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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You get the sense from listening to Cleveland Browns president Joe Banner that this year’s regular season is just one big inconvenience. Banner hasn't liked the make up of this team since he arrived and those pesky games, like this week's against Minnesota, keep getting in the way of his grand scheme to remake the team in his own crabby image.

Banner said that the first time he talked to the Indianapolis Colts about Trent Richardson was on Tuesday. But when he pressed whether Mikey called Jimmy or Jimmy called Mikey he deliberately avoided answering. He might as well have just admitted it. General Manager Mike Lombardi saw that the Colts needed a running back and made the call. That the Colts bit in the manner they did probably shocked Lombardi even more than the day Banner reached across the table to Lombardi, hand extended, and said "you're hired."

But let's be honest about a few things. Neither Banner, Lombardi, Rob Chudzinski nor Norv Turner much liked Richardson. He was traded because he had more value at the moment than the player they like even less, Brandon Weeden.

It’s not like the Browns’ record this season hinges appreciably on whether Richardson or even Weeden is on the roster. This is a deeply flawed team that had at best only a realistic shot at a handful of wins even before Richardson was traded and Weeden banged his thumb.

To understand this trade it’s best to remember that the only place where it really matters whether you won four games or two is when establishing next year’s draft order. Banner wanted to enhance his chances of getting next year’s very first pick and this trade, coupled with Weeden's injury, presented a particularly enticing hedge. Either the Browns get it through straight out incompetence, the most likely path, or through a package of picks. That’s what Banner and Lombardi are betting on. It’s a suckers bet.
Where did it all turn bad for Richardson in Cleveland? Probably about the time new owner Jimmy Haslam hired Joe Banner to be the club’s president. Banner has some very specific ideas on where players should or shouldn’t be drafted and what they should or shouldn’t be paid. It’s why Phil Dawson is gone, for example. There isn’t a chance in hell that Banner would have drafted Richardson with the fourth pick in last year’s draft and if possible even less of a chance he’d have traded three picks to move up one spot to draft him third.
I can only imagine the assessment that Banner must have given Haslam about last year’s draft and the boneheaded move the incredibly incapable Mike Holmgren made to gut the draft to get Richardson. And that was before Banner gave Haslam an earful about the abject stupidity that is drafting a 29 year old rookie quarterback.
But if there was a linchpin to the urgency of moving Richardson it probably came during the team’s first drive against the Ravens last Sunday. Weeden had just hit tight end Jordan Cameron for a 53-yard gain that put the ball at the Ravens’ 7 yard line. That’s the point at which you give it to your number one running back, the third pick in last year’s draft and let him show what he’s made of. Chud and Turd did just that, giving Richardson two shots at the end zone. He gained three yards on the first and one on the next. Weeden then through ineffectively to Davone Bess on third down before settling for the Billy Cundiff field goal.
Richardson’s career in Cleveland was over right then. The inability to score at that moment likely convinced Banner and Lombardi that Richardson lacked the strength or explosiveness to grind out 7 yards against a Ravens defense that is a shadow of its Super Bowl self. It’s hard to argue the point.
One of the bigger surprises, at least to me, has been the fan reaction. My sense is that it’s not so much that the fans were wholly vested in Richardson. It’s that the trade gave them a hook on which to hang their building anger at a franchise that has abused them for over a decade.
Banner is right that he has to earn the fan’s trust and given his nature is certainly comfortable with waiting the 12+ months, at least, that it will take before any aspect of this trade can be objectively analyzed. What Banner doesn’t quite get yet is that the fans don’t have that same comfort. While Banner was in Philadelphia, the fans here were buying Courtney Brown and Tim Couch jerseys.
The fans intellectually understand the Browns’ thinking behind the trade. What they don’t understand is why this franchise keeps taking a dump in their punchbowls the minute they set it out for the party. Fans have barely had time to build their hopes for a season that was bound to collapse anyway. Raising the white flag so early in the season in such an unmistakable way is just unsettling. They really wanted their 1-5 start before settling into several months of real bitching. It’s the arc and rhythm of every Browns season and to have it disturb this quickly messes with one’s equilibrium.
You have to admire Banner’s stones in taking the heat at Wednesday night’s press conference just as you have to admire his stony willingness to be very nonspecific about how this trade will make the Browns better. After all, there’s still the little matter of using the pick effectively. We know that the Browns 2.0 have whiffed on every first round pick except Joe Thomas. With that kind of history there’s no reason for the fans to believe, let alone believe with certainty, that this trade will in fact make the Browns better.
On the other hand, it doesn’t make them worse. They’ve scored one meaningless touchdown this season with Richardson on the roster. The only thing this does, really, is mostly close the books on what was an awful draft class. They’ll be completely closed when Weeden is gone, which he too most assuredly is.
Lost in the shuffle of yesterday’s trade was the earlier press conference on Wednesday when Chud announced that Brian Hoyer would be this week’s starter. Chud was asked whether Weeden will return to the lineup as the starter once he’s healthy. Chud danced around it like Banner dancing around who called whom, refusing to make that commitment despite numerous opportunities to do so. If Weeden does return as a starter it’s because Hoyer craps his pants as a starter or gets injured. Weeden will find himself in the offseason competing with the likes of Colt McCoy for a backup gig somewhere.
If you’re looking for the real head scratcher in this deal, ask yourself why Indianapolis was willing to give up a first round pick for anyone. That kind of trade doesn’t happen in the NFL. The Colts’ Jim Irsay never got past Richardson’s pedigree when evaluating the trade. I can’t think of running back in the entire league I’d give up a first round pick for so yea, while we’re at it, let’s give Lombardi some credit for lacking the shame it must have taken to even ask the Colts for a first round pick. He probably had to get their confirmation in writing when the Colts jumped because hearing them say “yes” had to convince Lombardi that his hearing must be failing.
If there’s a real loser in this trade it’s probably Chud. Irrespective of the underlying circumstances, he’ll catch the brunt of what will surely be a one or two win season. The Browns could improve next season with all the picks they’ve gathered but is that a four or five game improvement? Even so that would amount to a two year losing record for Chud, which is all the shelf life coaches get in Cleveland.
Goodbye, Trent. You weren’t ever good enough or bad enough to get all that emotional about. In that way, you were the perfect Cleveland Brown. With the trade Banner is on his way to achieving that same status.

