Let's Not Be Aggressive

The considered word on the street is that the Cleveland Browns will be “aggressive” when free agency opens for real late Tuesday afternoon.

Well, thanks as usual to the working class journalists who brought you that pithy bit of analysis.  Left undefined though is what does it mean to be “aggressive” and it is that very definition that will be the difference between whether this team continues to occupy the 8th circle of Hell for another decade or finally graduates to a few lesser levels on its march toward real honest-to-goodness mediocrity.

The facts, such as they are, are straightforward.  The Browns are waaaaaaaaaaay under the salary cap, so much so in fact that it makes you wonder whether someone in the previous regime simply didn’t own a calculator.  By luck or design, though, this gives the Browns what the working class journalists like to call “flexibility.”  The Browns also do have plenty of roster openings or, as the working journalists like to call it, “needs.”  They also have a new owner flush with new money from a lucrative sponsorship deal and an abiding need to impress.  Mix this together and of course it must mean that the Browns will be “aggressive.”

But if we’re being honest here, and as always we must, then being “aggressive” is the last thing that this team needs to be at the moment for “aggressive” in this context carries negative connotations not positive ones.  Teams that are “aggressive” tend to overspend because they overvalue.  Far better, I think, for the Browns to defy the working class journalists.  I’d settle for “prudent” and be thrilled if they got to “smart.”  As it stands on the eve of free agency, I’m encouraged the Browns will be at least one and maybe both but will reserve celebrating because if fans in Cleveland know anything it’s that celebrating prematurely is our Achilles heel. (See Byner, Earnest.  See Ehlo, Craig)

What this free agency season really will be is a test of what kind of club president Joe Banner and what kind of general manager Mike Lombardi are going to be.  The early indication is that Banner, at least, will serve in the role of heartless bastard who will cut popular but overvalued veterans irrespective of what they’ve brought the franchise.  For what it’s worth, in football at least that’s a good thing.  If you want proof look at James Harrison in Pittsburgh and Anquan Boldin in Baltimore (though the Ravens haven’t yet cut Boldin, they simply asked him to take a 1/3 pay cut as his reward for leading them to the Super Bowl.)

Free agents tend to fall into 3 specific categories:  players completing their rookie contracts; players completing their post-rookie contracts; and players looking for their last contracts.  The latter are easily identified as those are your aging veterans angling for one final payday.  In that group goes the Browns own Phil Dawson and Josh Cribbs.  The Steelers Harrison is of the same ilk as well.

Generally speaking, these players are like that carton of milk in your refrigerator with the expiration date closing in.  They may not yet be spoiled but be forewarned, taking a drink might be fine but it might also get you a seat on the porcelain throne for the next several hours, too.  Teams taking these players do so either because they are desperate to look “aggressive” to a fan base that’s lost faith or because they think that overpaying for one or two is a calculated gamble that if it plays out will put them on the precipice of a Super Bowl.  For every one or so that works out there are 4 or 5 that don’t.  The odds aren’t great.

If the Browns jump into free agency quickly and announce a signing at 4:02 p.m. on Tuesday it will mean two things.  First, they were violating league rules by finalizing deals before the opening bell.  But it’s the Browns so I doubt no one will much care.  Second, and more importantly, they will have overvalued and overpaid because they thought some other team would try to steal from them.  It may look “aggressive” but it will end up poorly.

Teams that go fishing like this, particularly by paying any of the big guaranteed dollars and oddly long contracts that temporarily spread that money over several years are usually desperate teams trying to change their fans’ perception of them.  If Banner and Lombardi opt for this approach then you can pretty much write off Banner and Lombardi has saviors.  There almost is no way to make these kind of free agents work within a team like the Browns without causing even bigger headaches down the road.

Personally I’d like to see the Browns re-sign Dawson but I’m not going to bemoan the loss if they don’t.  Dawson is by any measure on the back end of an excellent career.  That means he’s expensive.  But kickers on the back end tend to develop consistency problems.  David Akers is Exhibit A.  Dawson may be good for another season, but anything more than a year by year contract for a kicker his age is just asking for a dead money problem in year 3 of that contract.  The surest way of losing that vaunted “flexibility” is by loading a team’s balance sheet with dead money for players long since out of the league.

Cribbs is similarly situation, a good career that’s winding down.  Yet Cribbs’ history doesn’t suggest he’s expensive.  Cribbs may ultimately get what looks like a long-term deal with another team but only as a means to spread the cap hit.  What’s more likely is a contract more backloaded than front in order to ease the inevitable cap hit that will come when he’s not invited by his new team to finish out his contract.

Cribbs simply doesn’t fit into the Browns going forward unless it is an extremely club friendly contract.  That means smallish guaranteed money and backloaded larger salaries that have no cap impact when he’s cut in another year or two.  Anything else would be a signal that Banner and Lombardi aren’t spending Jimmy Haslam’s money wisely.

