High Hopes

I suppose one could make the claim that the out of reach theme of the Cleveland Browns, indeed Cleveland Sports, could be High Hopes.  I'm not sure any of the franchises in this town actually dare to reach so far with their dreams.  The Browns seem incompetent by design.  The Cavs were against their head coach before they were for him, again, and the Indians, well, just keep seeing the core of the team that surprised travel elsewhere for market-based wages. 

Then, of course, there's always Bruce Springsteen, not a native son by any means but adopted almost.  Much of his early success outside of New Jersey came in places like Cleveland that always seemed to embrace underdogs.  So in recognition of one consistently high level performer, here's the latest video from Springsteen as he readies his 18th studio album, "High Hopes."  Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving:

The Numbing Sameness of it All, Again-Steelers Edition

No one understands better than a Cleveland Browns fan the need, the longing desire, the unattainable dream, to change the narrative of this moribund franchise.  As usual, that will have to wait for at least another year as the Browns finished off their latest crash into the concrete wall that is the Pittsburgh Steelers in their usual spectacularly awful fashion, losing this time by the rather generic score of 27-11 and coming out with the usual bloody nose and busted lip.

There’s a perverse comfort in the numbing sameness that the Browns are on a week by week, year by year basis but it isn't the same as actual comfort.  That comes, if at all, when someone in charge does something about not just the talent level in this organization but its heart.  There is none.  There’s just a sinkhole, ever expanding, ever widening that no one yet has found a way to fill.  It’s why there is no reservoir of emotion to call upon when needed.  There’s just an eternal canyon in this franchise filled at best with the depressing detritus of 14 years of abject futility in the form of owners, coaches, and players come and gone.  Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

There are no words left, really, to describe another Steelers victory over the Browns. How does one exactly go about explaining the same loss in a different way?  Let me try anyway.
In the 30 games these teams have played against each other in the Browns 2.0 era, the Steelers own a 25-5 record and have won 14 of the last 15, which covers nearly 8 years of abject ass kicking.  You can’t have a rivalry if one team won’t participate

Let’s try again.

The Steelers dominated the Browns once again Sunday.  That’s not news.  It’s also not news that the Steelers did so by dominating in the manner that speaks to the essence of the divide between these teams.  The Steelers, struggling in ways that an aging great franchise occasionally does, showed that when necessary it can still play with more purpose, more physicality and more heart than these Browns have ever showed.  It’s still hard to find the right tone.

Ok, focus.  Screw it.  The Browns did what the Browns do which is lose to the Steelers.  The details aren't’t particularly important but here are a few.

First in assessing the team’s performance Sunday consider giving a pass to Josh Gordon on given that he did tied a franchise record for catches in one game, 14, and set another for yards, 237.  That’s nice, it really is.  Not to diminish Gordon’s contribution though, the context is important.  The overwhelming bulk of those yards came long after the Browns and the cold, brave fans had surrendered any hope of making the game competitive.  Still since something should be celebrated once in awhile, let’s at least consider that a sober Gordon is a talent to be reckoned with.  I’d put even money that his first call after the game was to his agent asking exactly when he’d be a free agent so he could go to a team that plays on prime time more than once every two or three years.  Otherwise he has no Pro Bowls in his future.

So with Gordon as the notable exception, let no one rejoice in the mess that the Browns have now put on full display these last two weeks against division opponents.  From opening bell Sunday until the final gun came, mercifully, 4 hours later there was not one thought one could have gleaned about a positive future for this team.

Those looking to the defense as a source of burgeoning pride, look somewhere else.  For much of the season, it had been stout.  The last two weeks, when the season was at its tipping point, it failed.  Sunday the Steelers were able to do if not everything it wanted, then most of it anyway.  True the box score suggests something different.  For example, the Steelers had 85 yards rushing on 34 attempts, which is pretty much where the defense has held most teams this year.  They also had only 217 passing yards.  That’s a pretty low total overall and generally is a hook to hang on to.  It’s just that sometimes statistics don’t tell the whole story.

The Steelers came out in a no huddle offense, which strangely seemed to catch the Browns’ defense off guard.  Running back Le’Veon Bell wasn't necessarily doing any significant damage early but certainly the threat of him seemed to likewise keep the defense off balance.  That gave Ben Roethlisberger enough time to pick and poke at the rest of the defense as if he was carrying a long pole and checking the depths of a pond nearby.  There were little flicks of passes here, an occasional run, and then a deep ball.  Eventually that led to the Roethlisberger to Antonio Brown 41 yard touchdown that more than anything seemed to put the team, not just the defense, in a funk as if they had already surrendered to the cold and accepted that it would be a long, miserable day.

The Browns’ offense was its typical messy self.  There was no running game to speak of even when one ignores the 21 yards debited for the 3 sacks.  The Steelers’ Bell had “only” 80 yards total but the Browns collectively had 76, not including the lost yardage on sacks.  To put a finer point on it running back Chris Ogbonnaya had a fumble for the second straight week that set up the Steelers’ second field goal.

The passing attack was disjointed until, again, garbage time.  Prior to that, Jason Campbell gave what Jason Campbell has, twice.  Knocked out early for one play, Campbell left the second time after a shiv to the chin which led to another turnover.  It caused a concussion for Campbell and a headache for the fans who wanted to see Brandon Weeden about as much as they wanted to see an oral surgeon.  Out came Brandon Weeden, nonetheless, as there are no other alternatives on the roster.

A chorus of boos greeted Weeden unceremoniously.  He probably took it personally but shouldn't.  The fans understand Weeden’s significant limitations as much as they detest the idea of watching a movie again that they didn't much like the two or three other times they sat through.  And just like a movie on continuous loop this one turned out like every previous viewing.  Weeden gave what he had, which was a pick 6 interception and then, later, a 1 yard touchdown pass to Gordon.  Truthfully, he did nothing of note on either side of the ledger, the pick 6 was as irrelevant to the final outcome as the touchdown pass.  His crowning achievement, such as it was, was his steadfast reliance on bolstering Gordon’s stats.    Before that, Weeden was his usual ineffective self leading a team that simply doesn't believe in him.

The players who claimed disappointment afterward about the fans booing Weeden probably shouldn't be so snippy.  They see first hand what Weeden has and hasn't done and they play accordingly.  Fan reaction to that can’t be unexpected.  It’s also not like these same players have done much the last few weeks either.  When it comes to Weeden on Sunday, the best that can be said and all that really should be said is that his ineffectiveness wasn't particularly contributory to the defeat nor notable from that of all his predecessors, the vanquished dozens of quarterbacks before him who have likewise failed to stand up to the Steelers in any meaningful fashion.  Numbing sameness indeed!

It might be nice if one of these Browns-Steelers games was closely contested and perhaps the one in two weeks will be.  But even if a victory does come in Pittsburgh it will be too late to be meaningful.  The Steelers are hanging by a thread anyway having started the season 0-4 and may be out of that thread by the time they meet the Browns again.  If not, then soon anyway.  The Browns on the other hand started the season with few threads and surrendered all they had, obviously, a week ago against the Bengals. This Steelers game was for pride and perhaps that’s why a loss seemingly like all the rest still hurts more than it should.