Posted with Blogsy

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

The real trick when writing about the Cleveland Browns is how to extricate yourself from the numbing sameness of it all, again in order to force the fingers to push keys as you struggle to say something, anything remotely new. Watching the Browns lose to the Baltimore Ravens Sunday was to essentially watch the tape from the previous week’s debacle against Miami and try to invent a new angle. It was cruel but not unusual.

Sure there were differences, subtle at best, between the two games. The overarching themes were exactly the same. No greater lessons were learned about this wretched team. Just initial impressions solidly confirmed.

Brandon Weeden is still an awful quarterback. He does enough to make a case for employment as a permanent long term NFL backup though I remain wholly unconvinced that he’s the kind of second stringer that you wouldn’t mind seeing play once in awhile. He’s actually the kind of backup that should play behind guys like Aaron Rodgers or Peyton Manning, quarterbacks not typically prone to injuries. If Weeden’s in charge, dread is hovering.

Weeden had a statistically insignificant day in the sense that he completed a fair amount of passes for a fair amount of yards and didn’t suffer the indignity of adding to his burgeoning wrong-sided touchdowns to interceptions ratio. Where he wasn’t insignificant though was in making plays that absolutely had to be made if this offense will ever be thought of as anything other than incompetent.

How a professional quarterback, a first rounder at that, could absolutely whiff on a cupcake throw to a running back who had nothing but green grass and high tides in front of him in Chris Ogbonnaya is nearly beyond comprehension.

Does Weeden simply not listen to his coaching staff when they implore him weekly to develop touch and occasionally do something other than try to throw the ball through a brick wall on every pass? Is he uncoachable or simply untalented?

The kind of miss on the Ogbonnaya disaster captures in a simple sequence exactly what’s wrong with Weeden. He seems intellectually to understand the throw that’s supposed to be made, just as he seems intellectually to understand generally the nature and flow of the offensive schemes that Rob “Chud” Shurmur has designed. What he can’t do except in the least pressurized situations is turn intellect into execution.

The sum total of a quarterback’s existence, from high school to the pros is to make that pass. Sure there is a lot of moving pieces and parts to the position. Reading defenses is important. So is remembering the snap count. Ultimately, though, when the team needs its quarterback most is when a big play beckons. The line of demarcation between the good and the also ran is the ability to make that play.

What makes Monday’s key failure so distressing, so utterly soul drenching, is that the miss to Ogbonnaya affirmed that Weeden hasn't improved one iota from last season to now. There has been no second year upgrade in ability. The numbing sameness of it all, again.

But because this is Cleveland and because it’s the Browns, the starving fan base clings to any glimmer of progress even as it takes to the airwaves to vent a perpetually full well of anger. So in that vein we look to the insignificant improvement in Weeden's passing stats as we look to the other contributory factors as to why the Browns loss. There are always other contributors. Let’s face it, it’s not like the Browns are merely one player away.

You could start with the back up running back that is Ogbonnaya and criticize him for not having the sufficient skills to catch a fastball barehanded, even if he was only expect the soft toss that would have been more than adequate to make the play. All true and yet let’s remember his role. He’s the back up running back on a really bad team. Where exactly do you think that puts him in the ranking of the 1600 or so active players in the NFL today? Doesn't that just emphasize why a supposedly pedigreed quarterback like Weeden has to make a better throw?

Then there’s the usual culprit of the offensive line, especially the right side of the line. Mitchell Schwartz and Oniel Cousins may be the two worst offensive linemen in a generation and they are playing next to each other. You could leave a stick of butter sitting on the counter and then microwave a knife for 5 minutes and that knife would still find more resistance cutting through that stick of butter than opposing defensive linemen find from the Browns’ right side.