It's not just the aging veterans that can get a team in trouble, either.  I'm worried that the Browns will be overbidding and hence overpaying free agents in either of the other two categories because they are desperate to look “aggressive.”

Far better for the Browns to run up the price on some other teams for players they don't really want and then use their discovered “flexibility” by being volume value players.  It's not like they have one or two slots to fill anyway.  This team needs bodies.
What free agency has really taught us is that the only way to find value players is in the same way that the New England Patriots have been finding value players for years.  That means taking your time, letting the desperate and the stupid spend themselves silly while the value market develops, which it always does.  The Patriots don’t tend to ever make a large headline in free agency and that’s something to be emulated not avoided.

The lesson in buying real estate, particularly your house, is the same lesson to be applied in free agency.  Don’t fall in love, with a house or a player.  There are always others on the market that will fill your needs and usually at a much better price.

The Browns’ so-called push into a higher level of analytics suggests that as a franchise they are tired of falling in love and overpaying only to find a leaky basement in a year or two.  That’s why it would be a surprise to me if the Browns were day one players in free agency.  That’s when all the worst deals tend to get made.  But then again I’m usually surprised by what the Browns do and like that aforesaid leak in the basement, the surprises usually are of the wrong kind.

Lingering Items--Passing Over Easter Edition

A loss on opening day isn't the end of the world or even the end of the season. It's not even the end of the series.  In a season as long as major league baseball's one game can be pretty meaningless except when you miss a playoff spot by that same game.

But the Indians won't miss the playoffs by just one game anyway so Thursday's loss to the Toronto Blue Jays will just be one that ends up one one side or other of the .500 ledger that will define the season.  Still, why is it that the Indians can't just lose a game and move on like most teams?  Why do they have to do things in such a historic and miserable fashion? And, for that matter, why does every loss have to illustrate exactly why there aren't more wins?

Thursday's excruciatingly boring loss was actually the perfect metaphor for an excruciatingly boring spring training.  There was very little to keep one's interest and most of the team and its coaches seemed to be going through the motions. 

The team that took the field on Thursday was much like the variations of it that took the field throughout spring training.  It featured players of various ill pedigrees trying to catch lightening in a bottle of careers that just don't seem to be panning out.  Behind them is a front office fixated on mining stats for greater truth while the ownership accepts the reality of its financial fate without contemplating how to change the paradigm.

It's not as if there isn't some talent on the team.  There is.  But if that’s the glue, what exactly is it holding together?  You didn't just need a program to identify all the new faces.  You needed ready access to the internet and its various resources to figure out the lineage of the pieces and parts that general manager Chris Antonetti has cobbled together to supposedly make a run at the Detroit Tigers. That's not exactly the textbook way to build a championship team.

The good news in general and with respect to Thursday, which news stands out as much like a sore thumb as anything, was Justin Masterson.  Eight very strong innings on opening day is not to be so easily dismissed.  He could have and ahould have finished what he atarted  Maybe he was tiring and had to be taken out of the game.  And in retrospect the performance of most of the bullpen Thursday was such that it's really unfair to second guess manager Manny Acta's decision to turn the game over to that bullpen.  It's just that you can't help but feel bad for Masterson, whose career here has been mostly of the hard luck variety and will continue as long as the bullpen is anchored by Chris Perez.

Perez made a mess of the game, yes, but in the larger sense it's hardly a surprise.  Perez himself is an undisciplined mess and that stems not just from a truncated spring training spent mostly nursing an injury.  It also stems from the fact that Perez seems to care little about his own conditioning or even his station in life.  Perez is deliberately taking the anti-athlete approach to one of the more critical jobs in baseball and the Indians will suffer for it, just like they did Thursday. Is it any wonder that the injuries he does suffer are suspiciously similar to those of the weekend warriors who throw a ball around about once every six months?

I get the sense that Perez seems far more interested in courting an image as a character then actually going about preparing himself to pitch in the major leagues.  He's out of shape and that doesn't seem to bother anyone associated with the Indians, including Perez.  CC Sabathia wasn’t and still isn’t a picture of conditioning either so maybe that doesn’t much matter.  Still would it kill Perez to visit a salad bar once in awhile instead of Five Guys?

Perez stood up after the game, bloated, unkempt and took the blame for the loss like a pro is supposed to do but yet he seemed so casual about it, the regret about his performance dripping from his mouth with ease like excess barbecue sauce from a pulled pork sandwich, it made me wonder whether his pitching really bothered him.  I doubt it did.

A closer has to have a short memory because saves do get blown. So in that sense there's no problem with Perez immediately putting the game behind him. But the concern with Perez is that he doesn't seem to care about anything—his conditioning, his appearance, his performance, his teammates.  Just cash the checks for as long as they roll in and then figure the rest out later. 

