Rare is it that a player in any sport
says anything of great interest that when he does you want to just
cut him some slack, leave the comments to dangle and just enjoy the
fact that you don't have to write another “we respect our
opponents” or “we're just going to go out there and try to have
some fun” quote. But on the other hand, if said player in any
sport is going to leave it out there dangling like a carrot at the
end of a stick, said player shouldn't be surprised when someone comes
along and tries to grab it.
Josh Cribbs, the special teams player
ordinaire for the Cleveland Browns, used the run up to the game this
week against the Dallas Cowboys to finally unleash what had been
building up at least since the aftermath of the Baltimore Ravens game
when he sat in the locker room biting his liplike Mitch McConnell
being forced to watch a Barack Obama press conference. Cribbs said
then he didn't want to say anything that would get him in trouble.
Apparently after seeing the game plan against the Cowboys that didn't
feature him doing anything more but watch kickoffs said over his
head, Cribbs decided that trouble was the least of his concerns.
It was classic Cribbs all the way. One
of the more passively aggressive athletes to wind his way through
Cleveland in years, Cribbs made sure first we all understood just
what a team guy he is before proceeding to explain in rather stark
detail just what a typical “me first” guy he really is.
Cribbs' main gripe, of course, is that
he just wants the damn ball. He explains that he believes he's the
best athlete on the team and that it is wrong, shameful, boneheaded,
inexplicable, pick your descriptor, that he is being used on offense
slightly less than the Jets are using Tim Tebow on offense. And lest
anyone thing Cribbs doesn't carry around his stats like a math geek
who can recite Pi to 48 places, Cribbs told the Plain Dealer's Mary
Kay Cabot in an English be damned screed, “me going from being able
to run the wildcat, to playing receiver last season and catching 41
passes and four touchdowns to nothing—I can't believe it.”
I can. There's no harm in Cribbs
walking the Berea campus with confidence and swagger in his own
ability. It's what athletes do or else they won't be professional
athletes for long. But let's not mistake Cribbs' ego as anything
more than furthering Cribbs' particular interests at the expense of
the team's. It's also what athletes do.
See, Cribbs is in the final year of a
contract and isn't getting the chance to show teams that his skills,
such as they are, go beyond special teams. No one is paying special
teams players, even with Cribbs' resume, the same as they are paying
true offensive playmakers. In other words, for all of Cribbs'
bitching, the words between the lines say, essentially “the Browns
are taking money out of my wallet each time they design a pass play
for Greg Little to drop.”
If Cribbs had merely confined his
frustration to how the lack of offensive opportunities this year is
costing him money next year, that would have been enough. We could
have then used the opportunity to point out that the only reason
Cribbs was in a position to catch said 41 passes and 4 touchdowns
last season was because general manager Tom Heckert decided that the
Browns didn't need to have any actual credible receivers on the
roster. Someone had to get in the way of the damn ball and that
someone on occasion was Cribbs. We could also have then pointed out
again how Cribbs wasn't anything close to a reliable NFL receiver
last year or at any point when he lined up wide. His lack of
training as a receiver was the context for his inability to run
anything resembling a crisp or reliable route. Sometimes he'd square
in on a 10-yard pattern at 8 yards or 12 yards or wherever he felt
like it. He'd do the same on a 10-yard out. He'd go long when the
pattern called for him to curl in. These kinds of mistakes, repeated
not just weekly but several times within each game, were
understandable because Cribbs was being asked to basically play out
of position.
But Cribbs wouldn't leave it at that.
His unintentionally hilarious slant on the world and how he fits into
it pushed him further into furthering his agenda by further feeding
into the animosity fans have against Shurmur. Cribbs told Cabot
that he has talked to Shurmur about his role earlier this year and
that it had no impact, so no reason to go down that road. “There's
no point,” he said. “Obviously they feel like everybody that's in
front of me is a better athlete. I disagree. I feel a different way
than the coach feels about me. They must feel I can't produce. We
have a difference of opinion.” That's putting it mildly.
The truth Cribbs has never faced is
that just being an athlete, for whatever that's supposed to me on a
team that's supposedly filled with athletes, doesn't necessarily
translate to awesomeness in any position you deem yourself capable of
playing. Cribbs really never did progress as a receiver. He was raw
when he started, got slightly better only through some fleeting
familiarity with the position, but leveled out quickly. Think what
you will about head coach Pat Shurmur and his decision making
ability, but he's been around enough receivers in his life to know
one that is credible and one that is not.
Shurmur isn't saying that the mediocre
receivers in front of him are better athletes but he is saying they
are better receivers and it's hard to argue that point. They are
better receivers. They've been doing it longer and are better
trained. They run better routes. In short they do the things
receivers are supposed to do better than Cribbs. All Cribbs really
has done is prove that he occasionally can catch a pass. He's not a
deep threat. He's not a consistent go-to guy on third down. Hell,
he's not particularly good at using the elusiveness he's developed as
a kick returner to much effect as a receiver, mainly because by the
time the ball gets to him from the quarterback, it's generally hard
to shake loose the guy draped on your back.
