Staying the Course, Again

If you treat press conferences conducted by Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren as performance art, then his latest body of work, on display as it was Thursday, didn't quite measure up to the provocative performance of a few weeks back. Thursday he was calm, collected and all together non-specific. It’s the kind of performance anyone could have turned in.

It paled in comparison to the star turn he made the last time he took to the podium spitting, spewing and basically blaming the media for being nattering nabobs of negativism who won't be getting any extra Browns playoff tickets from him. Like any example of performance art, it made you think even if that thought was “what the f _ _ _?”

But if you treat a Holmgren press conference as an opportunity to learn when exactly the Browns will quit wandering through the NFL like they’re one of the Lost Tribes of Israel then it was a major disappointment. Holmgren took about 75 minutes to say what can be summed up in 3 words “stay the course.”

Actually, I have no great problem with Holmgren's message, mainly because he's right. It’s just that he’s not the first or only Cleveland Browns’ executive to espouse that view. Just the latest. Maybe I should consider renaming this blog to "Stay the Course, Again."

It’s rather defeating to reminisce about such an inglorious past, but if one of the great truths in the NFL is stay the course, then the other great truth is that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

In late November, 2006, with the Browns under the unsteady leadership of Romeo Crennel, a serial good guy but an undisciplined mess of a head coach, and reeling once again, general manager Phil Savage stepped to the podium to proclaim his faith in Crennel and to declare, wait for it, that the Browns would be staying the course.

Savage, like a country lawyer, made an impassioned argument for staying the course, pointing out that the really good teams and franchises got that way through stability. He then talked about Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech and how fans wanted him out after his first season and by staying the course things worked out well. He talked about Brian Billick at Baltimore and how fans wanted him out and yet he went on to win a Super Bowl before he, too, was fired. He then talked about Bill Cowher to presumably make the point about how good things happen when you stick with one horse.

When that 2006 season ended, the Browns sat where they sit today—4-12. And yet, in the short term, Savage was right. The next season the Browns won 10 games even though they didn’t make the playoffs, a very rare occurrence in the NFL for any 10-win team. The problem? They really weren’t on the right course.

The next season demonstrated that the previous was achieved mostly through smoke, mirrors, an easy schedule and one transcendent season by Derek Anderson, who then fell off the map. The Browns quickly regressed the next two seasons when their talent didn’t match the assessment they had made of it. Crennel was canned, so was Savage and it was time again for a new course.

That next course lasted about a half season after Lerner impulsively hired Eric Mangini and then watched him lay waste to the franchise in near record time. Lerner quickly brought in Holmgren to chart still another course, which is where the franchise finds itself today.

But the back story to why all that occurred lies in the course the Browns were staying under Savage. Four months after Savage’s impassioned “stay the course” plea Lerner visited various newsrooms around the state to essentially make the same pitch. It wasn’t so much that he was making the case to keep Savage and Crennel as he was that Crennel and Savage needed much more time to see their plan through because the cupboard was bare when they arrived.

Lerner talked about how a good NFL team needs about 35 core players and at that time, early 2007, the Browns only had 18. In other words, there was much work to be done and it could only get done by, wait for it, staying the course.

The problem was that when things all came crashing down it turned out that Lerner (and Savage, by proxy) had missed the mark badly on the state of the team. Not only did it not have 18 core players, not even close, but they hadn’t made any meaningful progress in adding to the mix.

Here is the list of players from 2007 that Lerner claimed were core to the Browns’ development as a upper tier franchise if only the course would be stayed: “I have (Joe) Jurevicius, (Orpheus) Roye, Kellen Winslow, Braylon Edwards, Kamerion Wimbley, Sean Jones, Brodney Pool, Eric [Steinbach], Jamal Lewis, Andra Davis, Charlie Frye, D'Qwell Jackson, Leigh Bodden, Josh Cribbs for special teams certainly if not other, Steve Heiden, and emerging players like Leon Williams, Lawrence Vickers, Jerome Harrison, Travis Wilson.”

Remember, that’s 2007, just 4 years ago. Only 3 current Browns’ players remain with the team: Steinbach (injured all season), Jackson and Cribbs. Arguably all 3 remain in the “core” category. But the rest of the list is mostly laughable, especially the inclusion of players like Jones, Lewis, Davis, Frye, Williams, Harrison and Wilson.

Yet that’s the course that Lerner wanted to stay, at least until he fired Savage. It illustrates mostly the disconnect between theory and reality. The Browns’ cupboard wasn’t bare. There was no cupboard in the first place. It was a team with a random assortment of players that couldn’t be counted on to accomplish much of anything, so it didn’t. Had the team actually been further along, as implied by Lerner, it would be paying dividends today and fans wouldn’t be getting another earful of stay the course messages from the latest architect.

So while I have no great quibble with Holmgren’s message, it really was delivered in a vacuous way and without any real understanding of why it tends to fall on deaf ears. Far better than Holmgren, Browns fans know their history. They know what they’ve been promised and they know when they’ve been let down.

It would have been would have been instructive to hear Holmgren’s or general manager Tom Heckert’s view on how many core players the Browns need, how many they currently have and who they are as the context for staying the course they’re on. But Holmgren was too busy dodging specifics for earnest eye-brow furling instead.

In truth, the Browns do have more core players now then they had in 2007, but the number is still south of 10 and that, ultimately, is the crux of the problem. I’m not sure that any NFL franchise can ever have or even needs 35 core players. But they certainly need at least 20 and can’t win more than a handful of games when it’s less then 10. When you consider that the Browns aren’t even in double digits at the moment, you start to appreciate the enormity of the task at hand.

So it all boils down to the most operative question: “what course?” To Holmgren and Heckert, that course is the one that sees them gathering draft choices like game tickets at Chucky Cheese and making them count. It means eschewing any sort of quick fix through free agency. It means giving the players on board, at least those that are worth the effort, the time to grow. That’s all well and good if they’re right about what they have at the moment. They may be but too much history suggest otherwise.

Still, if this is what fans are being force fed and Holmgren and Heckert are really committed to building methodically, then they are absolutely right about one thing: they can’t blow the upcoming draft. They have gathered together a number of picks and need to hit on nearly every one if this franchise is really going to take a significant, permanent step forward in the next few years.

If they don’t then it will be time for Lerner to hire his next genius and set his next course and time for the rest of us to once again find another team to root for in the playoffs.

All Giddy in Berea

For a team that just completed another year of abject futility, the Cleveland Browns seem awful giddy at the moment. Head coach Pat Shurmur had a real bounce about him at his year end press conference, in contrast to his usual dour demeanor. All the post-season stories being written focus solely on the great future this team has, according to players and staff alike. Of course, the post-season stories being written after the last several seasons said pretty much the same thing from a different but similarcrew, but why quibble?

If the Browns are happy with their direction, then why spoil the party? Would it really do any good at this point to talk about the 4 wins this season, which is one less then in either of Eric Mangini’s two miserable seasons? Is it really necessary at this juncture to talk about a team that scraped the bottom of the barrel once again on offense and approached scoring touchdowns like teenagers approach taking the SATs?

When it comes to the Browns, cynicism easily prevails. Fans have heard so many versions of the same warmed over rhetoric about new directions, building the foundation, patience, time, draft picks, development and the like that they’ve become jaded to any process.

Need proof? How many fans were at Cleveland Browns Stadium this past Sunday to watch their team play the hated Pittsburgh Steelers? Unless they were disguised as orange seats or decided to wear black and gold just to blend in, then not many.

I doubt that Randy Lerner noticed but perhaps Mike Holmgren did, but only if he has an attendance bonus clause attached to his contract. It was the most visible sign yet that the fans aren’t yet buying what he’s selling, perhaps because they still aren’t sure at this point exactly what he is selling except an amorphous concept of patience that thus far has resulted in Holmgren squandering one season in order to keep a coach he never wanted and allowing a rookie head coach to take on two jobs instead of concentrating on the one he’s never had.