As much of a problem as Perez appears to be, let's also not obscure the fact that with the Indians, Cleveland now has three professional sports teams that can't generate offense.

It's as if Antonetti rehired Eddie Murray to be the hitting coach when no one was looking.  Given how low key the whole spring training regimen was, it's likely that's exactly what happened and we just didn't notice.

All the hallmarks of a Murray-coached offense were there Thursday and throughout spring training however: the lack of approach, the lack of patience, the inability to move runners. 

The Indians played 16 innings on Thursday and scored in only one of them.  Sadder still, they didn't put themselves in a position very often in any of those other innings to score. When they did, they couldn't get it done mainly because of a lack of discipline.   In context there was no chance the Indians were going to score again during that game.  It was just a matter as to when the Blue Jays would and put everyone out of their misery.

Twice Indians' hitters came to the plate with a man on third and less than two outs and twice they failed miserably.  Asdrubal Cabrera's weak grounder with the bases loaded was everything you needed to know about why.  After Michael Brantley had walked on four straight pitches, Blue Jays manager John Ferrell decided to engage in a massive display of over-managing.  Either that or he knew that Cabrera would never hit the ball out of the infield anyway so why not load it up with as many players as could fit?

Ferrell was right.  Showing all the patience of a puppy, Cabrera didn't even wait to see if Blue Jays pitcher Luis Perez, who didn't sniff the strike zone with Brantley, could find his control.  Instead Cabrera offered at the first pitch, which he could barely get a bat on, and grounded into an inning-ending double play.  Honestly it was everything you needed to know about how poorly this team prepared for the regular season wrapped up in one nice little moment.

There's no telling how the Indians will finish this season.  They got rocked on opening day last year and recovered pretty nicely.  It is just one game.  But yet when it comes to this team, why does it never seem to be just one game?

**

About that Gregg Williams tape...

Roger Goodell finally had a smoking gun and the real question now is whether professional football can survive. It's not an abstract question

Let's start with a more obvious point first, however.  Gregg Williams will never coach in the NFL again.  He probably won't be able to get an assistant defensive line coaching job in a Pop Warner league either.  For vastly different reasons, Williams is every bit as untouchable as Jerry Sandusky.

There's also another obvious point as well.  Goodell really had no choice but to do what he did to the New Orleans Saints, head coach Sean Payton and Williams.  On tape and in the most specific way possible, Williams addressed his players on who to hurt and how.  If that was the only evidence Goodell had it would still be enough.  Even if there wasn't a boatload of lawsuits pending against the NFL, Goodell still had to do what he did.

Now here is where it gets tricky. 

I'm not fond of the whole “everyone else does it defense” as a way of excusing what the Saints did but you just know it's true in this case.  The broader question, the one that Goodell doesn't want to contemplate even as he has, is whether the attitude of Williams is so institutionalized in the sport that ridding it is a losing battle. If that is the case then football will eventually die because eventually the pool of people who want to be deliberately maimed for money will go dry.

The NFL has always had and will always have a certain element of miscreants within its midst.  There are simply players that find it perversely satisfying to try and deliberately hurt their opponents. Oddly they aren't the problem so long as they represent the exception.

The problem is that football has too long glorified these exceptions in order to build brand cache. Pittsburgh Steelers' resident thug James Harrison deliberately courts an image as a tough guy and goes about his business on the field proving it with all manner of cheap shots intended to injure. He's been rewarded handsomely for it, his cheap shots shown repeatedly and not just as a cautionary tale but as an illustration of the state of the game. 

It's not as if Harrison is the only one.  Some of the more storied players in NFL history got that way precisely because their violent tendencies are the stuff of legend.  Those legends aren't urban, either.  They are an institutionalized part of the NFL experience, extolled by coaches, rewarded by owners and celebrated by the media that vote them into the Hall of Fame.

The question on the table now that all of the concussion-related lawsuits ultimately will attempt to really answer is whether football can survive in any other way.  If you ask the majority of the players, they will say it cannot because any concession by a player about the violence of his sport is considered cowardly.  But it is this mostly silent majority of players that need to speak up now and defend Goodell and what he's trying to accomplish instead of hiding behind the increasingly reprehensible DeMaurice Smith and his misguided attempt to always blame management for an issue his members mostly control.

It's sickening when Hines Ward defends Harrison each time he deliberately cheap shots an opponent. It's sickening when Drew Brees defends his head coach while abandoning the union brothers like Frank Gore who were deliberately targeted by his coach. It's ridiculous to extol Scott Fujita as one of the NFL good guys most concerned about player safety when he actively participated in the bounty pool.

Players of stature, like Brees, Fujita and Ward should instead have been the most vocal on calling out their teammates for their damaging behavior. Every word and deed in support just furthered the institutionalization of the problem and made it that much more difficult to stop.