It would appear as though the Browns have no other options but Schwartz and Cousins at the moment but that can’t possibly be true because there is no one worse. I suppose the Browns could sign others who’d play just as bad. Indeed that’s exactly what I’d expect them to do. They have a track record. But go ahead and sign others anyway. The Browns have no particular strategy that doesn't start with the word “if…” so signing anyone else, and I mean anyone else, would be reflect both the crapshoot nature of this franchise and could just work. Hell yea it could. Go buy some tickets now.

And where would this team be without the scary talent of Greg Little? Actually they’d still be 0-2 but that’s beside the point. Little is a really, really unique receiver if by unique one means he can’t catch. To call Little a receiver isn’t to just insult the Larry Fitzgeralds of the world. It’s also an insult to the Fair Hookers of the world.

You can’t even make the case that Little is Braylon Edwards without the attitude. Little has plenty of attitude. It’s why he was available to the Browns in the first place, another reclamation project of the old regime. At least on that rare occasion Edwards would actually make a catch that was difficult. Little hasn't even reached that level of maddening inconsistency, except of course with his driving ability. Little once again and despite previous assurances gathered in a bunch more motor vehicle violations early Monday morning, most notably driving on the license that was suspended for all the other infractions he had. He’s awful and deserves to be benched and then cut.

The play calling was again suspect with Trent Richardson carrying only a slightly higher level workload in a game that, like last week, was close for three quarters. The Chud and Turd monster aren’t keen on Richardson; that much is clear. Yet there’s no one else on the roster and if nothing else the threat of a commitment to use your number one pick from last season on a consistent basis could take some heat off of Weeden. If anyone could use less heat, it’s Weeden.

What was perhaps more confusing about the play calling though was the formations used. All off season fans were told that Weeden was a shotgun quarterback and having him play behind center was akin to having Bruce Springsteen play a banjo. Indeed, last season Pat Shurmur rarely had Weeden play out of the shotgun formation. This season is somewhat a different story but not nearly as much as fans were sold, if the first two games are any indication.

Sunday Weeden was in the shotgun for 34 plays and behind center for 23. Against Miami, if you disregard the final series for a moment when the Browns were scurrying to score to make the final score respectable, it was a nearly identical 31 times in the shotgun and 24 plays behind center.

What is instructive is that in actuality when the Browns are running their “regular” offense, you know the one that you see for most of the game as compared to the equally inept version that rears its ugly head just before the half or at the very end of games, Chud and Turd are as likely to put Weeden behind center as they are in the shotgun.

If Weeden’s strength as a quarterback lies mostly from the shotgun (and we’re taking a huge leap here that he has particular strengths as a quarterback) then why aren’t Chud and Turd taking greater advantage of it? They seem to prefer the shotgun formation when the team has to score and is pressed for time, such as near the end of each half of the game. Why isn’t that good enough the rest of the time, particularly when you have a fairly immobile quarterback playing behind a porous offensive line who needs all the head start he can muster before getting pounded once again?

The Browns’ offense may be a work in progress but it’s perfectly unclear what it’s progressing to. Chud and Turd don’t really know what to do with Weeden and their play calling is the best reflection of that. In other words, Weeden wasn't Chud and Turd’s first choice to play quarterback. For all intents, Weeden is to quarterback on this team as Schwartz and Cousins are to the right side of the offensive line on this team.

But these are really all the details that don’t amount to much difference. The Browns lost this week in very much the same way they lost last week and likely the same way they’ll lose next week. But they have sent a message to their fans and the league. Nothing’s changed in Cleveland including the numbing sameness of it all, again.

Browns: The Numbing Sameness of it All

In the numbing sameness that serves as Cleveland Browns openers, or the Cleveland Browns generally, the only good news was reserved for the delusional.  The rest of the AFC North also lost the first week and thus, technically, the Browns lost no ground except, I suppose, in the wild card race.  So there’s that.

The popular spin following Sunday’s route at the hands of a very, very average Miami Dolphins team was that the defense played well until it was worn down by the amount of time it had to spend on the field on an otherwise beautiful, low humidity first day of the season.  Don’t buy it.

Miami has a boat load of offensive problems and still managed to score 23 points, which isn't much when measured against conventional NFL standards but was 13 more than the Browns could muster.  When you have Buster Skrine in your secondary, your defense can never truly play well.  As Don Criqui said during the touchdown pass from quarterback Ryan Tannehill to a wide open Brian Hartline, “the receiver there was able to get separation from Skrine.”  Get used to hearing that, often.  Skrine is barely a legitimate nickel back on an average team.  That he starts for the Browns is the alpha and omega of the team’s myriad of problems.  It lacks players who can make plays (Joe Haden and T.J. Ward come immediately to mind.  There are others.) It lacks depth.  It lacks heart.  It lacks.

As for the Browns offense, which in its awfulness and mismanagement almost made me forget what was happening when the defense was on the field, Sunday proved yet again that until the Browns find a quarterback fans should not tire of being wrong about blaming the defensive breakdowns on the fact that the defense is on the field too much. The offense is that horrible to contemplate.