As I sit here again dissecting another season, I still have no idea what this team stands for, and that's been true now for years. I understand that a new offense is still in its infancy and that there are a dearth of players on the current roster that could execute it anyway, but as practiced this season it all seemed like just such a big mess.

On defense, it’s a mixed bag. There was significant improvement when you consider the overall stats but yet this team still can’t stop even mediocre running backs from gaining huge chunks of yardage each and every game. The defense isn’t particularly physical as all the missed tackles each week will attest. And while the pass defense was fairly stout, particularly inside the red zone, they still allow way too many big plays to be considered an upper echelon unit.

But those are the details. What’s the bigger picture? What’s Mike Holmgren’s vision? What kind of team is he really looking for? What’s Pat Shurmur’s vision? What kind of team is he really looking for?

Those answers to those questions are just as mysterious today as they were the day Holmgren arrived and as near as anyone can tell, outwardly this team has made no progress in essentially two years of Holmgren’s leadership. I guess when you don't have a specific destination, any path will do.

All that said, though, perhaps we should take some solace in the words of defensive back Sheldon Brown who expounded at length Monday in a story written by the Plain Dealer’s Mary Kay Cabor on how close this team is to being significantly better. When his playing days are over, the front office should grab him if for nothing else then team spokesmen. He offered the most cogent and articulate explanation on the state of the team that I've heard in years.

Brown dispelled two related notions up front. First, this team is not a mere key draft pick or two from changing its fortunes. Second, using a first round draft pick on Heisman trophy winner Robert Griffin III with the thought that he’d be the team’s savior is “crazy.”

Brown’s right. Fans are rightly frustrated but that doesn’t mean they’re not crazy. There a fair number of them at the moment that have gone off the rails in trying to find the appropriate target(s) for their frustration. It may very well be that Colt McCoy isn’t a franchise quarterback, for whatever that means anymore, but anyone who suggests that this year provided enough evidence of that is as loopy as Michelle Bachman.

The Browns’ offensive line, particularly the entire right side, was as weak as any team in the league and perhaps the weakest of any team not the Chicago Bears. When Eric Steinbach went down, general manager Tom Heckert did an awful job of finding credible backups. Tony Pashos, as brittle as a porcelain tea cup, couldn’t block a cold at this point in his career. Shaun Lauvao? If he wasn’t false starting or holding, you wouldn’t have even noticed him on the field, except as the one with his hand on his hips as he looked at his man draped on top of a prone McCoy. As for their backups? I defy anyone to name them without looking at the Browns’ depth chart.

The weakness in the line manifested itself in poor pass protection and a poor running game, the two keys for any quarterback to be successful. And that’s before we even stop to consider that the number one receiver on the team didn’t even play his senior year in college, the number two receiver catches like Braylon Edwards and runs like Bob Golic, and the third receiver is a converted quarterback.

There isn’t a quarterback in the league, and I say that without any intent to exaggerate, who could have turned that chicken stuffing into chicken salad, not a one. So even if Andrew Luck somehow fell to the Browns (or they traded up), absent any other change on offense the only change you’d see next year is that the Browns would go from 30 to 32nd in the league in scoring and the team would once again be staring down the barrel of a four or five win season.

What the Browns need far more than a quarterback at the moment are receivers, offensive linemen and running backs, in that order, assuming Steinbach can play next season. If Steinbach cannot come back, then it’s a toss up between linemen and receivers as to where the need is the greatest.

Where Brown was particularly insightful, however, was in talking about the youth on the team and the need to let it mature rather than simply blow things up as the Browns tend to do every two years. Brown believes that the additional experience that the young players on defense have gotten this past year will pay huge dividends, assuming the players are willing to do what it takes to take the next step in their own development. That’s a big assumption, perhaps, but it is true that the biggest leap for most professional players is between their rookie and sophomore years.

Finally, Brown talked about Shurmur and had nothing but praise for him. It’s become popular of late to blast Shurmur, at least when fans have taken a break from blasting McCoy, for the ills of the Browns. It’s misplaced.

Shurmur, like McCoy, is very far down on the list of things that went wrong with the team this year. Mostly the top 20 spots of that list are populated by things such as a lack of credible players (blame the general manager) and the impact on the lockout on a rookie coach installing a new system.

Shurmur, like the young players on defense, has to step up his game, but to suggest that he can’t progress as a head coach or that he’s in over his head is to ignore all evidence to the contrary. As Brown noted, though he didn’t have to, the one thing you could definitely say about this team in a positive way is that it didn’t quit at any point during the season.

There were low points and blow outs but those weren’t sustained. Usually the team kept it close even as they were usually overmatched and often by a huge margin. Both Pittsburgh games provided the best example of that, particularly this past Sunday’s when it would have been far easier to have gone through the motions then to put any effort into it.

I don’t necessarily share Brown’s optimism that this team is close, mostly because it’s a mantra that I’ve heard before and partly because it’s exactly what you’d expect an aging player looking to hang on would say in order to stay in the good graces of a club he hopes will employ him again next season. I do admire his candor nonetheless.

And irrespective of whether I or anyone else share’s Brown’s optimism, it doesn’t mean he’s not speaking the truth. He is. The only way for this team to get good enough to make the playoffs on a regular basis is to pick a true course and stay it for more than a year or two.

But that’s not what the fans want to hear, mostly because they’re fed up with hearing the truth and don’t trust that anyone associated with the Browns has the ability to do anything meaningful about it anyway, as two decades of futility demonstrate.

Another Season on the Runaway Train

How you view the Cleveland Browns 13-9 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday depends mightily on the bar you set. As measured by the usual late-season poundings the Browns endure from the big brother that's probably getting tired of pushing them around, it was a success. As measured by the usual things the NFL tends to chronicle more meaningfully, like wins and losses, not so much.

The loss came in the same mind numbing way that most Browns losses have come this season. A solid defensive effort for most of the game kept it close but a dearth of playmakers on offense once again kept the Browns from entering the end zone when they had the opportunity and when they needed it most. Settling for field goals early and unable to capitalize on two Steelers' turnovers and a final shot at the end zone late, the Browns lost to the Steelers for what seems like the 183rd straight time.

It also completed the Browns' 8th losing season in their last 9, and 16th losing season since 1990. It also marked the 10th time since their return in 1999 that they've won 6 or fewer games in a season. There's simply no way to sugarcoat it. The Browns as a franchise really are a runaway train, as Chris Palmer so presciently noted over a decade ago.

But really in the grand scheme of all things Browns, this was as meaningless of a game that could possibly take place so getting exorcised at this point is a wasted energy. Disregard any notion from some of the players, such as Josh Cribbs, who called the game “their Super Bowl.” It's a rather hollow statement, like “moral victory.” The Steelers had something to play for, the Browns didn't. The Steelers took care of business, the Browns did what they've done 12 other times this season, play the victim.

The point, I guess, is that the backdrop to Sunday's game was about as irrelevant as a Browns' game can get, at least in terms of having any meaning locally. It's in that context, truly, that this game must be quickly viewed and easily forgotten.

If you're nevertheless trying to discern some meaning, then two things stood out. First, the Browns' shortcomings, so brilliantly displayed game after game, are as apparent as the backside of Kim Kardashian. Second, and to be more specific, what Sunday did so ably demonstrate is that the failures of this team don't start with the quarterback. Seneca Wallace, subbing again for Colt McCoy, looked exactly like McCoy has looked most of the season.

Maybe that's an indictment of McCoy or Wallace or both, I'm not sure anymore. What it is an indictment of is a porous right side of the line that can't sustain blocks in the passing game or open up holes in the running game and a lack of big time receivers that can consistently be counted on to scare an opposing defense.

Take the example of the Browns' two possessions in the fourth quarter following fumbles by Steelers' running back Isaac Redman and then the Browns' final possession of the game.

The first possession took place just as the fourth quarter started. Taking over at the Pittsburgh 43 yard line (after a face mask penalty on James Farrior on the Joe Haden recovery of the Stedman fumble) and trailing just 13-9, this was the place where a good team rises up and snatches the momentum.

