has built a career finding. Players like that don’t usually fall into Cleveland’s lap, by accident and especially not by design.

There’s also the defense, generally, and the magnificently named Barkevious Mingo, in particular that seems to have opposing teams rattled or at least caged in. Mingo has had a sack in 3 straight games but his presence is even bigger than that. Mingo just enhances a strong defensive line and the linebackers, particularly but not exclusively D’Qwell Jackson, have been so effective that they are covering up a really weak secondary. Buster Skrine continues to underwhelm. Sure he had a key interception yesterday but not to pick nits he was in position to grab the deflection because he had lost sight of his assignment. Had Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton given it a half second more there was a longer completion to be made against the confused Skrine.

On the other side, though, is a running game that will be hard pressed to get appreciably better. Willis McGahee is simply too old in NFL terms to be consistently effective. He’s Jamal Lewis in his last season, more or less. Chris Ogbonnoya will never be anything more than a change of pace back.

It will eventually fall to Hoyer to buy time, which he seems quite capable of doing, as he looks off Greg Little and gets it to Gordon or Cameron or even Travis Benjamin. On Sunday, Hoyer threw short to Benjamin and he turned an otherwise pedestrian NFL stock plan into a 33-yard gain that eventually led to the Browns’ first touchdown.

There were two other key points of note in that series, though. First was the 17 yard pass to Devon Bess from Hoyer that got the ball to the Cincinnati 2-yard line. That followed by what is now becoming routine, the Hoyer to Cameron end zone connection. Cameron simply has excellent style and skill in the red zone. He’s difficult to cover or even account for.

Later in the second quarter came a spectacular 33-yard completion from Hoyer to Gordon on a ball that probably shouldn't have been thrown. But having decided to throw it, Hoyer put it in a position, despite the double coverage and with Adam “Arrested Again” Jones step for step, where only Gordon could make the catch. It was a difficult leaping catch but had it not been completed it wouldn't have been intercepted, either.

Kicker Billy Cundiff killed the momentum of the moment by demonstrating why he was available to the Browns at such a late date. His 37 yard miss on a field goal didn't

inspire much confidence. He’s safe for another week I suspect. The Browns play again Thursday. After that, he ought to prepare to watch others try out for his job.

Those were pretty decent highlights among an otherwise yawn inducing display of football by both teams for most of the game. But far better, far more fulfilling and far more important to the overall direction of the club this season what the drive that sucked up 6 and a half minutes of the fourth quarter and ended up with the Hoyer to Ogbonoyya touchdown.

From the Browns’ 9 yard line the drive started conservatively and predictably enough. Head coach Rob Chudzinski had a lead to protect. A short pass to Cameron. Then McGahee ran for 5 then 4 yards and suddenly a little life sparked. Then Hoyer to Gordon for 13 yards and two plays later to Cameron for 31 yards. At the very least field position had been altered.

Then McGahee ran three straight for 23 yards total followed by a neat little pass to Ogbonnaya for a 1-yard touchdown and suddenly an insurmountable lead emerged even though just under 5 minutes remained. Cincinnati, unable to move the ball all day, likely was banking on the Browns’ defense taking its usual fourth quarter siesta. Instead they played as if they had plenty of sleep the night before and shut the Bengals down once again.

It was a good fundamental example of football by a team with whom the words good and fundamental rarely crossed paths.

The question now that keeps popping up is whether the Browns can demonstrate to a relatively large national audience on Thursday against the Buffalo Bills that it’s new go high strategy makes perfect sense. In a league where the Steelers are Owen Four and so are the Giants, sure, why not?

The Things We Know--Week 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

**

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

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

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

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

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

The Things We Know--Week 4

If you squint your eyes, scrunch your forehead and furl your brow, you could see a way the Cleveland Browns end up ending what was once a 9-game losing streak by beating the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday evening.  If the third quarter sequence in which quarterback Brandon Weeden threw an ill-advised out pass that turned into a 63-yard touchdown for the Ravens and then the always reliable Greg Little doesn’t hold on to a sure touchdown pass doesn’t happen, then that 14 points swings in the Browns direction and next thing you know the Browns leave victorious.

But Weeden did throw a pick 6 and Little proved once again that he can’t catch when it matters most and now the Browns have their 10^th straight loss, their 9^th straight loss to the Ravens and their 293^rd straight loss in the AFC North, or something like that.  But since we established in week 2 that some losses are half wins, this one even more so because the final margin was only 7 points and was competitive, the Browns stand 1-3 instead of 0-4, or should, right?  Not right.