What the hell were Tom Heckert and Mike Holmgren really thinking when they drafted Weeden anyway?  He’s old by NFL veteran standards, let alone rookie or second year player standards.  And that’s the least of his issues.  If the only requirement to play quarterback in the NFL was the possession of a strong arm, why not resurrect Akili Smith?  For that matter, why didn't offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski just go with his gut and re-sign Derek Anderson?

The best that can be said about Weeden is that he’s not a coach killer.  That is, he’s not the kind of player whose raw athletic skills and occasional flashes of brilliance commit a coach imprudently to spending day and night trying to devise a way to harness that potential into consistent performance until, at least, the coach finds himself out of a job due to poor judgment.

Instead Weeden is simply a middling talent, another in a long line of back up quarterbacks that the Browns have spent the better part of 12 years developing.  He is occasionally strong armed and accurate.  More often he’s strong armed and inaccurate, befuddled by the simplest of defensive schemes and panicked by a blitzing defensive back.

It was said that Weeden was ill suited for the West Coast offense run by former head coach Pat Shurmur and that given Chudzinski’s and offensive coordinator Norv Turner’s track record, this would be a break out year.  It was likewise said the Weeden operates best out of the shotgun, like he did in college.  Both could still be true but I’m skeptical.  Nothing Weeden did in the preseason, including his awful performance in the  third preseason game, or as it’s now officially known, “The Only Preseason Game That Counts,” or in Sunday’s game even hints at significantly better things to come.

Team president Joe Banner, who has spent his entire tenure thus far diminishing anyone’s expectations about the fortunes of his team to the point where it would be easier if he just wore a shirt that says “We Suck. Quit Asking,” said that the new offense is a work in progress and will evolve over the course of the season.  The question is, will Weeden be a part of that evolution?

This isn't a call so much for either back up Brian Hoyer or Jason Campbell so much as it is a reminder that there’s no reason not to play either one or all 3, in the same game, in the same quarter, even in the same drive.  Weeden is no more an established starter than either of Hoyer or Campbell and isn't likely ever to be so what would be the harm?  Or the difference?

There are probably a hundred reasons that the coaching staff can come up with to justify their misplaced confidence in Weeden and to rationalize what was abundantly clear to everyone else.  The right side of the offensive line, with Oniel Cousins and Mitchell Schwartz, was simply incompetent.  Greg Little still channels the decaying ghost of Braylon Edwards as he celebrates routine catches, lets balls go off his fingertips and into defensive backs not named Joe Haden or T.J. Ward hands on difficult ones.  Josh Gordon, in absentia, was talked about as if he was Terrell Owens in his prime.  He may be the team’s number one receiver, but that’s more by default than actual accomplishment.  And of course there’s the bizarre play calling that makes weirdly insufficient use of their best weapon, Trent Richardson.

Chudzinski may claim that the game dictated more passing because they were playing from behind, but that’s just Chudzinski covering for Chudzinski (and Turner). The strong impression was that the Chud and Turd show was hell bent on proving the skeptics wrong about Weeden by forcing a game plan for which the he and the rest of the offense were ill suited to execute.

Consider the evidence.  With just three minutes gone in the fourth quarter, Miami held a 13-10 lead.  They then went on a 5 minute plus drive that extended the lead to 20-10 on a one yard touchdown run.  At that point and only at that point could the case be fairly made that passing was the first, best and only real option.

To that point, though, Weeden had already thrown 35 passes!  Richardson had run a mere 13 times!  I’m using exclamation points because anyone reading this, just as I was writing this, should be both amazed and confused!  Thirty-five freakin’ passes for a team with a wildly inconsistent quarterback and an embarrassing selection of receivers.  It’s pure bullshit, frankly, that the game dictated that kind of massive imbalance between the pass and the run and for Chud to suggest otherwise is disingenuous.  The truth is that Chud and Turd wanted to show how smart they were for believing in Weeden and all they actually accomplished was confirming how ill suited Weeden is to be a starting NFL quarterback.

The NFL can be a difficult game to navigate but it’s not nearly as difficult as its practitioners often imagine.  Richardson looked to be running well early on so naturally Chud and Turd abandoned it like their predecessors.  Look, everyone wants an explosive offense, one that can score on every possession.  That isn't the Browns and doesn't look to be anytime soon.  What’s wrong with shortening the game a bit by running Richardson until it’s nearly beyond question that it isn't working?  If you want to take pressure off a struggling quarterback and a defense that doesn't seen to have the conditioning to withstand even its first game, running the ball would seem the best option.

It’s true that the Browns aren't going to get appreciably better overall until they make better decisions about the talent they choose to employ.  It’s also true that this team won’t get appreciably better until the coaching staff stops thinking they’re the smartest guys in the room.  When you're number one pick is a supposedly elite running back, then just run the damn ball.

Meanwhile fans set giddy by irrational preseason exuberance unaccompanied by any objective reason for it are left with the deadening feeling of collapsed expectations and an anxiety-ridden future.

