The news broke that the Cleveland Browns traded disgruntled (and I mean really disgruntled) receiver Braylon Edwards to the New York Jets and even before I knew who and what the Browns received in return I couldn’t help think about Lenny Dykstra’s quote when the Philadelphia Phillies traded Von Hayes to the Indians years ago, “great trade, who’d we get?”
And that’s the point, isn’t it? Does it really matter who the Browns get in return for Edwards? Isn’t this the ultimate addition by subtraction trade?
There was an entry on the message boards at The Cleveland Fan that saw this trade as somehow being engineered by Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry as his way of ensuring that LeBron James won’t end up in New York. Good thought.
As it turns out the Browns received linebacker Jason Trusnik, a 4th year player out of Nordonia High and Ohio Northern who came into the league as an undrafted free agent, wide receiver Chansi Stuckey, a 7th round pick of the Jets in 2007 out of Clemson, and two draft picks. That makes a good trade even better. The Browns actually received real live players and Mangini’s favorite currency, draft picks, in return, although the level of the picks hasn’t been disclosed.
Trusnik is mostly a special teams player and Stuckey is the Jets’ number two receiver on a team with very average wide receivers. For his career, Stuckey has 43 catches for 479 yards and 4 touchdowns. He missed all of 2007 with a foot injury. He’ll bring some experience but an undistinguished resume. No matter. If he can just catch the ball more than he drops it then he’ll be an immediate contributor. More importantly, this trade should at least put a permanent end to second round pick Brian Robiskie’s days as an inactive bystander on game day.
What makes this trade important from a Browns’ perspective is not what the Browns received in return but the statement that it makes to the rest of the players. To put it charitably, Edwards was a problem, not just for head coach Eric Mangini but for Romeo Crennel before that. Edwards was the center of his own universe and playing for a coach who only wants the planets revolving around him and no one else. Edwards always had his own agenda and while he tried on occasion to talk a good game his actions spoke volumes about where he placed himself in the team dynamic.
Edwards was a rock that was headed for Mangini’s windshield during the offseason. It’s not secret that Mangini tried to trade him in the run up to the draft but couldn’t quite work out a deal with the New York Giants. This time Mangini found a fit and a sigh of relief is being breathed city-wide.
Certainly Edwards’ latest problem, the near brawl he allegedly started early Monday morning, was the precipitating factor in his sudden departure. But this was a move that was coming sooner or later. The Browns could have retained Edwards by making him a franchise player at the end of the season, thus effectively keeping him from signing elsewhere. Practically no one thought that was a likely scenario.
What was always far more likely was a trade such as this that keeps the Browns from facing the difficult decision of having to either sign Edwards or let him go for nothing. Argue all you want (as I would) that letting Edwards go for nothing is still a plus for this franchise, but take it on a leap of faith if you must that other teams would have thought the Browns were crazy had they let that scenario play out.
Indeed, the fact that Mangini and general manager George Kokinis were able to get two active players and two draft picks for Edwards tells you that others in the league still have the outsider’s view that Edwards has value. It’s what’s called the greater fool theory in business. No matter how deep you may have stepped into it there’s always a bigger fool out there willing to bail you out. Count this is just the latest mess made by the former regime that Mangini is extricating the team from.
If you want a baseball comparison, think Milton Bradley. Teams like Oakland and the Chicago Cubs thought that they had the secret recipe for keeping Bradley, a talented malcontent, motivated and engaged and so they showered him with millions. The Cubs sent Bradley home before this season ended because he’s such a disruptive source and they are surely regretting the multi-millions they guaranteed him before this past season started. Someone will take Bradley off their hands, though he may be running out of chances.
Edwards is Bradley a few years removed, with the Jets proving the point. The Jets, like the Browns, are very thin at wide receiver and wouldn’t a former Pro Bowler look just great? Despite their good start, they don’t look to go anywhere fast with such a weak unit even as strong-armed rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez lights up Broadway.
Undoubtedly the Jets see Edwards as the 2007 Pro Bowl receiver and already have more than rationalized away the faults that dominate Edwards’ profile in Cleveland. You don’t have to attend the Jets’ press conference to know that they will attribute Edwards’ troubles in Cleveland to the unsettled nature of the franchise, the constant changing of the quarterbacks, and his having 4 different offensive coordinators in 5 years. But how does any of that explain why Edwards dropped a ball that was right in his hands on Sunday?
There will be those on the Cleveland side that will be disheartened by the Edwards trade because he represented one of the few potential playmakers on this team. But just as the team as a whole won’t progress until it can consistently perform, Edwards is in the last year of a 5 year contract under which he rarely was as consistent of a performer as his talent might suggest. Fans who wanted to keep Edwards around are in a distinct minority.
As for what this signals for the Browns going forward, if there were any doubts that Mangini or owner Randy Lerner were taking a long term view toward rebuilding this franchise this trade quashed them. With a very young and very unproven receiver corps before the trade, Mangini has further depleted the limited potential this team has to score. A high draft pick next spring is a certainty.
Still, that’s probably not a bad thing. This team needs more of nearly everything and whatever contributions Trusnik and Stuckey can make, particularly to the dynamic Mangini is trying to build, the team will be better off for it. As for the draft picks received, Browns’ fans have no expectations in that regard. Year after year of fruitless drafting will wear down even the most ardent optimists.
Now Edwards is New York’s problem. Surely he doesn’t see it that way. He’ll see it as the world’s biggest stage and maybe that’s what he needs. But whatever success he may end up having just know it would never have happened in Cleveland. Edwards’ couldn’t get over the fact that this is LeBron’s town and even if James doesn’t stay in Cleveland many will always be grateful that before he left it was he all along who was holding Edwards’ exit door.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Taking the Bad from the Good
It’s funny how the worm can turn in professional football. One day Cleveland Browns fans find themselves somewhat giddy despite their team’s fourth straight loss this season and 10th overall and the next day they find themselves having to scratch their heads over the misadventures of one of the most misguided players to ever wear a Browns’ uniform, Braylon Edwards.
On the first count, that little hop in the step following Sunday’s loss to the Cincinnati Bengals is viewed through the bending light of a prism called progress.
Is it justified? The answer is both yes and no. Against the Baltimore Ravens two weeks ago, the Browns were literally picked clean of what little meat laid on their bones. It was as ugly of a loss as a professional football team should ever have. More than that, though, it represented a significant step backwards for a team and a franchise that already was up against a brick wall. In that sense, then, yes Sunday’s loss was progress.
Sunday’s loss also was progress because of it offered a glimpse of what the future might hold in some regard and that the future may not be as dark as anticipated.
Mohamed Massaquoi clearly has serious ability. Jerome Harrison, assuming he’s done icing off all the bruises by this Sunday, showed he can be an every down running back. Josh Cribbs continues to get better and is making a case not only for a new contract but for the designation of best special teams player in the league. And Shaun Rogers? Let’s just say that his game on Sunday was a nice illustration of how a defensive lineman on a team this bad could still be a Pro Bowler.
But Sunday’s loss wasn’t all progress because it was, first and foremost, a loss and to a team that isn’t one of the NFL’s elites.
The Bengals may be 3-1 at the moment and they have a quality win against Pittsburgh, but when the dust settles on this season the Bengals aren’t likely to be one of the survivors. They are far too inconsistent on both sides of the ball at the moment to be serious contenders. The shear number of 3-and-outs they had against a very suspect Browns’ defense speaks volumes as does the fact that their defense gave up 20 points to a team that had one garbage touchdown on offense all season.
Still, on balance, Sunday’s loss was a beam of light in a very dark tunnel. But it will only represent that and nothing more until can be replicated on a regular basis. If Massaquoi disappears as quickly as he appeared, if Harrison can be an every down back but not an every week back, if teams stop kicking to Cribbs completely, then Sunday’s game will represent more anomaly than trend.
Sunday’s game, though, also was memorable for a few things that didn’t happen. Quarterback Derek Anderson kept his job but he didn’t quite establish permanent ownership over it. Indeed he had a rather typical roller coaster performance. His ability to throw quickly and long opened up the running game, thus proving you can use the pass to establish the run. But he was awful early and late and had a critical interception at the Bengals’ goal line that arguably cost the team the game.
The other quarterback, Brady Quinn, didn’t get to do anything more than assume the position that has defined his career to this point: yawning bystander. Anderson’s performance and the fact that he’s in the last year of his contract probably means that Quinn is worth keeping around. He’s three years into a career that hasn’t started and he’s been crippled by some bad luck and bad timing.
He fell precipitously in the first round of the draft due to a confluence of events and, in retrospect, some question about his ability. He also has a lousy agent who held him out of camp when he would have been far better off reporting early. The emergence of Anderson from afterthought to potential superstar wasn’t good for the Quinn psyche nor was former general manager Phil Savage’s decision to sign Anderson to a contract extension. When Quinn did get a chance to start he showed poise and promise but was hurt too quickly for any final judgments to be rendered. Then, when he gets his chance this season, his head coach puts him on a very short leash and surrounds him with a running back well past his prime and a second receiver who literally learning on the job. He never got the benefit that Anderson did of having a running back on the right side of his career or a legitimate receiver to complement Braylon Edwards. If it wasn’t for bad luck Quinn would have no luck at all.
And then there is Edwards. He not only didn’t catch a pass in a game he’s played in for the first time in his career, he didn’t do anything afterward to help burnish an image he so wrongly claims is unfair. The only person that didn’t see this coming was my buddy Ron and that’s only because he stopped following the NFL the last time they went on strike.
Frankly, writing about Edwards as misanthrope is getting rather repetitive. To paraphrase Edwards, it’s something fans have dealt with for five years now. They aren’t even worried about it anymore. He signed a five-year deal.
If Edwards taking out his frustration on a man about half his size ends up being his ticket out of Cleveland then at least something could came of it. For whatever good he does and for whatever statements he makes about being unselfish and a team player, Edwards has proven time and again that he cares only of himself and courting an image as a player, both on and off the field.
At the moment, he’s neither. He’s as sad and pathetic of an excuse for a player that the Browns have ever had. If he had no talent, he’d be an afterthought. But because he has some ability he is a never-ending source of frustration.
It’s hard to tell if there is just one reason Edwards’ bad-ass attitude spilled over early Monday morning into a fight outside of a Cleveland bar but the smart money says probably not. Maybe it was the balls that bounced off his hands Sunday. Maybe it was the emergence of another legitimate receiving threat in the form of Massaquoi. In that regard about the only thing that could have made that worse news for Edwards is if it had been former Buckeye Brian Robiskie instead. Maybe it was just that Edwards really is sick of all the love that this town gives LeBron James and, by extension, his friends at the expense of carpetbaggers like Edwards who somehow thinks he’s more Cleveland than James, for whatever that means. Maybe he just didn’t like the way his drinks were being mixed.
Whatever it was Edwards once again undid any good he thought he was doing by positioning himself earlier this season as all about the team and all about being unselfish.
Working out of classification by playing pop psychologist is always dangerous, but I’ll wade in those waters anyway. Edwards has a certain amount of demons but he isn’t alone in that regard. He’s always had an outsized sense of entitlement, but then again so do most professional athletes. He also seems to carry a chip on his shoulder because he feels he’s never been completely embraced. Some of the league’s best players carried similar chips.
But the real issue with Edwards is that he’s always been just a paycheck player. He has no heart and it shows week in and week out. It may be that things have always come too easy for him that he’s found it unnecessary to develop the humility a professional athlete needs to cope with the inevitable failures. You decide but simply put, Edwards is hardly worth the sum of his parts.
Edwards can practice catching balls on the sidelines all he wants but he’s always going to drop more than he should because he’s not playing the game for the right reasons. In college it was about getting to the pros. He wanted to be the flashy receiver and was because it got him noticed. But in that process teams like Cleveland had to ignore the simple fact that Edwards had trouble with the routine plays.
At the pro level it’s been much the same. Edwards has always seemed far more interested in demonstrating his flash appeal. Get to the Pro Bowl. Get the love on the big stage. Get the next big contract. But his penchant for not making the routine plays is something he’s becoming far more known for these days. The first ball that he dropped on Sunday was classic Edwards. Anderson hit Edwards between the numbers on a very routine route and Edwards couldn’t execute. Even if he has as good a head for football as any receiver in the game, his lack of heart will continue to hold him back.
You can point to the good deeds Edwards has done in the community and draw whatever conclusions you’d like but in context they come across as insincere efforts designed more to bolster his image than to further something Edwards deeply cares about. They also were probably a tax strategy.
And that is the crux of the problem. Edwards seems to only really care about Edwards. He comes across as someone who doesn’t care about this team or the game he plays. He doesn’t honor either through hard work and commitment and sullies both through lip service and indifference. By this point it may be too late for Edwards to find his inner child and the reason he put on that first pair of shoulder pads in a midget league game. I do know this, though. Until Edwards rediscovers that spark and embraces it, the riches he dreams about will always be in someone else’s wallet.
As for the lingering impact of this escapade, let’s just say that it’s going to further the gulf between Edwards and his teammates and vice versa. Mangini may handle it in house but he’s not going to turn a blind eye. And if there’s something that players hate more than being punished for their own picayune offenses it’s being punished for someone else’s.
On the first count, that little hop in the step following Sunday’s loss to the Cincinnati Bengals is viewed through the bending light of a prism called progress.
Is it justified? The answer is both yes and no. Against the Baltimore Ravens two weeks ago, the Browns were literally picked clean of what little meat laid on their bones. It was as ugly of a loss as a professional football team should ever have. More than that, though, it represented a significant step backwards for a team and a franchise that already was up against a brick wall. In that sense, then, yes Sunday’s loss was progress.
Sunday’s loss also was progress because of it offered a glimpse of what the future might hold in some regard and that the future may not be as dark as anticipated.
Mohamed Massaquoi clearly has serious ability. Jerome Harrison, assuming he’s done icing off all the bruises by this Sunday, showed he can be an every down running back. Josh Cribbs continues to get better and is making a case not only for a new contract but for the designation of best special teams player in the league. And Shaun Rogers? Let’s just say that his game on Sunday was a nice illustration of how a defensive lineman on a team this bad could still be a Pro Bowler.
But Sunday’s loss wasn’t all progress because it was, first and foremost, a loss and to a team that isn’t one of the NFL’s elites.
The Bengals may be 3-1 at the moment and they have a quality win against Pittsburgh, but when the dust settles on this season the Bengals aren’t likely to be one of the survivors. They are far too inconsistent on both sides of the ball at the moment to be serious contenders. The shear number of 3-and-outs they had against a very suspect Browns’ defense speaks volumes as does the fact that their defense gave up 20 points to a team that had one garbage touchdown on offense all season.
Still, on balance, Sunday’s loss was a beam of light in a very dark tunnel. But it will only represent that and nothing more until can be replicated on a regular basis. If Massaquoi disappears as quickly as he appeared, if Harrison can be an every down back but not an every week back, if teams stop kicking to Cribbs completely, then Sunday’s game will represent more anomaly than trend.
Sunday’s game, though, also was memorable for a few things that didn’t happen. Quarterback Derek Anderson kept his job but he didn’t quite establish permanent ownership over it. Indeed he had a rather typical roller coaster performance. His ability to throw quickly and long opened up the running game, thus proving you can use the pass to establish the run. But he was awful early and late and had a critical interception at the Bengals’ goal line that arguably cost the team the game.
The other quarterback, Brady Quinn, didn’t get to do anything more than assume the position that has defined his career to this point: yawning bystander. Anderson’s performance and the fact that he’s in the last year of his contract probably means that Quinn is worth keeping around. He’s three years into a career that hasn’t started and he’s been crippled by some bad luck and bad timing.
He fell precipitously in the first round of the draft due to a confluence of events and, in retrospect, some question about his ability. He also has a lousy agent who held him out of camp when he would have been far better off reporting early. The emergence of Anderson from afterthought to potential superstar wasn’t good for the Quinn psyche nor was former general manager Phil Savage’s decision to sign Anderson to a contract extension. When Quinn did get a chance to start he showed poise and promise but was hurt too quickly for any final judgments to be rendered. Then, when he gets his chance this season, his head coach puts him on a very short leash and surrounds him with a running back well past his prime and a second receiver who literally learning on the job. He never got the benefit that Anderson did of having a running back on the right side of his career or a legitimate receiver to complement Braylon Edwards. If it wasn’t for bad luck Quinn would have no luck at all.
And then there is Edwards. He not only didn’t catch a pass in a game he’s played in for the first time in his career, he didn’t do anything afterward to help burnish an image he so wrongly claims is unfair. The only person that didn’t see this coming was my buddy Ron and that’s only because he stopped following the NFL the last time they went on strike.
Frankly, writing about Edwards as misanthrope is getting rather repetitive. To paraphrase Edwards, it’s something fans have dealt with for five years now. They aren’t even worried about it anymore. He signed a five-year deal.
If Edwards taking out his frustration on a man about half his size ends up being his ticket out of Cleveland then at least something could came of it. For whatever good he does and for whatever statements he makes about being unselfish and a team player, Edwards has proven time and again that he cares only of himself and courting an image as a player, both on and off the field.
At the moment, he’s neither. He’s as sad and pathetic of an excuse for a player that the Browns have ever had. If he had no talent, he’d be an afterthought. But because he has some ability he is a never-ending source of frustration.
It’s hard to tell if there is just one reason Edwards’ bad-ass attitude spilled over early Monday morning into a fight outside of a Cleveland bar but the smart money says probably not. Maybe it was the balls that bounced off his hands Sunday. Maybe it was the emergence of another legitimate receiving threat in the form of Massaquoi. In that regard about the only thing that could have made that worse news for Edwards is if it had been former Buckeye Brian Robiskie instead. Maybe it was just that Edwards really is sick of all the love that this town gives LeBron James and, by extension, his friends at the expense of carpetbaggers like Edwards who somehow thinks he’s more Cleveland than James, for whatever that means. Maybe he just didn’t like the way his drinks were being mixed.
Whatever it was Edwards once again undid any good he thought he was doing by positioning himself earlier this season as all about the team and all about being unselfish.
Working out of classification by playing pop psychologist is always dangerous, but I’ll wade in those waters anyway. Edwards has a certain amount of demons but he isn’t alone in that regard. He’s always had an outsized sense of entitlement, but then again so do most professional athletes. He also seems to carry a chip on his shoulder because he feels he’s never been completely embraced. Some of the league’s best players carried similar chips.
But the real issue with Edwards is that he’s always been just a paycheck player. He has no heart and it shows week in and week out. It may be that things have always come too easy for him that he’s found it unnecessary to develop the humility a professional athlete needs to cope with the inevitable failures. You decide but simply put, Edwards is hardly worth the sum of his parts.