Not the Browns. Wallace threw incomplete on first down and Montario Hardesty had no gain on second down. Wallace completed a rare pass to Mohamed Massaquoi, rare not because he wasn't throwing to Massaquoi but rare because Massaquoi actually held on, that gave the Browns a first down. But that's as far as it went. Hardesty lost two yards on the next play, Massaquoi dropped Wallace's next pass and then a short, underneath pass to Greg Little was incomplete. The Browns were forced to punt.

Given an almost identical second chance minutes later, the Browns reacted in almost identically futile fashion. After a completion for a first down to Cribbs, Wallace then missed on his next three passes and the Browns again were forced to punt with just over 4 minutes remaining in the game.

The Steelers had a chance to run out the clock and seemed well on their way to doing so but on 3rd and 2 with 2 minutes remaining, the Steelers decided not to trust Redman again, who was subbing for the injured Rashard Mendenhall, and instead forced a risky pass from Ben Roethlisberger that went incomplete.

It gave the Browns one final chance with 1:46 remaining and no time outs. With snowflakes the size of canned hams flying furiously, Wallace moved the ball into Pittsburgh territory with a series of out passes. But when Evan Moore couldn't get out of bounds on a catch at the Pittsburgh 24-yard line, Wallace, demonstrating he can learn something about clock management, spiked the ball with 5 seconds remaining. It gave the Browns one final opportunity that went for naught when a Wallace Hail Mary fell harmlessly in the end zone.

While any of those three possessions nicely summed up the season, it's not as if the rest of the game ran anything other than to script.

After a scoreless first quarter that saw the Steelers strangely forego a field goal attempt from the Browns' 32-yard line on their first possession, the Browns rode the game's first wave of momentum to take an early 3-0 lead on a Dawson 26-yard field goal.

The momentum was courtesy, first, of a Jabaal Sheard sack of Roethlisberger that turned what would have been a short Scott Suisham field goal try into a 45-yard attempt into the wind. It went wide right. That gave the Browns a certain bounce in their step that lasted nearly all the way to the Steelers' end zone. But on 1st and goal at the 4 yard line, Peyton Hillis, last year's touchdown machine, lost 4 yards. Two passes ostensibly intended for Massaquoi were incomplete and the Browns settled for the field goal.

The Browns took a 6-0 lead near the end of the first half on a Dawson 45-yard field goal, but Pittsburgh got on the board with a Suisham 19-yard field goal just as the half expired. That was a victory of sorts for the defense though as Roethlisberger had moved the Steelers down to the Browns' 1-yard line with just over a minute remaining. But lacking any timeouts, the Steelers were forced to throw and both Rothliberger passes were incomplete, forcing the short field goal.

The Steelers' tied it on their first possession of the second half with a Suisham 29-yard field goal (after a long drive stalled at the Browns' 11 yard line) and then took the lead for good on their next possession following an interception by Troy Polamalu of a Wallace pass at the Browns' 43-yard line. Redman, holding on to the ball, finished the last 7 yards of the drive with a nice run up the middle for the touchdown and the ultimate margin of victory.

Though the Browns had those 3 separate opportunities to potentially win the game in the fourth quarter,
it wasn't to be, again.

So let the evaluation begin, though how much is really necessary is an open question. The Browns were bad in every month of the season and for the identical reasons each time—lousy blocking, poor running, dropped passes, arm tackling, that sort of thing.

Nothing about what took place Sunday was particularly instructive either, although Cribbs had a career day receiving with 7 catches, many of them acrobatic and in traffic, for 91 yards. Hillis had only 10 carries for 30 yards before exiting with an apparent knee injury and Hardesty was a non-factor.

The one thing about this offseason that will be different is that the Browns won't be looking for a new head coach. Pat Shurmur's job is safe even though there is some sentiment brewing among fans that Shurmur is indeed a major part of the problem.

That's a tough call at this point, as difficult, really, as assessing McCoy's potential. Shurmur had nothing to do with filling out the roster. He was foreclosed by the lockout from conducting any sort of offseason program that would have familiarized the players with a new system. By the time the lockout ended, much of the preseason was lost, further frustrating any chance to fully install a new office.

The one thing that will be the same about this offseason? It's the realization once again of what the Browns really need—everything. It will be the third season of the Mike Holmgren regime and this time he would do well to bring a sense or urgency to a fan base whose patience has about run out, if all the orange seats around Cleveland Browns Stadium in a game against the team's most hated rival is any indication.

Because another 4 or 5 win season and the Browns will find themselves like the Cincinnati Bengals, practically begging fans to attend games that no one will much care about anymore.

Making the Winnable Unwinnable

You can now add “spike the damn ball” and “stay on side” to the list of things that Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren now will attribute to another Browns' loss. This time, he might just be right.

Down 17-0 and the clock winding down near the end of the first half against the Baltimore Ravens, the Browns, specifically head coach Pat Shurmur and quarterback Seneca Wallace, squandered a golden opportunity with the ball on the Ravens' 3 yard line and the clock ticking away. With no time outs (the last had been inexplicably squandered with 57 seconds remaining) and confusion the order of the day, Wallace didn't spike the ball but instead handed off to Peyton Hillis. The run went for naught, the clock expired and the Browns walked into the locker room without any points.

It was the lost touchdown that ended up being the difference in a 20-14 loss to the Ravens.

Less egregious but still ridiculous was defensive lineman Phil Taylor biting on a hard count by Ravens' quarterback Joe Flacco with 2 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Flacco and the Ravens were slightly out of Shayne Graham's field goal range, sitting at 4th and 2 at the Cleveland 37-yard line, when Flacco decided to see if he could get the Browns to jump offside. He did and with that first down the Ravens were able to run out the clock and complete an undefeated season at home. Had he not, of course, the Browns would have likely had one final possession and one final attempt to win a game that started out unwinnable and ended up very winnable.

That this was the case so late in the game was attributable mostly to the level of confidence and indifference that overtook the Ravens, just as it has overtaken many Browns' opponents this season, after opening up a 20-0 lead against a team that really did look like it was going through the motions.

But Josh Cribbs finally broke free on a punt return and scampered 83 yards for a touchdown that on the scoreboard at least put the Browns back into the game at 20-7. It brought some needed life to the sidelines while the Ravens just yawned.

When the Ravens were forced to punt on their next possession, Wallace and the Browns put together one of the more impressive drives of the season that ended with Wallace hitting Evan Moore for a 6-yard touchdown that closed the gap to 20-14.

The Browns could get no closer, however. On what turned out to be their last possession of the game, the Browns were sitting 4th and 5 at their own 45 yard line with just over 4 minutes remaining. Having blown two of their time outs on the previous drive, Wallace and/or Shurmur picked that moment to use the last timeout. It didn't help.

The play as called was a simple screen that went for no yards and gave the Ravens the ball. That led directly to the Taylor offside penalty that ultimately allowed Flacco to take a knee to end the game and begin to ponder the playoffs in earnest.

The close loss was rewarding in a way that the game ended up being more competitive then it started out to be. Then again most of this season has been rewarding in that same way. Little moments where some sun peeks through the perpetual cloud that hangs over this franchise.

The problem is that there is never enough sun to allow anything to grow. Shurmur is just the latest coach to walk the sidelines with the same bewildered look that overcomes every Browns head coach at some point. At least Shurmur got a chance to ask the question that the fans have been asking for years just at the conclusion of that aforementioned squandered opportunity at the end of the first half.

Apparently thinking he told Wallace to spike the ball instead of handing off to Hillis, Shurmur for all the world to see, mouthed “what the hell is he doing?” I wish we knew.

That the question could apply to Wallace or Shurmur, or certainly Holmgren or Tom Heckert speaks volumes about where this team is at it puts the finishing touches on another wasted season. Fifteen losing seasons in their last 17 is more then a trend. It's a way of life.