There’s still several weeks left in the season that the front office gave up on weeks ago.  All of this makes for another cold depressing march, especially for the faithful who cared to purchase season tickets in the eternal hope that the tag line that comes with the solicitation for such tickets, “season ticket holders have priority for playoff tickets,” will for once not be another empty promise.  Not this year and maybe not ever.
This Browns franchise isn't UPS or FedEx.  It’s not even the USPS.  Deadline or obligation be damned. It doesn't ever deliver.

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

Depending on one’s perspective, the Cleveland Browns either never or always disappoint.  For those watching long enough to know which way that particular wind blows, nothing much about the Browns 41-20 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals was particularly surprising or disappointing.

For reasons almost completely untethered from the reality of the environment, the Browns had briefly entered the national conversation about potential playoff teams.  Ensconced in a division that suddenly has gone weaker than the Big 10, the Browns and found themselves near the division lead relatively late in the season while still sporting a losing record, as if.

The headiness of those modestly inflated expectations were well served in a first quarter that featured 3 Browns scoring opportunities and a quick 13-0 lead against a Bengals team that almost looked like it was playing scared, not loose.   The planets realigned in a quick and jarring fashion.

Letting a team score 31 points in any quarter, indeed in any half, in football played at almost any level is a relatively rare occurrence generally reserved for the most obvious of mismatches.  To see it happen at a professional level was stunning.  The level of ineptitude a team must exhibit to allow itself to be tossed about like a Frisbee on a Saturday afternoon in the park is actually hard to describe.  When the final points of Sunday’s second quarter were tacked on by Cincinnati’s Mike Nugent after the Browns frightful punt unit couldn’t contain Adam Jones felt like piling on.  The Browns were finished and they knew it.  So did everyone else.

Remember, too, that this was the Cincinnati Bengals doing the piling on.  The Bengals’ record is better than it should be by virtue of the company they keep within the AFC North.  It will surely continue to improve as they prance their way to a division title that no one else much wants.  That doesn’t mean that this is a good Bengals team.

Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis may dream of playing in late January but right now there isn’t a playoff worthy team in the whole of the AFC that is worried about the Bengals.  I don’t expect that to change.  The Bengals are simply too average in virtually every aspect of their operations to do much damage to talented or even modestly talented teams, as the Browns 17-6 victory against the Bengals earlier this season attests.

Sadly, the Browns aren’t one of those talented teams.  It’s not so much that the Bengals game exposed the Browns as some have suggested.  It’s more that this Bengals game came at that point in the season where the highs and lows tend to even out.

If you want to be disappointed about something specifically in Sunday’s loss then let it be the absence of any clamoring to have a clearly struggling Jason Campbell, a quintessential nice guy journeyman, replaced by last year’s number one pick.  That’s the kind of disappointment that really lingers.  Teams like the Browns can’t afford to miss on first round picks and when they do they inevitably suffer untimely occasional drubbings at the hands of even lesser lights like the Bengals in subsequent seasons.

This isn’t to say, however, that folks like head coach Rob Chudzinski will be so existential in their analyses.  They already know about the holes.  Chudzinski and his staff need to figure out why his team, which had two weeks to practice, played like it hadn’t practiced in two weeks.

There were the obvious signs early, of course.  The Browns did have that 13-0 lead but it should have been more, much more.

Consider, for example, the sequence that followed running back Chris Ogbonnaya’s 43-yard run.  On a first and goal from the 8 yard line, Willis McGahee got the ball to the 4 yard line.  A penalty then put the ball on the Cincinnati 2.  McGahee was able to get it to the one yard line but then two particularly lousy throws from Campbell made it 4th and goal at the 1 yard line.

Chudzinski, who has not seemed particularly wedded to conventional coaching conservatism most of the season, got married in a hurry.  He clearly cherished early points of a modest amount as paramount to the payoff of a low-risk gamble and kicked the chip shot field goal.  It suggested if anything else that Chudzinski only gambles when the stakes don’t matter.  His Browns were in what he had been told was the most meaningful football game played in these parts in over a half a generation and so he decided that any points were better than none even if an unsuccessful 4th down attempt would have given the Bengals the ball at their own 1. Considering that the two most immediate runs had gained at least 1 yard each, it set the wrong tone.

A similar decision wasn’t necessary a few minutes later when Joe Haden, who played wonderfully now twice against one of the league's best receivers, A.J. Green, had his first interception.  Haden returned it to the 14 yard line but the offense couldn’t move it beyond the 10.  Again, conventional coaching conservatism says to take any points off a turnover, though truthfully but for the Ogbonnaya run the Browns hadn’t shown any ability yet to execute a successful 4th and 6 anyway.  Fourth and 1 a few minutes earlier was far more manageable. The easy call was made in the form of another chip shot field goal attempt and a disappointing 6-0 lead, assuming any lead can be disappointing, was acquired.

What this particular brand of lousy and conservative offense did was to actually provide the bounce, the springboard, to the dizzying 31 point second quarter that the Bengals slapped on the Browns.  As bad as the start was for the Bengals, they had to look up at that scoreboard and think “at least it isn’t as bad as it could be.”  When the half mercifully ended it was the Browns looking up at the scoreboard and thinking “that’s as bad as it could be.”

Though the two blocked punts (one was technically not a block because though it was tipped it garnered 7 positive yards) and the Jones punt return near the end of the half tend to make the game look as though it was a special teams meltdown, what Chudzinski will see as he replays the game over and over in his mind were all the little things, too, that were hallmarks of an unfocused, undisciplined team; things like fumbles, interceptions, false starts and holding penalties.

Even as the game spiraled beyond its control, the Browns never really did much to shake things up, particularly on offense.  Likely the gravity of the game that pushed Chudzinski into a careful, plodding approach had an impact on players like Campbell.

Looking almost nothing like the quarterback who had a better than 100 rating in his last two starts, Campbell repeatedly checked down to receivers hovering near the line of scrimmage.  It was hard to tell whether the Bengals’ secondary was just so good that no receivers could break open (unlikely) or that Campbell was just too scared to take a shot after throwing an early interception (more likely).  Either way there was a point up until about the 74 yard touchdown completion that Campbell made to Josh Gordon early in the third quarter on about as well thrown of a ball as there could possibly be that Campbell was averaging less yards per completion than Jim Brown averaged yards per rushing attempt for his entire career.

To illustrate the point more forcefully, consider that after the pass to Gordon, Campbell attempted 27 more passes the rest of the game.  A grand total of two of those were thrown beyond that series’ first down markers and one of those two were intercepted.  Giving due notice to the two sacks Campbell also suffered, that means that 23 of 27 passes attempted were intended to garner but a few yards vertically and perhaps more only if tackles were broken and one of those passes also was intercepted.  Even with nothing to lose Campbell played as if there was.

Sunday’s game, to the extent it was hell bent on proving anything, was that the Browns are still a franchise very much in the midst of still another transition.  This particular version has already won 4 games which at this point in the season gives it a leg up on the various other versions that were tried but failed.