Edwards can practice catching balls on the sidelines all he wants but he’s always going to drop more than he should because he’s not playing the game for the right reasons. In college it was about getting to the pros. He wanted to be the flashy receiver and was because it got him noticed. But in that process teams like Cleveland had to ignore the simple fact that Edwards had trouble with the routine plays.
At the pro level it’s been much the same. Edwards has always seemed far more interested in demonstrating his flash appeal. Get to the Pro Bowl. Get the love on the big stage. Get the next big contract. But his penchant for not making the routine plays is something he’s becoming far more known for these days. The first ball that he dropped on Sunday was classic Edwards. Anderson hit Edwards between the numbers on a very routine route and Edwards couldn’t execute. Even if he has as good a head for football as any receiver in the game, his lack of heart will continue to hold him back.
You can point to the good deeds Edwards has done in the community and draw whatever conclusions you’d like but in context they come across as insincere efforts designed more to bolster his image than to further something Edwards deeply cares about. They also were probably a tax strategy.
And that is the crux of the problem. Edwards seems to only really care about Edwards. He comes across as someone who doesn’t care about this team or the game he plays. He doesn’t honor either through hard work and commitment and sullies both through lip service and indifference. By this point it may be too late for Edwards to find his inner child and the reason he put on that first pair of shoulder pads in a midget league game. I do know this, though. Until Edwards rediscovers that spark and embraces it, the riches he dreams about will always be in someone else’s wallet.
As for the lingering impact of this escapade, let’s just say that it’s going to further the gulf between Edwards and his teammates and vice versa. Mangini may handle it in house but he’s not going to turn a blind eye. And if there’s something that players hate more than being punished for their own picayune offenses it’s being punished for someone else’s.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
What Could Have Been
The big adjustment is the one that got all the attention but it was the little one that made far more of a difference, just not enough. Mohamed Massaquoi, starting at receiver in place of Josh Cribbs, was a major difference maker of the unexpected kind but in the end the Cleveland Browns’ inability to finish and Cincinnati’s Carson Palmer’s abject resiliency gave the Bengals a 23-20 overtime victory against the winless Browns. It was the Browns’ 10th straight loss dating back to last season.
The Browns, clinging to a precarious 20—14 lead late in the game couldn’t find a way to finish off a reeling Bengals’ team even as they were seemingly stepping on their throats the entire second half. After slowing down the Bengals nearly the entire game, Palmer hit a wide open Chad Ochocinco in the end zone on a 4th and goal from the Cleveland 6-yard line with 1:44 left in the game to tie the score at 20-20. But Shaun Rogers blocked to go-ahead extra point, his second blocked kick of the day, giving the Browns one final chance in regulation.
Operating without any time outs, two had been blown needlessly and one was lost on head coach Eric Mangini’s second unsuccessful replay challenge of the game, quarterback Derek Anderson was not able to get the Browns into kicker Billy Cundiff’s field goal range. It sent the game into overtime and ultimately into the hands of the Bengals.
The overtime had the look and feel of the waning rounds of a heavyweight fight by two club pros. Despite winning the coin toss, the Bengals punches lacked any zing and they were forced to punt. The Browns’ counterpunch likewise lacked any sting as they were a quick 3-and-out. Two more changes of possession each set up the Bengals’ winning drive with 3:23 remaining.
Taking over at their own 20, Palmer and the Bengals put together an 11-play drive that ended with Graham’s 31-yard field goal and the Bengals pulling victory from the gaping jaws of a defeated but spirited Browns’ defense.
But oh what could have been.
Like a long putt that looks good until it doesn’t, the Browns looked like they were on the way to ending one of the worst losing streaks in franchise history, thanks in large part to Massaquoi, Rogers, Cribbs, Derek Anderson and Jerome Harrison, but not necessarily in that order.
While Massaquoi was in large measure the story of the game from the Browns’ perspective there were plenty of supporting characters. Anderson, for one, shook off a slow start and came on strong, repeatedly finding an open Massaquoi. Harrison, taking over for the injured Jamal Lewis, repeatedly helped his quarterback by being a credible threat on the ground, running for 121 yards on 29 carries. It was a nice turnaround for Harrison, whose fumble early in the second quarter led to a 78-yard Robert Geathers return and 14-0 Bengals lead. Rogers’ right hand alone was responsible for saving four points and ensuring the game got into overtime. He blocked Graham’s first field goal attempt and then blocked the critical extra point that sent the game into overtime. And then there was Cribbs. It was his long kick returns that repeatedly put the Browns’ offense in good position throughout the game.
The re-insertion of Anderson into the starting lineup certainly garnered all the attention in the run-up to Sunday’s game and it had the impact that Mangini likely expected. But it might have gone for naught if not for Mangini’s less-publicized by just as important decision to end the Cribbs-as-receiver experiment in favor of Massaquoi and now, perhaps, a new star is born. Massaquoi had 8 catches for 148 yards and gave the Browns another legitimate offensive weapon that opposing defenses will now have to worry about. To all this it’s worth wondering, what took so long?
Anderson, as is usually his wont, started off slow and at one point in the first half was 3-11 for 61 yards. But as is also his wont, Anderson got hot, repeatedly finding Massaquoi and moving the ball in a way that left fans scratching their heads asking where this all had been in the first three games of the season. In all, Anderson was 26-48 for 269 yards and two touchdowns, a 1-yarder to tight end Steve Heiden and a 1-yard run on 4th down that tied the score at 14 halfway through the third quarter.
Meanwhile, the Bengals, after two long opening drives, only one of which resulted in points, went into the kind of offensive and defensive funk that has defined head coach Marvin Lewis’ tenure with the team. But the Bengals are nothing if not opportunistic this season and despite being behind in the 4th quarter of every game this season, the Bengals find themselves on top of the AFC North with a 4-1 record, performing one miraculous escape after another.
At the outset, the game looked to be heading the way every Browns’ game has gone this season—over early. With the precision of every other opponent the Browns have faced this season, the Bengals took the opening kickoff and marched from their own 12-yard line to the Cleveland 5 before seeing their drive blow up via the Rogers’ block of what should have been a Graham chip-shot field goal.
Still the drive didn’t seem to portend well for the Browns as it chewed up over 7 minutes of the first quarter. Indeed, the trend continued on the Bengals next drive, coming as it did after a Browns 3-and-out, chewed up nearly 7 more minutes. In all, the Browns defense was on the field for nearly 14 minutes of the 1st quarter. That drive ended when Palmer found Ochocinco on a 5-yard fade pass that helped give the Bengals a 7-0 lead. Mangini unsuccessfully challenged the catch.
As the Bengals were dominating the time of possession, Anderson was busy making a case for Brett Ratliff. Anderson’s first pass was in the gut of receiver Braylon Edwards, which is the exact wrong place to throw to Edwards. It was dropped. His next pass, on 3rd and 7, was well off the mark to Massaquoi and the drive was over nearly as quickly as it started.
The Browns might have continued to founder somewhere deep in their own territory but for a nice return by Cribbs after the Bengals’ touchdown. Cribbs put together one of his trademark knifing returns through the opposition and scampered 58 yards to the Bengals’ 34-yard line. It didn’t end well, thanks to the Geathers fumble return that pushed the lead to a usually insurmountable 14-0.
This was the point that the game looked to be another death march on Lake Erie. But in what really did portend the future of this game at least the Browns showed a bit of life on their next drive, particularly when Anderson hit a 30-yard pass to Massaquoi for one first down and then rushed for another on a sneak before the usual offensive gremlins, dropped passes, passes knocked down at the line of scrimmage, forced another punt anyway.
The Browns then did do something on defense that they hadn’t done all season, and this time it was something good. Palmer, perhaps getting greedy, threw from his own end zone long only to see it intercepted by Brodney Pool at the Cleveland 43-yard line. But enthusiasm was quickly tempered when Anderson was sacked for 12 yards. Harrison ran for 4 yards and then Anderson had another ball knocked down at the line of scrimmage. Another Dave Zastudil punt followed. This was Anderson’s low point of the game.
After another Bengals’ punt and a Cribbs’ 39-yard return to the Cincinnati 38-yard line, the Browns had the opportunity with 3 minutes left in the first half to tighten a game that was surprisingly closer than it probably should have been. And faith, for once, was ultimately rewarded. Anderson lofted the ball to a streaking Massaquoi down the right side line for an apparent 30-yard touchdown that, on review, indicated that Massaquoi was down at the half-yard line. On the next play, Anderson rolled right and hit tight end Steve Heiden for the touchdown. The extra point by Billy Cundiff cut the Bengals lead to 14-7.
Two things about the sequence were worth noting. First, the replay reversal of the apparent Massaquoi touchdown actually helped the Browns. When Massaquoi made the catch there was nearly 2 minutes left in the half. By running another play the Browns were able to take another 20 or so seconds off the clock. The Bengals were never able to get much of a drive going thereafter. Second, the pass from Anderson to Heiden was just the kind of mid range pass that’s bedeviled Anderson his whole career. This one was on the mark.
It looked to be the turning point of the game. Opening the second half Anderson and the Browns were in the process of putting together their best drive of the season, featuring their best run of the season—a Harrison 21-yard burst—before another of Anderson’s gremlins, the interception, paid a visit at exactly the wrong moment. On 3rd and 8 from the Cincinnati 8-yard line, Anderson dropped back and tried to force a pass in the end zone to Heiden but it was picked off by cornerback Jonathan Joseph at the goal line and returned 32 yards.
Mangini burned his second replay challenge on the interception and was wrong again. That coupled with the timeout that Anderson needlessly burned on the half’s second play left the Browns with one time out for the remainder of the half. It came back to haunt them.
The turnover was not the dramatic momentum turn that if appeared it might be, at least for the Bengals. Struggling on offense after their first two drives, the Bengals were forced to punt when a third down pass slipped out of Palmer’s hands. The Browns, on the other hand, were full of fight.
Taking over at their own 23, the Browns put together a 10-play 77-yard drive, capped off by an Anderson 1-yard run on 4th down, that helped tie the score at 14-14. The drive featured a healthy dose of Anderson-Massaquoi with enough hard runs by Harrison to keep the Bengals’ defense off-balance.
The Bengals, reeling by this point, then turned the ball right back over after returner Andre Caldwell fumbled the kickoff and Blake Costanzo recovered, giving the Browns the ball at the Cincinnati 18-yard line. But the Browns couldn’t punch it in and head to settle for a 26-yard field goal by Cundiff that gave them the 17-14 lead just as the fourth quarter got underway.
As important as those four points would have been the Browns really had the chance to finish off the Bengals on their next drive after Cribbs returned a Kevin Huber punt 50 yards to the Cincinnati 14 with just under 9 minutes remaining. But Anderson lost 8 yards on a sack and the Browns had to settle for a 31-yard field goal that gave them the 20-14 lead. Those four lost points turned out to be the difference in the game.
The Bengals then rallied with the Palmer to Ochocinco touchdown pass that was set up by a key 16-yard pass from Palmer to Chris Henry on 3rd and 14. The Browns had one final chance in regulation but, operating without any time outs, couldn’t get into field goal range.
Unlike, really, any game this season this loss, coming as it did in last second fashion, at least gives the Browns something to build on for the rest of the season. Anderson was rusty, certainly, but showed more than enough to quell any further quarterback controversy for the time being. Harrison probably secured his role as a feature back and he did so in grand fashion. Massaquoi now gives the Browns another option that they didn’t have before this day. It will force teams to stop concentrating on Edwards, who was held without a reception while Massaquoi was having a career day.
For all the good, it just wasn’t enough. The game ended as most probably expected anyway but for the first time this season Browns fans at least have a legitimate reason to believe that the entire season will no longer be a complete bust.
The Browns, clinging to a precarious 20—14 lead late in the game couldn’t find a way to finish off a reeling Bengals’ team even as they were seemingly stepping on their throats the entire second half. After slowing down the Bengals nearly the entire game, Palmer hit a wide open Chad Ochocinco in the end zone on a 4th and goal from the Cleveland 6-yard line with 1:44 left in the game to tie the score at 20-20. But Shaun Rogers blocked to go-ahead extra point, his second blocked kick of the day, giving the Browns one final chance in regulation.
Operating without any time outs, two had been blown needlessly and one was lost on head coach Eric Mangini’s second unsuccessful replay challenge of the game, quarterback Derek Anderson was not able to get the Browns into kicker Billy Cundiff’s field goal range. It sent the game into overtime and ultimately into the hands of the Bengals.
The overtime had the look and feel of the waning rounds of a heavyweight fight by two club pros. Despite winning the coin toss, the Bengals punches lacked any zing and they were forced to punt. The Browns’ counterpunch likewise lacked any sting as they were a quick 3-and-out. Two more changes of possession each set up the Bengals’ winning drive with 3:23 remaining.
Taking over at their own 20, Palmer and the Bengals put together an 11-play drive that ended with Graham’s 31-yard field goal and the Bengals pulling victory from the gaping jaws of a defeated but spirited Browns’ defense.
But oh what could have been.
Like a long putt that looks good until it doesn’t, the Browns looked like they were on the way to ending one of the worst losing streaks in franchise history, thanks in large part to Massaquoi, Rogers, Cribbs, Derek Anderson and Jerome Harrison, but not necessarily in that order.
While Massaquoi was in large measure the story of the game from the Browns’ perspective there were plenty of supporting characters. Anderson, for one, shook off a slow start and came on strong, repeatedly finding an open Massaquoi. Harrison, taking over for the injured Jamal Lewis, repeatedly helped his quarterback by being a credible threat on the ground, running for 121 yards on 29 carries. It was a nice turnaround for Harrison, whose fumble early in the second quarter led to a 78-yard Robert Geathers return and 14-0 Bengals lead. Rogers’ right hand alone was responsible for saving four points and ensuring the game got into overtime. He blocked Graham’s first field goal attempt and then blocked the critical extra point that sent the game into overtime. And then there was Cribbs. It was his long kick returns that repeatedly put the Browns’ offense in good position throughout the game.
The re-insertion of Anderson into the starting lineup certainly garnered all the attention in the run-up to Sunday’s game and it had the impact that Mangini likely expected. But it might have gone for naught if not for Mangini’s less-publicized by just as important decision to end the Cribbs-as-receiver experiment in favor of Massaquoi and now, perhaps, a new star is born. Massaquoi had 8 catches for 148 yards and gave the Browns another legitimate offensive weapon that opposing defenses will now have to worry about. To all this it’s worth wondering, what took so long?
Anderson, as is usually his wont, started off slow and at one point in the first half was 3-11 for 61 yards. But as is also his wont, Anderson got hot, repeatedly finding Massaquoi and moving the ball in a way that left fans scratching their heads asking where this all had been in the first three games of the season. In all, Anderson was 26-48 for 269 yards and two touchdowns, a 1-yarder to tight end Steve Heiden and a 1-yard run on 4th down that tied the score at 14 halfway through the third quarter.
Meanwhile, the Bengals, after two long opening drives, only one of which resulted in points, went into the kind of offensive and defensive funk that has defined head coach Marvin Lewis’ tenure with the team. But the Bengals are nothing if not opportunistic this season and despite being behind in the 4th quarter of every game this season, the Bengals find themselves on top of the AFC North with a 4-1 record, performing one miraculous escape after another.
At the outset, the game looked to be heading the way every Browns’ game has gone this season—over early. With the precision of every other opponent the Browns have faced this season, the Bengals took the opening kickoff and marched from their own 12-yard line to the Cleveland 5 before seeing their drive blow up via the Rogers’ block of what should have been a Graham chip-shot field goal.
Still the drive didn’t seem to portend well for the Browns as it chewed up over 7 minutes of the first quarter. Indeed, the trend continued on the Bengals next drive, coming as it did after a Browns 3-and-out, chewed up nearly 7 more minutes. In all, the Browns defense was on the field for nearly 14 minutes of the 1st quarter. That drive ended when Palmer found Ochocinco on a 5-yard fade pass that helped give the Bengals a 7-0 lead. Mangini unsuccessfully challenged the catch.
As the Bengals were dominating the time of possession, Anderson was busy making a case for Brett Ratliff. Anderson’s first pass was in the gut of receiver Braylon Edwards, which is the exact wrong place to throw to Edwards. It was dropped. His next pass, on 3rd and 7, was well off the mark to Massaquoi and the drive was over nearly as quickly as it started.
The Browns might have continued to founder somewhere deep in their own territory but for a nice return by Cribbs after the Bengals’ touchdown. Cribbs put together one of his trademark knifing returns through the opposition and scampered 58 yards to the Bengals’ 34-yard line. It didn’t end well, thanks to the Geathers fumble return that pushed the lead to a usually insurmountable 14-0.
This was the point that the game looked to be another death march on Lake Erie. But in what really did portend the future of this game at least the Browns showed a bit of life on their next drive, particularly when Anderson hit a 30-yard pass to Massaquoi for one first down and then rushed for another on a sneak before the usual offensive gremlins, dropped passes, passes knocked down at the line of scrimmage, forced another punt anyway.
The Browns then did do something on defense that they hadn’t done all season, and this time it was something good. Palmer, perhaps getting greedy, threw from his own end zone long only to see it intercepted by Brodney Pool at the Cleveland 43-yard line. But enthusiasm was quickly tempered when Anderson was sacked for 12 yards. Harrison ran for 4 yards and then Anderson had another ball knocked down at the line of scrimmage. Another Dave Zastudil punt followed. This was Anderson’s low point of the game.
After another Bengals’ punt and a Cribbs’ 39-yard return to the Cincinnati 38-yard line, the Browns had the opportunity with 3 minutes left in the first half to tighten a game that was surprisingly closer than it probably should have been. And faith, for once, was ultimately rewarded. Anderson lofted the ball to a streaking Massaquoi down the right side line for an apparent 30-yard touchdown that, on review, indicated that Massaquoi was down at the half-yard line. On the next play, Anderson rolled right and hit tight end Steve Heiden for the touchdown. The extra point by Billy Cundiff cut the Bengals lead to 14-7.
Two things about the sequence were worth noting. First, the replay reversal of the apparent Massaquoi touchdown actually helped the Browns. When Massaquoi made the catch there was nearly 2 minutes left in the half. By running another play the Browns were able to take another 20 or so seconds off the clock. The Bengals were never able to get much of a drive going thereafter. Second, the pass from Anderson to Heiden was just the kind of mid range pass that’s bedeviled Anderson his whole career. This one was on the mark.
It looked to be the turning point of the game. Opening the second half Anderson and the Browns were in the process of putting together their best drive of the season, featuring their best run of the season—a Harrison 21-yard burst—before another of Anderson’s gremlins, the interception, paid a visit at exactly the wrong moment. On 3rd and 8 from the Cincinnati 8-yard line, Anderson dropped back and tried to force a pass in the end zone to Heiden but it was picked off by cornerback Jonathan Joseph at the goal line and returned 32 yards.