The reason it's a way of life, of course, is that the Browns at no point in that 17 years could answer Shurmur's simple question. Think about it. How many times as a fan sitting there watching one mind numbing loss after another, one mind numbing season after another, have you asked that same question? You've asked it of Randy Lerner when he hired his next flavor of the month. You asked it of any number of general managers who made questionable draft choices or ridiculous free agent signings. You've asked it of any number of head coaches who have made one puzzling decision after another. And you've asked it of any number of players, and there have been plenty, who have made one bonehead play after another.

That the Browns sit there now, 16 weeks into a season and just as clueless as the day training camp opened, and can't even figure out how to conserve time at the end of the half in order to give themselves a chance to score would be astonishing if it wasn't so commonplace.

Ah, but I digress.

The Ravens raced out to a lead like so many before them. It was aided at the outset by an interception Wallace threw on the Browns' opening drive just as that drive was starting to get interesting. It was actually lucky that the interception by defensive back Ladairius Webb didn't go for a touchdown. Wallace telegraphed the throw from the second he took the snap. It was just a matter of time anyway.

On their first play from scrimmage, Flacco threw deep for Torrey Smith. Mike Adams, defending the play, was flagged for a questionable interference call that gave the Ravens the ball at the Browns' 5 yard line. Flacco then calmly hit Ed Dickson for the 5-yard touchdown pass and a way too easy 7-0 lead.

A Graham 48-yard field goal on the Ravens' next possession made it 10-0 and then on the Ravens' third possession Flacco led running back Ray Rice beautifully dropping in a pass in coverage that Rice turned into a 27-yard touchdown and a 17-0 lead.

When the Browns' finally got on track late in the first half, they blew the opportunity. Still as a measure of incompetence it's worth going through the sequence, especially if you didn't get a chance to see it live.

Following a Baltimore punt, the Browns took over at their own 16 yard line with 3:21 remaining in the half. A completion from Wallace to Greg Little on second down took the ball to the Baltimore 27 yard line. Two plays later Peyton Hillis picked up 14 more yards and just that quickly the Browns were at their own 41 yard line.

Where things got interesting is when defensive back Chris Carr was flagged for a 30-yard interference penalty of questionable origin on Cribbs. That put the ball on the Baltimore 29-yard line with 1:51 remaining. That's not a typo. There were nearly two full minutes remaining and 29 yards to cover. There were also two time outs remaining.

After two incomplete passes and the clock not running, Shurmur inexplicably burned the Browns' second time out. There was 1:42 remaining. It was not in vain, however, as Shurmur then had Chris Ogbonnaya line up wide left with Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis covering him. Wallace hit Ogbonnaya as Lewis backed off coverage. The gain covered 12 yards putting the ball on the Ravens 17 yard line with 1:15 left. In other words, there was plenty of time, even for your average CYO team.

After Wallace completed a 9-yard pass to Greg Little that put the ball on the Baltimore 8-yard line, Shurmur weirdly called for his last time out with 57 seconds remaining. It was a head scratching decision then and remains one now.

After the time out, Hillis ran up the middle for 3 yards, forcing the Browns to scramble to keep ahead of the clock. Wallace then through a short out patter to Evan Moore whose progress was stopped in bounds, thus keeping the clock running. This apparently flummoxed both Shurmur and Wallace and 20 more seconds went casually ticking off the clock. With 11 seconds remaining but Wallace not watching the clock, he ran a play instead of spiking the ball. The play? A handoff to Hillis that had no chance of getting into the end zone. With that the clock expired with Shurmur on the sidelines gesturing how to spike the ball and mouthing the words that still resonate throughout the land.

The loss wasn't embarrassing as so many have been this season. Indeed there were a few bright spots. Hillis, for example, had 112 yards on 24 carries, something that will probably ruin Ray Lewis' evening. The defense gave up just a field goal in the second half and Cribbs had the 83-yard punt return.

But as usual it wasn't nearly enough for a team that is simply out manned at nearly every position when they play against the better teams in the league.

With a week remaining and all the mystery sapped long ago from the season, the Browns still can give their fans a “if only” moment by beating what looks like will be a resting Pittsburgh Steelers team. And if the Browns do find a way to win it will give Holmgren even more ammunition for the specious argument he advanced last week that if only they could snap the damn ball, catch the damn ball, spike the damn ball or stay on the right side of the damn ball they'd be in the playoff hunt.

Lingering Items--Penalties Edition

Whether the sanctions levied against Ohio State were too harsh or too lenient may be a matter of perspective. That won’t stop nearly anyone from questioning athletic director Gene Smith’s competency, however.

The biggest surprise levied against the Buckeyes was the 2012 bowl ban. Otherwise it seems like things pretty much went down as expected. When Ohio State self-imposed a litany of sanctions against the program, all they really did was give the NCAA a little wriggle room to make a few additional tweaks in order to look like it wasn’t just simply taking the Buckeyes’ word on everything.

So the tweak they made was not the one that was expected mainly because Smith was emphatic time and again that a bowl ban wasn’t on the horizon. So sure was Smith, in fact, that he didn’t even contemplate pre-empting the NCAA on that count by making the 6-6 Buckeyes sit home this bowl season instead.

What fans have now is a meaningless Gator Bowl to soothe their feelings when what they really wanted was to hit like the hurricane new head coach Urban Meyer promised for next season, play for the Big Ten title and possibly a national championship.

Smith is taking more heat for this then perhaps he deserves, though he does deserve some. It’s difficult to take Smith to task for the underlying infraction given former head coach Jim Tressel’s conduct. And assuming the conspiracy theorists are just that and Tressel didn’t take a bullet for Smith (what would be his incentive for that?), Smith’s only real sin was not level setting his bosses or the fans of the program.

The feeling always has been that Smith is wired into the NCAA in ways that other athletic directors are not. Every time he spoke, in that semi-sincere, semi-arrogant way of his, it carried the imprimatur that he knew from where he spoke. It turns out he was just as clueless as nearly everyone else in this whole matter.

One of the cardinal sins you can make in any organization is to overpromise and under deliver, which is exactly what Smith did here. Had he kept his mouth shut and just said that he hopes that the university had done enough to satisfy the NCAA, I doubt anyone would have been surprised by the bowl ban. After all, the NCAA is a random, feckless, morally undisciplined enterprise rife with conflicts of interest and wholly incapable of governing a church picnic, let alone a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

But the one thing to remember is that the NCAA Committee of Infractions ultimately is a group of individuals with their own feelings and emotions and the last thing individuals with their own feelings and emotions want is someone who carries the imprimatur of authority, like Smith, telling them what they should or shouldn’t do.

In many ways, Smith’s constant proclamations that a bowl ban was not in the offing served almost as a dare to the NCAA. So where’s the surprise that they did knock the battery off of Smith’s shoulder only to watch him flinch?

I have very mixed feelings about the sanctions overall. Much of my trepidation is with how the NCAA treated Tressel, a very fine man and educator, who made a serious mistake. But a 5-year “show cause” finding is particularly harsh. It may be that Tressel wasn’t going to coach again in college anyway, but to basically be told that he can’t earn a living at his chosen profession for the next 5 years is an astounding penalty given his one indiscretion.

As for the bowl ban, that seems harsh if only because while the Buckeyes did play in last year’s Sugar Bowl, part of their sanctions was to forfeit the game and give back the money earned. Effectively, it’s as if they have been banned from two bowl games.

Yet the NCAA isn’t going to do much to explain its reasoning mainly because it doesn’t have to, which gets to the other side of my feelings about this. I understand that the conduct engaged in by the Buckeyes’ players broke a rule and I understand that Tressel covered it up deliberately. But the rule makes no sense in any context but one in which the NCAA doesn’t want anyone else earning money that could have instead lined their pockets. The fact that Tressel covered it up just proves the adage, though, that the cover up is often worse then the underlying breach.

