Lingering Items-Bye Week Edition

When I was younger and more foolish, I looked forward more to the springing forward of the time change in April then the falling back of the time change in October (now November). As I grew older and less foolish, I realized that gaining that extra hour on a Sunday in the fall was one of life’s greatest and most underrated gifts. The greatest of course is the NFL bye week, particularly if you’re a fan of the Cleveland Browns.

The bye week represents the steadying notion that come Monday there won’t be another in an endless string of competitive losses to bitch about. There’s no coaching mistake to debate. No open receivers will have been missed, no passes will have been dropped. It’s as soothing to the psyche as a down comforter is to the body on a cold winter night.

But as it always is, there’s context to a Browns’ bye week. With head coach Pat Shurmur consistently wetting the bed each week and then scurrying home to pull the sheets out of the laundry, he’s lost support more quickly then Mitt Romney with Latinos after his self-deportation remark (or, really, 47% of the electorate after his freeloaders remark). The bye week gives teams contemplating major midseason course corrections the perfect cover. If a team is thinking of dumping its latest failure and slapping the interim tag on an aging coordinator who once worked as a head coach but got fired, this is the time.

New owner Jimmy Haslam tried to stop that fire from lighting by saying even before he was officially approved as the owner that there would be no significant changes until season’s end. Of course within minutes of the approval club president Mike Holmgren effectively stepped down, signing his own exit papers from a bunker somewhere in Seattle. The only conclusion to draw from Holmgren’s exit is that Haslam didn't see this as a significant change, and it would be hard to disagree. Holmgren slept walked his way through his tenure in Cleveland, waking up long enough to cash checks and criticize the media but mostly ignoring every little detail thrown his way such as the composition of the current roster.

Haslam has kept his promise otherwise and this bye week has been eerily quiet except for an exclusive interview Joe Banner gave to two different newspapers and the early week press conference by Shurmur in which he tried to disabuse any one that they truly know what’s in his heart while giving quarterback Brandon Weeden a vote of confidence, which Banner didn't exactly parrot in his interview with the PD. Meanwhile, Haslam talked to the good folks at Crain’s Cleveland Business and gave them a preview of how he believes more marketing of the team can and should be done in the Columbus area. He also said that he’ll sell the naming rights to Cleveland Browns Stadium but that there will be others more interested than his company in acquiring those rights. That means that the Pilot Flying J’s board chairman, one Jimmy Haslam III, doesn’t see throwing any more good money after bad. Ok then.

Since neither Banner nor Haslam were particularly forthcoming, let's get back to Shurmur. Irrespective of how quiet the week has been, there’s no chance that Shurmur is standing on the sidelines at the newly-named TravelCenters Stadium next season unless it’s with a press pass from Fox Sports. Once Holmgren grabbed the first United flight out of town, Shurmur’s career in Cleveland effectively ended. Tom Heckert may be the general manager and generally the general manager generally manages the hirings of head coaches and such, but Shurmur was always Holmgren’s hire.

With his wingman gone, there’s simply no way that Haslam or new president (or whatever title he ascends or descends to) Joe Banner starts their tenure by hanging on the gloriously ineffective Shurmur. You could argue that two seasons may not be a fair test for any coach to turn around a team or franchise this woeful, but it was quite clear after one year that Eric Mangini wasn’t ever going to be effective just as it was clear after one season that Jim Harbaugh was.

So assuming he’s gone anyway, this season becomes yet another wasted effort. That said, replacing Shurmur now with Brad Childress or Dick Jauron wearing an interim tag and the clueless look of former head coaches who likewise failed wouldn’t suddenly make this season more meaningful. There are interesting little stories to follow for the rest of the year, including whether Banner believes Weeden is his quarterback (hmmm) but there’s no overarching narrative any more. The Browns will end up with another early first round pick and probably blow it, but that’s about it.

The real interest will start when the clock turns 00:00 in the season’s last game. That’s when Haslam and Banner will kick into the public phase of their efforts to find a suitable replacement for Shurmur. Haslam will want to make a splash but that doesn’t dictate a splashy hire. As a successful business type, Haslam will approach the hire in a way that never occurred to a ne’er do well like Randy Lerner. A detailed profile will be prepared that will yield someone that shares the cultures, values and goals that Haslam brings to the table. Or Banner will return a favor to a former mentor and hire his son or nephew as head coach. Either way, it will yield plenty of words.

