The John Dorsey era continues to get better and better. So far, the new front office has done exactly what they needed to do to improve.
I don’t love any of the players they’ve signed. Few are likely to be blue-chip players. But they added a bunch of red-chips. That means they can dump the white chip players on the roster in 2017– or at least demote them to second or third string.
That will have a huge impact on the roster. Continue reading “Review: Free Agency (Part 1)”
No additions, but two subtractions– each worthy of a couple of sentences.
1. Washington Signs Terrelle Pryor. It’s a one-year deal for up to $8 million. If Pryor has another good year, he can hit the market and make a lot of money. If he turns out to be a flash in the pan, it’ll cost him a lot of money.
The story I linked to has what I think is the proper take: “Receivers take less than they anticipated.” It is, I’m pretty sure, the result of teams beginning to move towards analytics. Continue reading “Free Agency Recap (Day 2)”
It’s official: Hue Jackson and the Marx Brothers made the Browns worse.. Last year they went 3-13; the best they can do this year is 2-14. They have a chance to win Saturday against San Diego (RB Melvin Gordon probably won’t play Saturday), but unless Pittsburgh beats Baltimore Sunday and decided to take it easy next week, 1-15 will be as good as it gets.
And, yes, sports fans– the Browns really are this bad. There are two ways to verify that:
1. Their statistics: The 2016 Browns have scored 15.7 points per game– nearly two points per game less than last year’s 3-13 team (which scored 17.4). They’re allowing 29.1 points per game– over two points more than they did last year (27.0).
A basic rule of thumb (it’s not quite the simple, but this is easy to remember): if a team improves its point differential (points scored minus points allowed) by 30 points it will win one extra game. Doesn’t matter if they do it by enhancing the offense or improving the defense– 30 points improvement means another win.
In 2015, the Browns allowed 154 points more than they scored. That’s five wins below .500– and they went 3-13. The 2016 Browns have declined by 24 points on offense and 29 points on defense.
The numbers say the Browns should have won two games less; if Cody Parkety hadn’t missed field goals of 41, 42 and 46 in Miami , they’d be 1-13.
2. The Schedule: Don’t like projections from data? Here’s another way to look at it. Last year, Mike Pettine’s team beat San Francisco, Tennessee and Baltimore. Had Chris Tabor’s kicking teams not fouled up, they would have beaten Baltimore twice. . Hue Jackson’s team had chances to beat Tennessee and Baltimore again. They lost all three times.
This record isn’t happening by accident– and it isn’t due to bad luck. The best way to measure luck is margin of victory.
Here’s another metric: the 25-point rule. In order to have a reasonable chance to win, you need to score 25 points or more, and hold opponents below 25. A year ago, the Browns scored 25 points or more four times and allowed 25+ points 12 times. (Notice how closely that tracks to won-loss record, by the way).
This year, they’ve done it only twice (both times with late drives in games where the was way ahead), and already allowed 25 points 12 times.
The Browns have already allowed as many sacks (53) as they did all last year– they’ve been sacked on a higher percentage of dropbacks (9.6%, up from 8.0). The defense has seven sacks less– they’ve sacked opponents on 4.5% of their dropbacks.
A year ago, Browns quarterbacks had a rating of 84.8 (a little bit better than OK) and threw 20 TD passes and 12 interceptions. This year, despite an enormous effort to upgrade the performance– signing a free agent, drafting a quarterback on day 2 of the draft, five receivers drafted– their rating is down to 75.8, and they have as many interceptions (13) as touchdowns.
Last year’s defense didn’t handle quarterbacks well– it allowed a 1.01.8 rating and a 34-8 TD-INT ratio. This year is worse in every area: 104.0 rating and 34-8.
Passing years allowed– as I’m sure Ray Horton wants everyone to know– are down. Last year the Browns allowed 251 yards a game (22nd); it’s down to 246 (14th). Of course the reason for that is that the run defense is even worse.
The Buffalo game was a microcosm of pretty much everything that has gone wrong all year.
1. Cleveland lost by 20 points. They never led– the game was only tied for 8:36 minutes
2. They let Buffalo gain 451 yards– 280 rushing (7.0 per carry)– and 29 first downs. Naturally they held the ball for 34:19..
3. Buffalo quarterbacks only gained 6.96 yards per pass– a little lower than the 7.2 you’d like. But they completed 68%, had a TD and no interceptions and Tyrod Taylor had a 105.2 rating,
4. The Browns had no interceptions, no fumbles, one sack (for three yards) and two run stuffs (for six).
5. The Browns offense committed no turnovers, but was sacked five times and had their ballcarrier stuffed four times.
6. On five of their 10 possessions, the Browns went three-and-out. On a sixth– the drive at the end of the first half, where they took over with 34 seconds– they ran four plays and gained a first down.
7. The Browns did have one effective drive. On the opening possession of the second half, they ran 8 plays, gained 75 yards, and scored a TD.
Their second-best drive was a Shurmuball Special. With 2:05 left in the game, trailing 33-13, they ran 9 plays and gained 72 yards. The plays had no impact on the outcome, other than to make the totals less embarrassing for the head coach and the quarterback.
Robert Griffin went 6-7 for 64 yards, raising his rating for the day from 71.9 to 81.8. To give you an idea of how little the Browns were trying, the drive included a two-yard run from third-down back Squire Johnson– their first since 2:44 in the third quarter.
The day also produced one of the more exasperating data points of the year. The Browns gained 196 yards passing on 28 attempts (7.0 yards per pass). But RG3– who simply will not throw the ball away when he is about to be tackled– took five sacks for 34 yards lost.