Mangini burned his second replay challenge on the interception and was wrong again. That coupled with the timeout that Anderson needlessly burned on the half’s second play left the Browns with one time out for the remainder of the half. It came back to haunt them.
The turnover was not the dramatic momentum turn that if appeared it might be, at least for the Bengals. Struggling on offense after their first two drives, the Bengals were forced to punt when a third down pass slipped out of Palmer’s hands. The Browns, on the other hand, were full of fight.
Taking over at their own 23, the Browns put together a 10-play 77-yard drive, capped off by an Anderson 1-yard run on 4th down, that helped tie the score at 14-14. The drive featured a healthy dose of Anderson-Massaquoi with enough hard runs by Harrison to keep the Bengals’ defense off-balance.
The Bengals, reeling by this point, then turned the ball right back over after returner Andre Caldwell fumbled the kickoff and Blake Costanzo recovered, giving the Browns the ball at the Cincinnati 18-yard line. But the Browns couldn’t punch it in and head to settle for a 26-yard field goal by Cundiff that gave them the 17-14 lead just as the fourth quarter got underway.
As important as those four points would have been the Browns really had the chance to finish off the Bengals on their next drive after Cribbs returned a Kevin Huber punt 50 yards to the Cincinnati 14 with just under 9 minutes remaining. But Anderson lost 8 yards on a sack and the Browns had to settle for a 31-yard field goal that gave them the 20-14 lead. Those four lost points turned out to be the difference in the game.
The Bengals then rallied with the Palmer to Ochocinco touchdown pass that was set up by a key 16-yard pass from Palmer to Chris Henry on 3rd and 14. The Browns had one final chance in regulation but, operating without any time outs, couldn’t get into field goal range.
Unlike, really, any game this season this loss, coming as it did in last second fashion, at least gives the Browns something to build on for the rest of the season. Anderson was rusty, certainly, but showed more than enough to quell any further quarterback controversy for the time being. Harrison probably secured his role as a feature back and he did so in grand fashion. Massaquoi now gives the Browns another option that they didn’t have before this day. It will force teams to stop concentrating on Edwards, who was held without a reception while Massaquoi was having a career day.
For all the good, it just wasn’t enough. The game ended as most probably expected anyway but for the first time this season Browns fans at least have a legitimate reason to believe that the entire season will no longer be a complete bust.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Lingering Items--Ravens Edition
Sometimes helps comes from the most unexpected places. Take this past Wednesday. Seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of one of the worst weeks for Browns and their fans since Bill Belichick cut Bernie Kosar, Cleveland Indians general manager Mark Shapiro temporarily takes the focus of his beleaguered brother-in-law, Eric Mangini, by canning Eric Wedge and his entire coaching staff. It worked, for a moment anyway.
The Wedge firing doesn’t necessarily carry the same unbridled enthusiasm that the dismissal of Mangini might carry at the moment. Wedge’s shortcomings as a manager are well chronicled but at least he was approachable. He never carried himself to be the smartest guy in the room. He protected his players, sometimes to a fault, and was respectful, sometimes to a fault, of their struggles. Wedge will stay in baseball and has a real shot at managing again someday.
His firing was a bit of a surprise, at least in terms of timing. It turns out that Wedge asked Shapiro several days ago to know his fate before the team went to Boston for the final series. Shapiro accommodated Wedge, a nice move, and gave him the ubiquitous “going in a different direction” speech.
That Wedge stayed on to finish the season knowing he was done is an interesting but ultimately characteristically Wedge move. See it through to the end, no matter the outcome. Many of Wedge’s failures this season and for the last 7 seasons were every bit Shapiro’s failures and vice versa. But it really is time to actually go in that different direction. Here’s hoping that the Dolans and Shapiro are better at due diligence when it comes to hiring a manager than Randy Lerner was when it came to hiring a new head coach.
**
Back to the brother-in-law. It’s been a tough week for anything associated with the Cleveland Browns. The media buzzards are circling around Mangini as if he’s already have dead creating a sense among everyone else that perhaps Mangini’s firing is imminent. That is highly doubtful. He’ll make it through the season and probably well beyond.
For Lerner to actually pull the plug so quickly would require a whole lot of psychology to overcome. Making a move that quickly requires an impulsive personality, which is the exact opposite of Lerner’s disconnected approach. Lerner also has a lot personally invested in the decision. He made it solo which means he’s got his own reputation on the line and he’s going to need far more evidence than a little erratic decision making this early in the season to convince him that he was wrong.
Larry Elavasky, the self-appointed president of the Baltimore Browns Backers club, claims he wrote a letter to Lerner expressing his abject disappointment in the Browns and how it was making him sick to even watch the team. Elavasky claims that Lerner wrote him an email back and, among other things, expressed his faith in Mangini. (See letter and response here) In particular, Lerner said that when he got to the Browns “there was essentially no front office or core culture to define scouting, player evaluation or the draft let alone what is [sic] was to care about Cleveland and football….It is common knowledge of course that it took Tom Landry roughly seven seasons to build a winner in the 60s in Dallas. With the Steelers, it was probably 30 odd years from the time the team was acquired to when it stumbled on Chuck Knoll—and it has never turned back.”
The alleged email then went on to say that Lerner is heartbroken about the results so far as are his kids and concluded with “I do know that Eric Mangini knows his football and is a straight-shooter and a deeply decent man. To say the least, I believe he can get this thing right. Fingers crossed.”
I have no idea if the email is legitimate. Lerner doesn’t talk to anyone and it’s hard to believe in some sense that he would use email, the very vehicle that got Phil Savage in trouble with Lerner, as a coming out party of sorts. It’s also hard to believe that in an email he would throw his own Dad under the bus by saying what a mess the franchise was when he inherited it. Just call me skeptical.
On the other hand, the sentiment he expresses about Mangini is exactly where you’d think it would be. Lerner wouldn’t have hired Mangini if he didn’t think he knew football or if he didn’t think that Mangini was a decent sort. If it’s not a legitimate letter, kudos on the writer for getting this detail exactly right.
Irrespective of whether or not it’s real, it’s accurate. Getting this thing right isn’t a job that is either easily or quickly done. It did take that long in Dallas and Pittsburgh. Moreover, Lerner must feel Mangini is the right person to accomplish that task or it makes no sense to hire him in the first place. Speculate all you want but the most likely case it that we’ll all be here a year from now with the same complaints and the same speculation about Mangini’s future with the team.
**
There’s been plenty of talk in the last week about a number of players filing grievances against Mangini because of the imposition of fines. Mangini actually addressed the issue at his weekly press conference saying that grievances like these are common and that he’d be surprised if players didn’t file grievances, surmising that upwards of 90% of fines get grieved.
If only the Browns could play that good of defense.
As the head coach, Mangini is well within his rights under the collective bargaining agreement to set forth a list of infractions for which a player could be fined. Indeed, the agreement has a section dedicated to detailing the types of fines that may be levied and the upper limit on the amount of the fine. It even contains a yearly adjustment to that upper limit, a cost of living increase of sorts for fines. Players showing up late for meetings, reporting overweight and the like are very common fines in the NFL. Mangini’s schedule probably goes beyond what many other teams have in place but it’s hard to argue with his intent. Players should pay for their incidentals at hotels and they shouldn’t park in handicap spots, unless they play defense, I suppose.
In any evnet, when a player is fined his option is to pay it or grieve it. The grievance procedure in the collective bargaining agreement is two steps. First, the player files his complaint with club management. If he’s unsatisfied with the answer, which he undoubtedly will be, he can file it with the league office and have a neutral arbitrator hear the matter.
Not to get into a debate with Mangini and thus subject myself to a fine, but Mangini just isn’t correct when he says that grievances are filed over most of these matters. To the contrary, most fines don’t result in grievances. They get paid and the player moves on.
When they do get filed, it’s for one of two reasons. Either the player doesn’t think he committed the infraction or the player believes that the fine imposed was unfair relative to either the seriousness of the infraction or the fines levied to others similarly situated. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two, as in “I didn’t do it but if I did the fine is too much because Braylon only had to pay $250 for coming in late after the Michigan game.”
In either case, this narrows down the number of grievances that do get filed. Generally players know whether or not they committed the infraction and the amount imposed is usually according to a schedule so its relative fairness isn’t often an issue. Thus if upwards of 90% of the fines Mangini levies are indeed resulting in grievances, either here or when he was in New York, that’s a damning indictment on him. Again, though, it’s not really true. It’s just another Manginism.
As I said last week, the merits of the grievances files against Mangini aren’t the issue. Indeed, I assume that Mangini isn’t so random as to fine individuals without some basis. But the fact that a number of players already perceive unfairness and are willing to confront their head coach in an arbitration setting over it speaks volumes. Sure, Mangini or any head coach is prohibited from retaliating against a player because he filed a grievance but in a league where a player can get cut, without recourse, for performance reasons, determining retaliation is nearly impossible, particularly for fringe players. Consequences be damned, I ain’t paying no 50 cents for no coke.
This is exactly the kind of thing that undid Mangini in New York. Players perceived him as unfair for a variety of reasons. Whether he was or not was no longer the issue. Eventually ownership became convinced that Mangini lost the locker room and decided it was easier to fire one than to fire 53.
Mangini hasn’t lost the Browns’ locker room at this point. But manipulations with the quarterbacks and the iron fist when it comes to fines aren’t winning him many converts at the moment. For those already predisposed to feel that he’s unfair, based on reality or their own perception of reality, these things just tip the balance and become their leading exhibits for making their case to other players and to management.
This Browns team isn’t going to be competitive until Mangini can take away that kind of politicking in the locker room and get the players on the same page and focused on the next opponent only. That he hasn’t made much of a dent in that so far is a problem. That’s really job one. It may take a huge housecleaning to accomplish but he can’t get rid of everyone. When it comes down to it the biggest threat to Mangini’s tenure is if/when Lerner becomes convinced that it indeed is much easier to fire one than to fire 53.
**
At least reality hasn’t quite left town.
If you’re looking for some proof that not everything associated with the Browns at the moment is off its rails, consider this. At least some players understand that they are as much of a problem as anything else.
There was Braylon Edwards candidly admitting that the team has underachieved and that it may not even matter much who’s at quarterback. According to the Plain Dealer he said, "to be honest, we can't do any worse. It sounds, I don't know, maybe it's bad to say, but I don't think we can play any worse than we did.” It’s as honest as an assessment as you’re likely to read by someone on the inside.
One of the more telling quotes though came from Shaun Rogers. As reported in the Plain Dealer, Rogers labeled Sunday’s game with Cincinnati as “oh so, oh so important” and added this gem in discussing his team’s chances: “I would love to win, but I just want to see us compete this week, really.” From your lips to God’s ears, Shaun.
I like it when players demonstrate this level of unvarnished awareness publicly. Too often a player is so rote in saying “we just have to get better” that you wonder whether he has any sense that maybe he just isn’t good enough to get any better.. Edwards first and now Rogers at least understand that this team needs to be competitive before it can even think about winning. Recognition really is the first step on the road back from rock bottom. If this isn’t rock bottom, then that’s another column for another week.
**
Here’s hoping that Derek Anderson succeeds where Brady Quinn could not. But if he can’t then everyone associated with the Browns will be asking this week’s question to ponder: “What now?”
The Wedge firing doesn’t necessarily carry the same unbridled enthusiasm that the dismissal of Mangini might carry at the moment. Wedge’s shortcomings as a manager are well chronicled but at least he was approachable. He never carried himself to be the smartest guy in the room. He protected his players, sometimes to a fault, and was respectful, sometimes to a fault, of their struggles. Wedge will stay in baseball and has a real shot at managing again someday.
His firing was a bit of a surprise, at least in terms of timing. It turns out that Wedge asked Shapiro several days ago to know his fate before the team went to Boston for the final series. Shapiro accommodated Wedge, a nice move, and gave him the ubiquitous “going in a different direction” speech.
That Wedge stayed on to finish the season knowing he was done is an interesting but ultimately characteristically Wedge move. See it through to the end, no matter the outcome. Many of Wedge’s failures this season and for the last 7 seasons were every bit Shapiro’s failures and vice versa. But it really is time to actually go in that different direction. Here’s hoping that the Dolans and Shapiro are better at due diligence when it comes to hiring a manager than Randy Lerner was when it came to hiring a new head coach.
**
Back to the brother-in-law. It’s been a tough week for anything associated with the Cleveland Browns. The media buzzards are circling around Mangini as if he’s already have dead creating a sense among everyone else that perhaps Mangini’s firing is imminent. That is highly doubtful. He’ll make it through the season and probably well beyond.
For Lerner to actually pull the plug so quickly would require a whole lot of psychology to overcome. Making a move that quickly requires an impulsive personality, which is the exact opposite of Lerner’s disconnected approach. Lerner also has a lot personally invested in the decision. He made it solo which means he’s got his own reputation on the line and he’s going to need far more evidence than a little erratic decision making this early in the season to convince him that he was wrong.
Larry Elavasky, the self-appointed president of the Baltimore Browns Backers club, claims he wrote a letter to Lerner expressing his abject disappointment in the Browns and how it was making him sick to even watch the team. Elavasky claims that Lerner wrote him an email back and, among other things, expressed his faith in Mangini. (See letter and response here) In particular, Lerner said that when he got to the Browns “there was essentially no front office or core culture to define scouting, player evaluation or the draft let alone what is [sic] was to care about Cleveland and football….It is common knowledge of course that it took Tom Landry roughly seven seasons to build a winner in the 60s in Dallas. With the Steelers, it was probably 30 odd years from the time the team was acquired to when it stumbled on Chuck Knoll—and it has never turned back.”
The alleged email then went on to say that Lerner is heartbroken about the results so far as are his kids and concluded with “I do know that Eric Mangini knows his football and is a straight-shooter and a deeply decent man. To say the least, I believe he can get this thing right. Fingers crossed.”
I have no idea if the email is legitimate. Lerner doesn’t talk to anyone and it’s hard to believe in some sense that he would use email, the very vehicle that got Phil Savage in trouble with Lerner, as a coming out party of sorts. It’s also hard to believe that in an email he would throw his own Dad under the bus by saying what a mess the franchise was when he inherited it. Just call me skeptical.
On the other hand, the sentiment he expresses about Mangini is exactly where you’d think it would be. Lerner wouldn’t have hired Mangini if he didn’t think he knew football or if he didn’t think that Mangini was a decent sort. If it’s not a legitimate letter, kudos on the writer for getting this detail exactly right.
Irrespective of whether or not it’s real, it’s accurate. Getting this thing right isn’t a job that is either easily or quickly done. It did take that long in Dallas and Pittsburgh. Moreover, Lerner must feel Mangini is the right person to accomplish that task or it makes no sense to hire him in the first place. Speculate all you want but the most likely case it that we’ll all be here a year from now with the same complaints and the same speculation about Mangini’s future with the team.
**
There’s been plenty of talk in the last week about a number of players filing grievances against Mangini because of the imposition of fines. Mangini actually addressed the issue at his weekly press conference saying that grievances like these are common and that he’d be surprised if players didn’t file grievances, surmising that upwards of 90% of fines get grieved.
If only the Browns could play that good of defense.
As the head coach, Mangini is well within his rights under the collective bargaining agreement to set forth a list of infractions for which a player could be fined. Indeed, the agreement has a section dedicated to detailing the types of fines that may be levied and the upper limit on the amount of the fine. It even contains a yearly adjustment to that upper limit, a cost of living increase of sorts for fines. Players showing up late for meetings, reporting overweight and the like are very common fines in the NFL. Mangini’s schedule probably goes beyond what many other teams have in place but it’s hard to argue with his intent. Players should pay for their incidentals at hotels and they shouldn’t park in handicap spots, unless they play defense, I suppose.
In any evnet, when a player is fined his option is to pay it or grieve it. The grievance procedure in the collective bargaining agreement is two steps. First, the player files his complaint with club management. If he’s unsatisfied with the answer, which he undoubtedly will be, he can file it with the league office and have a neutral arbitrator hear the matter.
Not to get into a debate with Mangini and thus subject myself to a fine, but Mangini just isn’t correct when he says that grievances are filed over most of these matters. To the contrary, most fines don’t result in grievances. They get paid and the player moves on.
When they do get filed, it’s for one of two reasons. Either the player doesn’t think he committed the infraction or the player believes that the fine imposed was unfair relative to either the seriousness of the infraction or the fines levied to others similarly situated. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two, as in “I didn’t do it but if I did the fine is too much because Braylon only had to pay $250 for coming in late after the Michigan game.”
In either case, this narrows down the number of grievances that do get filed. Generally players know whether or not they committed the infraction and the amount imposed is usually according to a schedule so its relative fairness isn’t often an issue. Thus if upwards of 90% of the fines Mangini levies are indeed resulting in grievances, either here or when he was in New York, that’s a damning indictment on him. Again, though, it’s not really true. It’s just another Manginism.
As I said last week, the merits of the grievances files against Mangini aren’t the issue. Indeed, I assume that Mangini isn’t so random as to fine individuals without some basis. But the fact that a number of players already perceive unfairness and are willing to confront their head coach in an arbitration setting over it speaks volumes. Sure, Mangini or any head coach is prohibited from retaliating against a player because he filed a grievance but in a league where a player can get cut, without recourse, for performance reasons, determining retaliation is nearly impossible, particularly for fringe players. Consequences be damned, I ain’t paying no 50 cents for no coke.
This is exactly the kind of thing that undid Mangini in New York. Players perceived him as unfair for a variety of reasons. Whether he was or not was no longer the issue. Eventually ownership became convinced that Mangini lost the locker room and decided it was easier to fire one than to fire 53.
Mangini hasn’t lost the Browns’ locker room at this point. But manipulations with the quarterbacks and the iron fist when it comes to fines aren’t winning him many converts at the moment. For those already predisposed to feel that he’s unfair, based on reality or their own perception of reality, these things just tip the balance and become their leading exhibits for making their case to other players and to management.
This Browns team isn’t going to be competitive until Mangini can take away that kind of politicking in the locker room and get the players on the same page and focused on the next opponent only. That he hasn’t made much of a dent in that so far is a problem. That’s really job one. It may take a huge housecleaning to accomplish but he can’t get rid of everyone. When it comes down to it the biggest threat to Mangini’s tenure is if/when Lerner becomes convinced that it indeed is much easier to fire one than to fire 53.
**
At least reality hasn’t quite left town.