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There was a funny little item contained within the agate type of the Transactions column of the local newspaper this week. It said, under the banner “Kansas City Chiefs” that head coach Romeo Crennel had “relieved himself of the duties of defensive coordinator” which is another way of saying that Crennel the head coach fired Crennel the defensive coordinator. If that had happened in Cleveland, Lerner would probably have given Crennel the defensive coordinator a generous settlement to assuage his guilt and allow himself to sleep at night.

With the Chiefs alternatively imploding and exploding under Crennel’s watch, you get the feeling that general manager Scott Pioli must have forced Crennel’s hand in the most delicious way possible by keeping his own powder dry and making Crennel do his own dirty work. It’s totally in character for Pioli to do that and it’s totally in character for Crennel, ex-military, to obey orders. When a team is struggling, manners is the first victim.

The reason I bring any of this up is to provide contrast with the level of dysfunction in Cleveland that revealed itself this week when Shurmur said that he and Childress will need to streamline the play calling because apparently 40 seconds is just not enough time to decide on exactly which lousy 3^rd and 1 play to call. “Let’s do the dump off to Owen Marecic.” “No, how about the one where Weeden rolls right and throws across his body to Greg Little slanting left.” “Or how about…shit, is the play clock down to 3 already? Somebody call time out.”

For further context to why there even needs to be streamlining, let’s not forget that Shurmur, a first year head coach, served as his own offensive coordinator last year. The Browns offense couldn’t even be called a work in progress. It was mostly a disorganized mess that put punter Reggie Hodges on the field so much that he blew out his knee. Shurmur had no Crennel moment and thought to fire himself mid-season. He limped through it with a look of self-defeat and resignation, like Rick Perry trying to explain anything, and then listened while Holmgren or, probably, Heckert doing Holmgren’s dirty work, forcefully explained the need to hire another coach.

Shurmur wasn’t keen on giving up the dual roles. It was never clear if it was an ego thing or he simply didn’t think anyone out there shared his same vibe or genius, but he certainly was a reluctant warrior. He brought in Childress as the offensive coordinator but almost from the moment the hiring occurred Shurmur basically said he would retain play calling duties.

So Childress got kicked upstairs into a booth and has been forced all season to “collaborate” with Shurmur on play calls which seems like a fairly demeaning task if you have the coordinator title but apparently is acceptable if you are an ex head coach unwilling to give up the NFL lifestyle. That collaboration has created the visible mess that fans see each week, manifesting itself in all manner of delayed play calling, wrong personnel groups, wrong calls at wrong moments and abuse of the allocated time outs.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Shurmur is that in his quest to succeed he’s become a micromanager unconvinced of and/or uncomfortable with the general competence of the coaches on his staff, particularly those on the offensive side of the ball.

If you want to understand why some are comfortable with being “the guy” and others aren’t, it usually boils down to trust. Having succeeded to the point where he could grab a head coaching position, Shurmur took ultimate control, confusing it with ultimate responsibility. When your trust level runs from A to B, there’s almost no chance to succeed. The NFL is far more complicated then it has to be, but having since made itself so complicated, it begs for the head coach to get comfortable quickly with those on his staff being richly paid to execute his vision.

Shurmur is so bad at decision making these days that he’ll probably streamline the play calling by shutting off Childress’ headset. That should quicken the calls as well as his own demise.

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It was very revealing how much Weeden’s play has been influenced by Shurmur’s loss aversion. When Shurmur was pressed as to why not one single pass play for the end zone was called during any of the Browns’ 5 count’em 5 trips to the red zone last Sunday, Shurmur said that he could have probably been more heroic in the play calling but the team was on the edge of field goal range and didn’t want to suffer a sack or, God forbid, another Weeden interception. A day later, after essentially saying that he had no confidence in Weeden’s ability as a quarterback to avoid a sack or throw the ball out of bounds, Shurmur gave his quarterback a vote of confidence as the starter. Shurmur must really hate Colt McCoy.

Anyway, that same next day Weeden pretty much said the same thing as Shurmur, saying that he could have tried to squeeze a pass in but didn’t want to take that kind of chance. He was waiting, he said, for a receiver to be wide open because, as we know, that happens all the time when you’re in the opponent’s red zone. When no receiver was able to free himself of the 10-yard cushion Weeden apparently needs before Shurmur will allow him to throw into an opponent’s end zone, he dumped it off to a receiver that had no chance of sniffing a touchdown or else ran the draw play that the Lennon and McCartney of play calling, Shurmur and Childress, decided would work sufficiently enough not to screw up a field goal attempt.