I know that a lot of fans are calling for Smith to be fired and maybe he should be as part of the overall housecleaning. I’m not sure he could have ferreted out Tressel’s misconduct but some of the other activities that went unchecked are a failure that occurred under Smith’s watch. He should have had more robust systems in place.

Ultimately, though, the NCAA matters are now finally behind the Buckeyes. Sure they’ll linger because of the bowl ban and scholarship reductions, but the football program itself is on solid footing right now. Besides, it gives Meyer and the players the added chip on their shoulders for the 2012 season and should set them up well for 2013 and beyond. The hurricane may be delayed, but it’s still a good bet that it will hit ground and leave appropriate damage in its wake.

**
James Harrison, the NFL’s reigning and most clueless thug, seems to have reluctantly accepted the fact that his vicious hit on Colt McCoy was illegal. The revelation came to him apparently about the time he lost his appeal and the rest of his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates, while publicly supporting him, privately sate him down and told him that his brutish ways were actually hurting the team far more then helping. That it happened in the wake of a bad loss to the San Francisco 49ers is just a bonus.

But Harrison, as is his wont, doesn’t go down without a fight and thus surmised that the Browns as well should be fined or otherwise penalized for not properly attending to McCoy. So we have Harrison adamantly denying he did anything wrong for most of the last two weeks suddenly getting religion and becoming the voice of concern for McCoy?

Harrison is like the criminal who in the course of robbing a house gets bitten by the watch dog and then sues the homeowner. Lacking an ability to process either irony or context Harrison should just shut his mouth and play within the rules, assuming he can which actually may not be a safe assumption at all.

Meanwhile the Browns were indeed let off the hook for their malpractice when it came to safeguarding their starting quarterback but the rest of the NFL must now pay a price by staging so-called independent athletic trainers in the press box to oversee all the vicious hits and make suggestions to each team’s medical staff as to which players they may want to administer an exam to.

I’m happy whenever the NFL creates additional jobs, particularly for athletic trainers. I wonder, though, exactly why the NFL went macro on this instead of focusing specifically on the fact that the Browns medical and coaching staff screwed up. Indeed, the Browns’ medical staff for the last several years has a distinct history of putting its players in jeopardy but yea, it sounds like the NFL has an institutional problem.

It may very well be that the Browns and their medical staff needed some tough love in the form of some kind of penalty given their history but then again what we know most about the NFL is that they are very reticent to punish management and very pleased to punish the players.

The person to feel sorry for here is McCoy. He’s about to miss his second straight game and whatever grip he had on the Browns’ starting quarterback job. More than that, though, he very easily could have lost his life or at least suffered some permanent damage when he was sent back into the game seconds after getting his brains scrambled.

There was a teaching moment here just not the one the NFL focused on.

**
The Cleveland Indians continue to make their quiet offseason noise by signing any retread with a pulse that they can find. The latest contestant in this year’s version of “Who Can Fill the Shoes of David Dellucci?” is Andy “Don’t Call Me Either Adam or Dave” LaRoche.

This LaRoche, the son of former Tribe closer Dave LaRoche, a mediocre pitcher from the mid 1970s, brings a resume that includes a .247 average with 5 RBI in 40 games last season. But there’s more. LaRoche’s high water mark, batting average-wise, is .258.

If it makes you wonder why anyone would continue to sign LaRoche given his age (28) and the fact that he’s never done anything of note at any time for any major league team he played for, just follow the money. LaRoche, like so many that the Indians sign every offseason, is on a minor league contract. The team pays more in laundry bills then it would have to pay LaRoche.

If by chance he makes the big league team out of training camp, and if he does, look out, then he’ll make the major league minimum, which for 2012 is slightly more than $400,000. In other words, what LaRoche lacks in skills he more then makes up for in the fact that he works cheaply.

The one good thing to keep in mind in all of this is that Eric Wedge is no longer the team’s manager. LaRoche is just the kind of player that Wedge loved, mainly because LaRoche’s baseball skills approximate those that Wedge possessed as a player. That would have meant only one thing: a spring and early summer of screaming at the television every time LaRoche grounded out weakly with runners in scoring position.

**

The Cavs start their season in a few days, which leads to this week’s question to ponder: Will the Cavs take Jared Sullinger with the first pick in next year’s draft?

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Double Digit Failure

It’s that time of the year again, isn’t it? No, not the holiday season, though it’s that, too. It’s that time of year that the good folks and fans of the Cleveland Browns see every year, like potholes on the interstate.

Yes, I am talking about that time of the year when the Browns cement another double digit losing season.

That it was the Arizona Cardinals that administered the blow this season seems particularly cruel. The Cardinals, except for their one foray into the Super Bowl, have been perennially one of the worst franchises in the NFL. Now even they’re laughing at the Browns.

And while I don’t necessarily have a great desire to revisit one painful season after another as the Browns now careen toward their real favorite season—draft season—there are always those reminders of just why the Browns are who they are.
No matter how many times they do a reset on this franchise they just can’t get it right. Mike “The Big No Show” Holmgren is the latest architect and while he bitched and groused at the media a week ago not to report that it’s all just a bunch of “same old same old” with this team, he’s done absolutely nothing to provide any evidence to the contrary.

In his first full year at the helm, Holmgren decided that what the team and its fans needed most was to waste a season so he kept Eric Mangini as head coach despite the fact that Mangini and his approach to football and those who play it is at the extreme opposite of pretty much everything Holmgren stands for.

But Holmgren decided to assuage Mangini’s feelings rather than be a good steward for the people who pay his salary—the fans—and allowed Mangini to basically hang himself in the worst lame duck role ever invented.

The Big No Show essentially admitted that he wasted last season, but we already knew and wrote about it so why turn over that same shovel of dirt? Well, for the simple reason that it stands as a marker for why this franchise stumbles and bumbles its way into 10+ losses each and every season, that’s why.

To truly appreciate, though, the level of institutional failure just consider head coach Pat Shurmur’s coyness in his Tuesday press conference about the future of Colt McCoy as the Browns’ starter once he’s healthy.

For reasons that only Shurmur could discern, he refused to commit to McCoy as the team’s starting quarterback when healthy. It was an insidious, rookie mistake by Shurmur in a year of insidious, rookie mistakes by Shurmur.

All McCoy has done for him this year has gone out and run Shurmur’s crappy offense with no receivers, a porous right side of the line and no running attack and get his brains beat in for the trouble. James Harrison, the NFL’s biggest thug, rams his helmet through McCoy’s facemask and knocks him into some previous week. McCoy takes the lick, gets back into the game because the Browns’ medical staff is incompetent and then gets rewarded with a statement from his head coach that strongly suggests that perennial backup Seneca Wallace may very well have won the starting job.
And how did Wallace win that job? Well, he got the Browns into the end zone twice in one game which in Shurmur’s world is an achievement of great distinction apparently. Let’s give him the game ball.

Of course Wallace also abjectly failed nearly the entire second half of the game, including overtime, the Browns lost the game and Wallace ended up with a line that looked like every one McCoy has had this season (except all those games that Shurmur stupidly had McCoy throwing the ball 40 times). But yea, apparently to Shurmur, that’s the kind of progress this team has been looking for.

This is exactly why the Browns can’t progress as a franchise wrapped up in one neatly wrapped little holiday present. The team is run by boobs who are so oddly focused atn times on things that mean nothing while missing the far bigger picture that it’s a wonder they remember to tie their shoes in the morning. Maybe they wear slip-ons.

The saying goes that you are what your record says you are and while there may be times to quibble with that, this Browns’ season isn’t one of them. Frankly, none in the last 12 have been, either. Week in and week out they look like a 4-10 team because they’re run like a 4-10 team. The way in which they lost Sunday’s game at Arizona may have been a reminder of what could have been, as Holmgren views things. But it was also a near perfect display of why they are who their record says they are.

When a call needed to be made or a play needed to be executed, the Browns couldn’t quite make it, not just in overtime but from about halfway through the third quarter through the end of the game. There were flourishes of competence at times followed by too long stretches of futility and too few players willing to put an end to those flourishes to turn an inevitable loss into a win.