If you’re looking for some proof that not everything associated with the Browns at the moment is off its rails, consider this. At least some players understand that they are as much of a problem as anything else.
There was Braylon Edwards candidly admitting that the team has underachieved and that it may not even matter much who’s at quarterback. According to the Plain Dealer he said, "to be honest, we can't do any worse. It sounds, I don't know, maybe it's bad to say, but I don't think we can play any worse than we did.” It’s as honest as an assessment as you’re likely to read by someone on the inside.
One of the more telling quotes though came from Shaun Rogers. As reported in the Plain Dealer, Rogers labeled Sunday’s game with Cincinnati as “oh so, oh so important” and added this gem in discussing his team’s chances: “I would love to win, but I just want to see us compete this week, really.” From your lips to God’s ears, Shaun.
I like it when players demonstrate this level of unvarnished awareness publicly. Too often a player is so rote in saying “we just have to get better” that you wonder whether he has any sense that maybe he just isn’t good enough to get any better.. Edwards first and now Rogers at least understand that this team needs to be competitive before it can even think about winning. Recognition really is the first step on the road back from rock bottom. If this isn’t rock bottom, then that’s another column for another week.
**
Here’s hoping that Derek Anderson succeeds where Brady Quinn could not. But if he can’t then everyone associated with the Browns will be asking this week’s question to ponder: “What now?”
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Busting Up the Concrete
The Cleveland Browns are a lot of things this season, but until this weekend no one would have considered them existentialists. Yet here they are offering up a variation of the classic existential question by essentially positing: can a team this bad have a controversy at any position?
So much is wrong with this team from the ownership to the leadership on the field that such transient thoughts about quarterback controversies or whether the Browns have effectively ruined the career of Quinn, or Anderson for that matter, seem rather trivial. Assuming Mangini replaces Quinn with Anderson will that really make any noise?
That doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be learned here. As usual, there is and it is about head coach Eric Mangini. He’s turned into bizarro Chris Palmer.
Remember when Ty Detmer was signed on to be Tim Couch’s mentor in the fateful first season back 11 years ago? The veteran lasted all of 8 quarters until Palmer pulled the plug, essentially telling the world that the team wasn’t going anywhere so it was time to give the first-round pick the experience he would need to carry him and the team into a better place a few seasons down the road.
At the time Palmer’s decision was controversial mostly because the NFL mindset then was that rookies can’t play quarterback; it stunts their long-term development because failure allegedly shatters their confidence. How quaint that notion appears today, except in Cleveland. Palmer’s decision didn’t work out but it wasn’t wrong. It didn’t work out because the Browns were so bad that any quarterback who stepped on the field risked career-threatening injury, which is basically what happened with Couch. It wasn’t wrong because the franchise was building and he at least was trying to establish some semblance of a foundation.
Flash forward to Sunday. Mangini, the bizarro Palmer, does almost the exact opposite. He pulled his first-round pick, albeit 3 years removed, after a mere 10 quarters to insert a more veteran (barely) quarterback who is more suited to backing up than starting.
Mangini’s decision, unlike Palmer’s, may turn out OK but it is wrong. Instead of admitting the scale of the rebuilding process underway, Mangini acts as if this is a minor fix that will make the structure that much more sound. Hardly. Mangini took over a franchise with no structure and the minute he puts something in place he acts like a bride furnishing her first apartment, moving the end table here and the chair there. The fans play the patient husband tolerating these little moves knowing full well that they hardly make a difference.
Getting the quarterback position settled is one of the more important elements to building a successful team in the NFL. When you consider all the reasons the Browns have been awful the last 10 years, the lack of a quarterback is among the root causes. Mangini seemed to understand that at the outset and sought to remedy it. He had the chance to draft Mark Sanchez but apparently felt that there was already enough to work with here for both the near and long term to allow him to fill what he felt were more pressing needs.
After supposedly conducting a thorough competition over the better part of two months in order to put the forms in the right place, Mangini took a jack hammer to the concrete before it was fully cured. He did this on the strength of scant evidence presented in 10 quarters of football played against three objectively better football teams. And if Mangini names Anderson the starter, as expected, it apparently will come down to one play, Anderson’s 16-yard completion on third down to Mike Furrey.
In essence, Mangini is reworking the forms and pouring a new foundation three games in, throwing away virtually everything that had accumulated to that point in favor of one meaningless first down in a game in which his team had already been vivisected by a Ravens defense that had grown bored with the ease of their conquest.
When Palmer dumped Detmer in favor of Couch, most thought it signaled panic. As much as anything else it helped grease the skids for Palmer’s firing. If Palmer had made that decision today, most would probably praise the move because, well, the NFL mindset on rookie quarterbacks has changed. In some ways, Palmer was just ahead of that curve.
The opposite, however, is not true. Mangini, allegedly a veteran head coach, is the one panicking. More than just panicking he’s also signaling that he can’t be trusted. As ludicrous as the so-called quarterback competition in preseason was, it was important for Mangini to name as starter the one who emerged or else lose whatever credibility he was trying to build with his new team. When Mangini named Quinn as starter, it seemed like the right decision. The results of the competition were somewhat inconclusive but of the two participants most agreed that Quinn played less bad.
But those results are now apparently irrelevant in favor of 10 quarters of Quinn’s work against one meaningless pass completed by Anderson. If Mangini is so easily swayed, was the so-called competition ever anything more than window dressing anyway? In actuality, what this really says is that Mangini is completely indifferent to how random he appears. In his mind he probably thinks it adds to his aura.
The players always will put as good a face on all of this as they can because, really, they have no other choice. Existing under a petty dictatorship where every raised eyebrow and misspoken word may lighten their wallet, why on earth would they bother to have an opinion, at least publicly? Besides, for all the talk about “team” professional athletes within the same franchise are just a loosely affiliated federation of competitors. Thrown together mostly by chance they know that at any given moment they could be sitting in someone else’s locker room or at home in their Lay-Z-Boy waiting for a call from their agent on where they’re headed next. One player’s misery may be another’s opportunity.
Mangini, of course, is as free to take advantage of this built-in mindset as he is to reshuffle the deck as much as he wants. It comes with the job. Just like Randy Lerner shouldn’t hamstring this franchise by adhering to decisions that were wrong just for the sake of continuity (hint, hint) Mangini shouldn’t be so constrained either.
But why is it that Quinn is being castigated by Mangini in favor of a quarterback who has far more sins on his resume? Why is Mangini giving Anderson a pass for the three interceptions he threw on Sunday and crucifying Quinn for his one? Anderson came into a difficult situation during Sunday’s game only if you accept the premise that the Browns had a shot to win the game in the first place. They didn’t. Quinn was hamstrung with the same constraints—no running game, limited receiving corps and playing against one of the best defenses in the league—that Anderson had. The fact that Anderson entered the game with the team down 20-0 at the half hardly changed that equation.
All this talk about the quarterbacks also begs a larger question. What is Mangini doing about the overall approach to the offense? Stated differently, how safe is Brian Daboll’s job? During the first week of September three teams fired their offensive coordinators: Buffalo, Tampa Bay and Kansas City. Those seemed like panic moves at the time and in truth they were.
But we’re three games into the actual season and no one seems to be asking the rather obvious question as to how Daboll’s performance could escape the scrutiny that Quinn’s has gotten. If it’s possible Daboll has even less qualifications to be an offensive coordinator than Mangini has to be a head coach, but maybe that’s his attraction. Mangini, always the underdog, appreciates a compatriot.
Daboll never played the game as a professional and was a safety for the University of Rochester. His coaching career is likewise undistinguished. He started as a restricted volunteer at the College of William and Mary, went on to become a graduate assistant at Michigan State and then somehow landed in New England with the Patriots as a defensive assistant, whatever that means. Ultimately he spent 4 years as a receivers coach with the Patriots and 2 years as a quarterback coach with the New York Jets. In context to Mangini’s very similar resume, Daboll’s ascension by Mangini to full blown NFL offensive coordinator makes perfect sense.
What’s fascinating to consider in all of this is that both Mangini and Daboll were given ample opportunities that they probably didn’t deserve to move up the ladder while Quinn is being left to rot for having the audacity to play poorly for 10 quarters with a team as pointless and directionless as the Browns.
It may turn out that neither Quinn nor Anderson is a NFL caliber starting quarterback. But that’s a question that will get answered when either or both find themselves with another team and a better chance. Given the panicked and random way this regime makes decision, that’s really their only hope.
This isn’t to defend or protect either Quinn or Anderson so much as it is to underscore the problems with the puppeteer pulling the strings. Ample evidence exists and it’s growing daily that the puppeteer doesn’t know what he’s doing. Lucky for him, the one pulling his strings checked out about 5 minutes after his hiring was announced.
So much is wrong with this team from the ownership to the leadership on the field that such transient thoughts about quarterback controversies or whether the Browns have effectively ruined the career of Quinn, or Anderson for that matter, seem rather trivial. Assuming Mangini replaces Quinn with Anderson will that really make any noise?
That doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be learned here. As usual, there is and it is about head coach Eric Mangini. He’s turned into bizarro Chris Palmer.
Remember when Ty Detmer was signed on to be Tim Couch’s mentor in the fateful first season back 11 years ago? The veteran lasted all of 8 quarters until Palmer pulled the plug, essentially telling the world that the team wasn’t going anywhere so it was time to give the first-round pick the experience he would need to carry him and the team into a better place a few seasons down the road.
At the time Palmer’s decision was controversial mostly because the NFL mindset then was that rookies can’t play quarterback; it stunts their long-term development because failure allegedly shatters their confidence. How quaint that notion appears today, except in Cleveland. Palmer’s decision didn’t work out but it wasn’t wrong. It didn’t work out because the Browns were so bad that any quarterback who stepped on the field risked career-threatening injury, which is basically what happened with Couch. It wasn’t wrong because the franchise was building and he at least was trying to establish some semblance of a foundation.
Flash forward to Sunday. Mangini, the bizarro Palmer, does almost the exact opposite. He pulled his first-round pick, albeit 3 years removed, after a mere 10 quarters to insert a more veteran (barely) quarterback who is more suited to backing up than starting.
Mangini’s decision, unlike Palmer’s, may turn out OK but it is wrong. Instead of admitting the scale of the rebuilding process underway, Mangini acts as if this is a minor fix that will make the structure that much more sound. Hardly. Mangini took over a franchise with no structure and the minute he puts something in place he acts like a bride furnishing her first apartment, moving the end table here and the chair there. The fans play the patient husband tolerating these little moves knowing full well that they hardly make a difference.
Getting the quarterback position settled is one of the more important elements to building a successful team in the NFL. When you consider all the reasons the Browns have been awful the last 10 years, the lack of a quarterback is among the root causes. Mangini seemed to understand that at the outset and sought to remedy it. He had the chance to draft Mark Sanchez but apparently felt that there was already enough to work with here for both the near and long term to allow him to fill what he felt were more pressing needs.
After supposedly conducting a thorough competition over the better part of two months in order to put the forms in the right place, Mangini took a jack hammer to the concrete before it was fully cured. He did this on the strength of scant evidence presented in 10 quarters of football played against three objectively better football teams. And if Mangini names Anderson the starter, as expected, it apparently will come down to one play, Anderson’s 16-yard completion on third down to Mike Furrey.
In essence, Mangini is reworking the forms and pouring a new foundation three games in, throwing away virtually everything that had accumulated to that point in favor of one meaningless first down in a game in which his team had already been vivisected by a Ravens defense that had grown bored with the ease of their conquest.
When Palmer dumped Detmer in favor of Couch, most thought it signaled panic. As much as anything else it helped grease the skids for Palmer’s firing. If Palmer had made that decision today, most would probably praise the move because, well, the NFL mindset on rookie quarterbacks has changed. In some ways, Palmer was just ahead of that curve.
The opposite, however, is not true. Mangini, allegedly a veteran head coach, is the one panicking. More than just panicking he’s also signaling that he can’t be trusted. As ludicrous as the so-called quarterback competition in preseason was, it was important for Mangini to name as starter the one who emerged or else lose whatever credibility he was trying to build with his new team. When Mangini named Quinn as starter, it seemed like the right decision. The results of the competition were somewhat inconclusive but of the two participants most agreed that Quinn played less bad.
But those results are now apparently irrelevant in favor of 10 quarters of Quinn’s work against one meaningless pass completed by Anderson. If Mangini is so easily swayed, was the so-called competition ever anything more than window dressing anyway? In actuality, what this really says is that Mangini is completely indifferent to how random he appears. In his mind he probably thinks it adds to his aura.
The players always will put as good a face on all of this as they can because, really, they have no other choice. Existing under a petty dictatorship where every raised eyebrow and misspoken word may lighten their wallet, why on earth would they bother to have an opinion, at least publicly? Besides, for all the talk about “team” professional athletes within the same franchise are just a loosely affiliated federation of competitors. Thrown together mostly by chance they know that at any given moment they could be sitting in someone else’s locker room or at home in their Lay-Z-Boy waiting for a call from their agent on where they’re headed next. One player’s misery may be another’s opportunity.
Mangini, of course, is as free to take advantage of this built-in mindset as he is to reshuffle the deck as much as he wants. It comes with the job. Just like Randy Lerner shouldn’t hamstring this franchise by adhering to decisions that were wrong just for the sake of continuity (hint, hint) Mangini shouldn’t be so constrained either.
But why is it that Quinn is being castigated by Mangini in favor of a quarterback who has far more sins on his resume? Why is Mangini giving Anderson a pass for the three interceptions he threw on Sunday and crucifying Quinn for his one? Anderson came into a difficult situation during Sunday’s game only if you accept the premise that the Browns had a shot to win the game in the first place. They didn’t. Quinn was hamstrung with the same constraints—no running game, limited receiving corps and playing against one of the best defenses in the league—that Anderson had. The fact that Anderson entered the game with the team down 20-0 at the half hardly changed that equation.
All this talk about the quarterbacks also begs a larger question. What is Mangini doing about the overall approach to the offense? Stated differently, how safe is Brian Daboll’s job? During the first week of September three teams fired their offensive coordinators: Buffalo, Tampa Bay and Kansas City. Those seemed like panic moves at the time and in truth they were.
But we’re three games into the actual season and no one seems to be asking the rather obvious question as to how Daboll’s performance could escape the scrutiny that Quinn’s has gotten. If it’s possible Daboll has even less qualifications to be an offensive coordinator than Mangini has to be a head coach, but maybe that’s his attraction. Mangini, always the underdog, appreciates a compatriot.
Daboll never played the game as a professional and was a safety for the University of Rochester. His coaching career is likewise undistinguished. He started as a restricted volunteer at the College of William and Mary, went on to become a graduate assistant at Michigan State and then somehow landed in New England with the Patriots as a defensive assistant, whatever that means. Ultimately he spent 4 years as a receivers coach with the Patriots and 2 years as a quarterback coach with the New York Jets. In context to Mangini’s very similar resume, Daboll’s ascension by Mangini to full blown NFL offensive coordinator makes perfect sense.
What’s fascinating to consider in all of this is that both Mangini and Daboll were given ample opportunities that they probably didn’t deserve to move up the ladder while Quinn is being left to rot for having the audacity to play poorly for 10 quarters with a team as pointless and directionless as the Browns.
It may turn out that neither Quinn nor Anderson is a NFL caliber starting quarterback. But that’s a question that will get answered when either or both find themselves with another team and a better chance. Given the panicked and random way this regime makes decision, that’s really their only hope.
This isn’t to defend or protect either Quinn or Anderson so much as it is to underscore the problems with the puppeteer pulling the strings. Ample evidence exists and it’s growing daily that the puppeteer doesn’t know what he’s doing. Lucky for him, the one pulling his strings checked out about 5 minutes after his hiring was announced.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Where Down is the New Up
Somewhere between Romeo Crennel and Eric Mangini is the right head coach for the Cleveland Browns. If you’re out there and available at the moment just raise your hand, and do so high enough so that it can be seen somewhere in England where owner Randy Lerner surely is hiding.
On any other team under these same circumstances, Mangini might be in line to hold the record for the quickest hook of a newly-hired coach. But as it is, he’ll be given due time to snuff out the last sign of life in this franchise by Lerner, as disaffected of an owner as exists in professional sports. If it’s three years, so be it. Lerner has more than demonstrated by deed if not word that he couldn't care less.
That the Browns would be bad this season isn’t a surprise to anyone. That they are this bad at this moment surely is. But more to the point, Mangini has his troops playing as if they are purposely trying to get him fired.
Just about everything associated with this team is in disarray. The locker room is a circus. You have veterans with maturity issues playing juvenile pranks on rookies. You have immature rookies lashing out because they were doused with water. In each case, preparing for the next opponent seems like an after thought. Then there is also the matter of a mini-players revolt as a number of them, already irritated with Mangini’s petty ways and even pettier fines, are filing grievances with the league in what might be record fashion.
Whether these grievances have any merit is largely irrelevant. The fact that they have been filed so quickly into Mangini’s tenure is strong evidence that there is a deep and abiding distrust of the man in charge and an even deeper and more abiding lack of respect for him.
Sure there are players that will stand by his side, but these are mostly the former Jets that he breathed new life into by giving them a job here in Cleveland. There were also a few non-former Jets defending their head coach, but that’s suspect in the present environment. Does a fine await them if they don’t? If the polling was anonymous you’d have trouble finding anyone else in the locker room willing to put their own reputation on the line to stand up for him.
It isn’t just the pettiness, it’s the dispirited way Mangini goes about putting together the team. As the new man in town he decided to open up a quarterback competition rather than evaluate the evidence at hand. Fair enough. But then he went about constructing it in a way that made so little sense not even the main participants, Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson, had any idea where they stood until a few days before the Vikings game.
Stop and contemplate the implications of that and you can begin to understand why this team has had one touchdown in three games. If both Quinn and Anderson were being kept in the dark, how clueless must the other 25 or so players on offense have been? Mangini kept them wondering who would be their leader and as a result they built allegiance to no one. The results speak for themselves.
But it goes further than that. Trying to gain a competitive advantage at the expense of teaching a team that didn’t score a touchdown in its last 6 games last season how to score again, Mangini ran a vanilla preseason instead. Consequently, what little time Quinn and Anderson had to work in those games added little to their regular season preparation. The Browns threw about 152 screen passes in the preseason. In three games they’ve thrown, perhaps, three and no one on the Minnesota, Denver or Baltimore defense was fooled for a minute.
But it goes even further than that. The Browns’ receiving corps was thin going into the preseason. When you’re number one receiver is Braylon Edwards, known more for running his mouth and dropping the ball, that’s the first warning sign. But then Mangini traded Kellen Winslow without a viable back-up. There still isn’t one.