The union and its members are on the wrong side of the problem when they openly mock Goodell, as many have, for trying to take a safer route for such a great game. It’s simply not true that football can’t survive without all the cheap shoting. It can and has.  What football can no longer abide is a head in the sand approach to the life threatening nature of the way some players and coaches want to play it.  If it has to abide that because Goodell has failed or because he has been undermined by the very players he’s trying to protect, then that is what will kill the game.

**

Still fixated as I am on the Indians at the moment, this week’s question to ponder: What is the Indians’ back up plan if Chris Perez’s Thursday is a trend and not an anomaly?

Lingering Items--Penalties Edition

Whether the sanctions levied against Ohio State were too harsh or too lenient may be a matter of perspective. That won’t stop nearly anyone from questioning athletic director Gene Smith’s competency, however.

The biggest surprise levied against the Buckeyes was the 2012 bowl ban. Otherwise it seems like things pretty much went down as expected. When Ohio State self-imposed a litany of sanctions against the program, all they really did was give the NCAA a little wriggle room to make a few additional tweaks in order to look like it wasn’t just simply taking the Buckeyes’ word on everything.

So the tweak they made was not the one that was expected mainly because Smith was emphatic time and again that a bowl ban wasn’t on the horizon. So sure was Smith, in fact, that he didn’t even contemplate pre-empting the NCAA on that count by making the 6-6 Buckeyes sit home this bowl season instead.

What fans have now is a meaningless Gator Bowl to soothe their feelings when what they really wanted was to hit like the hurricane new head coach Urban Meyer promised for next season, play for the Big Ten title and possibly a national championship.

Smith is taking more heat for this then perhaps he deserves, though he does deserve some. It’s difficult to take Smith to task for the underlying infraction given former head coach Jim Tressel’s conduct. And assuming the conspiracy theorists are just that and Tressel didn’t take a bullet for Smith (what would be his incentive for that?), Smith’s only real sin was not level setting his bosses or the fans of the program.

The feeling always has been that Smith is wired into the NCAA in ways that other athletic directors are not. Every time he spoke, in that semi-sincere, semi-arrogant way of his, it carried the imprimatur that he knew from where he spoke. It turns out he was just as clueless as nearly everyone else in this whole matter.

One of the cardinal sins you can make in any organization is to overpromise and under deliver, which is exactly what Smith did here. Had he kept his mouth shut and just said that he hopes that the university had done enough to satisfy the NCAA, I doubt anyone would have been surprised by the bowl ban. After all, the NCAA is a random, feckless, morally undisciplined enterprise rife with conflicts of interest and wholly incapable of governing a church picnic, let alone a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

But the one thing to remember is that the NCAA Committee of Infractions ultimately is a group of individuals with their own feelings and emotions and the last thing individuals with their own feelings and emotions want is someone who carries the imprimatur of authority, like Smith, telling them what they should or shouldn’t do.

In many ways, Smith’s constant proclamations that a bowl ban was not in the offing served almost as a dare to the NCAA. So where’s the surprise that they did knock the battery off of Smith’s shoulder only to watch him flinch?

I have very mixed feelings about the sanctions overall. Much of my trepidation is with how the NCAA treated Tressel, a very fine man and educator, who made a serious mistake. But a 5-year “show cause” finding is particularly harsh. It may be that Tressel wasn’t going to coach again in college anyway, but to basically be told that he can’t earn a living at his chosen profession for the next 5 years is an astounding penalty given his one indiscretion.

As for the bowl ban, that seems harsh if only because while the Buckeyes did play in last year’s Sugar Bowl, part of their sanctions was to forfeit the game and give back the money earned. Effectively, it’s as if they have been banned from two bowl games.

Yet the NCAA isn’t going to do much to explain its reasoning mainly because it doesn’t have to, which gets to the other side of my feelings about this. I understand that the conduct engaged in by the Buckeyes’ players broke a rule and I understand that Tressel covered it up deliberately. But the rule makes no sense in any context but one in which the NCAA doesn’t want anyone else earning money that could have instead lined their pockets. The fact that Tressel covered it up just proves the adage, though, that the cover up is often worse then the underlying breach.

I know that a lot of fans are calling for Smith to be fired and maybe he should be as part of the overall housecleaning. I’m not sure he could have ferreted out Tressel’s misconduct but some of the other activities that went unchecked are a failure that occurred under Smith’s watch. He should have had more robust systems in place.

Ultimately, though, the NCAA matters are now finally behind the Buckeyes. Sure they’ll linger because of the bowl ban and scholarship reductions, but the football program itself is on solid footing right now. Besides, it gives Meyer and the players the added chip on their shoulders for the 2012 season and should set them up well for 2013 and beyond. The hurricane may be delayed, but it’s still a good bet that it will hit ground and leave appropriate damage in its wake.