That is, I suppose, a positive but even as I ponder that thought I’m haunted really by another more disturbing one:  that this franchise’s high water mark is still measured by Romeo Crennel’s 10-win non playoff season of 2007.  With a record that dispiriting how could anyone really feel a lingering sting of disappointment after Sunday?

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Intolerance Edition

When now former NBA player Jason Collins revealed that he was a gay athlete last year, it was hard, actually, to appreciate the courage it took.  To understand it, no better context exists than the circus that is the Miami Dolphins at the moment.

Richie Incognito, the hulking lineman who seems hell bent on trying to outlive the suggestion his last name would seem to mandate, is a crude, boorish, possible racist with deeply rooted insecurities.  He’s bullied his way through the NFL at various stops and while his behavior at times has caused a few teammates to just shake their heads, it’s always been in the “that’s Richie just being Richie” sort of way.  His past has been his prologue with no seemingly ill effects.

Jonathan Martin is a Stanford-educated second year lineman of some talent who put up with an unceasing amount of verbal crap from Incognito and other “teammates” until he could take it no more.  It seemed mostly related to his status as first a rookie and now a second year player.  He left the team last week and on the way out the door after an unspecified run-in during a team lunch he decided not to go quietly.

The stress of the abuse seemed to overwhelm Martin and by all accounts he has nothing particular in his background that elicited the attacks.  But could you imagine if he did?  Could you imagine if he had been Jason Collins?  Every person has a breaking point.  Yet, since then little sympathy has been generated his way, in particular little sympathy from “teammates” and others ensconced in and vested with the perpetuation of the unique culture of a professional sports locker room and its status as the last bastion of the all boys club.

There’s enough disappointment around about those who have stood silent or defended Incognito at the expense of Martin to fill up a book the size of a typical Stephen King novel.  Others better suited to that exposing that sort of outrage have weighed in.  Personally, though, I was disappointed in Brian Hartline’s reaction.  Rather than come to Martin’s defense or at least add a balanced perspective, Hartline evaluated the politics of the situation and his place in the locker room and came out squarely against Martin.  I would like to think an Ohio State athlete schooled under Jim Tressel would have reacted better than that.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming amount of analysis about this situation inevitably lands at the intersection of jock behavior and NFL culture.  But it’s not just NFL culture for the same kind of abuse takes place not just in NFL locker rooms but in the locker rooms housing male athletes in virtually every athletic pursuit from middle school to professionals all across the country if not the world.  The typical male athlete is infused with arrested development anyway so it shouldn’t surprise that the behavior that starts young carries over to well beyond the point it ceases to make any sense whatsoever.

Most “locker room behavior” isn’t clever.  It’s the same sort of derogatory abuse that picks first at the scabs of the most vulnerable.  Nothing Incognito said or did to Martin, for example, is any cleverer than the towel-snapping and wedgie escapes of high schoolers.  The only thing that’s changed really is the economic status and the physical size of the participants.

Until you can stop and consider this culture for a moment you can’t begin to fathom how difficult it would have been for Collins to be an openly gay athlete during the prime of his career.  Collins may have been wrestling with his own sexuality for years, conflicted by it, tortured by it, but all the while the overhang to the self-analysis was the unforgiving, uncompromising attitudes of his “teammates.”  The chances of acceptance were always slim and that is the real tragedy of the kind of culture that Incognito, Harline and all the others coming to his defense are trying to protect.  Collins, Martin and all the others deserve better.

To an extent, athletes reflect society, but only to an extent.  There is plenty of intolerance these days for anyone the least bit different.  Sarah Palin is on her latest book tour railing against religious intolerance by ginning up for profit a phony War on Christmas supposedly being waged by people who just want the same religious freedom to not have her beliefs mainstreamed on them.  Indeed we’re so accustomed to institutionalized intolerance that middle America is to willing to accept without even a sliver of the outrage we have for Incognito a Congress that wants to deliberately preserve the right of businesses to discriminate against gays and transgenders.

But yet in most workplaces where professional athletes don’t toil, the kind of behavior that Incognito attempted to justify in his shameless Fox Sports interview would never be tolerated. Most workplaces are even well ahead of Congress.  They already outlaw discrimination in any form.  If they didn’t, if they tolerated the abuse of others, productivity would fall at roughly the same rate that liability to a major dollar lawsuit would rise.

For some reason though, Incognito and all those who by word or deed support what he did to Martin are essentially trying to convince the rest of us that professional athletes (any athletes, really) should be held to a much lesser societal norm.  To that a simple question: to what end?

It’s not just the particular abhorrent words that Incognito used to refer to Martin that offend.  It’s the whole approach.  It’s the notion that a co-worker, someone supposedly working just as hard as Incognito to reach the same goal for their employer, should nonetheless be subject to unceasing abuse because of status that offends.  Incognito, quite frankly, is just too stupid to understand that concept.  Listen to his interview again and you’ll see what I mean.  I’d say his agent should be fired for green lighting the interview but an agent with integrity and a sense of decency wouldn’t be associated with Incognito in the first place.

But guys like Jason Collins understand better than anyone what a nitwit like Incognito never will.  It’s the notion that status is irrelevant.  Performance is what matters and those who are offended by status of any kind aren’t just lunkheads but cancers to the goal of the enterprise.  They can’t even see the small irony in calling themselves teammates of a player they can’t tolerate.

I’m not naïve to think that this problem is limited to the Dolphins.  I’ve covered sports and have been in plenty of locker rooms.  The fate suffered by Martin, for example, is commonplace.  Women, who make up an ever increasing segment of the working sports press, still get the occasional eye roll and sexist attitude from their subjects.  It’s improved, but it’s not been eliminated.

This is why above all else that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had no choice but to launch an investigation into the Dolphins’ farce.  It speaks to an entire multi-billion dollar enterprise and its own attitudes toward a diverse workforce.  The NFL’s bread is buttered on the backs of its multitude of corporate sponsors, none of which would want to be directly associated with any organization that openly tolerates the kind of conduct Martin exposed.

But Goodell has to do more than just punish the Dolphins and if past is prologue, he will.  Goodell showed an uncompromising approach to the New Orleans Saints that in large measure eliminated an analogous form of misconduct, bounty hunting of opponents, by subjecting it to significant consequence.  That, too, was a behavior initially justified by the supposedly singular nature of the NFL culture.  It was fraud as defense just as Incognito’s explanations are now.  And if, in his investigation, Goodell finds that Dolphins officials and/or coaches helped facilitate Incognito’s behavior then they should suffer a fate similar to that of Sean Payton, the New Orleans Saints head coach.

There’s no reason, no good reason anyway, that the NFL or any professional sports team should tolerate an atmosphere where racial slurs, derogatory comments about sexuality or family or friends, should be seen as just part of the bouillabaisse that makes our sports unique.  The Incognito situation can and should serve as a flashpoint for a sea change in behavior.  There are plenty of Jason Collinses in the NFL right now and even more that desire to play professional football but don’t dare dream for fear of the abuse they’d be subject to in the name of preserving an antiquated culture.

It’s time for the NFL to be a leader once again not just for itself but this time for a whole swath of our culture.

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Ravens, Again, Edition

There's no way, a day after snapping one of the more embarrassing losing streaks in franchise history, to definitively say if the Cleveland Browns are a franchise on the rise.  But after dominating the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, 24-18, there's at least enough reason to believe that this might be the case.