Cribbs' comments are a challenge to
Shurmur but don't expect much to come of it. There was a time when
the Plain Dealer probably would have run this story on the front page
of the paper, forget the front page of the sports section. Instead
it was buried well inside the sports pages playing 10th
fiddle to a story about John “Not Buddy” Greco and high school
playoffs. That's about right. This town is indifferent.
But the impact of his words will
linger. Sure Shurmur probably won't do anything because he's a lame
duck and he has bigger problems to worry about, such as figuring out
which teams may need a quarterbacks coach next season. But new
president Joe Banner will probably notice and not in the way Cribbs
imagines.
Cribbs in for a wake up call for the
rest of his career. He's been fine on special teams this season but
not spectacular. He may be back next year for the Browns or he may
not but wherever he finds himself next and whoever he's playing for
then he'll still end up being the frustrated best athlete in the
room. No team short of a team like the Browns of last season that
believe having credible receivers on a roster is overrated is going
to insert Cribbs into the offense except as an interesting,
occasional diversion.
**
As a wrongheaded ego-driven loudmouth,
Cribbs is a mere amateur against someone with the All World skills of
Rob Ryan, the former Browns defensive coordinator now plying his
trade in Dallas. Because everything in a Ryan world is about a Ryan,
the almost meaningless match up between the Browns and the Cowboys
has turned into a sort of Call of Duty: This Time It's Personal death
battle.
Apparently Ryan didn't feel like his
massive skills as a defensive coordinator were respected by the
Browns when they made their most recent regime change. Ryan claims
he slept in the office for 7 straight weeks so that he could work
longer and harder to turn around the Browns' fortunes and that this
should have been recognized. It was, just not in the way he would
have liked. He was fired because he was part of the stinking bath
water of the Eric Mangini regime.
I'm not sure, really, what Ryan is
bitching about. It's not as if he landed as a crew shift leader at
Subway, though I suspect that he wouldn't have minded that gig
judging by a waistline that is expanding far faster than the economy.
He landed as the freakin' defensive coordinator for America's team
or at least what once passed as America's team until owner Jerry
Jones took it upon himself to see how many fans he could actually
alienate.
What probably chafes at Ryan is not
that he landed in Dallas in the same slot that he left in Cleveland
but that he didn't even get an interview when Mike Holmgren hired
Shurmur. That, really, is what's personal about all of this, proving
that coaches aren't any more self-aware than the players under their
charge.
The Browns aren't the first team to not
see greatness in Ryan as a head coach. They aren't even the latest.
Every year there are at least 4 or 5 head coach openings, including
this past off season, and none of them resulted in Ryan being
elevated to the position he really covets. If Ryan keeps making it
all personal, pretty soon he's going to hold a grudge against the
entire NFL establishment to the point that his only viable
alternative really will be as crew chief at Subway.
There are plenty of reasons Ryan isn't
a head coach and isn't likely to ever be. His lack of any semblance
of personal discipline or politics makes Chris Perez look like Colin
Powell. There's nothing particularly innovative about the schemes
Ryan runs. He's related to Rex Ryan.
Let's also keep in mind, too, the
initial and most obvious point. When a Ryan speaks it's always about
the Ryan. The “this is personal” meme was even too cliché to
have been a plot point on Friday Night Lights. It stopped being a
motivational tool along about the time players formed a union. But
as a tool for furthering the narrative of Rob Ryan it works,
clumsily, but it works.
The likelihood of the Cowboys beating
the Browns on Sunday is high. The likelihood of the Cowboys defense,
just like any other team's defense, getting in the head of a rookie
quarterback with an interception problem is equally high. So if the
Cowboys do what all sense and logic dictate they should do, Ryan can
at least advance the theory that it was his crazy motivational skills
that righted the Cowboys ship and not the fact that as bad as the
Cowboys are they still have more than enough to beat the Browns, one
of the NFL's worst teams. I only hope he gets a game ball for his
efforts.
**
Lost in all the “goodbye, Mike, we
hardly knew ye” was the gem that Holmgren threw out about the itch
he still has to coach one more time. If that doesn't piss off Browns
fans then they truly have stopped caring.
At this point I'm pretty convinced that
Holmgren's better days are well behind him but putting that aside, if
Holmgren still wanted to coach there was an opening on the team that
he oversaw as President not too long ago, like 3 weeks ago. When
Holmgren dumped Mangini a year too late, he had every opportunity to
scratch that coaching itch here and it would have been well received
at least until the moment that fans realized that even a Super Bowl
credentialed coach isn't going to help this team with this roster win
more than 4 or 5 games a season.
It's never been adequately explained
why Holmgren chose the route he did but because he did, he finds
himself out of Cleveland completely, which may have been his crazy,
brilliant motivation all along. Meanwhile the Browns find themselves
where they tend to find themselves every two years, on the precipice
of another exhaustive search for a head coach.
What all this demonstrates more than
anything else is that Randy Lerner made absolutely the right decision
to sell the team. It was the only right decision he made during his
entire tenure. The only real hope in turning this franchise around
is through an engaged owner and not one who would cower in the corner
when the lights came on.
**
Cribbs' crybaby outburst leads to this
week's question to ponder: Who would you rather have on your team,
Josh Cribbs or Tim Tebow?
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