What do the Browns do with their quarterback situation?  They've been a laughingstock for years with the revolving door that is that position.  But until it’s definitively or at least more positively solved it’s questionable whether the Browns can ever be even a mere playoff team.

The Baltimore Ravens, the Browns’ next opponents, won a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer so it’s possible that a strong enough running game and a strong enough defense can paper over the team’s glaring quarterback issues and get to a point where at least it’s not so damn hilarious and depressing to ponder the playoffs.

But even if Chud and Turd go against their collective wont and become more run-oriented in their approach, eventually this team will have to find its own version of Joe Flacco.

Look, there’s reason for hope.  There always is.  It’s just hard to find obscured as it is by the numbing sameness of a team that knows not of success but only of unrelenting disappointment.  It’s going to be another long season.

Lingering Items--A Banner Edition

There are any number of ways to look at the upcoming Super Bowl and the local and national media won't tire of trying to tell you what that should be.  But really if you're a Browns fan is there any other context than to look at the participants and use them as a benchmark for how far your team has to go? Didn't think so.

For in truth, the only point of the NFL, indeed all sports really, is to find a way to get to the top of the mountain.   When you're a team like the Browns that can't ever seem to exit base camp, all you can do at this time of year is to watch the better climbers do what they do best and figure out how to be one of them when you grow up.

The Browns journey over the last decade plus  has been quixotic, to say the least.  To say the most it's been one big cluster after another and while we've dissected all the reasons why until we're as sick as sick can be, the fact remains that neither the patient nor those who care about it most (that's you, the fans) has gotten any better.  This is the narrative that we all know so well, including now owner Jimmy Haslam and his right hand hatchet man Joe Banner.

Haslam has made no great missteps since he bought into the Billionaire Boys Club known as the NFL unless you count his almost blinding trust of Banner.  This isn't a screed about Banner, however, just a cautionary note that while Haslam's methodology is sound it success still hinges on the execution by people.  Banner has enough of a resume to warrant some level of trust but right now the fans are a little queasy placing their faith in the guy who just placed his fate in the combined talents of Rob Chudzinski and Mike Lombardi.

At first I was confused because I assumed that the Browns and Banner were thinking of the guy who played Mike Lombardi in the TV show Rescue Me as their new personnel guy.  Sure that Lombardi was confused about his sexuality but he was a helluva fireman and always had Tommy's back.  So that had to count for something.  Then someone told me it wasn't that Mike Lombardi but the recycled nut job who helped run Bernie Kosar out of town.  That didn't exactly clear things up until I remembered that this is Cleveland and nothing smells as fresh as a repainted house.  So yea, it made as much sense as the Cavs blind faith in Byron Scott.

The trepidation about the actual Mike Lombardi (and Chudzinski) is well earned, sure, but at what point do the fans just sit back and let it all be?  There have been seemingly far more competent hires in the Browns' recent past and yet not a single damn one of them worked out. I suppose then just on the basis of that rare combination of dumb luck and contrarian thinking there's every reason to hope that this can work.

I know more about why Chudzinski hasn't yet been a head coach (young, paying his dues) then the reasons why Lombardi's been on the sidelines for the last 5 years giving curbside opinions into open microphones instead of showering his brilliance on some other wanting franchise.   Maybe the right situation didn't materialize.  Maybe he liked the non pressured life of a pundit.  Maybe no one until Banner trusted him enough to make personnel decisions for real.  So Lombardi enters the fray here in Cleveland with a cloud hanging over him, which is nothing new for virtually and Cleveland sports hire, and an upcoming draft that will either make other teams look stupid for ignoring his acumen for so long or confirm Browns' fans worst fears.

But hell, let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt for now and treat it as if there's a choice. Let's remember that in most circles outside of Cleveland a recommendation, particularly a glowing one, by Bill Belichick, is highly valued.  That doesn't have to be good enough here mainly because Browns fans would be nervous if Belichick up and quit the Patriots and came back to coach Cleveland instead.  But there's really no way of knowing how Lombardi will perform until he does.  Besides let's stop acting as if something terrible will happen if Lombardi does turn out to be the devil.  This franchise through all its losing has proven to be remarkably resilient and the fans remarkably forgiving as it waits for some sort of oracle who probably never will arrive.

**

Are you finding the budding feud between Banner and his childhood buddy and former boss, Eagles owner Jeff Lurie delightfully perverse? I know I am. When Banner and Haslam escaped Arizona without doing something really stupid like making a flavor-of-the-month, always-chokes-when-the-pressure's-greatest, no NFL experience, getting-out-of-Dodge-before-the-NCAA-can-saddle-up guy like Chip Kelly the highest paid head coach in the NFL, they did so because Kelly was vascillating. An attention whore at heart but as decisive as a 6-year-old in Dylan's Candy Shop, Kelly wasn't coming across as all-in. While flirting with Haslam he also was making goo-goo eyes at Lurie and secretly texting his love to Phil Knight. So the Browns' contingent left and Kelly went back to Oregon, a classic case of overplaying a truly lucky hand.

