It's going to be another long season
for a city that only knows long seasons. But anyone taking a
realistic assessment of the Cleveland Browns knew that already. What
they don't know, what noone can answer is when the light at the end
of the tunnel will not just be another oncoming train.
Certainly Mike Holmgren can’t answer
it nor did he much try at his press conference on Monday (itself an
event but perhaps consistent with a vow to be more accessible to the
local media). What he did offer up, though, spoke volumes about the
season to come. It wasn’t pretty.
In one breath Holmgren said he expected
the team to be better but in another he expressed some astonishment
at the composition of the roster and the fact that fully half is
comprised of rookies and second year players and is being led by
someone in only the second year of his head coaching career.
With no discernible sense of irony
Holmgren also said that the team is pretty much where he thought it
would be. Huh? Either Holmgren has adjusted his expectations without
bothering to tell the fans or he really is as disconnected from the
day to day operations as most fans have suspected.
I actually don't much care as much
about the youth on this team as I do about whether the guy in charge
was aware this was happening. The latter is related to the former
anyway. Clearly Holmgren didn’t know what was happening and that
is what they call in the business a red flag. It makes every thing
else he says suspect.
Holmgren has given general manager Tom
Heckert final say over the roster but perhaps sometime before the
53-man roster was announced Holmgren and Heckert should have met and
discussed how this team, with all its youth and beauty, was going to
meet the almost conflicting goals of significant improvement and
roster overhaul in the same season. You get the feeling that Holmgren
didn't realize what this team looked like until he read about it in
the newspaper. Actually, that may be exactly how he found out.
And that, really, was what Monday's
press conference was all about--lowering fan expectations. Holmgren
reminded everyone more than once that quarterback Brandon Weeden is a
fine passer but is still a rookie. He also went some length to
distance himself for last year's pledge of big improvement in almost
every way imaginable, probably because he knows that you can’t have
a rookie quarterback, a rookie running back, rookie receivers, rookie
defensive linemen, no linebackers and a likely to be suspended
cornerback and think you’re going anywhere but down.
But more frustrating was his view on
how an opening day loss (highly anticipated given how the Eagles
defense toyed with the Browns' starters two weeks ago in a
meaningless game) doesn't mean much because the season is a marathon
and not a sprint.
In the words of Jim Steinman, "stop
right there." I don't know if I'd label the NFL season a sprint
but it's surely not a marathon. With only 16 games on the schedule
one loss is far more impactful to a team's season then in any other
sport. But that's not even the biggest problem with Holmgen's
statement.
No, that would be reserved for the lack
of situational awareness that it displays. The Browns 2.0 have played
13 seasons. In that time they've won their season opener once. That's
right, once. In those 13 years they've had just two winning records
at season's end. But let’s put an even finer point on it. In
those 13 seasons, there have only been 24 weeks total when Browns
fans could claim that their team had a winning record. In other
words, 90% of the time over the last 13 years the Browns have had a
losing record. If you take away the two winning seasons of 2002 and
2007, there have only been 6 weeks in the remaining 11 years when the
Browns have had a winning record. To bring it all home, there have
been 7 seasons in the last 13 where the Browns didn’t have a
winning record at any point and 3 seasons where they enjoyed a
winning record for exactly 1 week.
So when Holgrem blithely dismisses the
importance of this team in this town getting off to a good start it
shows me that he has no idea just how desperate these fans are to
have something positive happen with this team, if just for a little
while. That’s why, if nothing else, winning the home opener is so
important. In context it would contrary to the strong trend in the
other direction.
**
As I thought more about Holmgren's
press conference it occurred to me that while he was clearly level
setting rather modest expectations for the team he barely knows, the
fans weren't his intended audience anyway.
Where Holmgren seemed most emphatic was
with respect to his job status. Declaring he's never quit anything in
his life, Holmgren clearly put the onus on owner-to-be Jimmy Haslam
to push him aside and, in the grand tradition of every front office
executive who's come before him in the last 13 years, pay off the
remaining years of his contract.