The Browns on the field played exactly like the front office, from Holmgren down to Shurmur, played.

Why is it, exactly, that the special teams folded just when it needed to stand up? I guess it’s the same reason they couldn’t snap the damn ball or catch it all season, either. The difference between good players and the mediocre ones that surround them has to do with the ability to consistently execute. The same holds for front office executives and head coaches.

In truth, virtually any player in the NFL is capable of doing something special on any given play. It’s why they’re in the NFL in the first place. But the reason Tom Brady makes so much money and Wallace so little, comparatively speaking, is the ability to consistently execute.

But none of this matters now because Holmgren sits and twiddles and Shurmur decides right now is the exact time not to commit, again, to a quarterback. Is it any wonder this franchise is a mess?

Frankly, I’m not sure why so many have seemed to have jumped off the McCoy bandwagon given how few competent people general manager Tom Heckert put on it to help McCoy get to his destination. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could do any better with what McCoy’s had to work with.

Maybe it’s just the idea that Wallace isn’t McCoy in the same way that McCoy wasn’t Jake Delhomme and Delhomme wasn’t Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson. The attention span and patience of Browns fans, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks, seems to run about 10 games before they’ve seen enough. And the best player is the one sitting on the bench, whoever that might be.

Sure, it’s all understandable except that it’s not. At some point the clowns that run this organization and the fans that worship it are going to have to give someone enough leeway to develop in some capacity. At some point fans are going to have to realize that the Browns are just a really awful team with really awful players at so many positions that there's little chance for anyone to develop as a quarterback because we run them off before giving them a real chance.

I’m not raging against Shurmur staying on as a coach anymore then I’m raging against Holmgren or Heckert sticking around. What I am raging against is the Browns machine they’ve inherited and have done little to alter. The machine is broken and needs a real overhaul and not the tinkering they seem to be engaging in.

Instead of actually doing something different, innovative and unique, they just keep making the same mistakes of all the other nincompoops who came before them and then complain that the media isn’t giving them a fair shake.

The Browns need Holmgren to act like a president, have the presence of a president and bring a calm, professional demeanor and approach as he goes about actually making meaningful change. And he needs to do it out front where people can see him working and not from the comfort of his Arizona home.

Holmgren in turn needs Shurmur to stop acting like a know-it-all who thinks he got into the job because he’s such a genius and start embracing the fact that he does have much to learn. Make him hire an offensive coordinator so that he stops acting like one. Make him commit to a actually developing a quarterback and designing a scheme around the players you have instead of the players you wish you had.
But maybe that’s too hard.

So sure, let’s change out the quarterback again because it carries the hint of making progress even if it ends up being the exact opposite of what actual progress looks like. Let’s keep pressing the reset button again and again because really that’s all it’s going to take to fix this mess. And while we’re at it, let’s get used to the painful drip, drip, drip of loss after loss because if there’s one thing we do know, the world doesn’t lack for the next set of goofs standing in line to take more of Randy Lerner’s wasted money.

Business As Usual

For a franchise that has known little else but embarrassment since it came back into the NFL 12 years ago, you’d think at some point the Cleveland Browns would finally reach rock bottom. Apparently there is no bottom.

Mike, the Big No Show, Holmgren finally made a media appearance on Tuesday to say in rather clinical if also defensive fashion that the franchise he now oversees did almost nothing right to protect the health of the quarterback that Holmgren believes is the future.

It was Holmgren’s first press conference in months and came, not coincidentally, the day that Bud Shaw of the Plain Dealer called out Holmgren for leaving Pat Shurmur to fend for himself on what was clearly a team issue that should have been addressed by Holmgren. (An aside. I thought Shaw’s column was excellent. That said, it was similar to what I wrote a few weeks ago about the mysterious no show by the team’s leaders to explain just what the hell is going on with the team this time. Oh well.)

But before anyone gets the idea that Holmgren came out to offer some sort of mea culpa or other overt act of leadership at another of the 650 million critical points in this franchise's recent history, think again. Instead Holmgren came out mostly to defend the team's complete bungling of Colt McCoy's head injury last Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers and then do his level best to convince the unconvinced that this team is not operating like every other incompetent regime that came before him.

But in trying to make the “this is not business as usual” case Holmgren actually did the opposite by devoting the first few minutes of the press conference to explaining why it's taken this long for anyone higher then Shurmur to address the McCoy concussion issue. In short, it was because he wanted to get his story straight with the NFL and the players' union before having to address the media. Given the passage of time, you'd have thought Holmgren could have done a better job. Put it this way, Gene Smith thinks Holmgren gave a lousy performance.

As to the concussion issue, which dominated the conference, Holmgren took the Phil Savage approach. He came out swinging and defensive, blamed others, accepted no blame himself for anything and essentially mocked anyone with the audacity to think differently.

In a startling but hardly unbelievable fashion Holmgren claimed that McCoy wasn’t administered any sort of concussion test before sending him back into the game against Pittsburgh, not even as a precautionary measure, for two reasons. First, the patient seemed lucid. Second, the medical staff was too busy attending to other injured players to see exactly how McCoy got assaulted by the biggest thug in the NFL, James Harrison

McCoy, who claims to not remember a damn thing about the hit or what happened immediately after, appeared coherent enough to the Browns’ crack medical staff to such an extent that a precautionary test for a concussion wasn’t necessary? Who exactly is leading that staff, Dr. Bombay or Dr. Vinnie Boom Botz? The guy from the Sprint commercials? Maybe there isn’t anyone with a medical degree at all but someone who happened to stay at a Holiday Inn Express the night before.

In defending the medical staff's approach to McCoy, Holmgren was quick to emphasize foremost not how important the health of the players is but how impressive the medical staff is, calling it's the best in the business. But by offering the reasons behind the rather perfunctory exam of McCoy on the sidelines in essence Holmgren just signaled to every player on the team, not to mention any player who might potentially play for the team, that the Browns’ medical staff is a bunch of incompetent boobs that can’t be trusted enough to make even the most obvious of exams. That’s got to be comforting not to mention a real selling point when trying to lure free agents. Makes one wonder how Holmgren sees this as different from the past, unless he meant it's now worse, or what the medical staff would have looked at if McCoy had come to the sidelines with his femur poking through his skin.

But let’s assume that the staff was too busy with all the other walking wounded on this team. It strikes me that Shurmur had a pretty good view of what was going on during the game. So too did many if not all his coaches, including those sitting in the press box with the luxury of replay. They all saw Harrison attempt to ram his skull through McCoy’s. Shouldn't it have occurred to Shurmur or anyone else at any point to run over to that overwrought, overworked medical staff and say something like “make sure you check McCoy for a concussion. He nearly had his head decapitated”?

A particularly rich exchange occurred when Holmgren offered up that the outcome of his meetings with the league and the union was that the league will likely tweak its concussion procedures going forward, which was a not so subtle suggestion that it was the league’s policies that failed McCoy and not the Browns.

The truth is that the Browns, from Holmgrem to Heckert to Shurmur to every member of Shurmur's staff, failed McCoy. But that in itself isn't unusual because McCoy is just another in a long line of players that have been mostly abandoned by this team in one form or another. It isn’t just all the medical issues that they’ve had, two of which have resulted in lawsuits by former players LeCharles Bentley and Joe Jurevicius. It’s all the other little ways that that this team fails the very players and fans it claims to value.

If Holmgen was the leader we thought he was, he would have taken the charge, made an apology and laid out exactly how things would be different going forward instead of claiming that things already are different. Instead he came across as weak by merely offering excuses, defending the bumbling antics of his medical staff and then refusoing, when asked, to back McCoy by acknowledging that they haven't given McCoy even a reasonable opportunity to be fairly evaluated.

But why focus on just McCoy. You can start with Tim Couch and wind your way through nearly every player that has strapped on a Browns’ uniform in the last decade and come to the conclusion that Cleveland has been a miserable place to earn a living as a football player because of rampant incompetency at every level of management, from the owner on down to every coach and front office goof that has been given a title and a paycheck.