But when the Eagles couldn't find a suitable date they called back Kelly and he proved he isn't always as stupid as he's been and jumped. A press conference was held and all sorts of cutesy pointed barbs were hurled toward banner by Lurie and the next thing you know a rivalry has taken hold. Gosh I hope not.

I'm all for circling the wagons around the locals and protecting them from the invaders but really, what's the point?  Lurie is an idiot. He ran a perfectly successful coach out of town in favor of a perfectly enigmatic question mark.  Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't but why get all grouchy about it? It's not as if the Browns and the Eagles are tethered by their division. They aren't even in the same conference. Chip Kelly could go on to be the next Bill Belichick and Rob Chudzinski could go on to become the next Chris Palmer and it still wouldn't make me question the decision to leave Kelly standing on the tarmac of Sky Harbor airport picking at his scabs. Kelly is a shady character and the Browns always will be better off without him.

On the other hand if Banner engages the fight by bringing in a washed up Michael Vick in order to try and prove a point, then I will start to worry mostly because what's business will have turned personal and that's just one more distraction this franchise doesn't need.

**

Norv Turner was officially introduced to the media by way of a press conference with his new boss earlier this week and all attention turned to the “Brandon Weeden Question.”  Basically, is Weeden the guy or not?

The early verdict is that it’s too soon to tell.  Chudzinski and Turner say they have to look at some more film, talk to Weeden, etc ad nauseum.  But if Brandon Weeden doesn't fit the offense that,Chudzinski and Turner have in mind, well, doesn't that just figure?  Weeden was a risk pick based on age alone. He needed to impress immediately because of his age and instead ended up as one of the worst quarterbacks in the league, a player who had some early downs, some mid season ups and some end of season disasters.  He played like a typical rookie, assuming that rookie was 10 years younger.

Weren’t fans told that Weeden’s age was an advantage?  Whatever extra maturity he brings didn’t particularly translate on the field and so now what Turner and Chudzinski face is a 30 year old second year quarterback.

Will Weeden develop isn't as much the question as will he develop in enough time? That's the question Turner, Chudzinski and Lombardi will debate in one form or another for the next several months. It's the most important personnel question they face and the one they can least afford to screw up.

That said what's the effective alternative? Is there someone coming out in this year's draft that makes the Weeden question a no-brainier?   Hardly. Throw in Weeden's contract, a contract that reflects his actual draft position instead of where he was projected, and you immediately get the sense that no matter how many hours the Browns' current brain trust debates the matter, no matter how much film they watch, no matter how many times they take in vain the names of the previous Browns' brain trust who put them in this position, Weeden will be back under center or in the shotgun come next year's season opener.  Call it the Travis Hafner syndrome—too much contract to dump.

In other words, pray that Banner and Lombardi do the right thing and resign Phil Dawson. I see lots of stalled out drives in the Browns’ future.

**

Getting back to Kelly, he's the subject of this week's question to ponder:  What's the over/under on how long he'll stay in the NFL?

The Things We Know--Week 8

The Cleveland Browns’ win over the San Diego Chargers on Sunday didn’t necessarily teach fans anything new with the possible exception that a tedious win is always better than a competitive loss.

Until Sunday, the Browns had a knack, honed over several years, of teasing their fans with all manner of competitive losses, the kind of “if only the defense/offense/special teams had done this or that” that inevitably caused fans to try to find a reason to keep watching the team.

Sunday’s victory couldn’t possibly have won over any converts. It’s not as if the Browns had just hammered the New York Giants by clicking in all 3 phases. The win was against a reeling Chargers team coached by Marvin Lewis West Coast Edition that looked and played like it wanted to be anywhere but Cleveland on a cold, rainy Sunday.

But for once it’s not necessary to pick through the bones of a loss that could have been a win. Instead fans can turn fate on its head by picking through the bones of a win that could have been a loss. Now there’s hope and change that fans can embrace.

Even if one were to pick through the bones there wouldn’t be much meat available anyway. The Browns put together exactly one good drive and it was the first one of the day. That drive was kept alive because either the elements scared the beejeezus out of head coach Pat Shurmur or because he finally is beginning to understand that when you’re the head coach of a team that wins about as frequently as members of Congress agree on something substantive (or even insubstantial) there’s no reason to play it cautiously.

At the Chargers’ 26-yard line and facing a 4^th and what looked to be mere inches, Shurmur decided to roll the dice and have the 6 foot 3 inch Brandon Weeden try to find the inch that Al Pacino screams about in “Any Given Sunday.” It wasn’t Shurmur’s boldest call of the season but it was out of character. In far more crucial situations he’s foregone the attempt. Here, the first possession of the game, he decides that maybe now’s the time to grow a pair which is what you might think actually happened until you remember that faced with another 4^th down call later in the game, Shurmur reverted to form.