Mangini appeared to address the shortcoming by drafting two, count’em, two receivers in the second round. Keep in mind that in Brian Robiskie, he was the 7th receiver drafted and by all measures other than Mangini’s, was the most polished receiver in the draft. He can’t even get himself activated for game day because Mangini, always the thinker, just had to find a space for that third string defensive back on special teams. Robiskie isn’t probably the only one in the locker room scratching his head over that one. The other second rounder, Mohammed Massaquoi might as well be inactive. He sees time late in the game, if at all, so busy is Mangini trying to shoehorn Joshua Cribbs into a role he’s not quite suited for.
Layered on all of this is a first time offensive coordinator, Brian Daboll, the first branch I suppose off the Mangini tree. It’s been three games and I defy anyone to present a cogent explanation for what exactly the team is trying to accomplish under his direction. The runs are perfunctory, the passing game unimaginative.
Argue all you want that the running game is lousy because the running backs are lousy, but as you’re doing that remember to lay the blame for that at Mangini’s feet. He’s the one that left the team so thin at the position. As for the passing game, it may be that Quinn doesn’t like to look downfield, but as I watch things unfold, it doesn’t look like there are many plays designed to go downfield. Edwards is double covered on virtually every play. Cribbs is a neophyte at the position and can’t get open. Michael Furrey is a specialist at going underneath, never past the first down markers. The Browns under Daboll are content to dump and dink because that’s all they can think to do.
It’s impossible to believe that the Browns are this bad. The offensive line features a Pro Bowler, a well thought of high-priced guard and a decorated rookie at center. They aren’t the second coming of the 1973 Buffalo Bills, but they also aren’t the second coming of the 1999 Cleveland Browns either. There is some talent. Why, then, can’t it open holes or protect a quarterback?
There is probably any number of theories but the one I keep landing on is coaching. Simply put, Mangini and the coaching team he assembled are in over their collective heads. They are not putting any of these players in a position to be successful. Nothing is done to slow down the rush, less is done to open up the running game. Quinn is confused because he’s in a confusing system with no purpose.
On defense, Bob Ryan is doing nothing to make anyone feel like the New York Jets pegged the wrong Ryan brother as their successor to Mangini. Ryan gets a bit of a pass, though, because outside of perhaps Shaun Rogers there isn’t a player on this defense that could start for any other team.
Watching Brandon McDonald, for example, flail away against Baltimore only confirms that this was another personnel assessment that former general manager Phil Savage got exactly wrong. Watching “highlights” of the Denver/Oakland game reminded me of how Savage touted JaMarcus Russell as the next great quarterback. It’s too bad, really, that Savage wasn’t able to snag Russell. He’d fit in perfect here.
Mangini isn’t to blame for players like McDonald but he is to blame for the current product on the field. It’s not an issue of this taking time to turn around. There is nothing to turn around. Mangini has taken a team that was run aground under the last regime and instead of trying to redefine it he’s busy poking enough gaping holes in it to make it impossible to float again.
If Lerner thought that Mangini would be a steadying force, then just chalk that up as another in a series of bad decisions Lerner’s made since he reluctantly inherited the team. When Mangini yanked Quinn in the third quarter of a game that didn’t have a chance of winning before it started, it only confirmed Mangini’s unsteady hand.
What’s fascinating to contemplate is why exactly Mangini would take a situation already desperate and deliberately make it worse by inserting Anderson ostensibly to add a spark. He had to know that it wouldn’t work and if he didn’t know it that only makes it that much worse. It confirms to the players, on both sides of the ball, that their head coach has hit the panic button. If you think they aren’t playing for him now, just wait. When it comes to things like this, players aren’t as dumb as Mangini would like to believe. If he wanted a spark with Anderson then why did he wait until the team was back on the field to start the second half? It was a panic move by a head coach not worthy of the title.
Whether Quinn starts next week or Anderson or even Brett Ratliff or the ghost of Bruce Gradkowski, just know that the ensuing turmoil was self-inflicted by what is quickly becoming the worst off-season move in the history of the NFL, Lerner’s hiring of Mangini.
All of which gets me back to my original point. On any other team under these circumstances, Mangini would be searching for a realtor. In Cleveland, where down is the new up, Lerner is probably trying to figure out how to give Mangini and even greater role in the organization.
On any other team under these same circumstances, Mangini might be in line to hold the record for the quickest hook of a newly-hired coach. But as it is, he’ll be given due time to snuff out the last sign of life in this franchise by Lerner, as disaffected of an owner as exists in professional sports. If it’s three years, so be it. Lerner has more than demonstrated by deed if not word that he couldn't care less.
That the Browns would be bad this season isn’t a surprise to anyone. That they are this bad at this moment surely is. But more to the point, Mangini has his troops playing as if they are purposely trying to get him fired.
Just about everything associated with this team is in disarray. The locker room is a circus. You have veterans with maturity issues playing juvenile pranks on rookies. You have immature rookies lashing out because they were doused with water. In each case, preparing for the next opponent seems like an after thought. Then there is also the matter of a mini-players revolt as a number of them, already irritated with Mangini’s petty ways and even pettier fines, are filing grievances with the league in what might be record fashion.
Whether these grievances have any merit is largely irrelevant. The fact that they have been filed so quickly into Mangini’s tenure is strong evidence that there is a deep and abiding distrust of the man in charge and an even deeper and more abiding lack of respect for him.
Sure there are players that will stand by his side, but these are mostly the former Jets that he breathed new life into by giving them a job here in Cleveland. There were also a few non-former Jets defending their head coach, but that’s suspect in the present environment. Does a fine await them if they don’t? If the polling was anonymous you’d have trouble finding anyone else in the locker room willing to put their own reputation on the line to stand up for him.
It isn’t just the pettiness, it’s the dispirited way Mangini goes about putting together the team. As the new man in town he decided to open up a quarterback competition rather than evaluate the evidence at hand. Fair enough. But then he went about constructing it in a way that made so little sense not even the main participants, Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson, had any idea where they stood until a few days before the Vikings game.
Stop and contemplate the implications of that and you can begin to understand why this team has had one touchdown in three games. If both Quinn and Anderson were being kept in the dark, how clueless must the other 25 or so players on offense have been? Mangini kept them wondering who would be their leader and as a result they built allegiance to no one. The results speak for themselves.
But it goes further than that. Trying to gain a competitive advantage at the expense of teaching a team that didn’t score a touchdown in its last 6 games last season how to score again, Mangini ran a vanilla preseason instead. Consequently, what little time Quinn and Anderson had to work in those games added little to their regular season preparation. The Browns threw about 152 screen passes in the preseason. In three games they’ve thrown, perhaps, three and no one on the Minnesota, Denver or Baltimore defense was fooled for a minute.
But it goes even further than that. The Browns’ receiving corps was thin going into the preseason. When you’re number one receiver is Braylon Edwards, known more for running his mouth and dropping the ball, that’s the first warning sign. But then Mangini traded Kellen Winslow without a viable back-up. There still isn’t one.
Mangini appeared to address the shortcoming by drafting two, count’em, two receivers in the second round. Keep in mind that in Brian Robiskie, he was the 7th receiver drafted and by all measures other than Mangini’s, was the most polished receiver in the draft. He can’t even get himself activated for game day because Mangini, always the thinker, just had to find a space for that third string defensive back on special teams. Robiskie isn’t probably the only one in the locker room scratching his head over that one. The other second rounder, Mohammed Massaquoi might as well be inactive. He sees time late in the game, if at all, so busy is Mangini trying to shoehorn Joshua Cribbs into a role he’s not quite suited for.
Layered on all of this is a first time offensive coordinator, Brian Daboll, the first branch I suppose off the Mangini tree. It’s been three games and I defy anyone to present a cogent explanation for what exactly the team is trying to accomplish under his direction. The runs are perfunctory, the passing game unimaginative.
Argue all you want that the running game is lousy because the running backs are lousy, but as you’re doing that remember to lay the blame for that at Mangini’s feet. He’s the one that left the team so thin at the position. As for the passing game, it may be that Quinn doesn’t like to look downfield, but as I watch things unfold, it doesn’t look like there are many plays designed to go downfield. Edwards is double covered on virtually every play. Cribbs is a neophyte at the position and can’t get open. Michael Furrey is a specialist at going underneath, never past the first down markers. The Browns under Daboll are content to dump and dink because that’s all they can think to do.
It’s impossible to believe that the Browns are this bad. The offensive line features a Pro Bowler, a well thought of high-priced guard and a decorated rookie at center. They aren’t the second coming of the 1973 Buffalo Bills, but they also aren’t the second coming of the 1999 Cleveland Browns either. There is some talent. Why, then, can’t it open holes or protect a quarterback?
There is probably any number of theories but the one I keep landing on is coaching. Simply put, Mangini and the coaching team he assembled are in over their collective heads. They are not putting any of these players in a position to be successful. Nothing is done to slow down the rush, less is done to open up the running game. Quinn is confused because he’s in a confusing system with no purpose.
On defense, Bob Ryan is doing nothing to make anyone feel like the New York Jets pegged the wrong Ryan brother as their successor to Mangini. Ryan gets a bit of a pass, though, because outside of perhaps Shaun Rogers there isn’t a player on this defense that could start for any other team.
Watching Brandon McDonald, for example, flail away against Baltimore only confirms that this was another personnel assessment that former general manager Phil Savage got exactly wrong. Watching “highlights” of the Denver/Oakland game reminded me of how Savage touted JaMarcus Russell as the next great quarterback. It’s too bad, really, that Savage wasn’t able to snag Russell. He’d fit in perfect here.
Mangini isn’t to blame for players like McDonald but he is to blame for the current product on the field. It’s not an issue of this taking time to turn around. There is nothing to turn around. Mangini has taken a team that was run aground under the last regime and instead of trying to redefine it he’s busy poking enough gaping holes in it to make it impossible to float again.
If Lerner thought that Mangini would be a steadying force, then just chalk that up as another in a series of bad decisions Lerner’s made since he reluctantly inherited the team. When Mangini yanked Quinn in the third quarter of a game that didn’t have a chance of winning before it started, it only confirmed Mangini’s unsteady hand.
What’s fascinating to contemplate is why exactly Mangini would take a situation already desperate and deliberately make it worse by inserting Anderson ostensibly to add a spark. He had to know that it wouldn’t work and if he didn’t know it that only makes it that much worse. It confirms to the players, on both sides of the ball, that their head coach has hit the panic button. If you think they aren’t playing for him now, just wait. When it comes to things like this, players aren’t as dumb as Mangini would like to believe. If he wanted a spark with Anderson then why did he wait until the team was back on the field to start the second half? It was a panic move by a head coach not worthy of the title.
Whether Quinn starts next week or Anderson or even Brett Ratliff or the ghost of Bruce Gradkowski, just know that the ensuing turmoil was self-inflicted by what is quickly becoming the worst off-season move in the history of the NFL, Lerner’s hiring of Mangini.
All of which gets me back to my original point. On any other team under these circumstances, Mangini would be searching for a realtor. In Cleveland, where down is the new up, Lerner is probably trying to figure out how to give Mangini and even greater role in the organization.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Chasing Their Tails
It’s time to stop judging the Cleveland Browns by such conventional standards as wins or losses. The watchword for these Browns is simply “progress” as in was there any noticeable progress from the previous week’s disaster? Adjusting expectations according, the Browns were more Denver bad than Minnesota bad as they were blasted by the Ravens, 34-3.
Like a bad movie being played on a continuous loop, head coach Eric Mangini decided to revisit the relative salad days of preseason by reintroducing a quarterback controversy for the coming week. Here’s what we know. The limits of Mangini’s patience is 10 quarters. That’s how long he gave his preseason quarterback derby winner Brady Quinn before pulling the plug by inserting Derek Anderson in the game to start the second half. It didn’t pay immediate dividends. In fact it didn’t pay any dividends, unless you consider that it made a dark and dank situation even more muddled. Anderson moved the team once but threw 3 interceptions in his limited time. You figure out what that means, I’ve lost the will.
If there’s a controversy next week regarding the quarterback slot, it will probably be over who has to start. Being forced to start at quarterback for this team, a team without a running or receiving game, is like being forced to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush after a frat party.
While 3 interceptions in such a short period of time are impressive by even Cleveland standards, Anderson had a few nice moments. Playing in garbage time that seems to be arriving earlier each week, Anderson at least put his team in relative to position to score by driving them down to the Ravens 8-yard line on his second drive.
The drive featured a number of “good Anderson” plays where he avoids the rush and throws down the field followed by a number of “bad Anderson” plays where he inexplicably trips over his feet and misses a mid-range pass. Still, for a moment it was good enough to give fans hope that someday soon a real touchdown might be scored.
Just not on this day. Down 27-0 and apparently deciding that in some sense progress is measured in points, Mangini eschewed 4th and goal from the 12 (yea, they were 1st and goal from the 8) and instead sent out newly-signed kicker Billy Cundiff for a 30-yard field goal. How very Romeo Crennel of Mangini.
As for the rest of the game, at least it fell apart early, dispelling any notion at the outset that it might be competitive and giving fans enough time to get some chores completed.
Taking the opening kick off and moving the ball for a brief moment on their first series, it blew up 5 plays into it when quarterback Brady Quinn was intercepted by cornerback Dominique Foxworth at the Baltimore 37-yard line. Foxworth then lateraled to Ray Lewis who got the ball to the Cleveland 31 yard line. From there, after a perfunctory toying with the Browns’ defense on 4th down, Willis McGahee essentially walked into the end zone so unmolested that he could have Twittered his status on the way and just like that the Ravens had a 7-0 lead.
Meanwhile, back on the Ravens side of the ball, offensive coordinator Cam Cameron used the team’s second drive to demonstrate not just to the Browns but to the rest of the league that this is a team in full.
Like Artie Lange at a Vegas buffet line, the Ravens marched through the Browns with ease for the drive’s first 77 yards but a timely sack of quarterback Joe Flacco forced the Ravens to settle for a 37-yard field goal by Steven Hauschka. The drive was greatly aided by the Browns’ defense’s inability to put pressure on Flacco for most of it and a late hit penalty that will have Mangini poking out his eyeballs when he looks at it on film Monday, but those are just details. The Ravens made it look effortless. The Browns, on the other hand, looked to be using less effort.
Here’s a question to ponder so early in the week: on the Browns’ next drive, Jerome Harrison had the team’s longest run of the season, 17 yards. On first down Quinn quick snapped a quarterback sneak. The question is why? Did he think that Harrison was a yard short of the first down on his run? Was he trying to catch the Ravens napping? Was Maurice Carthon subbing for Brian Daboll as offensive coordinator? The answer isn’t all that important except that it is. It was a wasted play against that feasts on wasted plays. Two plays later, the Browns were punting.
But this being about progress and not results, the Harrison run did change field position. Dave Zastudil’s punt was downed at the Baltimore 9-yard line. An illegal block penalty put it at the Baltimore 3-yard line. This is the spot in which it would be nice to write that the Browns defense, emboldened by having the Ravens buried deep, tightened and held, forcing the Ravens to punt from their own end zone and giving Cleveland the ball at the Baltimore 45-yard line.
Actually, it was nice to write that, though it would have been nicer if it were true. Instead the Ravens put together another long drive, 92-yards to be exact, before being stopped at the Cleveland 5-yard line. Hauschka hit the 33-yard field goal (which would have been a 23-yarder but for a holding penalty on his first kick) and pushed the score to an even more insurmountable 13-0.
Again, though, this is about progress and from a progress standpoint the Browns defense may have given up two incredibly long drives, 77 yards and 92 yards, back-to-back, but at least they didn’t let the Ravens in the end zone. Kudos, I guess, to Rob Ryan.
Where, then, to fit in the Ravens next touchdown, the one that helped make it 20-0 at half? The answer, of course, is somewhere between the 77-yarder and 95-yarder. This one was precisely 80 yards. For those bothering to do the math, that’s 4 drives in the first half covering a total of 271 yards. For perspective, that’s more yardage than the Browns had in either of the first two games.
The Browns, as usual, didn’t find the end zone in the first half. They didn’t even come close. Not a whiff. But since this is about progress, call it a draw. They haven’t scored a touchdown in the first half of either of their first two games, either.
It’s probably best not to get into too much detail about what took place in the second half. The overarching story was Mangini pulling the plug on Quinn and Anderson doing his best to punch his own ticket elsewhere. For the rest of it, let’s just put a positive spin on it and acknowledge that not as much progress was made as Mangini had hoped. Here were the highlights:
• Opening kickoff, Browns were offside. Mangini, I think, swallowed his tongue.
• Browns defense holds Ravens, forcing their first punt at 12:47 of the third quarter, thus marking this the first halftime adjustment that’s worked for the Browns this season.
• When Anderson entered the game it wasn’t a surprise. I remember thinking at the moment Quinn threw the interception on the Browns’ first drive that his days as the starting quarterback were dwindling quickly. Apparently Mangini had the same thought at the same time. Scary, huh?
• Anderson shows exactly what a backup can do when given the same empty toolbox as the starter. He, too, throws an interception on his first drive, thus keeping it at “1” the number of halftime adjustments this season that have been effective.
• McGahee goes where Adrian Peterson and Correll Buckhalter have gone before. He rumbles 34 yards down to the Cleveland 19-yard line, treating Brandon McDonald as if he were his little brother by pushing him out of the way twice.
• Ray Rice completes what McGahee started by running the final 9 yards, giving the Ravens a 27-0 lead. In England, it’s 6 hours later and owner Randy Lerner is just sitting down for dinner. Good show, mate.
• As Anderson began his second drive, the media drones from Sector 2 readied the next wave of quarterback questions for Mangini while the Ravens defense contemplated whether or not to stay interested enough to try and pitch a shut out. Ah, the game within the game. The Browns win this little battle when they foil the shut out with the Cundiff field goal.
• For apparently no reason, Shaun Rogers throws Ravens guard Ben Grubbs to the ground and gets an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Oddly, this seemed to rattle the Ravens enough that McGahee fumbles on the next play, deep in Browns’ territory, and the Browns recover. The Ravens didn’t stay rattled for long as the Browns were forced to punt a few plays later.
• In what may be one of his final drives as a Cleveland Brown, Anderson throws long and downfield in the direction of Edwards. Dawann Landry, wearing Ravens purple, sees it land in his gut for the interception.
• With a 27-3 lead, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh gets word from the press box that tiebreaker points might be needed. Flacco throws long to Derrick Mason, who makes a great catch and move on an outclassed McDonald and turns it into a 34-3 game. McDonald must be worried that he is soon to receive the Martin Rucker treatment. It’s barely 3:30 p.m. EDT, there’s still over 7 minutes remaining and yet it seems like the game already has lasted 4 hours.