While Weeden continued the up and down existence of a NFL rookie quarterback, Thursday he was trending toward the good, the pick 6 notwithstanding. He showed composure.  He stood in and took hits.  He showed he can throw on target while being blitzed, even  though Little can’t catch.

In that sense, optimism.  But let’s be honest. You probably can attribute at least some of the Browns’ more up than down performance on Thursday to that same ebb and flow of young player development that Weeden is experiencing.  But let’s not overlook perhaps an ever greater equalizer that made the game closer than the talent levels would otherwise suggest:  a short work week.

Here are the two things I noticed that had nothing specifically to do with the Browns.  First, both teams looked tired, Baltimore even more so than Cleveland having played Sunday night.  Three days of rest isn’t enough in the NFL.  The Thursday night games are too quick of a turnaround.  But on the other hand, the lack of rest does more for parity than the reverse order of the NFL draft.

The second thing is that while the regular NFL referees are back on the field, the calls aren’t automatically going to improve.  The blow to Cribbs’ cranium that caused his helmet to fly about 20 feet looked pretty helmet-to-helmet to me, particularly on the replay.  We’ll let Commissioner Roger Goodell figure that one out.  But once the helmet flew off the play should have been blown dead, meaning the fumble should have been nullified.  The refs reviewed it and didn’t reverse themselves, apparently feeling that a play that’s always going to be bang-bang was bang-bang and thus too difficult to tell if the fumble and the helmet flying was simultaneous.  Why have the rule? (Here’s my theory on that: do the “real” refs, for all their bluster, really want to start off their rebirth by reversing a call on themselves so soon out of the gate?  As Gob Bluth would say, “c’mon on.”).  

After the game Thursday, in that way that opposing coaches have toward their counterparts who are besieged with calls for their jobs, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh had nothing but praise for both Pat Shurmur and the Browns.  He called the team well coached and talented and a team that is not only getting better but will be something to contend with for years to come. I wonder if he knows something.

Anyway, that does beg the overarching question coming out of Thursday’s loss: are the Browns getting better?

Wins are the measuring stick ultimately and on that most important benchmark the answer is surely no.  But, you say, they look better than a year ago.  Maybe.  Last season the Browns opened against the Bengals and played pretty much the same game they played against the Bengals a few weeks ago with pretty much the same result, a competitive loss.  They followed that up with a win against woeful and Peyton Manning-less Indianapolis which gave the fans some comfort that at least the Browns weren’t the worst team in the league.  Then they won again, against Miami, a lousy team as well.  Then they were pasted by the Tennessee Titans.  They followed that up with a competitive loss to Oakland, a game they actually should have or at least could have won (like Thursday night’s against Baltimore) and followed that up with an ugly win against Seattle.

So after 6 games last season the Browns were 3-3 and in week 7 had another competitive loss to the San Francisco 49ers.  My only point is that the Browns had a horrible record last season but in most cases the losses were the kind of losses like Thursday’s and on a week-by-week basis the fans kept finding reasons for optimism even as they were pulling out their hair from another loss.

In other words, even in the context of last season there’s scant evidence that the Browns are a better team this year than last.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t it just means that there’s nothing more than the overly optimistic gut feelings of Browns fans to make that claim.

All that said, the Browns’ touchdown drive last night was a better, more professional drive than any drive the team put together last season.  Down 9-0 and backed up in their own territory early in the second quarter, the Browns were at the precipice of letting the game get out of hand and sending everyone in Cleveland to bed early.  They had just gone 3-and-out on their two previous possessions and another 3-and-out would have been fatal, a few first downs hopeful and a touchdown seemingly impossible.

When Weeden completed a 3^rd and 4 pass to Ben Watson that took the ball to the Cleveland 18, it mostly eliminated the Ravens getting great field position on what seemed like an inevitable punt.  Then Weeden threw deep to Little who defied all odds and made a nice catch for 43 yards, to the Ravens 39 yard line.  At this point a Phil Dawson field goal seemed within reach and suddenly the adrenalin returned to the blood stream.  Another Weeden pass, this one to Travis Benjamin, got the ball to the Baltimore 27 and things were now rolling.  Trent Richardson ground out a 7 yard carry, taking one of the game’s biggest assholes, Ray Lewis, with him for the last 3 yards.  A pass two plays later to Benjamin got the ball to the Baltimore 1 yard line and then Richardson finished off the drive by showing the kind of NFL speed necessary to turn the corner on defensive backs, waltzing in the end zone for the touchdown.