Anyway, given that it really was just a few inches, it wasn’t that gutsy of a call and the first down was easily secured. It worked out well because it set up Trent Richardson’s 26-yard touchdown run that, along with Phil Dawson’s extra point, gave the Browns a lead they never relinquished. (I honestly can’t remember the last time I wrote a sentence like that applied to the Browns and something they did early in a game. Maybe never.)

From there the game was a mind numbing array of offensive ineptitude from both teams. The Browns punted the ball on 9 straight possessions. Fortunately, though, they weren’t all 3-and-outs. There was enough of a running game, thanks mostly to Richardson, to keep the clock moving mercifully for the brave few that thought sitting outside at Cleveland Stadium on a raw, rainy day was preferable to just about anything else that one could find to do on a raw, rainy day.

For their part, the Chargers moved the ball a little and got a couple of field goals. They also arguably threatened near the end of the game, but not really. There’s was a game plan that seemed to center around trying to get the ball to Antonio Gates and why not? He was being covered by Buster Skrine most of the day, which generally means trouble for the Browns.

But in one of the abiding mysteries that is football, a game like Sunday can turn previous goats into almost heroes. While it’s not time to completely reconsider Skrine, let’s reconsider him briefly.

Skrine put together a game that made him not just resemble but play like a legitimate NFL defensive back. Skrine’s biggest play was the pass deflection near the end of the game that ended the last Charger threat. It was a good play, unquestionably. It also was the kind of play that usually doesn’t get made by the Browns, which is why they have so many competitive losses. The knack for just missing on a play that turns the game has been a specialty of Browns 2.0.

But on this particular Sunday, all of the elements combined not just for the beginnings of a tropical storm of historic proportions but for Skrine as well. He made Gates a non-factor. That’s not a small accomplishment.

Before anyone rewrites the Buster Skrine narrative, let’s not lose perspective. Skrine still makes Brandon McDonald look like Darrelle Reavis and until Skrine can string together a few more games like Sunday, and particularly against quarterbacks with more confidence than Phillip Rivers, he still remains on the suspect list. He just gets a reprieve for the week. Good show, Buster. Spend some time with Lucille or a Loose Seal. You choose.

The other goat turned near hero was punter Reggie Hodges or maybe that goes to Shurmur for keeping Hodges. But before getting to Hodges, let’s examine a little of the context that adds still more color to an incredibly colorless game.

The Browns had 10 possessions on Sunday. Lacking the vast resources, servers and unpaid interns residing in Bristol, Connecticut, I have no idea how many times a team has had 10 possessions in a game, punted on the last 9 of them and still won the game. It can’t have happened very often, right? If you score on only one possession you can only get, at most, 8 points, usually 7, sometimes 6, sometimes 3. So right there a team rarely if ever wins scoring 8 or fewer points.

In the last two years, there have been only 4 games, including Sunday's, in which a team has scored less than 10 points and won the game and Cleveland and Kansas City were involved in two of them, which makes sense because both teams have been pretty crappy and scoring challenged.

Earlier this season Baltimore beat Kansas City 9-6. But in that game, Baltimore had 3 drives in which they scored, although on field goals only. In week 17 last year the Chiefs beat the Denver Broncos 7-3. On the surface, it looks similar to Sunday’s game but f beauty is only skin deep so too is ugly. It featured only one touchdown by the Chiefs but they had two other possessions that didn’t result in punts. The first was a missed field goal. The second was a turnover. (Denver, with the overrated Tim Tebow was even more inept but still had more than one scoring opportunity all day. It’s just that they only scored on one of their opportunities. The other was a missed field goal. And by the way, interesting fact, the two punters who got a work out that day are brothers.)

The third game was when the Browns beat the Seahawks last October 6-3. The six points were the result of two Dawson field goals, meaning that the Browns at least scored on two possessions. In fact, the Browns had four scoring opportunities in that game. Dawson also missed two field goals (the ones he made were from 53 and 52 yards, so what does that tell you about how poorly the Browns moved the ball in that game?)

What made Sunday’s game unique was simply that but for the one drive they couldn’t even get close enough again for a Dawson field goal attempt nor did they turn it over or even turn it over on downs (which isn't a surprise because Shurmur just can't stand 4^th and short). To keep the Chargers at bay, Hodges was called on repeatedly and delivered, repeatedly. He had four kicks inside the 20 yard line. As bad as Hodges was a week before was as good as he was on Sunday. Kudos to Shurmur. I thought he should have at least put Hodges on the hot seat by auditioning other punters. Shurmur, as is his wont, didn’t do anything and in the end and for another week Shurmur was right for not overreacting to Hodges’ disaster against Indianapolis.

At that, there was precious little left to inform about Sunday’s game, including precious little about Greg “Precious” Little. Browns receivers did little because Weeden couldn’t figure out the wind and Shurmur stuck to what was working. Rivers couldn't do anything either, flagging confidence, tricky winds and general indifference the main culprits. It all was enough for a Cleveland win and in a town starved for wins, it’s really all that matters.