• Anderson throws his third interception and somewhere on the Browns’ bench Quinn is probably muttering under his breath, “told ya.”
• Troy Smith enters the game and for two series the Browns hold. Smith deserved better.
Sorting through the wreckage, the final stats tell the story in one sense but not in another. The Ravens had 479 yards in offense, the Browns 186. Flacco was 25-35 for 342 yards, Quinn and Anderson were a combined 17-27 for 115 yards. Baltimore had 142 yards on the ground and the Browns had exactly half of that. It would be hard to find a game more lopsided out of the Texas-UTEP game.
As bad as things were last season, the sting of this season is far worse actually. Promised a new direction and a new attitude, most fans didn’t even begin to contemplate that that meant backwards and worse. There is no spark or passion on this team as it takes its cue from the emotionally inept Mangini. The players know that theirs is a boat that is drifting listlessly and that Mangini is responsible for the lack of rudder. He put the team in this position offensively by not committing to one quarterback early in preseason and he took an ax to whatever continuity was being built (admittedly not much) by throwing Anderson in when things got tough.
If the Browns really want to fix this mess then they have to set a course and learn to live with it, for all the ups and down that may come. Instead they change direction on a whim and with their third straight blowout loss, find themselves once again going in circles. Apropos to nothing, the New York Jets are 3-0.
Like a bad movie being played on a continuous loop, head coach Eric Mangini decided to revisit the relative salad days of preseason by reintroducing a quarterback controversy for the coming week. Here’s what we know. The limits of Mangini’s patience is 10 quarters. That’s how long he gave his preseason quarterback derby winner Brady Quinn before pulling the plug by inserting Derek Anderson in the game to start the second half. It didn’t pay immediate dividends. In fact it didn’t pay any dividends, unless you consider that it made a dark and dank situation even more muddled. Anderson moved the team once but threw 3 interceptions in his limited time. You figure out what that means, I’ve lost the will.
If there’s a controversy next week regarding the quarterback slot, it will probably be over who has to start. Being forced to start at quarterback for this team, a team without a running or receiving game, is like being forced to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush after a frat party.
While 3 interceptions in such a short period of time are impressive by even Cleveland standards, Anderson had a few nice moments. Playing in garbage time that seems to be arriving earlier each week, Anderson at least put his team in relative to position to score by driving them down to the Ravens 8-yard line on his second drive.
The drive featured a number of “good Anderson” plays where he avoids the rush and throws down the field followed by a number of “bad Anderson” plays where he inexplicably trips over his feet and misses a mid-range pass. Still, for a moment it was good enough to give fans hope that someday soon a real touchdown might be scored.
Just not on this day. Down 27-0 and apparently deciding that in some sense progress is measured in points, Mangini eschewed 4th and goal from the 12 (yea, they were 1st and goal from the 8) and instead sent out newly-signed kicker Billy Cundiff for a 30-yard field goal. How very Romeo Crennel of Mangini.
As for the rest of the game, at least it fell apart early, dispelling any notion at the outset that it might be competitive and giving fans enough time to get some chores completed.
Taking the opening kick off and moving the ball for a brief moment on their first series, it blew up 5 plays into it when quarterback Brady Quinn was intercepted by cornerback Dominique Foxworth at the Baltimore 37-yard line. Foxworth then lateraled to Ray Lewis who got the ball to the Cleveland 31 yard line. From there, after a perfunctory toying with the Browns’ defense on 4th down, Willis McGahee essentially walked into the end zone so unmolested that he could have Twittered his status on the way and just like that the Ravens had a 7-0 lead.
Meanwhile, back on the Ravens side of the ball, offensive coordinator Cam Cameron used the team’s second drive to demonstrate not just to the Browns but to the rest of the league that this is a team in full.
Like Artie Lange at a Vegas buffet line, the Ravens marched through the Browns with ease for the drive’s first 77 yards but a timely sack of quarterback Joe Flacco forced the Ravens to settle for a 37-yard field goal by Steven Hauschka. The drive was greatly aided by the Browns’ defense’s inability to put pressure on Flacco for most of it and a late hit penalty that will have Mangini poking out his eyeballs when he looks at it on film Monday, but those are just details. The Ravens made it look effortless. The Browns, on the other hand, looked to be using less effort.
Here’s a question to ponder so early in the week: on the Browns’ next drive, Jerome Harrison had the team’s longest run of the season, 17 yards. On first down Quinn quick snapped a quarterback sneak. The question is why? Did he think that Harrison was a yard short of the first down on his run? Was he trying to catch the Ravens napping? Was Maurice Carthon subbing for Brian Daboll as offensive coordinator? The answer isn’t all that important except that it is. It was a wasted play against that feasts on wasted plays. Two plays later, the Browns were punting.
But this being about progress and not results, the Harrison run did change field position. Dave Zastudil’s punt was downed at the Baltimore 9-yard line. An illegal block penalty put it at the Baltimore 3-yard line. This is the spot in which it would be nice to write that the Browns defense, emboldened by having the Ravens buried deep, tightened and held, forcing the Ravens to punt from their own end zone and giving Cleveland the ball at the Baltimore 45-yard line.
Actually, it was nice to write that, though it would have been nicer if it were true. Instead the Ravens put together another long drive, 92-yards to be exact, before being stopped at the Cleveland 5-yard line. Hauschka hit the 33-yard field goal (which would have been a 23-yarder but for a holding penalty on his first kick) and pushed the score to an even more insurmountable 13-0.
Again, though, this is about progress and from a progress standpoint the Browns defense may have given up two incredibly long drives, 77 yards and 92 yards, back-to-back, but at least they didn’t let the Ravens in the end zone. Kudos, I guess, to Rob Ryan.
Where, then, to fit in the Ravens next touchdown, the one that helped make it 20-0 at half? The answer, of course, is somewhere between the 77-yarder and 95-yarder. This one was precisely 80 yards. For those bothering to do the math, that’s 4 drives in the first half covering a total of 271 yards. For perspective, that’s more yardage than the Browns had in either of the first two games.
The Browns, as usual, didn’t find the end zone in the first half. They didn’t even come close. Not a whiff. But since this is about progress, call it a draw. They haven’t scored a touchdown in the first half of either of their first two games, either.
It’s probably best not to get into too much detail about what took place in the second half. The overarching story was Mangini pulling the plug on Quinn and Anderson doing his best to punch his own ticket elsewhere. For the rest of it, let’s just put a positive spin on it and acknowledge that not as much progress was made as Mangini had hoped. Here were the highlights:
• Opening kickoff, Browns were offside. Mangini, I think, swallowed his tongue.
• Browns defense holds Ravens, forcing their first punt at 12:47 of the third quarter, thus marking this the first halftime adjustment that’s worked for the Browns this season.
• When Anderson entered the game it wasn’t a surprise. I remember thinking at the moment Quinn threw the interception on the Browns’ first drive that his days as the starting quarterback were dwindling quickly. Apparently Mangini had the same thought at the same time. Scary, huh?
• Anderson shows exactly what a backup can do when given the same empty toolbox as the starter. He, too, throws an interception on his first drive, thus keeping it at “1” the number of halftime adjustments this season that have been effective.
• McGahee goes where Adrian Peterson and Correll Buckhalter have gone before. He rumbles 34 yards down to the Cleveland 19-yard line, treating Brandon McDonald as if he were his little brother by pushing him out of the way twice.
• Ray Rice completes what McGahee started by running the final 9 yards, giving the Ravens a 27-0 lead. In England, it’s 6 hours later and owner Randy Lerner is just sitting down for dinner. Good show, mate.
• As Anderson began his second drive, the media drones from Sector 2 readied the next wave of quarterback questions for Mangini while the Ravens defense contemplated whether or not to stay interested enough to try and pitch a shut out. Ah, the game within the game. The Browns win this little battle when they foil the shut out with the Cundiff field goal.
• For apparently no reason, Shaun Rogers throws Ravens guard Ben Grubbs to the ground and gets an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Oddly, this seemed to rattle the Ravens enough that McGahee fumbles on the next play, deep in Browns’ territory, and the Browns recover. The Ravens didn’t stay rattled for long as the Browns were forced to punt a few plays later.
• In what may be one of his final drives as a Cleveland Brown, Anderson throws long and downfield in the direction of Edwards. Dawann Landry, wearing Ravens purple, sees it land in his gut for the interception.
• With a 27-3 lead, Ravens head coach John Harbaugh gets word from the press box that tiebreaker points might be needed. Flacco throws long to Derrick Mason, who makes a great catch and move on an outclassed McDonald and turns it into a 34-3 game. McDonald must be worried that he is soon to receive the Martin Rucker treatment. It’s barely 3:30 p.m. EDT, there’s still over 7 minutes remaining and yet it seems like the game already has lasted 4 hours.
• Anderson throws his third interception and somewhere on the Browns’ bench Quinn is probably muttering under his breath, “told ya.”
• Troy Smith enters the game and for two series the Browns hold. Smith deserved better.
Sorting through the wreckage, the final stats tell the story in one sense but not in another. The Ravens had 479 yards in offense, the Browns 186. Flacco was 25-35 for 342 yards, Quinn and Anderson were a combined 17-27 for 115 yards. Baltimore had 142 yards on the ground and the Browns had exactly half of that. It would be hard to find a game more lopsided out of the Texas-UTEP game.
As bad as things were last season, the sting of this season is far worse actually. Promised a new direction and a new attitude, most fans didn’t even begin to contemplate that that meant backwards and worse. There is no spark or passion on this team as it takes its cue from the emotionally inept Mangini. The players know that theirs is a boat that is drifting listlessly and that Mangini is responsible for the lack of rudder. He put the team in this position offensively by not committing to one quarterback early in preseason and he took an ax to whatever continuity was being built (admittedly not much) by throwing Anderson in when things got tough.
If the Browns really want to fix this mess then they have to set a course and learn to live with it, for all the ups and down that may come. Instead they change direction on a whim and with their third straight blowout loss, find themselves once again going in circles. Apropos to nothing, the New York Jets are 3-0.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Lingering Items--Broncos Edition
The news that the Cleveland Browns waived tight end Martin Rucker was greeted by most with a mere yawn or at best a knowing smirk. Either way it’s below the radar when there are far bigger issues to deal with. But, really, in some sense isn’t the cutting of Rucker a marker for the biggest issue facing this team, a deep and abiding lack of talent?
Rucker was one of former general manager Phil Savage’s classic picks. Thinking, as he usually did, that he was once again outsmarting the rest of the league, he traded a 2009 third round pick to Dallas for another fourth round pick in 2008, which turned into Rucker.
If Savage were still around, the fact that he wasted a third round pick on another bust would be a dischargeable offense. Hopefully it will probably keep him further unemployed. As the Plain Dealer reported, Savage was well aware that Rucker couldn’t block, which is something most teams want from tight ends, dismissing his complete lack of skills by challenging the reporter to name a tight end that could block. Since Rucker wasn’t drafted to fill the role of a traditional tight end, he basically was competing for the position of slow receiver. In that context his being waived was inevitable. The Browns already have plenty of those.
The larger issue though is what Savage did to this franchise in the process of making such a bone-headed move. Essentially, the Browns had no 2008 draft. It was mortgaged for three defensive linemen, a quarterback and a linebacker in the persons of, Shaun Rogers, Corey Williams, Ahtyba Rubin, Brady Quinn, and Alex Hall, respectively.
Of that group, the only one to contribute meaningfully so far has been Rogers. The level of his contribution though is hard to gauge. He was chosen for the Pro Bowl on the strength of a season in which he anchored a defensive line that was one of the worst in the league. Evidently it would have been far worse without Rogers but even with him the team went 4-12. Maybe they go 3-13 or 2-14 without him, as if that would really would have mattered.
Corey Williams hasn’t been a bust but neither has he been much of a contributor, mainly due to injuries. Rubin looks like a decent prospect but again this season the defensive line can’t stop the run so it’s unclear how much of a difference he, Rogers or Williams, singularly or collectively, are making anyway. Quinn is the team’s starting quarterback on an offense without a credible running game or a credible complement of receivers to catch the ball. He looks bad but there isn’t a whole lot of ways to look good, either. As for Hall, whatever his contributions might be, the Browns linebacking corps is one of the worst in the league. Do the math on that yourself.
No team can essentially give away draft after draft after draft after draft and expect to be competitive. The Indians’ season is a testament to exactly what eventually happens when draft neglect has been committed in serial fashion. The Browns of this season and last are making a case of overtaking the Indians as the Wikipedia entry for that point.
That gets head coach Eric Mangini off the hook except that it really doesn’t. To this point his 2009 draft isn’t looking so smart, either. All the manipulating and cleverness that he tried to exhibit on draft day cost him Mark Sanchez and instead brought the team a rookie center and two receivers who apparently can’t even beat out a converted college quarterback and kick returner, even if he is one of the best kick returners in the league. There also are a couple of linebackers that haven’t contributed despite the gaping need the team has at that position and a defensive back that plays on special teams because, again, he can’t crack an incredibly weak starting defensive backfield. Finally, there’s a running back who shows promise but hasn’t contributed much in two games despite, wait for it, a gaping need at that position as well.
That’s not to pass judgment on the Browns 2009 draft class. It has plenty of time to get better and one preseason and two games in is just far too early to judge it to conclusion. But it is fair to suggest that it ought to contributing more considering the alternatives that are playing in their places. In any case, last year’s class is kaput. Rucker is now gone and forgotten. But what won’t be is what he stands for; another failed draft. If 2009 turns into another failed draft, just add another few years before the team can even hope to be competitive.
**
Does the fact that Coye Francies tried to take on the entire Browns’ locker room after being the victim of some sort of prank mean the wheels are starting to fall off the team so soon? Probably not. But of all the comments made about it, the most intriguing was that made by receiver Braylon Edwards when he told reporters, according to the Plain Dealer, “welcome to the Browns’ locker room.”
In that comment Edwards was clearly telling the collected media, in front of whom the skirmish broke out, that this kind of chaos is de rigueur for the team. Small wonder Mangini doesn’t want the media around.
It might be fair to ask why any Browns are playing a prank on any player, no matter how juvenile, instead of concentrating on not suffering their third straight beat down. But that would just be poking at the obvious. What is clear is that despite all the discipline he promised to bring, Mangini is no more in charge of the locker room than his predecessor.
Under former head coach Romeo Crennel, Brady Quinn was the victim of a prank that he was none too happy about, the shaving of his Sampson-like locks last year. Then there was that little tête-à -tête (that’s two French phrases in one item, take that Gladys McCoy) Quinn had with Shaun Smith. That all probably meant that Quinn doesn’t have much of a sense of humor or it might mean that neither incident was particularly funny. But it also meant that Crennel was busy sitting in his office while the players were doing anything but trying to win the next game.
There is a “boys will be boys” element to every team and in sports, the pranks are particularly amateurish, usually involving humiliation. But right now the Browns are being laughed at nationally because their play on the field is a joke. Now they’re also being laughed at nationally because their players can’t take a joke.
**
The muted response by Browns’ fans to last week’s loss in Denver can only mean that a large portion of them are already in either stage 4 or 5 of the grieving process. That means some are still depressed by most are in the acceptance phase, which is healthy.
Occasionally I get a random email from someone still in the bargaining stage, as in “if Jamal Lewis can just….and if Quinn can find Edwards…and if Eric Wright becomes the Pro Bowl corner he should be…then this team can make the playoffs” or something like that. But those are far less than they used to be.
The Browns as a franchise died when Art Modell moved them to Baltimore. The new Browns arrived terminally ill, clinging to a ventilator. The plug was effectively pulled when Randy Lerner took over as owner. The best way to look at it these days is to simply think of Mangini’s hire as the equivalent to the team starting over from scratch. It’s a refreshing state of mind, actually. It makes you realize that it’s no longer about trying to keep grandpa alive but about watching a newborn grow. Whether it has the right parents is open to much debate. But this truly is a franchise at the moment that is learning to crawl—forward.
**
As a bit of a follow-up to an item last week, it is noted that Green Bay New York Jets Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre has apologized, sort of, for getting his former team, the Jets, and his former coach, Mangini, in trouble with the league. Poor Brett is just apoplectic about having cost them $150,000 in fines, but not apoplectic enough to reimburse either of them.
Mangini, as usual, has put the whole matter behind him though he never addressed it either. I mention this because it’s a fascinating counterpoint to the rather impassioned justification Mangini gave for fining Abram Elam $1700 for not paying for a $3 bottle of water at a hotel. Mangini said there is a code of conduct that everyone in every walk of life lives by and his football players should be no different. In that, of course, Mangini’s views are above reproach.
But Mangini is also rather convenient when it comes to the more squishy issues of league rules as they apply to him. Mangini knew full well that he wasn’t properly reporting Favre’s injury last year but continued to do it anyway. He wouldn’t have been caught but for Favre’s big mouth. If you’re keeping score, that means that Elam’s offense wasn’t walking out without paying for the water, it was getting caught.
To this point Mangini hasn’t substantively spoken about the $25,000 fine he received from the league. In basically sweeping it away, he creates the impression that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong but there’s no use fighting big brother. Maybe he actually feels that way, maybe he doesn’t. But either way, Mangini missed a teaching opportunity with his troops that, more than empty words about his players’ place in proper society, would have demonstrated exactly why it was proper to fine Elam fine and any other player similarly situated. Mangini could have done this by the simple act of publicly declaring that his actions last year with respect to Favre were wrong, a violation of the rules for which he was rightly fined and then giving his word that it will never happen again.
Mangini couldn’t do that because he lacks that gene. If he did, it wouldn’t be Saturday before Browns fans found out that the starting kicker has a serious enough injury that the team was auditioning emergency kickers.
The truth is that Mangini plays the outer boundaries of any rules he simply doesn’t like. League rules require that he provide the media reasonable access to the team and he complies with the letter but hardly the spirit. He pressured rookies into taking a 10-hour bus ride, a ride Mangini himself was unwilling to make, skirting again the spirit if not the letter of the collective bargaining agreement. In both cases he’s left a bus-load of pissed off people in his wake.
It’s a disturbing pattern, actually. There’s no problem with Mangini holding his players accountable for not acting like jerks in public. There is a problem when Mangini is only willing to live by that same code when it’s convenient. Ethics and integrity aren’t about what you do when someone’s looking. They’re about what you do when no one is.
**
If a team can possibly be a “soft” 2-0 then the Denver Broncos have met that charge. After opening against the Bengals and then the Browns, the Broncos have gotten off to a the kind of start Browns fans can only dream about and, in the process, have given their fans a reason to believe that Pat Bowlen’s firing of Mike Shanahan was the right move at the right moment.
It won’t last.
