The good news is that my father-in-law is recovering well from his stroke. My wife is being weaned off the medications prescribed for the episodes of dizziness, hearing loss, blurred vision and nausea (no idea what the cause is). My mother-in law’s spinal surgery went successfully–she has both a fever and infection, but we believe they will be brough tunder control. in a few days.
The bad news is that I haven’t finished my season preview and didn’t do a Game 1 review. But when crunch time hits, we do what we can. And, since it’s Saturday, our priority become our Game Preview.
Opponent Preview
I call Saints’ head coach Sean Payton. “The Little Tuna.” This is not entirely a complement; I’ve always felt Bill Parcells was as much myth as legend
Payton has skills. He was quarterback coach for the Eagles when Jon Gruden was their coordination; Gruden tried to hire him when he joined Oakland (last century). Payton took the Giants to a Super Bowl as Jim Fassel’s offensive coordinator. Parcells chose Payton to run his offense in Dallas from 2003-05; Le Gran Thon was always skillful at choosing coaches whose work he could take credit for.
Payton’s record in 11 years and one game in New Orleans is 105-72 (.593 winning percentage). The reason I’m not impressed: QB Drew Brees is 112-79 in games started for the Saints. Both guys came to the Saints after the 2005 season; I don’t know what percentage of the record is the coach and how much belongs to the player.
Payton has made only six trips to the playoffs, despite playing in what is almost always the NFC’s weakest division. He went 3-0 in the playoffs in 2009; in the other five seasons, he’s 4-5.
Payton didn’t discover or develop Brees– Brees made the Pro Bowl in 2004– two seasons before he changed teams.The Saints didn’t mastermind a trade– they just outbid everyone in free agency.
If Payton is a genius, he disguises it well. The the thing that impresses me about a coach is his command of details– the number of issues he has under control; the many ways he gives his team an edge. Payton just looks like a guy who only knows offense. New Orleans scored a ton of points in his first three years, but the team went 25-23.
It took the hiring of DC Gregg Williams— and the decision to pay players to deliberately cripple opposing QBs– for Payton to look like a great coach. I have never forgiven Williams for his doing that; I think even less of Payton for allowing it.
You might or might not agree that this is related to the bounties, but when the players struck in 1987, Payton was one of the strikebreaking players. A really bad one. In my mind, another example of Payton putting himself first.
Payton was suspended for the 2012 season. When he returned in 2013, he hired Rob Ryan to replace the departed Williams. Ryan was comparable to Williams in the sense that chocolate is comparable to cow manure– both are brown and have a distinctive aroma.
Ryan also shouts and curses all the time and his response to every challenge is to blitz. But Williams is skillful; Ryan has almost always run one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Payton had gone 37-11 with Williams running his defense. Under Ryan, he went back to 25-23.
It’s not just the losing. It’s needing three years to realize that Rob Ryan is a circus clown.
Under coordinator Dennis Allen, (who went 8-28 as Oakland’s head coach and made fans nostalgic for his predecessor–Hue Jackson) the Saints have gone 18-14.
Brees is now 39. Allen’s defense got drilled 48-40 by Tampa Bay (with Ryan Fitzpatrick at QB) in week one. It is entirely possible they’ll go 7-9 again, completing another 25-23 trilogy.
If that happens, the Saints will have gone 7-9 in four of the last five seasons. I don’t know if that will be enough to punch Payton’s ticket out– he did win a Super Bowl and that makes owners notoriously reluctant to pull the trigger.
But owner Tom Benson died and his 71-year-old wife is in charge. The new owner often doesn’t have the loyalty the old one did. I would assume he is close to the hot seat.
Browns Preview
As I wrote this, the second runner-up for Least Surprising News Ever news (“the Cleveland Zoo will release Puff Gordon on Monday“) has hit. If you have never read anything I’ve written– or are missing a functioning brain stem, the news might come as a shock. Let me excerpt four paragraphs from the profile I keep setting aside.
| Next on the depth chart are two guys named “Puff.” Mr.Gordon hasn’t played well in four seasons (the 2017 fragment was pretty good, the 2014 fragment not). He seems very happy to be back in the NFL– but rather offended that a player of his perceived greatness is still trapped in Cleveland at the age of 27.
My take on his behavior– and I have been right about this joker every step of the way– is that he isn’t truly recovered. He has grasped the notion that he won’t be able to make millions unless he stays sober… but the kind of humbleness and dedication visible in truly rehabilitated players– Cris Carter springs to mind– seems missing. Puff’s goal for 2018 appears to be avoiding injury and piling up enough big plays to get him onto the free agent market, where he can con some sucker on a warm-weather team into giving him a fortune. Whether he’ll be able to control himself long enough to do it is anyone’s guess. People who don’t seem to understand the impact of missing seasons(for any reason) believe Puff G. will be an All-Pro. My ambitions are more modest: I want him to have a big game or two, so Dorsey can liquidate him. I don’t expect him to stay sober; I am positive he won’t stay in Cleveland. |
The first runner-up, in case you are wondering, is “Browns Fire Hue Jackson; Promote Gregg Williams” and the winner is “Jackson Benches Tyrod Taylor for Baker Mayfield 13 Games Sooner Than He Told Us He Would.”
Part of the reason I always sound exasperated is that I reason things out. I do my homework, pay attention to track records, calculate percentages and bet with the odds. One reason I have deadline problems because I do so much estimating and scouting (and very little scribbling or thinking wishfully).
Comparatively little of the season comes as a surprises to me. I do get things wrong– such as assuming the Steelers would be capable of beating the Browns last week. But my mistakes tend to be of the same type: I foresee two outcomes that seem almost equally probable– after outlining them both, I take the wrong one.