**
James Harrison, the NFL’s reigning and most clueless thug, seems to have reluctantly accepted the fact that his vicious hit on Colt McCoy was illegal. The revelation came to him apparently about the time he lost his appeal and the rest of his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates, while publicly supporting him, privately sate him down and told him that his brutish ways were actually hurting the team far more then helping. That it happened in the wake of a bad loss to the San Francisco 49ers is just a bonus.

But Harrison, as is his wont, doesn’t go down without a fight and thus surmised that the Browns as well should be fined or otherwise penalized for not properly attending to McCoy. So we have Harrison adamantly denying he did anything wrong for most of the last two weeks suddenly getting religion and becoming the voice of concern for McCoy?

Harrison is like the criminal who in the course of robbing a house gets bitten by the watch dog and then sues the homeowner. Lacking an ability to process either irony or context Harrison should just shut his mouth and play within the rules, assuming he can which actually may not be a safe assumption at all.

Meanwhile the Browns were indeed let off the hook for their malpractice when it came to safeguarding their starting quarterback but the rest of the NFL must now pay a price by staging so-called independent athletic trainers in the press box to oversee all the vicious hits and make suggestions to each team’s medical staff as to which players they may want to administer an exam to.

I’m happy whenever the NFL creates additional jobs, particularly for athletic trainers. I wonder, though, exactly why the NFL went macro on this instead of focusing specifically on the fact that the Browns medical and coaching staff screwed up. Indeed, the Browns’ medical staff for the last several years has a distinct history of putting its players in jeopardy but yea, it sounds like the NFL has an institutional problem.

It may very well be that the Browns and their medical staff needed some tough love in the form of some kind of penalty given their history but then again what we know most about the NFL is that they are very reticent to punish management and very pleased to punish the players.

The person to feel sorry for here is McCoy. He’s about to miss his second straight game and whatever grip he had on the Browns’ starting quarterback job. More than that, though, he very easily could have lost his life or at least suffered some permanent damage when he was sent back into the game seconds after getting his brains scrambled.

There was a teaching moment here just not the one the NFL focused on.

**
The Cleveland Indians continue to make their quiet offseason noise by signing any retread with a pulse that they can find. The latest contestant in this year’s version of “Who Can Fill the Shoes of David Dellucci?” is Andy “Don’t Call Me Either Adam or Dave” LaRoche.

This LaRoche, the son of former Tribe closer Dave LaRoche, a mediocre pitcher from the mid 1970s, brings a resume that includes a .247 average with 5 RBI in 40 games last season. But there’s more. LaRoche’s high water mark, batting average-wise, is .258.

If it makes you wonder why anyone would continue to sign LaRoche given his age (28) and the fact that he’s never done anything of note at any time for any major league team he played for, just follow the money. LaRoche, like so many that the Indians sign every offseason, is on a minor league contract. The team pays more in laundry bills then it would have to pay LaRoche.

If by chance he makes the big league team out of training camp, and if he does, look out, then he’ll make the major league minimum, which for 2012 is slightly more than $400,000. In other words, what LaRoche lacks in skills he more then makes up for in the fact that he works cheaply.

The one good thing to keep in mind in all of this is that Eric Wedge is no longer the team’s manager. LaRoche is just the kind of player that Wedge loved, mainly because LaRoche’s baseball skills approximate those that Wedge possessed as a player. That would have meant only one thing: a spring and early summer of screaming at the television every time LaRoche grounded out weakly with runners in scoring position.

**

The Cavs start their season in a few days, which leads to this week’s question to ponder: Will the Cavs take Jared Sullinger with the first pick in next year’s draft?

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Lingering Items--Evaluation Edition

Baylor University quarterback Robert Griffin III won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night and that is apparently enough to anoint him the next future quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. It's exactly that kind of patience that has gotten this franchise in trouble in the first place.

Maybe it's best to forgive the locals who see Griffin as another Cam Newton, someone who can come in and play well on a bad team. It's brought some excitement to a moribund Carolina Panthers franchise so perhaps there's some legitimacy in that view.

But as you ponder a future with Griffin, ask yourself whether quarterback is even close to being the biggest area of need on the Browns at the moment. For anyone who has already written off Colt McCoy, what is it exactly that you see in Griffin that would have made this Browns team any better this year?

Would Griffin's presence make Mohamed Massaquoi any faster? Would his presence make Josh Cribbs run a decent route or help Greg Little catch the ball? Would Griffin have healed Peyton Hillis or Montario Hardesty? Would Griffin have been able to turn anyone on the right side of the offensive line into a better run or pass blocker?

Griffin may be a game changer but with all his talent there are things he can't do and that starts with filling the prodigious holes in the Browns' offense. Personally the thought of the Browns investing all that cash into a first round pick like Griffin only to watch him get clobbered by the same things that are turning McCoy into a pinata is about as appealing as it was watching the Browns invest all that cash in Tim Couch only to watch him get clobbered into a premature end to his career.