What seemed to really bother Holmgren most during the entire press conference was the growing perception that Holmgren as a leader isn't any better or different from those who came before him and that it really is business as usual for the Browns. He should have saved the sanctimony.

I’m not ready to write off this current regime just yet but if Holmgren really doesn’t think this team is operating in a “business as usual” format then he did very little due diligence before taking the job. The Browns’ reaction to the McCoy hit was exactly how every other regime that’s had the keys to Berea would have handled it, which is to say poorly.

Holmgren implored the fans to trust him that this will all get fixed. That would be a whole lot easier if every visible sign this season, from the questionable signings to the bad fundamentals to the boring product on the field to the constant bungling of personnel and medical issues, didn't suggest that it's beyond his ability to fix.

Lingering Items--Evaluation Edition

Baylor University quarterback Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night and that is apparently enough to anoint him the next future quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. It's exactly that kind of patience that has gotten this franchise in trouble in the first place.

Maybe it's best to forgive the locals who see Griffin as another Cam Newton, someone who can come in and play well on a bad team. It's brought some excitement to a moribund Carolina Panthers franchise so perhaps there's some legitimacy in that view.

But as you ponder a future with Griffin, ask yourself whether quarterback is even close to being the biggest area of need on the Browns at the moment. For anyone who has already written off Colt McCoy, what is it exactly that you see in Griffin that would have made this Browns team any better this year?

Would Griffin's presence make Mohamed Massaquoi any faster? Would his presence make Josh Cribbs run a decent route or help Greg Little catch the ball? Would Griffin have healed Peyton Hillis or Montario Hardesty? Would Griffin have been able to turn anyone on the right side of the offensive line into a better run or pass blocker?

Griffin may be a game changer but with all his talent there are things he can't do and that starts with filling the prodigious holes in the Browns' offense. Personally the thought of the Browns investing all that cash into a first round pick like Griffin only to watch him get clobbered by the same things that are turning McCoy into a pinata is about as appealing as it was watching the Browns invest all that cash in Tim Couch only to watch him get clobbered into a premature end to his career.

Somewhere along about the time Pittsburgh's James Harrison was engaging in about his 12th dirty hit of the season by blasting into McCoy's facemask with the crown of his helmet, many fans and too many jugheads in the media decided McCoy wasn't the answer. And if that blow to the head didn't do it then it was the critical interception that McCoy threw a few plays later that sealed his fate, never mind that his brain was so scrambled by the play he probably couldn't even remember which team he was playing for.

This is why it is so difficult to be a Browns fan. Not only do you have to put up with an organization that redefines incompetence each season, you also have to deal with a fan base with the patience of a newborn.

I get that everyone's tired of all the excuses. So am I. But to condemn McCoy to the Island of Misfit Browns Quarterbacks right now given the putrid cast that general manager Tom Heckert surrounded him with this season makes as much sense as the BCS. If McCoy is to be evaluated in the context of this team, then why does anyone think that Griffin would fare any better or last any longer?

The same crappy front office that brought this mess of an offense, that decided that no moves needed to be made at wide receiver, that decided an injury prone Tony Pashos was the answer on the right side of the line, that put their faith in Montario Hardesty, is going to be the same crappy front office that drafts Griffin and then surrounds him with the same kind of second tier castoffs.

That's the nub of the problem. There isn't a quarterback in the entire NFL that could move the needle statistically for this offense. And there isn't a quarterback in college, especially a junior like Griffin or a senior like Andrew Luck, that could have done any better then McCoy.

This isn't to defend McCoy so much as it is to point the white hot glare of the spotlight on the reality of this Browns' offense. It's a mess in almost every way a team's offense can be a mess. Outside of Joe Thomas, there isn't a quality player lining up on that side of the ball at the moment. The few players that even pass for decent, like Hillis, have been hurt all season.

If this were Vegas, it would be as if the Browns' front office bankrolled McCoy at the blackjack table and then told him that the only time he could bet was when he was dealt a 8 and a 7. Winning 4 of every 16 hands sounds about right to me. And yet the fans seem puzzled by that lack of success.

I think McCoy has some ground to cover as a quarterback and perhaps he may never make it as a big time NFL quarterback. But anyone who thinks they can make that conclusion after this season with that supporting cast ought to quit their day job and apply for a job with the Browns as the next general manager. Sure things won't get any better, but on the plus side they probably won't get any worse.

**
Speaking of that thug James Harrison, if Roger Goodell and the NFL don't come down with at least a two game suspension on him for the hit on McCoy then it will be confirmation that they aren't really serious about eliminating concussions. And if I were representing the former and current players suing the NFL for its responses to the growing number of concussions I'd use the hit and the lack of effective action by the league for it as exhibit 1 that the NFL just doesn't get it.

Harrison by any measure is the dirtiest player in the league. Last year he was fined over $500,000 as the result of four vicious, unnecessary hits. Browns fans will recall that Harrison knocked both Josh Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi out of the same game with brutal, illegal hits.

That of course hasn't deterred Harrison one bit. In reaction to the fines, Harrison hasn't just shown no remorse. He more than double downed on his thug persona by slurring Goodell in an article entitled “Confessions of a Hit Man” that appeared in Men's Journal.

I like in particular how Harrison did his best to portray himself as an outlaw with a grudge, someone who is constantly fighting for some abstract notion of respect despite the huge salary and plush lifestyle he leads thanks to the generosity of the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The choice quote of that article is the one that hopefully Goodell reads right before he throws Harrison's ass out of the league for good: “But up until last year, there was no word of me being dirty—till Roger Goodell, who's a crook and a puppet, said I was the dirtiest player in the league. If that man was on fire and I had to piss to put him out, I wouldn't do it. I hate him and I will never respect him.” For good measure, he also called Goodell a “faggot.”

Three points about those quotes. First, Harrison's a liar. Goodell never called Harrison the league's dirtiest player, though he should have. Second, Harrison's reputation goes back further then a year ago. He's always been a thug who would rather lead with his helmet when making a tackle then take the easier and less riskier bath of tackling with his shoulder. Third, Harrison apologized in that passive aggressive way most people apologize. He's sorry if anyone was offended by his remarks. He's not sorry he made them. He's not saying he didn't mean them. He's just sorry if you're too much of a sensitive puke to hear them.

The Harrison apologists in Pittsburgh, which include the Steelers' owner and the head coach, will point out that this is Harrison's first personal foul of the season and that he is trying to conform despite his loud mouth bragging to the contrary. What these apologists fail to appreciate is that Harrison has no interest in learning his lesson. He sees himself as the protector of some ancient league ethic about the violence inherent in the sport and remains hell bent on upholding the image of the thug who posed for that article bare-chested and brandishing two guns. Besides, the lack of personal fouls is hardly a marker for better behavior. Harrison didn't draw a penalty on the Cribbs or Massaquoi hits either and they were clearly illegal.

There also is the theory that even the Plain Dealer's resident contrarian Bill Livingston advanced that somehow Harrison can't really be blamed because McCoy appeared to be a runner on the play. Well, McCoy was scrambling, true. He also threw the ball from behind the line of scrimmage, which makes him a quarterback. No one's complaining that Harrison should have held up hitting McCoy at all. Where Harrison crossed the line was lowering in lowering his head so that the crown of his helmet was aimed squarely at McCoy's chin. Harrison could have hit McCoy in the chest but that is a pussy move in Harrison's world. Far better to blast him in the face just so he and the rest of the league get the message.

The league sent Ndamukong Suh to the sideline for two games for stomping on a player during a nationally televised game. Suh's high schoolish move looked awful but caused far less damage. Suh's a repeat offender that has more than demonstrated that he has no predisposition to play by the rules. In that regard, though, he's just following the lead of players like Harrison. If the league really wants to send an effective message to the Suhs of the world, they have to start by sending Harrison to the sideline as well. And if they were really serious, Harrison's season would be over.