Denver’s cause will be helped this year by the division they play in, but it won’t be helped enough. As long as the Broncos continue to start Kyle Orton as their quarterback, and what choice do they have really, they and their fans will eventually face reality. You can drink all night and not feel like you’re drunk, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have a headache when you wake up in the morning.
The Broncos, frankly, are a borderline pathetic franchise at the moment. They beat the Browns last week because that’s what they, like the Steelers, always do. But there are bills coming due. Head coach Josh McDaniel’s decision to trade quarterbacks with the Bears was not just plain dumb, it will become a millstone around his neck when his offense can’t keep pace with the better defensive teams in the league. When they play the Steelers or the Ravens, take either and give the points.
The Broncos defense may have been able to stifle the Browns offense, but then again I think Ohio State’s defense could hold the Browns to under 10 points at the moment. When the Broncos begin facing teams with a legitimate offense, their defense will struggle. The seeds of that struggle were evident even against the Browns.
**
The San Francisco 49ers haven’t yet signed receiver Michael Crabtree. If the 49ers are smart, they’ll let him dangle some more. The 49ers have made an offer befitting Crabtree’s place in the draft but Crabtree wants an offer befitting where he believes he should have gone in the draft. Eventually he’ll sign. Sitting out the year will result in money he’ll never recoup. All this is a very long set up for this week’s question to ponder: When the 2009 season concludes, who will have more receptions, Crabtree or Brian Robiskie and Mohamed Massaquoi?
Rucker was one of former general manager Phil Savage’s classic picks. Thinking, as he usually did, that he was once again outsmarting the rest of the league, he traded a 2009 third round pick to Dallas for another fourth round pick in 2008, which turned into Rucker.
If Savage were still around, the fact that he wasted a third round pick on another bust would be a dischargeable offense. Hopefully it will probably keep him further unemployed. As the Plain Dealer reported, Savage was well aware that Rucker couldn’t block, which is something most teams want from tight ends, dismissing his complete lack of skills by challenging the reporter to name a tight end that could block. Since Rucker wasn’t drafted to fill the role of a traditional tight end, he basically was competing for the position of slow receiver. In that context his being waived was inevitable. The Browns already have plenty of those.
The larger issue though is what Savage did to this franchise in the process of making such a bone-headed move. Essentially, the Browns had no 2008 draft. It was mortgaged for three defensive linemen, a quarterback and a linebacker in the persons of, Shaun Rogers, Corey Williams, Ahtyba Rubin, Brady Quinn, and Alex Hall, respectively.
Of that group, the only one to contribute meaningfully so far has been Rogers. The level of his contribution though is hard to gauge. He was chosen for the Pro Bowl on the strength of a season in which he anchored a defensive line that was one of the worst in the league. Evidently it would have been far worse without Rogers but even with him the team went 4-12. Maybe they go 3-13 or 2-14 without him, as if that would really would have mattered.
Corey Williams hasn’t been a bust but neither has he been much of a contributor, mainly due to injuries. Rubin looks like a decent prospect but again this season the defensive line can’t stop the run so it’s unclear how much of a difference he, Rogers or Williams, singularly or collectively, are making anyway. Quinn is the team’s starting quarterback on an offense without a credible running game or a credible complement of receivers to catch the ball. He looks bad but there isn’t a whole lot of ways to look good, either. As for Hall, whatever his contributions might be, the Browns linebacking corps is one of the worst in the league. Do the math on that yourself.
No team can essentially give away draft after draft after draft after draft and expect to be competitive. The Indians’ season is a testament to exactly what eventually happens when draft neglect has been committed in serial fashion. The Browns of this season and last are making a case of overtaking the Indians as the Wikipedia entry for that point.
That gets head coach Eric Mangini off the hook except that it really doesn’t. To this point his 2009 draft isn’t looking so smart, either. All the manipulating and cleverness that he tried to exhibit on draft day cost him Mark Sanchez and instead brought the team a rookie center and two receivers who apparently can’t even beat out a converted college quarterback and kick returner, even if he is one of the best kick returners in the league. There also are a couple of linebackers that haven’t contributed despite the gaping need the team has at that position and a defensive back that plays on special teams because, again, he can’t crack an incredibly weak starting defensive backfield. Finally, there’s a running back who shows promise but hasn’t contributed much in two games despite, wait for it, a gaping need at that position as well.
That’s not to pass judgment on the Browns 2009 draft class. It has plenty of time to get better and one preseason and two games in is just far too early to judge it to conclusion. But it is fair to suggest that it ought to contributing more considering the alternatives that are playing in their places. In any case, last year’s class is kaput. Rucker is now gone and forgotten. But what won’t be is what he stands for; another failed draft. If 2009 turns into another failed draft, just add another few years before the team can even hope to be competitive.
**
Does the fact that Coye Francies tried to take on the entire Browns’ locker room after being the victim of some sort of prank mean the wheels are starting to fall off the team so soon? Probably not. But of all the comments made about it, the most intriguing was that made by receiver Braylon Edwards when he told reporters, according to the Plain Dealer, “welcome to the Browns’ locker room.”
In that comment Edwards was clearly telling the collected media, in front of whom the skirmish broke out, that this kind of chaos is de rigueur for the team. Small wonder Mangini doesn’t want the media around.
It might be fair to ask why any Browns are playing a prank on any player, no matter how juvenile, instead of concentrating on not suffering their third straight beat down. But that would just be poking at the obvious. What is clear is that despite all the discipline he promised to bring, Mangini is no more in charge of the locker room than his predecessor.
Under former head coach Romeo Crennel, Brady Quinn was the victim of a prank that he was none too happy about, the shaving of his Sampson-like locks last year. Then there was that little tête-à -tête (that’s two French phrases in one item, take that Gladys McCoy) Quinn had with Shaun Smith. That all probably meant that Quinn doesn’t have much of a sense of humor or it might mean that neither incident was particularly funny. But it also meant that Crennel was busy sitting in his office while the players were doing anything but trying to win the next game.
There is a “boys will be boys” element to every team and in sports, the pranks are particularly amateurish, usually involving humiliation. But right now the Browns are being laughed at nationally because their play on the field is a joke. Now they’re also being laughed at nationally because their players can’t take a joke.
**
The muted response by Browns’ fans to last week’s loss in Denver can only mean that a large portion of them are already in either stage 4 or 5 of the grieving process. That means some are still depressed by most are in the acceptance phase, which is healthy.
Occasionally I get a random email from someone still in the bargaining stage, as in “if Jamal Lewis can just….and if Quinn can find Edwards…and if Eric Wright becomes the Pro Bowl corner he should be…then this team can make the playoffs” or something like that. But those are far less than they used to be.
The Browns as a franchise died when Art Modell moved them to Baltimore. The new Browns arrived terminally ill, clinging to a ventilator. The plug was effectively pulled when Randy Lerner took over as owner. The best way to look at it these days is to simply think of Mangini’s hire as the equivalent to the team starting over from scratch. It’s a refreshing state of mind, actually. It makes you realize that it’s no longer about trying to keep grandpa alive but about watching a newborn grow. Whether it has the right parents is open to much debate. But this truly is a franchise at the moment that is learning to crawl—forward.
**
As a bit of a follow-up to an item last week, it is noted that Green Bay New York Jets Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre has apologized, sort of, for getting his former team, the Jets, and his former coach, Mangini, in trouble with the league. Poor Brett is just apoplectic about having cost them $150,000 in fines, but not apoplectic enough to reimburse either of them.
Mangini, as usual, has put the whole matter behind him though he never addressed it either. I mention this because it’s a fascinating counterpoint to the rather impassioned justification Mangini gave for fining Abram Elam $1700 for not paying for a $3 bottle of water at a hotel. Mangini said there is a code of conduct that everyone in every walk of life lives by and his football players should be no different. In that, of course, Mangini’s views are above reproach.
But Mangini is also rather convenient when it comes to the more squishy issues of league rules as they apply to him. Mangini knew full well that he wasn’t properly reporting Favre’s injury last year but continued to do it anyway. He wouldn’t have been caught but for Favre’s big mouth. If you’re keeping score, that means that Elam’s offense wasn’t walking out without paying for the water, it was getting caught.
To this point Mangini hasn’t substantively spoken about the $25,000 fine he received from the league. In basically sweeping it away, he creates the impression that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong but there’s no use fighting big brother. Maybe he actually feels that way, maybe he doesn’t. But either way, Mangini missed a teaching opportunity with his troops that, more than empty words about his players’ place in proper society, would have demonstrated exactly why it was proper to fine Elam fine and any other player similarly situated. Mangini could have done this by the simple act of publicly declaring that his actions last year with respect to Favre were wrong, a violation of the rules for which he was rightly fined and then giving his word that it will never happen again.
Mangini couldn’t do that because he lacks that gene. If he did, it wouldn’t be Saturday before Browns fans found out that the starting kicker has a serious enough injury that the team was auditioning emergency kickers.
The truth is that Mangini plays the outer boundaries of any rules he simply doesn’t like. League rules require that he provide the media reasonable access to the team and he complies with the letter but hardly the spirit. He pressured rookies into taking a 10-hour bus ride, a ride Mangini himself was unwilling to make, skirting again the spirit if not the letter of the collective bargaining agreement. In both cases he’s left a bus-load of pissed off people in his wake.
It’s a disturbing pattern, actually. There’s no problem with Mangini holding his players accountable for not acting like jerks in public. There is a problem when Mangini is only willing to live by that same code when it’s convenient. Ethics and integrity aren’t about what you do when someone’s looking. They’re about what you do when no one is.
**
If a team can possibly be a “soft” 2-0 then the Denver Broncos have met that charge. After opening against the Bengals and then the Browns, the Broncos have gotten off to a the kind of start Browns fans can only dream about and, in the process, have given their fans a reason to believe that Pat Bowlen’s firing of Mike Shanahan was the right move at the right moment.
It won’t last.
Denver’s cause will be helped this year by the division they play in, but it won’t be helped enough. As long as the Broncos continue to start Kyle Orton as their quarterback, and what choice do they have really, they and their fans will eventually face reality. You can drink all night and not feel like you’re drunk, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have a headache when you wake up in the morning.
The Broncos, frankly, are a borderline pathetic franchise at the moment. They beat the Browns last week because that’s what they, like the Steelers, always do. But there are bills coming due. Head coach Josh McDaniel’s decision to trade quarterbacks with the Bears was not just plain dumb, it will become a millstone around his neck when his offense can’t keep pace with the better defensive teams in the league. When they play the Steelers or the Ravens, take either and give the points.
The Broncos defense may have been able to stifle the Browns offense, but then again I think Ohio State’s defense could hold the Browns to under 10 points at the moment. When the Broncos begin facing teams with a legitimate offense, their defense will struggle. The seeds of that struggle were evident even against the Browns.
**
The San Francisco 49ers haven’t yet signed receiver Michael Crabtree. If the 49ers are smart, they’ll let him dangle some more. The 49ers have made an offer befitting Crabtree’s place in the draft but Crabtree wants an offer befitting where he believes he should have gone in the draft. Eventually he’ll sign. Sitting out the year will result in money he’ll never recoup. All this is a very long set up for this week’s question to ponder: When the 2009 season concludes, who will have more receptions, Crabtree or Brian Robiskie and Mohamed Massaquoi?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
More Puzzle Than Pieces
Rarely is it a good time to be a Cleveland sports fan but some times are better than others. This is one of the others.
Browns fans seemed particularly despondent over the team’s dismal performance at Denver on Sunday. It wasn’t so much that they expected the team to win. They just didn’t expect them to lose that bad. As the game played out in its mind-numbing slowness, it’s glacial pace gave fans plenty of time to contemplate just how long it might be until this team, this franchise, is competitive again. From the looks of things at the moment, it will be years.
That the Browns season is effectively over two games in is just another helping of bad news on a town that thought that this past NBA season would bring the championship this town believes it deserves. An inability to match-up with an otherwise inferior opponent carried an aura of inevitability of the defeat that surely came.
Then, of course, the meltdown by the Cleveland Indians followed, carrying with it all earmarks of a business model that’s built around developing players that can later be traded. The Indians are a franchise without the financial wherewithal to develop and retain core players and fans just know at this point that any World Series title depends mostly on the harmonic convergence of young players exceeding expectations before they can be free agents.
With the Indians season now a distant memory despite a handful of games remaining and the Cavs still a several days away from camp (and sorting out what the heck Delonte West was thinking), focus is on the Browns. It’s not quite a team in disarray in the Romeo Crennel sense, but it’s a team with limited purpose.
Trying to get a bead on head coach Eric Mangini is proving more elusive as each day passes. Quarterback Brady Quinn, a rookie quarterback in every way but name, is saddled with a somewhat suspect offensive line, a non-existent running back led by a back several years past his prime, and a receiving corps with a college quarterback and kick returner extraordinaire acting as its second best option.
Then there’s the defense. It features a secondary that can’t cover a slot receiver or tackle a running back. The last time the linebackers put pressure on an opposing quarterback on a regular basis, Clay Matthews, Sr. was only known as Clay Matthews. And the defensive line? In two games opposing teams have averaged more than 200 yards on the ground and the nose tackle is a Pro Bowler.
Where does that leave the team now and, more importantly, where is the direction that Mangini wants to take it? At the moment there’s no way of telling because the next time that Mangini provides a substantive answer on anything will be the first time. He’s no more going to offer a credible explanation on why he’s trying to mold Josh Cribbs into a big-time receiver at the expense of two potential big-time receivers that he just drafted in the second round then he is on why, despite the fact that Jamal Lewis is done as a running back, he left the team so thin in that department.
Fans are always about instant gratification but the sense of dread is not over immediate results. No one is calling for Mangini to be fired and most fans know, intellectually if not emotionally, that it’s going to take far more than one off –season and a few games to fix this mess. But on the other hand they’d at least like to think that entering their 11th season, this version of the Browns has more of a chance to win a few games than the expansion version did. It is on this notion that Mangini will be judged.
Assessing Mangini in this context thus far is difficult. The team has a serious deficit in talent and while Mangini made all the calls on which personnel would be retained and which would be jettisoned, it’s not like he could fire everyone and start over, either. What he has done so far, though, begs a few questions that he’ll never answer.
Among the most puzzling is why Brian Robiskie was inactive for the Denver game and why Mohamad Massaquoi basically didn’t play until garbage time. Is it really the case that Cribbs is well ahead of both of them or more the case of trying to figure out right now the full limits of Cribbs’ potential?
It’s no knock on Cribbs to say that his usefulness as a receiver is limited. He can run reverses just fine but lacks the polish and skill to run crisp routes and get open consistently at the moment. That may change down the road by why is it being done at the expense of two receivers with far bigger upsides?
One theory is that the more Cribbs is out there with the first team offense, the more effective the so-called wildcat offense will become. That probably holds some merit but until Cribbs starts throwing from that formation, NFL defenses will know what’s coming and respond accordingly. The Vikings only needed to see it once to stop it the second time.
Mangini hinted at an answer with respect to Robiskie, offering the rather odd excuse that Robiskie was inactive because Mangini needed to get newly-acquired Patriots castoff defensive back Ray Ventrone in the mix on special teams. Hard to tell if that was a slam at Robiskie or a slam at the special teams, but either way the Browns have essentially relegated one of their second round picks behind an unsigned free agent begging for a gig until Mangini through him a lifeline.
Another puzzle is the defense. Sure, it lacks credible defensive ends, linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties, but why are they so out of shape? Or is it my imagination that they can’t sustain either their stamina or their interest for a full 60 minutes?
You can argue somewhat correctly that if the offense would sustain a few more drives maybe the defense wouldn’t get so tired. But what of the notion that this is only the second game of the season and the players should be less banged up and in enough shape to sustain their energy irrespective of how long they’ve been on the field in a particular game? They do this for a living, the least they can do is be in shape.
The challenge for Mangini, just two games in though it feels like 22, is not only stifling the losing culture but keeping it from further metastasizing. Show me a team that is losing like this and I’ll show you a team that is falling apart at the seams. Want proof? Look at the spectacularly dismal way Eric Wedge is bringing his limp horse of a team back to the barn. It is exactly the same feeling that fans had at the end of the Browns season last year, more bored than pissed looking on at injured and indifferent players acting as if a rectal exam would be more welcome.
It may be far too soon to say the players on this team are just mailing in their performance each week, but it isn’t too soon to conclude that they go into each week expecting to lose. It’s the inevitable result when the elements of an indifferent owner, bad hires, bad drafts and bad karma meet. Maybe Mangini can become the change agent to actually alter the recipe of this toxic soup, but given the way his team and his draft picks have played thus far, the list of things that need to get fixed isn’t any shorter.
Browns fans seemed particularly despondent over the team’s dismal performance at Denver on Sunday. It wasn’t so much that they expected the team to win. They just didn’t expect them to lose that bad. As the game played out in its mind-numbing slowness, it’s glacial pace gave fans plenty of time to contemplate just how long it might be until this team, this franchise, is competitive again. From the looks of things at the moment, it will be years.
That the Browns season is effectively over two games in is just another helping of bad news on a town that thought that this past NBA season would bring the championship this town believes it deserves. An inability to match-up with an otherwise inferior opponent carried an aura of inevitability of the defeat that surely came.
Then, of course, the meltdown by the Cleveland Indians followed, carrying with it all earmarks of a business model that’s built around developing players that can later be traded. The Indians are a franchise without the financial wherewithal to develop and retain core players and fans just know at this point that any World Series title depends mostly on the harmonic convergence of young players exceeding expectations before they can be free agents.
With the Indians season now a distant memory despite a handful of games remaining and the Cavs still a several days away from camp (and sorting out what the heck Delonte West was thinking), focus is on the Browns. It’s not quite a team in disarray in the Romeo Crennel sense, but it’s a team with limited purpose.
Trying to get a bead on head coach Eric Mangini is proving more elusive as each day passes. Quarterback Brady Quinn, a rookie quarterback in every way but name, is saddled with a somewhat suspect offensive line, a non-existent running back led by a back several years past his prime, and a receiving corps with a college quarterback and kick returner extraordinaire acting as its second best option.
Then there’s the defense. It features a secondary that can’t cover a slot receiver or tackle a running back. The last time the linebackers put pressure on an opposing quarterback on a regular basis, Clay Matthews, Sr. was only known as Clay Matthews. And the defensive line? In two games opposing teams have averaged more than 200 yards on the ground and the nose tackle is a Pro Bowler.
Where does that leave the team now and, more importantly, where is the direction that Mangini wants to take it? At the moment there’s no way of telling because the next time that Mangini provides a substantive answer on anything will be the first time. He’s no more going to offer a credible explanation on why he’s trying to mold Josh Cribbs into a big-time receiver at the expense of two potential big-time receivers that he just drafted in the second round then he is on why, despite the fact that Jamal Lewis is done as a running back, he left the team so thin in that department.