If Shurmur really does have confidence in Weeden, then let him throw the friggin’ ball downfield and not just when the Browns are sitting on their own 35-yard line and a long pass intercepted serves the same purpose as a punt. The truth is that Shurmur doesn’t have any more confidence in Weeden then he had in Sam Bradford when Bradford was a rookie and seemed to set the all time record for the lowest yards per catch ratio in NFL history.

Indeed, Shurmur doesn’t show much confidence in anything and that’s why this team so often plays like a tentative mess, well that and the fact that it is a team with a poorly constructed, mistake-prone, youthful roster for which Heckert alone (apparently) is to blame. The lack of confidence is evident in matters large and small and while the team is ostensibly competitive losers, they’re losers nonetheless and for that Shurmur will pay the ultimate price when both Shurmur the head coach and Shurmur the offensive coordinator is relieved of his duties.

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Josh Cribbs says that he’s tired of the constant turnover and that it’s not good for team morale or performance. How true. But consistency for consistency’s sake isn’t the answer. Look no further than Cincinnati to see how that plays out. Marvin Lewis has been there for a decade and hasn’t much moved the needle.

Here’s how Lewis’ biography reads on the Bengals’ official web site: “Marvin Lewis is in his 10^th season as the Bengals head coach, having posted the most wins (69) in franchise history. He has led the team to the postseason in two of the last three seasons.” That’s it. Shorter than Mitt Romney’s concession speech.

Lewis keeps on adding to his franchise record as his 3-5 record this year now gives him 72 wins. That keeps Lewis muddling along at a 47% win clip, which means he’s averaging about 7.5 wins per season. That’s about a game better than the previous 10 years.

All this means is that Haslam could honor Cribbs’ wish for consistency as long as he’s willing to sacrifice, I don’t know, a winning record. The Bengals are models of consistency but all that’s done is entrench their mediocrity. There is a better way and while this franchise continues to take a step back in a quest to move forward, sometimes the illusion of movement is enough to satiate a bored and apathetic fan base.

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With Shumur now part of the Walking Dead, this week’s question to ponder: Does Heckert face a similar fate?

Lingering Items--Winter Doldrums Edition

 When the Super Bowl ends sometime around 10 p.m. EDT this Sunday it will mark not just the end of a very curious but interesting football season. It is also will mark the beginning of the dullest period of the sports season.

Fortunately, the dull times don’t last too long as it’s at most a few weeks until major league teams report to spring training. Until then, though, you have time to catch up on Mad Men before the next season starts in March or waste your time with meaningless games in whatever sport you follow.

The Ohio State Buckeyes men’s basketball team, talented and athletic and a real contender for a national championship, have a difficult schedule ahead over the last half of their regular season, but the presence of a Big Ten tournament and the knowledge that the Buckeyes will be in the NCAA tournament come March render these upcoming games mildly interesting and overwhelmingly irrelevant, like the Plain Dealer on a good day.

Far worse, though, is the NBA season and not just because the Cavaliers are still in the early stages of a major rebuild which, if history is any indication, is a minimum 8 year process. If there are any NHL fans in this area, and I suppose there probably are a few, nothing much interesting happens this time of year, either. Like the NBA, more teams make the playoffs then should and only a few teams really have a chance of taking the crown. That much was known months ago and not much has changed in the interim.

So what we’re left with for the next few weeks is to engage in postseason speculation when it comes to the Browns, preseason bitching when it comes to the Indians and in season indifference when it comes to the Cavs.

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Let’s start with the Cavs. With them, the current mostly boring debate surrounds whether or not the team should just continue on a losing path for the rest of the season in order to secure a better draft pick. Right now, the Cavs would make the playoffs and wouldn’t make the lottery. It’s a situation known as NBA purgatory. There are only a few teams with a legitimate chance to make the NBA Finals. There are a few others that are close to that level and thus would likely benefit from the seasoning that the NBA playoffs bring. The rest of the teams though are just spinning their wheels in the most unproductive manner possible in purgatory.