**
It looks like Cleveland Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is in hot water with some fans, including Cavs fans, for opening his mouth again and daring to speak the truth about the joke that the NBA has come at the expense of small market teams.

Gilbert was getting excoriated in some corners for being one of the more aggressive owners during the NBA's lockout. Gilbert's fight then and now was to level the playing field for a league that is tilting in favor of a few super teams and against everyone else.

If you had invested as much money as Gilbert has into this franchise and then watched as the league sat passively as that franchise's value was being significantly diminished by rules that should be designed to protect it, wouldn't you speak up just as loudly?

It's not worth getting into all the particulars of the Chris Paul trade and its ramifications on the entire league. What is worth getting into is all the various goofy rules and exceptions that can easily get manipulated by the league's high rolling clubs at the expense of everyone else.

Basketball is a winter sport and it's understandable that pampered players would rather play their 41 home games a year in a warmer climate. No one wants to go to Minnesota or Cleveland or a dozen other places in the winter. Hell, I hate being in Cleveland in the winter. But if the NBA is truly going to thrive it must protect the Minnesotas and Clevelands of the league even if it comes at the expense of nullifying trades that aren't in the sport's best interest.

Sure that's a slippery slope but on the other hand it's exactly why there is a commissioner in the first place. His most important duty is as a guardian of the entire league's best interest and not just the interest of a coddled few.

Cavs fans should be applauding Gilbert, not crucifying him. Gilbert's motives may be selfish—the protection of his own investment—but they have the byproduct of protecting the overall health of the league.

Personally I'd rather have Gilbert being the standard bearer for fairness then have owners like the Dolans who have been less vocal and far more compliant in fostering baseball's inherent economic unfairness.

It's a funny thing about fans. As much as they like to bitch about how the cards get stacked against them, particularly in Cleveland, they'll do little on their own accord, like stop supporting those who stacked those cards against them. Meanwhile when someone with some gravitas does step forward on their behalf their pride takes over and they complain that they don't need any help in their fight against the bully, even as they stand their bleeding from the beating they've been taking.

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With the Cavs opening up training camp this past Friday and the talk now of waiving Baron Davis so that his salary won't count against the cap, this week's question to ponder: Doesn't it seem rather convenient that Davis has suddenly developed a bad back?

Who's Minding the Gap?

There’s a concept in the business world called gap analysis. It works like this. Say you need to reorganize a business unit or redesign a business process because it's become a bloated, inefficient version of its former competitive self. You can just start trying different things to see if that will make it better. In football terms, that's called the Cleveland Browns Approach. Usually it doesn’t work. You could also take a more methodical, process-oriented approach. In football terms, that's called the Rest of the NFL Approach. That tends to work much better.

Assuming you follow the Rest of the NFL Approach, the first task is to do an “as is” analysis, which is exactly what the term suggests. During this phase you review, factually and unapologetically, the current state of what you’re doing. You make no value judgments. You just take an honest, sometimes brutal assessment of what you currently do.

The next step is the “to be” phase which also is exactly what the term suggests. Having decided that a change is necessary, you undertake an assessment of what you want the reorganized or redesigned business unit or process to look like. You do this by benchmarking against your competitors. You try to find best practices that others are using. In short you meticulously design exactly what it is your business unit will look like as a more nimble, capable competitor.

The final step is to undergo a “gap analysis.” This means you compare your “as is” work product with your “to be” ideas and figure out what are the gaps keeping you from getting where you are to where you want to be. If you’re at all honest about the process, it should lead to some sobering conclusions and daunting tasks. But if you perform those tasks correctly, the gaps will close.

To this point, the Cleveland Browns have mostly been shooting crooked in the dark. Not knowing where they really want to go, except in the most general of terms, they figure that any road will get them there. That's why there's been a series of coaches, personnel directors and players of all shapes, sizes and temperaments and yet as one season blends into another the franchise hasn't progressed in any discernible fashion.

I bring all this up because there’s been much talk the last few days about the gaps between the Cleveland Browns and the rest of the teams in the AFC North or, for that matter, the rest of the good teams in the NFL. Josh Cribbs, who else, spurred it on by declaring in this week’s post-game gripe that the gap between the Browns and the rest is huge.

Joe Thomas, on the other hand, took issue with the declaration, suggesting instead that it’s all a matter of execution.

This isn't exactly an argument over nature vs. nurture, Lodge. Instead it's an outward manifestation of all the little disconnects between what’s taking place in the front offices occupied by general manager Tom Heckert and club president Mike Holmgren and what’s filtering down to the players.

Besides, there’s no need to take sides between Cribbs and Thomas since they’re both in essential agreement. The ability to execute is what differentiates minor and major talents. So yes, the Browns have a huge talent gap. How do we know? The players they have lack the ability to execute.

Never was this more clear then the debacle that was the Ravens game this past Sunday. It was no secret that the Ravens wanted to run the ball with Ray Rice and Ricky Williams. Even if the Ravens had tried to disguise it, which they didn’t, the steady rain dictated that approach. And yet even knowing exactly what was coming and when, the Browns’ defense was rendered powerless to stop it.

This was the result of talent gap. The Ravens’ offensive line played bigger, stronger and faster. They executed their assignments with precision. The Browns’ front 7, to a man less talented then their counterparts, could only absorb the blocks and respond only after the play had mostly passed them by. It’s why the Ravens gained nearly 300 yards on the ground and why the Ravens could have gained 500 yards on the ground if that had been their wont.

When the Browns had the ball, it was the same situation, just in reverse. The Browns’ offensive line, particularly the right side where most plays seem to be run, played smaller, weaker and slower than the Ravens’ defensive line. They were often perfunctory in the execution of their assignments. Rarely were there even slivers of light through which Peyton Hillis could run.

When Colt McCoy had the ball, he was under near constant siege against a defensive line that was far better in its ability to apply pressure then the offensive line was in preventing it. And even when there was time, McCoy’s receivers failed to execute on their main job assignment, catching the ball.

According to Mary Kay Cabot in Tuesday’s Plain Dealer, the Browns’ receivers lead the league in dropped passes with a staggering 35 of them. And that’s without Braylon Edwards! If the offensive line isn’t opening holes and the receivers aren’t catching passes, then how exactly is a team supposed to score?

So what you had really on Sunday was an almost perfect visual documentation of a gap analysis with the Ravens representing a “to be” state, the Browns in the “as is” phase and all those very telling statistics, not to mention what you actually witnessed, separating the two.

It manifested itself in the plays the Ravens made routinely on both sides of the ball and the plays the Browns did not. It manifested itself in the visceral feel you got that the Ravens players seemed to just hit harder and cover better. It manifested itself in the records of two teams who only technically play in the same conference and league.

The fact that a gap exists is itself not the problem. There’s always a gap unless you’re the team at the top and even then there are all sorts of mini-gaps between various aspects of your operations and those other teams that do some tasks better then you.

The issue is exactly what it will take to close the gap and that is the question that various iterations of Browns deep thinkers supposedly have been trying to solve with virtually no success. Former general manager Phil Savage often spoke about it in terms of the number of quality players it takes to be competitive. Eric Mangini, a de facto general manager, talked about it in terms of a mystical process. In the end they were just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it would stick.

What really bothers the average fan still is that they're tired of that approach and are starting to think, based on the results they see each week, that this regime is more of the same.

It would help if someone on this Browns staff laid out much of a realistic vision on how those gaps are going to be closed. But Holmgren speaks sparingly and Heckert not at all. You can't tell exactly what gaps they see and what plans they haveto close them. All your left to do is look for little clues and make assumptions that are probably wrong.

What I fear is that the Browns are reaching a critical mass with their fans, most of whom have proven they can take an incredible amount of abuse. What these fans need at the moment is a reason to believe that despite the numbing sameness each week there is a definite plan in place and it's being acted upon. Right now, that just doesn't appear to be the case.

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.