This Browns team at this moment isn't exactly a playoff contender but neither is it the woeful doormat it's been for years. And if that's the only conclusion to draw from Sunday's victory that's still better than the conclusions Browns have been used to drawing on a typical in season Sunday evening.

Are they a team on the rise?  One telltale sign is when it believes that's the case. This Browns team believed, indeed assumed, it would win Sunday and not in a wishful thinking sort of way.  Some of that stemmed from the tough loss it suffered at the Ravens hands in the season' second week, a game it could have or maybe should have won.  Some of that stemmed from the way the Ravens have struggled since that win, struggles that confirm that the various off season financial moves the Ravens endured, including paying quarterback Joe Flacco as if he were Tom Brady, were ill advised. And some of that stemmed from a Browns team that simply seems more energized on both sides of the ball when Brandon Weeden serves as a backup.

The offense, led by a gritty Jason Campbell, set the tone early and closed the door late. It's actually hard to remember when that was the case, particularly with a quality team.  In between those bookends the defense forced the Ravens into a one dimensional offense by taking away any semblance of a running game and forcing Flacco and a modest  set of receivers into roles they are ill equipped to execute even against a defensive backfield as thin as the Browns'.  Flacco was pressured all day, sacked 5 times, and generally had the beleaguered look afterward that Browns fans are used to seeing on the faces of their various quarterbacks over the years. It was satisfying on many levels.

While it never completely felt like the victory was either assured or in doubt, one play that surely tipped the balance in the right direction is the very one that has so completely defined the the troubles of Campbell's backup. It was a desperate flip pass to running back Chris Ogbonnaya, the third of the season though the first from Campbell.  Where Weeden looked ridiculous for trying Campbell pulled it off with aplomb and at just the right moment. Combined with the horse collar penalty then Ravens drew trying to tackle Ogbonnaya, the Browns were able to drain the clock of most of its remaining life while setting up a 22-yard Billy Cundiff field goal that forced the Ravens into needing a touchdown from 80 yards away with 14 seconds remaining. That the Ravens didn't even much try was a particularly enjoyable coda to a game in which they never led anyway.

The other play, perhaps the game's biggest, that gives reason to think this team is rising while the Ravens are falling, was the little 3-yard catch by Davone Bess on 4th and one from the Baltimore 43 yard line with 3:12 remaining, the Ravens with a full complement of times outs, and the Browns with merely a 3 point lead. Miss on that play and the Ravens are a couple of first downs away from perhaps tying the game. Campbell was pressured but bought time and eventually found a diving Bess. It was the kind of play that a possession receiver like Bess is supposed to make and the kind of play he couldn't make a week ago. It broke the hearts and minds of the Ravens defense.

Bess had two touchdown grabs in the game, one of which included an impressive 15 yard run after catch and ankle breaking fake on the Ravens' Ladarius Webb who dove to his right at the insistence of a Bess head fake and Bess took his body the other direction and into the end zone. Bess' overall play Sunday was everything it wasn't the week before.

The game served as redemption of sorts, too, for receiver Greg Little, who had one of the best statistical days of his career, 7 catches for 122 yards.  But Little both gives and takes and so it was Sunday as Little cost his offense 30 yards on two stupid unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. He tossed a defender's helmet, apparently because he didn't like the extra curricular push in the pileup and taunted another within ready distance of a referee.  Little has much to learn and he could do worse than befriending Bess and picking his brain.

Campbell's 3 touchdown passes against a team that has bedeviled the Browns for 5 years was a welcome surprise. It's a testament too to the interesting mix of caution and abandon that head coach Rob Chudzinski and offensive coordinator Norv Turner employ on a weekly basis. Certainly a welcome respite from the stodginess of Pat Shurmur's version of the West Coast offense. Yet the better story of Sunday's win was the play of the defense.

Barkevious Mingo has a chance to be a real rarity in Cleveland, a first round pick that pans out. His quickness is wondrous and even with just a handful of games to his professional resume teams are specifically scheming against him and with very mixed results.  The presence he brings to the defensive line, along with an increasingly stout Phil Taylor, combined to make both Flacco and running back Ray Rice's Sunday miserable. Rice played like Trent Richardson but with even less burst. Had Flacco not scrambled for 25 yards while as he was trying to escape a constantly pursing defensive line the Ravens rushing total might have looked like Michigan's did against Michigan State on Saturday.

If teams weren't convinced before Sunday's game, they are now.  The Browns are a difficult defense to run on and are one of but just two teams to not give up 100 yards rushing to any one opposing player.  That's a worthy accomplishment 9 games into the season.

The Browns' defensive backfield, as thin as any unit in the league, had just as good a day Sunday as the defensive line.  Outside of Joe Haden's fingertip interception, it wasn't a particularly loud day but that's what made it so good.  There weren't any particular instances where Buster Skrine, for example, found himself with his back to the quarterback chasing a receiver.  Skrine's improving, likely, but it's clearly aided by a defensive front that can pressure an opposing quarterback.  But before we celebrate too much let's remember that a few more good quarterbacks await in the season's remaining 7 games before we can draw any particular conclusions about Skrine's long term prospects.

As for the Ravens, it was fun and just on Sunday to watch a team struggle on offense the way the Browns usually do, particularly since it was Baltimore's lost offense. Watching one Baltimore drive after another fail for every different reason was the real treat, certainly on par with watching the Steelers get taken to the woodshed by the Patriots on Sunday.

Flacco played Sunday like he's regressed since securing a big contract.  The Browns' defense was no small part of it Sunday but so too is the lack of talent around him at the moment.  Whatever Derek Anderson-like lightning in the bottle that Flacco caught in last year's playoffs has disappeared just as quickly as it did for Anderson.  Maybe he finds it again but he'll need a better supporting cast for that resurrection.

Certainly the Baltimore fans must be miserable as they watch the downfall of a team that just months ago was Super Bowl champs.  To that I just say, “welcome to the party.  I hope you remembered to bring the cupcakes.”

After 9 games, the Browns finally draw a bye week and for once it's not filled with the kind of intrigue centered around another potential regime change.  Chudzinski for now looks like exactly the right hire.  He's quirky without being odd.  He's willing to take chances especially of the high risk variety when his team otherwise has nothing to lose.  The players seem to like him but more importantly respond to him. In baseball terms, where Shurmur was Eric Wedge, Chudzinski is Terry Francona.

The latest word out of Berea is that Campbell has sore ribs after having the full weight of Haloti Ngata fall on him in a somewhat questionable fashion.  Ngata is quite acquainted with less than ethical play so his relatively late pancaking of Campbell after he already was down remains questionable.  But in the body of work that is Ngata's, it doesn't make the list of his top 50 offenses.  Campbell will have several days to recover, which is a good thing.  Because when this team has looked most on the rise is when it has had the benefit of anyone but last year's number one pick behind center.

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Chiefs Edition

The last bastion of a bad sports team, the sport doesn't matter, is when it begins to traffic in moral victories.  The Cleveland Browns have been a bad sports team for more than a decade so it’s use to counting its good losses as half wins.  Undoubtedly a 23-17 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday has been put in the good loss column as fans and players grasp for anything positive to distract from the negatives of their reality.