Had their kicker had been a little better,they would have. Or if Mike Tomlin had understood how difficult it is to kick into the open end of Cleveland Stadium in the wind and rain, they might have tried harder to gain yardage. Three plays to James Conner (one of the many subjects I got right) gained seven yards. It would have been smarter to try a fake to Conner and a another pass to try to get closer. I can’t help agreeing with Terry Bradshaw– how hard it is to kick in Cleveland is the sort of thing Tomlin should know at this point in his career.
The Browns do very little analyzing. They like to imagine what could happen. As my grandpa used to say: “Wish into one hand and crap into the other and see which fills up first.”They decide to replace Joe Thomas with Desmond Harrison— he commits three penalties, allows a sack, five hurries and six pressures. He does that even though the Browns are in max protect (at least one extra player designated as a blocker) for 50% of the pass plays.
RT Chris Hubbard and the tight ends are hit-or-miss (meaning 50% effectiveness) and not one of the three running backs can block worth a crap.
None of the three running backs looked good in pre-season, but the problem was waved away because training camp doesn’t mean anything. The bell rings and Carlos Hyde gets 73% of the carries and 2.8 per carry. Nick Chubb (17 of his 21 yards) and Duke Johnson (13 of his 17) each have one good touch.
As a direct result QB Tyrod Taylor (who didn’t have a single snap where he wasn’t under pressure) doesn’t have a good game– and the yahoos (who have apparently forgotten every season since 1999) start hollering “Let’s play the rookie now!!!”
The defense looks promising. But it was in the wind and the rain– and Ben Roethlisberger often looks subpar in the first few games of the season.
In the new Fox show that airs at 11:30 Sunday evenings, Deion Sanders scornfully noted that teams don’t play their players in the pre-season– then they wonder why things look so ragged in game one
The Browns could be on the verge of better things. But, a game into the season, they’re already being forced to deal with issues that should have been entirely predictable– and preventable– had they not convinced themselves they wouldn’t happen.
Game Preview
Last week’s game was played in uninterrupted rain with winds consistently at or above 10 MPH. In last week’s preview, I said “Bad weather reduces the chance that the best team will win, by about 20%.” I’d guess field conditions had a substantial effect on at least one out of every five plays.
Since the game will be played in New Orleans, weather won’t be a factor.The field is very fast. That might be a good thing for the Browns; GM John Dorsey and Williams have substantially upgraded defensive speed. The defense could blow by the Saints and disrupt pretty much every play.
The Saints lost 48-40 last week because they got into a scoring contest with Tampa Bay– and blinked first:
- Both teams scored 17 points on their first three possessions.
- On #4, New Orleans threw three passes– an incompletion, six yards and then a sack– and punted
- Tampa Bay put up another 7.
- On the Saints’ next offensive play, RB Mike Gillislee fumbled– Tampa recovered and ran it in.
The Saints were down 31-17. They didn’t have RB Mark Ingram (they won’t have him this week, either– suspended four games for performance-enhancing drugs), they couldn’t slow things down and try to regain control. They ran only 13 times– and only for 43 yards (3.6 yards).
Neither Gillislee nor Alvin Kamara can blast through tackles. Tampa (who have former Atlanta head coach Mike Smith running the defense) simply dropped everyone in coverage and let the four linemen deal with the squirts.
The Browns can do that. James Conner gashed them for 135 yards (4.4) a play, but that happened because they kept trying to shoulder-block him,and he was too strong to go down from that.
The issue is whether they can shut Brees down. Ben Roethlisberger was dreadful (23-41; three picks and two fumbles), but he still got 335 yards because he occasionally thew good passes. It’s why JuJu Smith-Schuster had 119 yards and Antonia Brown had 93.
Brees went 37-45 for 499 yards last week. WR Michael Thomas had 16 catches on 17 targets for 180 yards; CB Denzel Ward would have to be Superman to shut him down. Kamara went 9-12 for 113. He might be hard to shut off.
But 33-year-old WR Ted Ginn went 5-6 for 68 yards and a score. 38-year-old TE Ben Watson went 4-4 for 44 yards– each catch for a first down.They have to be stopped at all costs; for a good defense, that should not be hard.
Brees got sacked only once and the Bucs got pressure on him on less than 50% of the plays. The Browns shouldn’t assume they can do better. C Max Unger is a former Pro Bowler; RG Larry Warford went last year and theodds of either LT Terron Armstead (#1 in 2015) or RT Ryan Ramczyk (#1 in 2017) going this year or next seem high.
The Browns can’t let Brees get out in front. And that means they need to score– early and often. That doesn’t appear likely
Game Prediction
The game hinges on the reaction to Puff’s departure. Most of these guys barely played with him. Since he didn’t come to camp, they don’t know him and they might very well dislike him.
They could respond to his departure by saying “@&$$^% that loser!” and come out determined to prove they don’t need him. They could also come out in a panic and flail.
OC Todd Haley–whose tolerance for these sorts of players can be best seen in the way he treated Corey Coleman– will be in a rage. Both he and Williams will challenge everyone to prove that he isn’t a homosexual. But since the papers were full of “Here’s a preview of all the great things you can expect Puff Gordon to do Sunday!!!” I’m guessing Hue Jackson (who seems to have convinced himself that he’d have Puff) will be in a panic.
Some guys I expect to step up. Others will punk out. Still others are likely to try to do too much. Honestly, I don’t see them outscoring the Saints–especially since New Orleans saw how easy it will be to get by the line
Delay of Game 