That's the only way any of Holmgen's
statements can be squared. Holmgren sounded as much like a man
auditioning for his new boss as he did a man explaining to future
employers that the team is on track and would get to the promised
land if only he had been given the time to see if through.
In that sense Holmgren actually sounded
much like Eric Mangini during the final days of The Lost Season.
Mangini hadn't yet been officially told his fate from Holmgren though
it seemed clear to everyone else. He sounded at times like he was
lobbying for a third season while also reminding the rest of the
league that his plan was working should he need a new job.
It didn't work out for Mangini (it
still hasn’t) and I don't see a different outcome for Holmgren.
If/when Holmgren is pushed aside, the likely outcome is that he’ll
retire back to Seattle with Haslam’s money to live on for a few
more years. And that, more than anything, will be Haslam’s real
welcome to the NFL. He’ll join Lerner as another billionaire
giving away money to guys that didn’t deserve it.
Meanwhile what I hope doesn't happen
but probably will is that once again the fans will be asked to be
patient while the new blood cleans up the old mess. What we won’t
know but will be left merely to debate is whether the team was on the
right track in the first place because it will once again be time to
visit the one place that the fans know better than any other--square
one.
**
Getting now to the meat of the matter,
you can’t say that Holmgren doesn’t know what he’s talking
about. He perused this roster and knows that significant improvement
is unlikely.
I don't know what to make of the
Browns' rather unusual roster, except for one thing. There is simply
too much youth on this team to expect improvement, substantial or
otherwise, as measured by wins and losses.
Let's use the Carolina Panthers as our
barometer. Last season they went 6-10 with Cam Newton as their
quarterback. That was an improvement of just four games from the
prior season. (True, it tripled their victory total from the year
before, but they were still nowhere close to the playoffs.) That
seems about right considering the caliber of player Newton is versus
the kind his predecessor, Jimmy Clausen, was.
By all accounts Weeden is a better
passer than Colt McCoy but the difference between Weeden and McCoy
isn't even close to the difference between Newton and Clausen. So
expecting a huge jump for the Browns, assuming you think the Panthers
took a huge jump, just by changing quarterbacks seems a bit of
wishful thinking.
If you're thinking then that the
addition of Trent Richardson will make all the difference, that's
doubtful, too. The 2010 Panthers were terrible but it was more
anomaly than trend. The season before they were 8-8. The season
before that they were 12-4. In fact at no point in their existence
have they been as miserable as any of the Browns' recent seasons.
But staying with that 2010 Panthers
team it's true that they didn't run the ball well that season but
their same two primary running backs were far more effective in 2011
with the addition of Newton, who had a substantial rushing total of
his own. Even with a very effective running game the Panthers still
only improved by 4 games.
It won't take much for Richardson to
markedly improve the Browns' rushing game but unless he has a
record-setting season, he won't approach the combined rushing totals
of the Panthers' backs last season. Add to that the fact that Weeden
is almost no threat to run and you come to the rather easy conclusion
that while the Browns should be more balanced like the Panthersin
2011, it still won't amount to much this year.
And, as I just mentioned, the Panthers
were already a better team in 2010 than the Browns were in 2011, the
records notwithstanding.
But all of this just gets us back to
the even more salient point. While upgrading at quarterback and
running back, the Browns also got markedly younger almost everywhere
else as well. This doesn't bode well in a league where youth is
served only occasionally.
I would expect the Panthers to take
another decent step forward this season because it is now more
experienced. But even this season may not be of the leaps and bounds
variety, the kind that Holmgren envisioned for his own team this
season.
The Browns may be on the right
trajectory, but as trite as it sounds only time will tell.
Unfortunately there simply won't be enough time in this season to
really make that judgment and that's all Haslem may give this regime
before he decides to repaint the walls of Berea.
**
Staying with this same theme, given
what Randy Lerner extracted from Haslam for control of this
franchise, have we been underestimating Randy Lerner’s business
acumen all along?
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