Of course teams don’t make playoffs, let alone with championships, by piling up a basketful of good losses.  What they tend to get are regime changes every few years and early draft picks to squander.  That’s been the real story of the Browns of the last several season.  None of the good losses of past seasons ever translated into much before so it’s difficult to see progress by coming close against a team that hasn't yet been beaten this season.

The Chiefs were a two win team last year.  Even accounting that it was a team then coached by Romeo Crennel and offensively coordinated by Brian Daboll, they may be 8-0 at this point but let’s assess their worthiness once they play the Denver Broncos two times in three weeks in November.  For now, the focus should remain squarely where it’s always been and that’s on the bumbling group of stumblebums wearing different combinations of brown and orange week after week.

If Sunday’s game could be counted as progress of any sort, it would be to underscore the soundness of head coach Rob Chudzinski's brand of offense as coordinated by a guy who should never have left the coordinator’s booth in the first place, Norv Turner.  All it takes to come to that realization is to watch their game plan be executed by anyone not named Brandon Weeden.

That’s not good news for Weeden.  Not by a long shot.  Every time someone like Campbell can step in and look positively competent where Weeden looks positively befuddled hastens Weeden's exit and with it the closing of the incredibly misguided management style of Mike Holmgren.  For a guy who claims to know quarterbacks, Holmgren's hit rate is as impressive as a suit from Men’s Wearhouse.

To illustrate, Sunday, like that Sunday several weeks ago when Brian Hoyer took the start, showed that a quarterback of even modest accomplishment is a step change difference from Weeden, Holmgren's prized first round pick.  And while Campbell is most certainly a decent sort trying to survive in a league that churns players like NBC sitcoms churn viewers, let’s face it.  At best he’s a merely serviceable NFL quarterback.  A player like him was readily available to one of the worst teams in the league for a reason.

Yet there was Campbell, who seems to have been around since the Reagan administration but in fact is just a year older than Weeden, throwing for nearly 300 yards and two touchdowns against a team that was averaging 5 sacks a game until Sunday.  His quarterback rating was 105.4, which seems like about double of what Weeden’s likely would have been.  It was enough to get Campbell another start and Weeden another step closer to a backup job with another team.

What caused the Browns’ latest good loss on Sunday was not quarterback failure.  Instead it was another hole in the leaky life raft supports this team, this time in the form of two veterans who should know better, Joe Thomas and Davone Bess.

Thomas rarely comes under criticism and for good reason.  He’s as reliable as Dick Goddard forecasting lake effect snow.  Thomas stepped into his left tackle position from his first mini camp and hasn’t missed a game.  He’s made every Pro Bowl he’s been eligible for because where every thing else about the Browns has been a disaster, Thomas has stood out in the most unusual way. He’s been the exception to the otherwise ironclad rule that irrespective of who is doing the drafting, the Browns will blow their first round pick. (It’s worth noting, if only to show how ironclad the rule really is that in the year Thomas was drafted, the Browns also took Brady Quinn in the first round.  So there!)

Yet Thomas had two crucial holding penalties and a false start that had the simultaneously bad result of killing key late drives and burying the offensively challenged Browns into even deeper holes.  It was more than Campbell and his minor core of skill players could ever hope to overcome.

Bess had a game that only two players in modern Browns history could both relate to and appreciate—Braylon Edwards and Greg Little.  The difference though is that Bess wasn't signed because he had a reputation as a breakaway, Calvin Johnson wannabe.  He was signed because he was a bargain bin version of Wes Welker.  Bess is the possession receiver that’s supposed to run the underneath patterns and hold onto balls, particularly in those third down situations where the faster receivers are being pursued by defensive backs while the rest are covered by linebackers.

Bess’ drops in the first half were mostly irrelevant, just frustrating.  It was his disastrous fourth quarter that will be remembered most.

With just over 7 minutes remaining and the Browns’ defense continuing to tighten the screws, Bess fielded what looked like a routine punt.  Indeed Bess caught the ball near midfield, if just for a moment.  Suddenly he dropped it s if he were the focal point of the movie The Longest Yard and had made a special deal with the warden to lose to the guards.  The Chiefs recovered.  Though the Chiefs couldn't use that mistake to put the Browns away for good, it was enough that the Chiefs got another chance to punt a few minutes later pushing the Browns even further from a game tying field goal.

Where Thomas and Bess intersected is where the mistakes hurt the most.  The game was over 57 minutes old and the Browns still down just a field goal.  Campbell, who has a nice step up move in the pocket anyway, stepped up but couldn't find anyone open and scrambled 13 yards for a first down.  Thomas’ second holding penalty then  nullified the gain and the momentum.

Bess killed it for good a few plays later.  On 4th and 7, really the last opportunity to remain relevant in the game, Campbell scrambled, then scrambled some more.  It was at that moment, more so than any other in the game, where my first thought was of Weeden.  Watching Campbell move toward the sideline while still holding onto a ball that had to be thrown, I had two competing visions and they both involved Weeden.  The first was of him simply running out of bounds to avoid the sack as if demonstrating at the most inopportune moment that sometimes it’s best to take the sack.  The second was of something even dumber, Weeden again flipping the ball to anyone wearing any colored uniform.

What I got, what we all got instead was Campbell actually throwing the ball to a diving Bess justthismuch past the first down marker.  It was exactly the kind of pass that earns one the moniker of “possession receiver” (well, that, and his relatively slow 40 time).  But Bess couldn't secure the pass, leaving the Browns once again to chart a good loss.

It’s hard to understand, except in the context of losing teams, why week in and week out a new goat emerges to undo any good accomplished.  In some cases it’s because a player, tired of losing, tries to work outside of his limited role in order to “make something happen.”  In other cases it’s a character issue that reveals itself when character most  counts.  Still other times it’s simply that a lack of talent has the maddening tendency to show up at exactly the wrong time.  All of these are true of the Browns.

Weeden's not a major talent but what’s inhibited his progress is the self-imposed burden he carries to lift the team beyond what he’s capable of doing.  Last week, Little and Gordon failed because they have an insufficient reservoir of internal strength and purpose of mind.  And then there’s simply the fact that the Browns have all the depth of a Katherine Heigl movie.  They are what their record says they are.

There will be no celebrating a good loss because it hasn't gotten anyone, team, front office, coaching staff or fans anything in the past other than a slightly higher cliff off which to fall and the next inevitable bad loss.  The Browns are in a simple business where success is easily measured.  Unfortunately, so is failure.

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Packers Edition

There really is a numbing sameness to the Cleveland Browns, isn't there?  It’s not just the big things, like the way they lose each week.  It’s crept into the small things as well.  Consider, for example, the following quote from quarterback Brandon Weeden and then guess when it was spoken:

“I was trying to throw a groundball to [running back Chris Ogbonnaya].  I just didn't want to take a sack there.  My mistake.”