Somewhere along about the time Pittsburgh's James Harrison was engaging in about his 12th dirty hit of the season by blasting into McCoy's facemask with the crown of his helmet, many fans and too many jugheads in the media decided McCoy wasn't the answer. And if that blow to the head didn't do it then it was the critical interception that McCoy threw a few plays later that sealed his fate, never mind that his brain was so scrambled by the play he probably couldn't even remember which team he was playing for.

This is why it is so difficult to be a Browns fan. Not only do you have to put up with an organization that redefines incompetence each season, you also have to deal with a fan base with the patience of a newborn.

I get that everyone's tired of all the excuses. So am I. But to condemn McCoy to the Island of Misfit Browns Quarterbacks right now given the putrid cast that general manager Tom Heckert surrounded him with this season makes as much sense as the BCS. If McCoy is to be evaluated in the context of this team, then why does anyone think that Griffin would fare any better or last any longer?

The same crappy front office that brought this mess of an offense, that decided that no moves needed to be made at wide receiver, that decided an injury prone Tony Pashos was the answer on the right side of the line, that put their faith in Montario Hardesty, is going to be the same crappy front office that drafts Griffin and then surrounds him with the same kind of second tier castoffs.

That's the nub of the problem. There isn't a quarterback in the entire NFL that could move the needle statistically for this offense. And there isn't a quarterback in college, especially a junior like Griffin or a senior like Andrew Luck, that could have done any better then McCoy.

This isn't to defend McCoy so much as it is to point the white hot glare of the spotlight on the reality of this Browns' offense. It's a mess in almost every way a team's offense can be a mess. Outside of Joe Thomas, there isn't a quality player lining up on that side of the ball at the moment. The few players that even pass for decent, like Hillis, have been hurt all season.

If this were Vegas, it would be as if the Browns' front office bankrolled McCoy at the blackjack table and then told him that the only time he could bet was when he was dealt a 8 and a 7. Winning 4 of every 16 hands sounds about right to me. And yet the fans seem puzzled by that lack of success.

I think McCoy has some ground to cover as a quarterback and perhaps he may never make it as a big time NFL quarterback. But anyone who thinks they can make that conclusion after this season with that supporting cast ought to quit their day job and apply for a job with the Browns as the next general manager. Sure things won't get any better, but on the plus side they probably won't get any worse.

**
Speaking of that thug James Harrison, if Roger Goodell and the NFL don't come down with at least a two game suspension on him for the hit on McCoy then it will be confirmation that they aren't really serious about eliminating concussions. And if I were representing the former and current players suing the NFL for its responses to the growing number of concussions I'd use the hit and the lack of effective action by the league for it as exhibit 1 that the NFL just doesn't get it.

Harrison by any measure is the dirtiest player in the league. Last year he was fined over $500,000 as the result of four vicious, unnecessary hits. Browns fans will recall that Harrison knocked both Josh Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi out of the same game with brutal, illegal hits.

That of course hasn't deterred Harrison one bit. In reaction to the fines, Harrison hasn't just shown no remorse. He more than double downed on his thug persona by slurring Goodell in an article entitled “Confessions of a Hit Man” that appeared in Men's Journal.

I like in particular how Harrison did his best to portray himself as an outlaw with a grudge, someone who is constantly fighting for some abstract notion of respect despite the huge salary and plush lifestyle he leads thanks to the generosity of the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The choice quote of that article is the one that hopefully Goodell reads right before he throws Harrison's ass out of the league for good: “But up until last year, there was no word of me being dirty—till Roger Goodell, who's a crook and a puppet, said I was the dirtiest player in the league. If that man was on fire and I had to piss to put him out, I wouldn't do it. I hate him and I will never respect him.” For good measure, he also called Goodell a “faggot.”

Three points about those quotes. First, Harrison's a liar. Goodell never called Harrison the league's dirtiest player, though he should have. Second, Harrison's reputation goes back further then a year ago. He's always been a thug who would rather lead with his helmet when making a tackle then take the easier and less riskier bath of tackling with his shoulder. Third, Harrison apologized in that passive aggressive way most people apologize. He's sorry if anyone was offended by his remarks. He's not sorry he made them. He's not saying he didn't mean them. He's just sorry if you're too much of a sensitive puke to hear them.

The Harrison apologists in Pittsburgh, which include the Steelers' owner and the head coach, will point out that this is Harrison's first personal foul of the season and that he is trying to conform despite his loud mouth bragging to the contrary. What these apologists fail to appreciate is that Harrison has no interest in learning his lesson. He sees himself as the protector of some ancient league ethic about the violence inherent in the sport and remains hell bent on upholding the image of the thug who posed for that article bare-chested and brandishing two guns. Besides, the lack of personal fouls is hardly a marker for better behavior. Harrison didn't draw a penalty on the Cribbs or Massaquoi hits either and they were clearly illegal.