Fans are always about instant gratification but the sense of dread is not over immediate results. No one is calling for Mangini to be fired and most fans know, intellectually if not emotionally, that it’s going to take far more than one off –season and a few games to fix this mess. But on the other hand they’d at least like to think that entering their 11th season, this version of the Browns has more of a chance to win a few games than the expansion version did. It is on this notion that Mangini will be judged.
Assessing Mangini in this context thus far is difficult. The team has a serious deficit in talent and while Mangini made all the calls on which personnel would be retained and which would be jettisoned, it’s not like he could fire everyone and start over, either. What he has done so far, though, begs a few questions that he’ll never answer.
Among the most puzzling is why Brian Robiskie was inactive for the Denver game and why Mohamad Massaquoi basically didn’t play until garbage time. Is it really the case that Cribbs is well ahead of both of them or more the case of trying to figure out right now the full limits of Cribbs’ potential?
It’s no knock on Cribbs to say that his usefulness as a receiver is limited. He can run reverses just fine but lacks the polish and skill to run crisp routes and get open consistently at the moment. That may change down the road by why is it being done at the expense of two receivers with far bigger upsides?
One theory is that the more Cribbs is out there with the first team offense, the more effective the so-called wildcat offense will become. That probably holds some merit but until Cribbs starts throwing from that formation, NFL defenses will know what’s coming and respond accordingly. The Vikings only needed to see it once to stop it the second time.
Mangini hinted at an answer with respect to Robiskie, offering the rather odd excuse that Robiskie was inactive because Mangini needed to get newly-acquired Patriots castoff defensive back Ray Ventrone in the mix on special teams. Hard to tell if that was a slam at Robiskie or a slam at the special teams, but either way the Browns have essentially relegated one of their second round picks behind an unsigned free agent begging for a gig until Mangini through him a lifeline.
Another puzzle is the defense. Sure, it lacks credible defensive ends, linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties, but why are they so out of shape? Or is it my imagination that they can’t sustain either their stamina or their interest for a full 60 minutes?
You can argue somewhat correctly that if the offense would sustain a few more drives maybe the defense wouldn’t get so tired. But what of the notion that this is only the second game of the season and the players should be less banged up and in enough shape to sustain their energy irrespective of how long they’ve been on the field in a particular game? They do this for a living, the least they can do is be in shape.
The challenge for Mangini, just two games in though it feels like 22, is not only stifling the losing culture but keeping it from further metastasizing. Show me a team that is losing like this and I’ll show you a team that is falling apart at the seams. Want proof? Look at the spectacularly dismal way Eric Wedge is bringing his limp horse of a team back to the barn. It is exactly the same feeling that fans had at the end of the Browns season last year, more bored than pissed looking on at injured and indifferent players acting as if a rectal exam would be more welcome.
It may be far too soon to say the players on this team are just mailing in their performance each week, but it isn’t too soon to conclude that they go into each week expecting to lose. It’s the inevitable result when the elements of an indifferent owner, bad hires, bad drafts and bad karma meet. Maybe Mangini can become the change agent to actually alter the recipe of this toxic soup, but given the way his team and his draft picks have played thus far, the list of things that need to get fixed isn’t any shorter.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Another Week, Another Streak
The streak continues, take your pick.
After losing to the Denver Broncos on Sunday 27-6 at Denver’s Invesco Field, the Browns kept in tact the NFL’s longest drought for not scoring on an opening drive and the NFL’s third longest losing streak, thanks Detroit, thanks St. Louis. Meanwhile a new touchdown-less streak has begun. Yes, the offense is that bad, again.
The Browns, lacking much of a passing game and less of a running game couldn’t sustain drives when they needed to or take advantage of opportunities when presented. An earnest effort early undone by a lack of talent, the Browns were kept in the game for mucht of the game mostly because the Broncos offense under Kyle Orton is nearly as bad, despite the team being 2-0.
As an aside, here’s something that was clear from the Broncos first drive. Orton is no Jay Cutler. When the Broncos stop plowing their way through the second division of the AFC North, head coach Josh McDaniels can blame himself for ushering out the temperamental but far more talented Cutler for Orton. Orton defines NFL mediocrity in a position where it’s hard to hide. With an occasional good pass thrown in among the several bad ones, Orton almost single-handedly kept the Browns in this game until they imploded in the middle of the third quarter.
For now, the Browns are relegated once again to talking about getting better, fixing what needs to be fixed and moving on past their third 0-2 start in the last four years. At least it started promising.
Peyton Hillis fumbled the opening kickoff from Phil Dawson giving the Browns the ball at the Broncos 22-yard line. But the Browns weren’t going to break a nearly two-year old streak of not scoring a touchdown on their opening drive on this day and, as usual, settled for a Dawson field goal. With gifts few and far between for this team it felt as if the Broncos decided to spot the Browns a 3-point lead and then buckled their chinstraps and said, “let’s play.” They could have spotted the Browns a lot more.
But so much of what the Browns do is for the benefit of others. On third and long from deep in their own territory on the game’s second drive, rookie center Alex Mack dribbled a shotgun snap to Brady Quinn that Quinn couldn’t handle. The fumble was recovered by linebacker Darrell Reid at the Browns 10. Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton then hit tight end Tony Scheffler on a slant inside of a badly overmatch Kamerion Wimbley for a 3-yard touchdown pass on third down giving the Broncos the 7-3 lead.
It looked like the blowout it would eventually become.
At various points the Browns and Brady Quinn showed enough life to think that maybe with a few more games under their belt they’ll start to convert a few of their opportunities. Just not on this day. On the Browns second drive, for example, Quinn moved the ball from his own 20 to the Broncos 29 on a combination of Jamal Lewis and Quinn’s new found penchant for finding wide receivers instead of tight ends, but alas this drive too stumbled, yielding to a 47-yard Dawson field goal that closed the gap to 7-6.
The Broncos pushed the lead back to 4 with a 23-yard Matt Prayter field goal after their 13 play, 5 minute drive stalled at the Browns’ 6-yard line. The drive featured Orton hitting his favorite target, receiver Brandon Stokely, on a short pass over the middle that Stokely took 37-yards to the Cleveland 28. The Broncos had a chance to make it a 7-point lead just before the half after another long drive, this time 15 plays, but that drive fizzled too and Prayter missed a chip shot field goal. It was another in a series of opportunities squandered by the Broncos’ own brand of ineptness, offensively, despite almost no visible pass rush from the Browns’ defense, even when it blitzed.
Here’s another aside. I know that the television announcers want to appear as though they have something good to say about every team. But Steve Beuerlein took that to an extreme by twice referring to Browns’ cornerback Eric Wright as one of the best in the league. It must have happened when I wasn’t looking and admittedly I don’t watch the Pro Bowl, but Eric Wright? Beuerlein took that as accepted fact because Orton, hardly the best judge of talent, supposedly called Wright one of the five best cornerbacks in the league, no doubt in a pre-game “Pay your respects to the opponent and don’t give them any bulletin board material” interview.
A game within striking distance again at the half eventually turned into an ugly mess, this week a little later than last, although the Browns tried their best to help. In the second half’s opening drive, Quinn hit Josh Cribbs over the middle on 3rd and 9 from the Browns’ 24-yard life but Cribbs fumbled it away. At least he fumbled it forward as the Broncos recovered it at their own 38. The reason that turned out to be such a good thing is that the Broncos offense is essentially Cleveland West. A few predictable decent plays followed by the even more predictable bad plays by Orton forced still another Prayter field goal and a 13-6 lead.
If the game had ended right there it would have mattered little. Broncos fans seemed bored and Browns fans, at least those still watching, were probably in the kitchen packing tomorrow’s lunch. The Broncos had a chance to push it to a 10-point lead with just under 3 minutes left in the third quarter after another drive inevitably stalled for the Broncos but Prayter missed another field goal, this one from 37 yards as fans in two cities yawned in unison.
For just a bit it looked like the Browns were again showing some life after the Prayter miss. It was as if they awoke to realize that the game still was within reach, technically. Quinn hit Braylon Edwards on back-to-back passes but then had three straight deflected, one to an open Mohamad Massaquoi and two at the line of scrimmage and were forced to punt after getting the ball to the Denver 44.
Then the wheels, wobbling mightily anyway, finally fell off. On the Broncos next drive, a short pass from Orton to Jabar Gaffney turned into a 37-yard play and got the ball to the Cleveland 2-yard line. Even the Broncos couldn’t miss that lay up and didn’t when Hillis went in for the touchdown which helped push the lead to a now insurmountable 20-6.
Emboldened, the Broncos defense then blew up the Browns’ next drive with two sacks and a false start penalty on tackle John St. Clair. It was a game that could cost him his job as Denver defensive tackle Elvis Dumervil treated him like a blow-up doll, running over him with regularity on his way to sacking Quinn 4 times. Dave Zastudil had to punt from deep in his end zone, giving the Broncos good field position. Three plays later running back Correll Buckhalter, doing his best Adrian Peterson imitation of a week ago, ran through the middle of the Browns defense on his way to a 45-yard touchdown run that pushed the lead to 27-6 with just over 8:30 left in the game. That loud sound a moment later was the signal that garbage time had officially begun.
But this week’s version of garbage time wouldn’t be nearly so prolific. The Browns took it from their own 31 to the Denver 32-yard line but the game mercifully ended when a Quinn pass for Cribbs was intercepted by Darcel McBath. Orton, as unlikely a victor as you’ll ever see, took a knee on the game’s final play.
If there’s a drawing board to head to, rest assured that where you’ll find Eric Mangini. When he gets there, the pens will probably be out of ink. His team, perhaps more disciplined, is every bit as awful as last year’s version. The defense is porous and can’t rush the quarterback and the offense can’t sustain drives or score touchdowns. The numbing sameness of it all is wearing thin in every corner.
Quinn was about the same as a week ago, going 18-31 for 161 yards and 1 interception and one fumble. He didn’t exactly own the job but the play of the offensive line didn’t exactly give anyone reason to think that Derek Anderson, or Tom Brady for that matter, would have been any more successful.
In all the Browns had 3 turnovers, including the Cribbs fumble. The running game was nearly non-existent with Lewis carrying it 14 times for 38 yards. About the only real bright spot for the Browns was the re-emergence of Edwards, who had 6 catches for 92 yards, a few of the acrobatic variety. More importantly, he had no dropped balls.
The Broncos weren’t exactly an offensive machine but did enough over the course of the game to wear down the Browns’ defense and put the game away. Orton was a deceiving 19-37 for 263 yards, deceiving because most of those yards were the result of long runs after short passes. Knowshon Moreno had 75 yards on 17 carries and Buckhalter, thanks to his 45-yard touchdown run, added 76 yards on 9 carries.
The story of this game, ultimately, is that it’s the same old story. Mangini surely is trying his level best but is finding that no manner of discipline and order can turn this ship around quickly. It won’t just take time. It will take better players.
After losing to the Denver Broncos on Sunday 27-6 at Denver’s Invesco Field, the Browns kept in tact the NFL’s longest drought for not scoring on an opening drive and the NFL’s third longest losing streak, thanks Detroit, thanks St. Louis. Meanwhile a new touchdown-less streak has begun. Yes, the offense is that bad, again.
The Browns, lacking much of a passing game and less of a running game couldn’t sustain drives when they needed to or take advantage of opportunities when presented. An earnest effort early undone by a lack of talent, the Browns were kept in the game for mucht of the game mostly because the Broncos offense under Kyle Orton is nearly as bad, despite the team being 2-0.
As an aside, here’s something that was clear from the Broncos first drive. Orton is no Jay Cutler. When the Broncos stop plowing their way through the second division of the AFC North, head coach Josh McDaniels can blame himself for ushering out the temperamental but far more talented Cutler for Orton. Orton defines NFL mediocrity in a position where it’s hard to hide. With an occasional good pass thrown in among the several bad ones, Orton almost single-handedly kept the Browns in this game until they imploded in the middle of the third quarter.
For now, the Browns are relegated once again to talking about getting better, fixing what needs to be fixed and moving on past their third 0-2 start in the last four years. At least it started promising.
Peyton Hillis fumbled the opening kickoff from Phil Dawson giving the Browns the ball at the Broncos 22-yard line. But the Browns weren’t going to break a nearly two-year old streak of not scoring a touchdown on their opening drive on this day and, as usual, settled for a Dawson field goal. With gifts few and far between for this team it felt as if the Broncos decided to spot the Browns a 3-point lead and then buckled their chinstraps and said, “let’s play.” They could have spotted the Browns a lot more.
But so much of what the Browns do is for the benefit of others. On third and long from deep in their own territory on the game’s second drive, rookie center Alex Mack dribbled a shotgun snap to Brady Quinn that Quinn couldn’t handle. The fumble was recovered by linebacker Darrell Reid at the Browns 10. Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton then hit tight end Tony Scheffler on a slant inside of a badly overmatch Kamerion Wimbley for a 3-yard touchdown pass on third down giving the Broncos the 7-3 lead.
It looked like the blowout it would eventually become.
At various points the Browns and Brady Quinn showed enough life to think that maybe with a few more games under their belt they’ll start to convert a few of their opportunities. Just not on this day. On the Browns second drive, for example, Quinn moved the ball from his own 20 to the Broncos 29 on a combination of Jamal Lewis and Quinn’s new found penchant for finding wide receivers instead of tight ends, but alas this drive too stumbled, yielding to a 47-yard Dawson field goal that closed the gap to 7-6.
The Broncos pushed the lead back to 4 with a 23-yard Matt Prayter field goal after their 13 play, 5 minute drive stalled at the Browns’ 6-yard line. The drive featured Orton hitting his favorite target, receiver Brandon Stokely, on a short pass over the middle that Stokely took 37-yards to the Cleveland 28. The Broncos had a chance to make it a 7-point lead just before the half after another long drive, this time 15 plays, but that drive fizzled too and Prayter missed a chip shot field goal. It was another in a series of opportunities squandered by the Broncos’ own brand of ineptness, offensively, despite almost no visible pass rush from the Browns’ defense, even when it blitzed.
Here’s another aside. I know that the television announcers want to appear as though they have something good to say about every team. But Steve Beuerlein took that to an extreme by twice referring to Browns’ cornerback Eric Wright as one of the best in the league. It must have happened when I wasn’t looking and admittedly I don’t watch the Pro Bowl, but Eric Wright? Beuerlein took that as accepted fact because Orton, hardly the best judge of talent, supposedly called Wright one of the five best cornerbacks in the league, no doubt in a pre-game “Pay your respects to the opponent and don’t give them any bulletin board material” interview.
A game within striking distance again at the half eventually turned into an ugly mess, this week a little later than last, although the Browns tried their best to help. In the second half’s opening drive, Quinn hit Josh Cribbs over the middle on 3rd and 9 from the Browns’ 24-yard life but Cribbs fumbled it away. At least he fumbled it forward as the Broncos recovered it at their own 38. The reason that turned out to be such a good thing is that the Broncos offense is essentially Cleveland West. A few predictable decent plays followed by the even more predictable bad plays by Orton forced still another Prayter field goal and a 13-6 lead.
If the game had ended right there it would have mattered little. Broncos fans seemed bored and Browns fans, at least those still watching, were probably in the kitchen packing tomorrow’s lunch. The Broncos had a chance to push it to a 10-point lead with just under 3 minutes left in the third quarter after another drive inevitably stalled for the Broncos but Prayter missed another field goal, this one from 37 yards as fans in two cities yawned in unison.
For just a bit it looked like the Browns were again showing some life after the Prayter miss. It was as if they awoke to realize that the game still was within reach, technically. Quinn hit Braylon Edwards on back-to-back passes but then had three straight deflected, one to an open Mohamad Massaquoi and two at the line of scrimmage and were forced to punt after getting the ball to the Denver 44.
Then the wheels, wobbling mightily anyway, finally fell off. On the Broncos next drive, a short pass from Orton to Jabar Gaffney turned into a 37-yard play and got the ball to the Cleveland 2-yard line. Even the Broncos couldn’t miss that lay up and didn’t when Hillis went in for the touchdown which helped push the lead to a now insurmountable 20-6.
Emboldened, the Broncos defense then blew up the Browns’ next drive with two sacks and a false start penalty on tackle John St. Clair. It was a game that could cost him his job as Denver defensive tackle Elvis Dumervil treated him like a blow-up doll, running over him with regularity on his way to sacking Quinn 4 times. Dave Zastudil had to punt from deep in his end zone, giving the Broncos good field position. Three plays later running back Correll Buckhalter, doing his best Adrian Peterson imitation of a week ago, ran through the middle of the Browns defense on his way to a 45-yard touchdown run that pushed the lead to 27-6 with just over 8:30 left in the game. That loud sound a moment later was the signal that garbage time had officially begun.
But this week’s version of garbage time wouldn’t be nearly so prolific. The Browns took it from their own 31 to the Denver 32-yard line but the game mercifully ended when a Quinn pass for Cribbs was intercepted by Darcel McBath. Orton, as unlikely a victor as you’ll ever see, took a knee on the game’s final play.
If there’s a drawing board to head to, rest assured that where you’ll find Eric Mangini. When he gets there, the pens will probably be out of ink. His team, perhaps more disciplined, is every bit as awful as last year’s version. The defense is porous and can’t rush the quarterback and the offense can’t sustain drives or score touchdowns. The numbing sameness of it all is wearing thin in every corner.
Quinn was about the same as a week ago, going 18-31 for 161 yards and 1 interception and one fumble. He didn’t exactly own the job but the play of the offensive line didn’t exactly give anyone reason to think that Derek Anderson, or Tom Brady for that matter, would have been any more successful.
In all the Browns had 3 turnovers, including the Cribbs fumble. The running game was nearly non-existent with Lewis carrying it 14 times for 38 yards. About the only real bright spot for the Browns was the re-emergence of Edwards, who had 6 catches for 92 yards, a few of the acrobatic variety. More importantly, he had no dropped balls.
The Broncos weren’t exactly an offensive machine but did enough over the course of the game to wear down the Browns’ defense and put the game away. Orton was a deceiving 19-37 for 263 yards, deceiving because most of those yards were the result of long runs after short passes. Knowshon Moreno had 75 yards on 17 carries and Buckhalter, thanks to his 45-yard touchdown run, added 76 yards on 9 carries.
The story of this game, ultimately, is that it’s the same old story. Mangini surely is trying his level best but is finding that no manner of discipline and order can turn this ship around quickly. It won’t just take time. It will take better players.
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