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I noted Shurmur’s decision to try to convert 4^th and inches early in the game as being out of character, which it was. What’s not out of character is the confounding decision- making that tends to dominate Shurmur’s coaching style, if you want to call it that.

Shurmur let another 4^th down conversion go by the way side, which was expected. I’ll let that one slide because it wasn’t a particularly critical moment of the game and because the Browns were winning and the Chargers were not doing anything particularly effectively.

But a word or two about the challenge flag Shurmur threw on the Chargers’ very next play after the Richardson touchdown. After the Dawson kickoff, the Chargers started from their own 18 yard line. Rivers completed a short pass to Robert Meachem for all of 6 yards. The fans screamed their objection because it didn’t look to be a clean catch. Shurmur through the challenge flag and a few minutes later the call was overturned. Yea, fans. Shut up next time.

The challenge was correct but to what end and at what cost? It was still the first quarter so it wasn’t as if Shurmur had any legitimate reason to think the Richardson touchdown would be the last one of the day by either team. Meanwhile, a coach only gets 2 challenges per game. If he’s right on both challenges, then he gets a third. That’s why coaches generally make sure that they use their challenges when they matter most. Wasting a challenge early when the situation doesn’t dictate means that the challenge may not be there when needed. Moreover, historically the success rate of a challenge is about 50%, making Shurmur’s decision even more puzzling that early in the game.

There are plenty of plays that could be challenged but that doesn’t mean they all should be. Deciding to challenge is not just a function of whether you think you’re correct but the ramifications either way of not challenging and/or being wrong.

In this case, the best that could be said was that Shurmur was trying to keep the Chargers’ pinned in, something that did in fact happen when the Chargers were unable to get a first down. That doesn’t justify the poor decision making. The likelihood that there would be more pivotal moments to challenge in a game that still had over 50 minutes of time remaining were pretty high. But I guess when you know your job is hanging by a thread nothing it's better to look good then be good.

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Indulge me for a moment, will you? Even though the Browns’ victory didn’t generate much knowledge, there were Browns-related items of interest to ponder from Sunday. My favorite, though, revolves around the Chiefs in general and their head coach, Romeo Crennel, in particular.

I’ve been covering and writing about the Browns for over 6 years now, 6 mind numbing, infuriating, frustrating years. One of my earliest columns was entitled, simply, “Romeo Crennel Must Go.” The Browns were nearly two years into the Crennel experiment and it wasn’t going very well. What prompted the column was an embarrassing loss against Cincinnati in which Braylon Edwards went after Charlie Frye on the sidelines for some perceived grievance or another while Crennel looked the other way, perhaps eyeing up cheesesteak concessionaire, I’m not sure.

It was clear at that point that Crennel had lost the team and it was out of control. The Browns won only 4 games that season but stuck with Crennel anyway. The next season, with an easy schedule to manage, the Crennel-coached Browns went 10-6 but didn’t make the playoffs. If you think a 9 punt game in which your team still wins is rare, research how many 10 win teams haven’t made the playoffs. Only in Cleveland. Of course the Browns regressed to their norm the following season and won 4 games. That’s when Randy Lerner finally fired Crennel.

Personally, I always liked Crennel. He’s genial. He’s a gentleman. He cares about his players and coaches. He’s a good defensive coordinator. But the one thing he’s not is a head coach. He lacks the organizational skills necessary to pull together an entire franchise. Fans who think Shurmur looks clueless on game days must have short memories because Shurmur looks like Dick Vermeil compared to Crennel. I bring all this up because of what’s happening n Kansas City right now.

As the Chiefs stumbled through another loss on Sunday, Crennel was asked why, with Brady Quinn as their quarterback, they didn’t simply hand the ball off to Jamaal Charles, their only offensive threat, more than 5 times. Crennel, honest as a politician isn’t, shrugged and said he didn’t know. What’s great about that answer is that it just shows how little Crennel has changed.

When he handed over the reigns of the Cleveland offense to Maurice Carthon, Crennel was asked almost weekly why the Browns did this or that on offense when the more obvious call would have been that and this. Crennel then, just as now, shrugged and said he didn’t know. He meant it then and means it now. He really doesn’t know what’s going on with his team, particularly if it's happening on offense. Once a defensive coordinator, always a defensive coordinator I guess.

The other great thing about the Chiefs is a stat that says that despite their one win this season, they’ve not lead once in regulation all year. I’d say that’s a surprising stat, indeed, a rare stat, but I just got done writing about the Browns punting on the last 9 possessions of a game in which they had 10 possessions total and still won.

Meanwhile, all of this just goes to show why general managers get fired. Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli let himself get sucked into thinking that the Browns of the Crennel-era were better than their 24-40 record would indicate. They weren’t. It’s a decision Pioli will regret because when Crennel is fired, perhaps before season’s end, Pioli will be likewise looking for work. Maybe he’ll find it in Cleveland.

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The Browns play the Ravens next week and it’s a chance to pick up their second straight win against a AFC North rival. The Ravens are rested but beat up and aren’t as good as their record. Of course, either are the Browns. Maybe it will be sunny