There also is the theory that even the Plain Dealer's resident contrarian Bill Livingston advanced that somehow Harrison can't really be blamed because McCoy appeared to be a runner on the play. Well, McCoy was scrambling, true. He also threw the ball from behind the line of scrimmage, which makes him a quarterback. No one's complaining that Harrison should have held up hitting McCoy at all. Where Harrison crossed the line was lowering in lowering his head so that the crown of his helmet was aimed squarely at McCoy's chin. Harrison could have hit McCoy in the chest but that is a pussy move in Harrison's world. Far better to blast him in the face just so he and the rest of the league get the message.

The league sent Ndamukong Suh to the sideline for two games for stomping on a player during a nationally televised game. Suh's high schoolish move looked awful but caused far less damage. Suh's a repeat offender that has more than demonstrated that he has no predisposition to play by the rules. In that regard, though, he's just following the lead of players like Harrison. If the league really wants to send an effective message to the Suhs of the world, they have to start by sending Harrison to the sideline as well. And if they were really serious, Harrison's season would be over.

**
It looks like Cleveland Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is in hot water with some fans, including Cavs fans, for opening his mouth again and daring to speak the truth about the joke that the NBA has come at the expense of small market teams.

Gilbert was getting excoriated in some corners for being one of the more aggressive owners during the NBA's lockout. Gilbert's fight then and now was to level the playing field for a league that is tilting in favor of a few super teams and against everyone else.

If you had invested as much money as Gilbert has into this franchise and then watched as the league sat passively as that franchise's value was being significantly diminished by rules that should be designed to protect it, wouldn't you speak up just as loudly?

It's not worth getting into all the particulars of the Chris Paul trade and its ramifications on the entire league. What is worth getting into is all the various goofy rules and exceptions that can easily get manipulated by the league's high rolling clubs at the expense of everyone else.

Basketball is a winter sport and it's understandable that pampered players would rather play their 41 home games a year in a warmer climate. No one wants to go to Minnesota or Cleveland or a dozen other places in the winter. Hell, I hate being in Cleveland in the winter. But if the NBA is truly going to thrive it must protect the Minnesotas and Clevelands of the league even if it comes at the expense of nullifying trades that aren't in the sport's best interest.

Sure that's a slippery slope but on the other hand it's exactly why there is a commissioner in the first place. His most important duty is as a guardian of the entire league's best interest and not just the interest of a coddled few.

Cavs fans should be applauding Gilbert, not crucifying him. Gilbert's motives may be selfish—the protection of his own investment—but they have the byproduct of protecting the overall health of the league.

Personally I'd rather have Gilbert being the standard bearer for fairness then have owners like the Dolans who have been less vocal and far more compliant in fostering baseball's inherent economic unfairness.

It's a funny thing about fans. As much as they like to bitch about how the cards get stacked against them, particularly in Cleveland, they'll do little on their own accord, like stop supporting those who stacked those cards against them. Meanwhile when someone with some gravitas does step forward on their behalf their pride takes over and they complain that they don't need any help in their fight against the bully, even as they stand their bleeding from the beating they've been taking.

**
With the Cavs opening up training camp this past Friday and the talk now of waiving Baron Davis so that his salary won't count against the cap, this week's question to ponder: Doesn't it seem rather convenient that Davis has suddenly developed a bad back?

Head Cases

When Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards brought guns into the locker room at the Verizon Center he didn’t just violate NBA rules, he also committed a crime. When Areneas and his teammates joked about it a few days later in a pregame ritual, NBA commissioner David Stern came unglued and suspended Arenas for the rest of last season and laid down the law to his cohorts.

If NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has a similar sense of outrage, he’ll do likewise with Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison and perhaps a few of his cronies as well.

Harrison didn’t commit any crimes while playing against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, but he did commit two rather flagrant penalties, neither of which were called and both of which knocked out players of the game. Both were brutal hits to the head, which are specifically prohibited by the NFL.

Making matters worse is the rather blasé attitude of not just Harrison, but his teammates and even his head coach, Mike Tomlin. Despite all the emphasis on head injuries throughout the league, when it comes right down to it, the NFL’s message just isn’t getting through to the people that need to understand it best—the players and the coaches.

When T.J. Ward hit a defenseless Jordan Shipley, he was justifiably fined. Afterward, no one in the Browns’ organization showed much concern for the hit itself or Shipley’s well-being. Ward focused on trying to establish his credentials as a tough defensive back and head coach Eric Mangini spent time defending his player.