If you guessed in the aftermath of the Browns desperate loss to the Detroit Lions a week ago, you’d essentially be right.  If you also guessed in the aftermath of the Browns desperate loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, you’d be absolutely right.  Weeden is nothing if not self aware, two straight weeks.  A mistake one week is still a mistake the following week.  The problem is that clarity tends to be hours after it’s most needed.

Weeden’s second in as many weeks backhanded, underhanded, shovel call it what you want pushing of a ball ostensibly toward an eligible receiver as he’s being dragged down by an opposing lineman, didn't cost the Browns a comeback attempt against the Packers like it did against the Lions.  Weeden made sure the game was well out of reach by then.  But what it did definitively establish was that Weeden has no capacity for lessons learned.

If you’re head coach Rob Chudzinski, or offensive coordinator Norv Turner, or club president Joe Banner, that has to be the final  “a ha” moment of Sunday’s 31-13 loss.  Whatever secret hopes any of them may have harbored for Weeden’s success has effectively ended.  One who can’t learn can never improve.

Weeden seems to believe that nearly any act of desperation no matter how silly or ill advised is cover in the service of “leaving it all on the field.”  He said as much after Sunday’s game and the previous Sunday’s as well.  It’s a thought process shared by the insane and the incompetent.  I fear that Weeden may be both.

If there’s any way to blunt the utter frustration that Weeden inflicts on fans it would be that between the fans and the coaching staff there is no disconnect.  Pat Shurmur, for example, had a vested interest in Weeden because it’s the guy who his boss, the guy that hired him, drafted in the first round.

Chudzinski isn’t so encumbered and it’s been on full display from preseason forward.  Chudzinski wouldn't fully commit to Weeden then and won’t now.  If Weeden starts next week it will be because Jason Campbell has slipped back into a coma.

Because there are no coincidences in sports, there was deeper meaning to be drawn from both Brian Hoyer's promotion over Campbell to take over when Weeden went down with a thumb injury and Chudzinski's willingness to give Weeden extra time to heal as a way of continuing to play Hoyer.  At this point there’s no doubt that had Hoyer stayed healthy Weeden would still be rehabbing his thumb.  There’s likewise little doubt that Chudzinski sees Campbell as much of an alternative except in the “what the hell how can it be worse” sense.

Weeden simply isn't the quarterback for this team and the reason is summed up nicely in the bookended passes to Ogbonnaya in the waning moments of the last two games.  Where Weeden sees effort, his coaches see a quarterback who can’t learn.  Weeden has become Mike Phipps and the Browns and is inspiring his teammates to play with all the fire and competence of any of the 1970s teams.

Whether Weeden can be useful to any team is a different question entirely and something to ponder when next year’s draft rolls around.  But for now both Chudzinski and Browns fans will have to endure the slings of Weeden’s misguided and usually late arriving arrows.  The first two passes Weeden threw on Sunday to Greg Little serve as exhibits 2,944 and 2,955.

As for Sunday’s loss there is perspective to consider.  It was never Weeden's game to win or lose and while his limited skills contributed as they usually do to another loss, there were others responsible as well.

Receiver Josh Gordon had the kind of game that someone with his personal resume will have on occasion.   He had two catches for 21 yards and that came late in the game after the score caught up to the dominance that Packers were already demonstrating. Little, when there were decent throws to catch, had the kind of game that has become his stock in trade.  He had 4 catches for 49 yards and at least as many misses for as many yards.  Both Gordon and Little have much in common, starting with their selfish, me-first attitudes that limit their effectiveness.

Gordon and Little are good examples of why teams tend to favor signing what they call “high character” guys.  Character only matters when pressure is greatest.  The reason neither Gordon nor Little can be counted on to make the key plays that their physical talents would otherwise suggest is related to their low reservoirs of personal character.  Under duress they fold.

Gordon’s disappearance on Sunday was a little less expected than Little’s but it derives from the same place.  Gordon let his teammates down by being a multiple offender of the league’s drug policy so an inability to put up a stronger fight for a tough pass thrown into traffic in a relatively important part of the game should not come as much of a surprise.  Even Chudzinski essentially conceded in his post game comments that he thinks Gordon could have fought harder for the 4th down pass near the end zone early in the 4th quarter.  Little just can’t catch.

What is more disconcerting about Gordon and Little though is that given their flaws the Browns are probably going to have to move on without them next season.  That’s the right move in concept but in a team this flawed it creates even greater issues.

It’s abundantly clear, for example, that this team has significant holes in its starting line up and little if any depth at any position.  By luck and happenstance the receiving corps actually has legitimately talented receivers but that talented is limited in its execution.  When a team like the Browns moves on from theoretical talent it just creates more actual openings that have to be filled.  This isn't the New England Patriots.  There is no next man up.

Then of course there was the usual lack of running game.  But how much that matters depends on how much one believes offensive coordinator Norv Turner likes to run the ball anyway.  There’s a strong case to be made that Green Bay jumping out quickly in response to Weeden's lack of same suggested that it could be a long day.  In turn that would require a more pass oriented attack.  But there’s also a strong suggestion that Turner and Chudzinski always favor a pass oriented attack in what is clearly a pass happy league.  Put it this way, there is no evidence to date that either Chudzinski or Turner favor a balanced attack.  So blaming Willis McGahee for being old is like blaming Mike Holmgren for being conceited.

Not to continue flogging a mostly dead horse, but the flaw in Chudzinski's and Turner’s offense is not its underlying theory but it’s reliance on quarterbacking skills that Weeden simply doesn't have.  That isn't to say that it’s unreasonable in its expectations.  It is to say it’s incompatible with the quarterback they inherited.

Watching a game on television with its multiple replays tends to highlight what must be increasingly maddening film sessions inside Berea.  Weeden favors tight end Jordan Cameron anyway but there were at least 3 times that Weeden didn't seem to see a wide open Cameron in the middle of the field because he was locked on a more difficult option.  There were other times that Weeden did what he usually does and hold on to the ball until the receiver becomes inextricably covered by even modest defensive backs.  And, of course, there were just the mystifying throws, the ones where he can’t seem to get it in the hands of an outlet receiver hanging within 5 yards of the pocket.  His touch on simple screen passes resembles Anderson Varejao’s touch on lay ups.

To be fair, Weeden's touchdown pass to Cameron was well thrown.  It was the kind of pass that suggests more.  Yet it came after he missed Little on a slant in the end zone by throwing behind him.  That too sums up Weeden and the Browns offense.  Some starts but mostly fits.

With Weeden at the controls the Browns have regressed significantly on offense since the veritable salad days of Hoyer.  Instead of the relative exciting mess that they were for about 3 games, they’re back to the same turgid death march where 40+ yard field goals are the best one can hope for.

The Browns have definitely resumed the early season tailspin that got temporarily interrupted when Hoyer had the ball.  If nothing else it also resumes the plan Banner hatched by collecting all those 2014 draft picks in the first place and puts them back in a dogfight with Jacksonville and the New York Football Giants for next year’s number one pick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cleveland Browns and their fans find themselves in the oddest place, which is first place in the AFC North. Lest you think god is smiling with them he’s not.  He’s laughing at them.

In a week that started with an amazing confluence of events that brought fleeting joy to the sports fans in these parts has ended in a confluence of events that more than anything confirms exactly how much God really does hate Cleveland sports.