There is no good that could come from the Cavs making the playoffs this season. They are simply too far away to reap any tangible benefit from playing in the postseason. If/when the Cavs are able to cobble together enough pieces and parts to make a far more legitimate run, most of the players on the current team will be playing elsewhere. In other words, getting playoff experience under their belts, to the extent that matters, won’t benefit the Cavs anyway.

All that said, of course, it’s ridiculous to think about tanking an entire NBA season. Professional athletes for the most part are imbued with a strong sense of pride and competitiveness. They may know their team sucks, but when the whistle blows they still tend to play hard if only because they don’t want to be embarrassed.

There are notable exceptions to this of course. The Cavs, for example, have had rosters full of players that mailed it in for millions a year. But this Cavs roster isn’t of that ilk. They aren’t talented enough to compete at the highest levels but neither are they jaded enough to spend the rest of the season going through the motions.

I don’t think that fans need to worry anyway. Water finds its level and for this Cavs team, that’s somewhere far closer to the ceiling then the upper floors. The lottery looks secure for another season.

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The Indians, on the other hand, are about to embark on another gun fight once again wielding a dull knife. They spent another offseason gathering spare parts and broken hearts through barter while the key competition around them acquired assets with cash.

It’s to their detriment but not their fault that they didn’t acquire Prince Fielder and his expanding waist line. It was an ill advised move by the Detroit Tigers. But it does emphasize why the Indians will always fall short of filling the gaps they need. They are essentially playing in a different league when it comes to better financed teams.

The acquisition of Fielder by the Tigers is interesting because it somewhat dispels the notion of small market vs. big market teams. I don’t think of Detroit as a big market anymore although that tide could be turning along with the fortunes of the auto industry. They're just a small market with a big market thinking owner.

That said, I don’t recommend that any team, least of all the Indians, overpay someone like Fielder who looks like he took training tips from an online consortium run by CC Sabathia and Dinner Bell Mel Turpin. The contract the Tigers committed to for Fielder will be a bigger millstone around their neck then the Travis Hafner contract has been around the Indians’.

I fully expect that Fielder will have some good numbers for the next year or two and some of that will come at the expense of the Indians as they try to claw back into relevance. But come years 6, 7, 8 and 9, if not years 3, 4 and 5, someone in Detroit is going to lose his job for green lighting Project Fielder for $200+ million.

Meanwhile, back at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, the Indians are putting on their usual offseason flourish designed to systematically lower expectations as part of their overriding goal each year to under promise and over deliver.

Indeed that’s why last season felt like such a revelation. With nothing promised, the Indians easily exceeded expectations. The problem is that with the limited bit of a success comes the implied obligation to further upgrade. Instead fans received the same warmed over players that can be had on the cheap as they rehab from injuries. About the only thing different from any number of seasons past is that the Indians applied that same criteria to one of their own, Grady Sizemore.

The key word in every Indians’ offseason is “if,” as in, “if Grady Sizemore can stay healthy” or “if Kevin Slowey can stay healthy” or, well, you get the picture. But as we know full well by not, most of the “ifs” become “buts” and the Indians, by virtue of their inaction, will again be scrambling to develop other revenue sources besides the more traditional route of good play-inspired attendance. And the circle goes unbroken.

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The Browns have underwhelmed thus far in the off season, but it’s early. They're is still time to massively disappoint. The only move of consequence was the addition of failed former head coach Brad Childress as the offensive coordinator.

But like most things that happen in Berea, it looks like it will come with the odd condition in the form of not allowing Childress to exercise the full benefits of his title by being the team’s play caller. But perhaps Childress was chosen exactly for that reason. As Andy Reid's offensive coordinator in Philadelphia, Childress didn't call plays then either.

Still, it smacks of a compromise reached between head coach Pat Shurmur and his boss, team president Mike Holmgren. Shurmur doesn’t appear to want to relinquish what little power he has and Holmgren needs to quell a fan insurrection over the awful state of the offense. Who better to step in and play the part of a well paid patsy then another client of both Shurmur’s and Holmgren’s and Tom Heckert's agent, Bob Lamonte, the out of work Childress?

Like most compromises of this nature, its structure suggests failure and not success. If the Browns need an offensive coordinator, and they do, then hire one and let him do the job. The last thing this team needs is another consultant, which is what Childress essentially has signed on for.