Maybe the two spoke behind the scenes and perhaps Ward was given some additional coaching on better technique. If that occurred, no one is talking about it but they should. It’s not a sign of weakness or even acknowledgement that a previous hit was wrong. It’s just addressing a safety issue. Irrespective, the situation with Ward pales in comparison to the chirping coming out of Pittsburgh regarding the two blows Harrison unapologetically delivered to two opposing players.

Harrison talked about how “geeked up” a hit like the one he put on Cribbs gets everyone on his team, “especially when you find out that the guy is not really hurt—he’s just sleeping.”

Stop right there for a moment and admire both the ignorance and the arrogance. Harrison is a local kid, Akron born and educated at Kent State. Make all the jokes you want about that scholastic resume but I find it hard to believe that Harrison really is that ignorant, to equate being knocked cold to merely sleeping. I do think he’s arrogant enough not to care about the difference.

A person who’s sleeping is doing so voluntarily, like taking a nap on a sleepy winter Saturday afternoon. When a person is knocked cold, as Cribbs was, it means that he suffered a blow to his head that was so severe it caused his brain to crash into the inner wall of the skull and some level of internal bleeding occurred. A few minutes later, the brain essentially regained its intended equilibrium and Cribbs regained consciousness. It’s not like waking up from a nap. But that’s hardly the end of the story.

Cribbs is going to feel the effects of that hit for a few days, perhaps a few weeks. Generally the resulting injuries aren’t permanent and the symptoms such as dizziness and nausea disappear within a few weeks. But repeated hits cause repeated damage that increases the risk that permanent brain injury will result.

After being dismissive of the hit on Cribbs Harrison then completely downplayed the hit on a defenseless Mohamed Massaquoi. According to the Plain Dealer, the hit to the helmet left Massaquoi with some neck pain and memory loss. Harrison said, “I could have put a lot more into it than I did.” Well, there is that.

If Harrison’s self-congratulatory tone and simultaneous downplaying of its actual impact weren’t offensive enough, consider the words of James Farrior, who told the media, as reported in the Plain Dealer, “Today was especially good because he took out their top dog, really. He took out the biggest weapon they had. He didn’t do it intentionally, but with the intensity he plays with, it’s liable to happen sooner or later.”

Then there was everyone’s favorite cheap shot artist, the ever grinning, ever scheming Hines Ward. According to the Plain Dealer, he said “you see a guy like [Harrison]—knocking guys out like that—he’s a man on a mission.”

And there was more: “hopefully nothing serious was wrong with those guys. But he set the tempo for everybody else. He’s our emotional leader.” Yea, hopefully.

Taken collectively, what you have thus far is an attitude that is about 180 degrees from what Goodell and the rest of the league are trying to accomplish when it comes to head injuries.

When the players celebrate Harrison as a warrior, a man on a mission, the inspirational leader, someone trying to set the tone for the defense and if a few head injuries happen, la di da, they’re demonstrating a reckless indifference for the welfare of their fellow competitors. They also are demonstrating that whatever educational programs and fines thus far that the league has imposed have had less impact on them then Brett Favre’s problems with women.

Every one of these same players, especially Ward, is going to find themselves on the business end of one of these hits. It’s liable to happen sooner or later as they like to say And I suspect they might feel differently when they find themselves sitting out a few games, perhaps unable to earn performance bonuses or perhaps finding their careers jeopardized, because some jackass ballplayer thinks he needs to set a tone by playing illegally.

Perspective sure can be a bitch in these circumstances. Right now I’m sure there are plenty of fans in Pittsburgh celebrating Harrison’s play and carping at anyone from Cleveland who dares whine about it.

It’s the same thing way Cleveland fans played the whole Shipley/Ward encounter. At that time I posited how Cleveland fans might feel if it were Leon Hall and Josh Cribbs instead. But that theoretical turned into reality when it was Harrison and Cribbs instead. Now the Browns’ message boards are lit up with comments about Harrison’s blasts and, not surprisingly, most of those same people defending Ward are complaining loudly about Harrison.

No one is trying to put a skirt on these players but to act as if knocking players out cold is an acceptable consequence given all the research to the contrary is just more than a tad foolish. But that sort of logic tends to get lost on the fans whose player was the perpetrator and not the victim. It also tends to get lost on the totally clueless, like Harrison.

As for whether he really had any remorse for knocking out Cribbs, Harrison got the last word. “I don’t want to injure anybody, but I’m not opposed to hurting anybody. There’s a big difference being hurt and being injured. You get hurt, you shake it off and come back the next series or the next game.”

It’s a fine and self-serving line that Harrison is trying to draw for himself but it’s clear that he doesn’t see brain trauma as an injury. The medical profession may disagree and I suspect the NFL gods will, too. And the only way they can really send the right message to Harrison, Ward, Farrior and the rest of his posse and the rest of the players for that matter that they are taking this issue deadly seriously, is to look at Harrison’s record of cheap shots, the nature of the hits themselves, and sit his ass out for four games, minimum.