Sure the Indians went on a 10-0 run to end the season and grab the top seed in the American League wild card play-in game.  But that was just a way to suck fans into the false conceit that this could be their year.  It’s never their year.  The middle of the lineup went 0-16.  Asdrubal Cabrera, in front of Gods and countries, demonstrated exactly how much he’s regressed since the last time the Indians were in the playoffs and then Nick Swisher, everyone’s Nick Swisher, first failed to lift a ball out of the infield and then  struck out on 3 straight pitches to kill the last flicker of a chance.

The Indians got plenty of hits, 9 to be exact.  But not a single one came when it mattered and like the Browns team of several seasons ago that won 10 games and didn’t make the playoffs, the Indians were done before they started and the jaded fans that had repacked Progressive Field to remind everyone how it used to be were left wondering exactly what kind of menace the front office would bring in the offseason.

Your first place Browns can’t seem to lose for winning or, more accurately, lose for losing.  It’s clear what God intended. Joe Banner just hasn't been around long enough to recognize the forces he's battling. He had a plan, damnit.  He had a plan. 

The team he inherited, the one Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert built, had the following characteristics: a first round 29-year old rookie quarterback; a first round running back who can’t seem to average more than 3 yards a carry or stay healthy; a substance abusing wide receiver who is one step away from getting kicked out of the league; another wide receiver who can’t catch; and, of course, Buster Skrine, the worst cover guy in NFL history (slight exaggeration that!) anchoring of sorts the secondary.

It took Banner no more than one regular season game, though he waited two, to assess what he had.  This team would have to be disassembled, piece by piece.  Banner would sell off what he could and discard what he couldn’t.  Stockpile draft picks and get a quarterback who when he's 29 will have been in the league for 7 years. And the plan was working.

Banner took advantage of a desperate Indianapolis Colts team and extracted a first round pick (!) for Richardson.  If it were any team other than the Browns on the receiving end of that trade, I’d immediately declare it the most one sided trade since Dallas went all in for Rickey Williams.  But it is the Browns, a team that has made high art of squandered draft picks.

Still, a good start.  With no running attack and a quarterback with no fast twitch skills, a losing course was set. Wait 'till next year, again. Just sit back and let the rest of the league come to you.

Then as almost luck would have it Brandon Weeden injured his thumb. If having a first string Weeden is critical to a losing season then imagine how delicious it must have been to Banner to use a back up quarterback for a good part of the season. But just to leave no stone unturned Banner had the team use the third string quarterback instead. It's as if Banner, who resembles the Grinch anyway, was in his cave rubbing his hands together, talking to his dog.  

But the Who down in Whoville didn’t get the message.  Brian Hoyer, waiting, learning from the masters old school way, jumped into the fray and ignited an offense that had been moribund since the word moribund was invented.  The improbable victory against the Minnesota Vikings looked like an outstretched middle finger to the front office.  Then came the victory against the Cincinnati Bengals, a team with high playoff hopes.  The game was boring, sure, but Hoyer rallied in ways that Weeden could never imagine and the Browns ground out a very professional victory.

Two straight and the smacking sound you heard all the way to Green was Banner slapping his head with his palm.  The two game win streak energized the fan base who, even if the Indians were in the middle of winning game 7 of the World Series by 5 runs, would still flood local sports talk shows with questions about the Browns.

Banner’s plan was unraveling faster than the plot of a Kate Hudson movie.  With that as the backdrop, the Browns entered into Thursday night’s game against the Buffalo Bills not exactly sure where they stood.  The fans were just as confused.

Order seemed restored early on when first Greg Little, who has the decision making skills of a 10-year old in a trading card store, fielded the opening kick from 9 yards deep and returned it 18 yards, pinning the Browns on their own 9 yard line.   Hoyer then hit Josh Gordon in the hands on what should have been about a 70-yard touchdown pass on the game’s second play.  Naturally Gordon dropped it.  The ensuing punt was returned well by the Bills who found themselves with a short field, made all the shorter when Joe Haden interfered with Steve Johnson in the end zone, setting up a short touchdown and a quick 7-0 Buffalo lead.

On the Browns’ second series, Hoyer scrambled for a first down and in true Cleveland fashion, tore his ACL and ended his season.  Weeden trotted in, looking as effective as he had before his own injury, and the Browns quickly punted.  This led to a Buffalo field goal and now a 10-0 lead.  The rout certainly seemed on.

Just as Banner was secretly celebrating Weeden’s return and the return of his master plan, something strange happened.  Once again the Browns rallied around the beleaguered Weeden and he found what amounts to sea legs.  True Weeden more or less looked as he always has.  He holds the ball like he’s afraid he’ll never get it back and moves in the backfield as if he was driving with the brakes on.  Those deficiencies aside, he was able to play nearly effective enough.

Weeden will forever be defined by 57 yard return that gave the Browns the ball at the Buffalo 31.  A short pass fell incomplete.  A run went nowhere.  A third down pass fell incomplete but the Bills were penalized for unnecessary roughness.  A Weeden sack and a few incomplete passes later the Browns were settling once again for a 30-yard field goal.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

What Weeden will rarely be defined by is the next drive, an interminably long affair that started at the Browns 12 and ultimately ended in a game tying touchdown.  It mostly featured the running of Willis McGahee enabled greatly by the return of Shawn Lauveo at right guard.  It was tedious at times and nerve racking at others.  It was not clear until it happened that McGahee would get that final yard.  He did and the Browns were tied.  Fah who for-aze. Dah who for-aze.

After a defensive hold, Travis Benjamin took the Bills punt 79 yards and the Browns were now winning, 17-10.  Games do turn quickly, usually against the Browns.  This was a through the looking glass moment.

In the third quarter, the Bills scored twice and were now up 24-17.  The first was a 54-yard touchdown run by C.J. Spiller against a defense that apparently featured no defensive backfield.  Once Spiller made it past the line he could have run sideways to the end zone so alone was he.  The second was nearly a carbon copy of the Bills’ first touchdown, set up by interference in the end zone.  The only negligible difference was that it was T.J. Ward who committed the penalty.

The game was turning predictably back, except it really didn’t.  As suddenly as the clouds returned and the rain began to fall, figuratively and literally, Gordon turned a short pass from Weeden into a 37-yard touchdown. Another should have been touchdown turned into a chip shot field goal courtesy of a poor run from the 1-yard line by McGahee and a wildly inaccurate pass to tight end Jordan Cameron.

Still another Cundiff field goal was followed by a pick six from Ward on a pass from the Buster Skrine of quarterbacks, Buffalo’s Jeff Tuel, and the game was over.  Final score, Browns 37, Bills 24.

Let me pause here for a moment to stop picking on Skrine.  In truth, he played probably his best game as a professional, and probably his entire life, on Thursday night.  He was mostly where he was supposed to be and that’s a major accomplishment.  Haden, on the other hand, seemed lost.  Maybe he’s trying to do too much given the shortcomings around him, but against a better team and a better quarterback Haden would do well to pay attention to his assignments and not try to do others as well.

Now back to our regular programming.