This is the kind of thing that really is starting to grate on the nerves of fans when it comes to Holmgren. Brought in to make tough decisions, he continuously backs away at the sign of any internal resistance. He kept Eric Mangini on for a year because Mangini literally pleaded to Holmgren to spare him the ax. It was nice for Mangini but awful for the fans and the progress of the franchise.

When he brought in Shurmur, who hadn’t been a head coach at any level, Holmgren allowed Shurmur to control the narrative by suggesting that he could handle both head coaching duties and the job of first assistant. It only sounds reasonable if the Browns were trying to cut costs on the number of assistants, but then when have the Browns ever been on that kind of austerity plan? They trend in the opposite direction, doling out money to meaningless coaches long since gone.

Armed with empirical proof that Shurmur (or any head coach) is ill suited to do the job of two coaches at once, Holmgren nonetheless again backed away from forcing Shurmur to relinquish some control. This can only mean more of the same for next year. If Childress lasts the entire season under this construct I’ll be amazed.

As for upgrading the roster, the first thing the Browns need to decide is which of their free agents they want to pursue. It would seem like D’Qwell Jackson and Phil Dawson are layups. More interesting is running back Peyton Hillis. Heckert is now leaking it to the media that the Browns do want Hillis back.

Hillis, when healthy, is exactly the kind of running back most teams need these days. While the presence of a running game is still important to the overall effectiveness of an offense, attitudes have changed on exactly what a presence means. There can be no doubt, for example, that a team does not need a Walter Peyton or a Barry Sanders to be successful. Quick, name me the starting running backs for the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.

Hillis is exactly the kind of effective no-name player that most teams look to have on board, as long as he doesn't cost too much. His problem is that he is injury-prone. He plays football like Grady Sizemore plays baseball and it leads to more injuries and less effectiveness.

The injuries have hurt Hillis’ bargaining power, but not in the same way they hurt Sizemore’s. Because there’s very little guaranteed money in the NFL, the chances are much better that a team would be willing to sign Hillis to a long-term contract. Sizemore couldn’t sniff anything more than the one-year deal the Indians offered him.

If Hillis is lost to free agency, it won’t be a major blow. I like his game, but he’s fungible with backs like Chris Ogbonnaya, a point that will become more evident when the Browns develop a better right side of the offensive line and employ credible receivers. At that point they’ll become far more pass oriented, like the rest of the league, with just a dash of running thrown in to keep teams honest.

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The other Browns story that remains in the background concerns the fate of former Plain Dealer beat reporter Tony Grossi. The PD’s public editor, Ted Diadiun, gave a rather farcical account of what he termed a painful but necessary decision to demote Grossi, as I anticipated in my earlier column on this subject.

Diadiun pulled out the old “standards” card and essentially suggested that it wasn’t Grossi’s views of Browns owner Randy Lerner that got him in trouble but the fact that he expressed them publicly. Apparently the Plain Dealer discourages its sports reporters from having opinions.

Diadiun is making a distinction without a difference. Irrespective of whether Grossi expressed the opinion publicly, the fact of the matter is that he didn’t respect Lerner and that didn’t seem to matter to the PD until Grossi said it out loud.

And for what it’s worth, I’m not buying the whole “inadvertent tweet” defense Grossi offered in order to save his job. Maybe Grossi did mean to respond only privately but the fact remains that he didn’t and it doesn’t matter anyway. Whether he made his views of Lerner known publicly or privately is irrelevant. He held the opinion and it did impact in some fashion on his coverage. That isn’t a sin because every reporter has an opinion on his subject matter and many times it isn’t favorable. So be it.

Indeed, I think it’s cowardly for Grossi to try and hide behind a defense that relies on the phrase “inadvertent tweet”, two words that shouldn’t ever be uttered consecutively, by the way. He feels that way, he said it, end of story. But even more cowardly is the journalistic yarn the PD is hiding behind in order to assuage the feelings of a pathetic and irrelevant billionaire and his ineffective and weak first lieutenant.

The Plain Dealer demonstrated, to the detriment of the rest of its staff, that when the going gets tough, the reporters get tossed.

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With the Super Bowl upcoming and Bill Belichick further affirming his status as one of the all time great head coaches in NFL history comes this week’s question to ponder: When Art Modell hired Belichick, he said it would be the last head coach he’d ever hire. If Modell has stuck to it, would he now be in the Hall of Fame?