In every sense of the word it was a professional drive.  It was extremely well executed throughout and even though I know that every Browns’ fan feared it would end in a turnover, it didn’t.  It really was the kind of drive that justified that aforesaid overly optimistic gut feeling that the Browns are a better team this year.

The third quarter pick 6 by Weeden, which even Scriff the dog saw coming on such a slow developing out pattern, was the cold slap in the face that fans ultimately expected, but still, if Little doesn’t drop the pass later in the quarter, it wipes out that mistake and the game is much different.  See, even I can get sucked in by irrational exuberance.

**

Let’s talk about Little, again, although briefly.  If Shurmur is a man of his word or, forget that, if he has any hope of keeping the respect of the rest of the team, he’ll send Little to the bench just as he said he would earlier in the week.

Little did have 4 catches for 77 yards including the critical catch during the Browns’ touchdown drive that accounted for the bulk of his yards, but it was the catches that he didn’t make that stand out more.  In the first half he literally let a ball go through his hands in an amazing display of a lack of hand eye coordination.  The ball was through his hands a split second or two before he moved them together to try and make the catch.  

The bigger miss was the one late in the fourth quarter that would have brought the Browns to within 3 with plenty of time left.  Weeden was under extreme pressure yet still found a wide open Little at the end zone and Little inexplicably dropped the pass.  Phil Dawson kicked a 51-yard field goal that got the Browns within a touchdown, meaning they were technically still in the game, but the Little drop was every bit as deflating as Shurmur’s decision last Sunday to punt at midfield with 6 minutes left and his team down by 10. Some things just can’t be overcome.

It is true, of course, that you can’t punish someone into competence so benching Little won’t in and of itself make him a better player.  But if there’s a better player inside of Little that needs some coaxing then a benching would do some good.  Little lacks focus and the only way to foster a better approach is not to sanction that conduct by continuing to play him and simply hoping he wakes up.

Travis Benjamin, on the other hand, showed a few things Thursday night that make you think that he can actually be a significant contributor.  His inside route that got the Browns down to the Ravens 1 yard line and led to the Richardson touchdown was a revelation.  It’s clear that opposing defensive backs respect his speed and thus give him a slightly bigger cushion.  Benjamin recognized the advantage and made a nice fake out and then back in leaving him wide open for the pass that Weeden delivered on time and on budget.  It was the kind of play that few receivers wearing Browns’ uniforms have been able to make in the last 14 years and the kind of play that could make Little’s deserved benching irrelevant.

**

In the version of the Browns that is 2.0, has there been a player more missed than Joe Haden?  His suspension for testing positive for a stimulant and violating the league’s drug policy has caused about as big of a drop off at a position as I can recall seeing in the last 14 years.

Now, charitably, that may not mean much in the context of this team, but Haden’s loss is still pretty noticeable.  Teams are clearly picking on Buster Skrine and will until he can show that he’s a credible presence.  He’s running out of time.  Haden has one more game to sit out and thus fans have one more game to watch opposing receivers run wild, run open and run free.

Indeed Skrine’s days could be numbered if Haden comes off and is able to demonstrate that the drop off from him to Skrine is as big as it appears at the moment.  I’m not saying that Skrine is the worst defensive back the Browns have had in years, but he’s starting to make long for Brandon McDonald.

**

The Browns get a much needed break to reassess the season at its quarter post.  Fans that were stupidly optimistic have been slapped back to reality.  Others, meaning the majority, meaning the edgy cynics, feel justified in their pessimism.  Then there is the rest who know that nothing is ever as bad or as good as it seems and that holds true even for the Browns.

What we know now, four games into a season that seems longer by the minute, is what we knew all along: this team will struggle.  This team is struggling.  And while it’s what happens on the feel that we react to most emotionally, it’s what’s about to happen off the field, the transfer of ownership, that should have the most impact on this team.

Jimmy Haslam III has been ever present since his deal.  He’s put in more time with this team in just the last few weeks then Randy Lerner has since he inherited the team from his dad.  The Browns need a more active owner and that time is nearly at hand.  Haslam is a successful businessman who knows how to build and while the Browns will clearly present the biggest challenge of his life, there’s more reason than not to think he’s up to it.

The transition to Haslam begins in earnest in October.  That’s when the Browns 3.0 begins and our long, national nightmare hopefully comes to an end.