Weeden wasn’t anything special on Thursday night.  He was only 13-24 for 197 yards.  Yet he wasn’t awful at least awful as defined by Banner’s expectations of him or those of virtually everyone else that have followed his brief, flatline trajectory as a starter.

Now the Browns are firmly entrenched for another week at the top of the AFC North.  It is a highly winnable division because there isn’t a dominant team among them.  Heck, the Steelers might go 0 for the season. Yet you get the sense that Banner can’t possibly be happy with this outcome.  It doesn’t completely devalue the power the Browns will yield in the draft but if this winning stuff continues it does diminish it.

So in any sense, large or small, God really does hate Cleveland sports.  If he didn’t, the Browns would have a lock on the first pick of the draft, the Indians would be playing the Red Sox this weekend, Hoyer would be healthy and Bernie Kosar wouldn’t be trying to find a creative defense for the DUI he got last weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Numbing Sameness of It All, Again--Vikings Edition

So much about how one reacts to what was surely a stunning victory by the Cleveland Browns on Sunday depends on how full or empty he tends to look at the perpetually slightly filled glass of water the Browns keep by each fan's night table. On the one hand, who knew that Trent Richardson was such a drag on the team? Conversely, who knew Josh Gordon’s presence would give such a boost?

If one is truer than the other, then it would have to be the presence of at least one credible wide receiver in the lineup in the form of Gordon that was one of the key differences. Gordon caught 10 passes for 146 yards. He looked strong after the catch and his presence also opened up the other real receiving star of the game, tight end Jordan Cameron who in word and deed is pretty much everything Kellen Winslow, Jr. was not.

Let’s not bury Richardson though as a drag on the team. He wasn't. He just didn't perform like much of an asset at the time of the trade. And while I consider Richardson’s true value a bit more deeply days later I am stunned by the chart the Wall Street Journal ran on Monday that showed a team’s record after having spent a high pick on a running back. Generally, it’s not been impressive. Surely the Browns' record with Richardson doesn't help the cause but look at it this way. Even with Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings are only a collectively 47-44 and that’s one of the better records. Ultimately club president Joe Banner merely put into action something that is relatively backed up by the evidence: an elite running back is not nearly as important to a winning NFL team as even a decent overall running game or merely the threat.

Richardson performed for Indianapolis on Sunday as he’s done now for all the previous Sundays he’s been in the league. His yards per carry seem perpetually stuck in the 3s. He may not know the Colts’ playbook, but will that really help? How much did it help here?

So putting aside the obvious dynamic of the presence of Gordon and the absence of Richardson, let’s look instead at the other variables. Surely Brian Hoyer had something to do with the outcome. Indeed he was going to have something to do with it either way. His beautifully lofted third down throw to Cameron accounted for the margin of difference. A more opportunistic Vikings offense might have ended with far more points and put the game out of reach off of Hoyer’s three interceptions.

Still, Hoyer showed more in one game than it’s taken a season to eke out of the surely deposed Brandon Weeden. He led the team on a freakin’ legitimate two minute drill to get the winning touchdown. Good luck finding the fan who thinks Weeden has that skill.

Let us not forget, too, that in his now fifth season in the NFL, Hoyer is still two plus years younger than Weeden. So even if Weeden follows Hoyer’s NFL arc, the Browns are three seasons from seeing a quarterback in Weeden who can loft a ball when that’s what the play dictates and who can recover from spells of awfulness without letting it snowball into head slapping frustration.

Yet it would be hard to pin the victory just on Hoyer or Gordon or Cameron or on Richardson. There was boldness on the special teams to account for. Perhaps the biggest uncontrolled variable was the “us against the world” mentality that surely crept into the recesses of a gobsmacked locker room. Nothing motivates a professional like job insecurity and if Banner accomplished anything last week it was instilling a sense of job insecurity into even Joe Thomas.

Whatever weird combination of cosmic factors and mental gymnastics were responsible for the Browns falling behind in the race for next year’s number one pick doesn’t matter today. Nothing causes a Browns’ fan to forgive faster than a victory, particularly when it was so unexpected. Of course, the same thing can be said as well for a Browns’ fan capacity to overemphasize a victory and its impact on a newly rosy future.

We’re all grown ups here so let’s acknowledge that there’s no way to attach any significance to the Browns’ victory on Sunday without the context of what kind of performance breaks out in subsequent weeks. We know the context of all previous weeks and, frankly, it isn’t very good. It’s why, really, Sunday’s victory, particularly the manner in which Hoyer was able to drive a team down the field like a real NFL quarterback and get a go ahead score with less than a minute remaining, seemed unusual. Past performance, and not just the past two weeks, would certainly suggest that no one knew they had it in them.

But that they did, for at least one game. It’s funny, but the win didn't feel as much earned as it did a bonus. That’s usually true for games one where trickery is involved and that was on display early as head coach Rob Chudzinski dug into the bag of diversionary tricks and created just that, a diversion.

There was the point in the third and fourth quarter where all that had previously gone right for Hoyer was starting to go horribly wrong. The interception he threw from his own end zone on a pass that looked as if it had been thrown by a concussed Pam Oliver, was as predictable as the jokes at Sunday night’s Emmy telecast. The Vikings defense, mostly sackless in every sense of the word, was starting to tee off. Hoyer looked as if he’d accidentally stepped into the middle lane of northbound I-71 at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday.

Then just as suddenly as that all happened it all disappeared. Hoyer regained the composure that Weeden doesn’t ever look to develop and led the Browns on a terrific final drive, continually hitting the right receiver with the right pass at the right time. There have been far prettier drives in the past, just not the recent past.

Even if a win hadn’t developed, the game still would have been a breath of hardy air. The almost abject refusal to advance the ball had all but disappeared. Hoyer, passing as if he had been in Chudzinski’s offense for years, looked mostly comfortable doing so. You could tell he learned plenty watching Tom Brady. There was enough of a running game to keep the Vikings guessing a little.

Most of all, though, there wasn't any point at which you felt as if you were watching a particularly unfortunate episode of Masterpiece Theater. There were actually multiple occasions on which Browns were exciting to watch. Most of last season and the first two games this season were overwhelming in their cringe worthiness. You may not have known what exactly was coming next but you pretty much knew what the outcome of what came next would be. This past Sunday was different. There was no point where I felt the calling to nod off.

And that pretty much sums up the low expectations I usually have for the Browns. If they aren’t boring, I’m thrilled. So yes, the game was a thrill.

The wins, so infrequent as they are, are generally meaningless. They stay with you about as long as a mouthful of cotton candy does. But what does linger is the overall numbing effect of the incredibly bland flavor of football the Browns tend to play. So when they play counter to type, like Charlize Theron in Monster, you notice and in a good way.

Typically, Monday rolled around and Chudzinski, settled in like every Browns coach in the 2.0 era, refused to name Hoyer the starter for next week. He'll do so by mid week I'm guessing. Just as typically, the Browns got the overall mission of 2014 draft positioning wrong by getting it right and now have fallen behind even the Pittsburgh Steelers in the race to number one draft pick. Yet they did so in a way that asserts that when most cylinders click there’s reason to watch well into the fourth quarter. Ultimately that’s all the fans have been demanding for four or five regimes now.