Two of the sacks occurred when he ran out of bounds while behind the original line of scrimmage. He’s three games away from the end of his NFL career, and he still can’t t grasp an elementary concept of quarterbacking: If you throw the ball away, you lose a down. If you’re tackled (or run out), you lose both a down and yardage.
Subtract the yards lost on sacks from passing yards, you have 162. Add the sacks to pass attempts, you have 33 plays. If you recalculate yards per pass using those two numbers– as the NFL does when it calculates team stats– the Browns gained 4.91 yards per pass.
Cleveland ran the ball 21 times for 107 yards– 5.09 yards per carry.
You tell me why a team averaging 5.1 yards per rush and 4.9 yards per pass chooses to pass 33 times and run 21.
And don’t give me the “they got behind, and…” horsecrap. They were doing the same stupid thing all game long. At the end of the first half, the Browns had:
This is such a simple concept that a moron ought to be able to grasp it: If you’re not gaining yardage or scoring points throwing the ball, stop doing it.
Yes, running the ball uses more time than passing. If you’re 14 points behind, with three minutes remaining, you can’t score twice by running the ball.
If you have 30 minutes left to score twice, you have plenty of time to run the ball.
That score creates a problem. But the Browns were in the same spot they were in at the beginning of the half. They just had 20:50 of game time remaining. Score a touchdown, stop the opponent, score another TD.
But they couldn’t do any of it:
The Browns were down 30-13 with 12:58 left in the game when that drive began. Running the ball would have taken too much time. But throwing the ball certainly didn’t help. In that weather– with those receivers and that quarterback– passing was even less likely to succeed. Another three-and-out, followed by Tabor’s wretched kicking teams (37-yard punt; seven-yard return) merely gave Buffalo the ball at the 50– a hop, skip and jump away from their final field goal.
More to the point:if your defense can’t stop the opponent, it doesn’t matter what plays you call. If the opponent can match every score you get, you’ll never catch up.
In that situation, your best chance is simply to call the plays most likely to help you score, then pray your opponent screws up.
One of the biggest reasons the Browns are 0-14 is astonishingly poor play selection by Hue Jackson, week in and week out. The Browns have the NFL’s fifth-highest team rushing average (4.7 yards per carry) but they’re 25th in rushing yards (1,357). They’re averaging 96.9 yards a game through 14 games–barely ahead of the 95.6 accomplished by the 2015 team.
And that 2015 club averaged 4.0 yards per carry– nearly a yard less. None of the players who averaged more than 4.0 yards were supposed to be running the ball:
Of the people who were supposed to carry the ball, Isaiah Crowell averaged 3.8 yards per carry; Squire Johnson 3.6 and Robert Turbin 3.3. That’s why the 2015 team gained 100+ yards only six times. Week after week, a quarterback would lead the team in both total rushing yards and rushing average. But that offense still tried to keep defenses honest by running the ball. It averaged 23.8 carries per game– on 36.5% of its offensive plays.
This team has four players averaging more than 4.5 yards per rush– Crowell (4.6), Johnson (5.0), Griffin (5.8) and Kevin Hogan (13.1)– has averaged only 20.6 carries per game. It is running only 34.2% of the time.
Jackson’s play-calling isn’t the reason the Browns lost this week. It usually hasn’t been the main reason the Browns lost the 13 games before it. When you have a defense that can’t stop anyone– that lets itself get steamrollered by opposing runners and lets tight ends run unmolested (Charles Clay caught all 7 passes thrown his way, for 72 yards and a score), you’re not going to win many games.
But this team shouldn’t be winless. And it probably wouldn’t be if the Browns had tried a little harder to manage games– take what opponents were giving.
Instead, they’ve thrown the ball on 65.8% of their plays– and six of the seven players who have thrown a pass have completed fewer than 60% of their passes. Cody Kessler (65.6% completions, 7.1 yards per pass, 6 TDs and 2 interceptions) is the only player who hasn’t looked terrible– and he, very clearly, is a journeyman.
And if you subtracted all the meaningless completions in garbage time, the passing game would look absolutely dreadful. Two games from now, Hue Jackson will have a great deal of explaining to do.
The decision to start Robert Griffin against Cincinnati seems entirely appropriate. He started the first game of the season, when many people (including Sashi Brown) hoped he would lead the Browns to 6+ wins. After injuring himself on a play that few other quarterbacks would have made– and missing 11 games– he’ll start the first game after the bye week, in the hope he can help them avoid a winless season.
I don’t think those hopes will be gratified either– but he is the best option at this point:
Besides, as anyone familiar with Griffin’s career knows, he complains when he isn’t playing. So you might as well use Griffin– rather than have him complaining (vie Mary Kay Greenhouse) that he could have won the last four games if the Browns had used him?
When the Browns signed RGIII, a friend who works for an NFL team– who had a close-up view of him– told me that I’d grow to hate writing about him, because I’d have to keep repeating the same things over and over again. The similarities to another quarterback from a Texas school who shall remain nameless were very high:
The hope was that the shape of his career would force Griffin to change. He was injured in his first three seasons (2012, 2013 and 2014)– then benched for Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy in 2014.
He didn’t play at all in 2015 (Washington went 9-7 and made the playoffs); when his rookie contract expired, Washington severed ties to him. No other team wanted to sign Griffin, so his best option was the NFL’s worst organization.
On paper, the Browns’ decision (as I pointed out when they made it) was entirely sound. They had nobody who could play. Griffin was 26 and is phenomenally gifted. Hue Jackson had a reputation for enabling troublemakers working with players, so maybe he would reach Griffin. Had he changed his ways, they’d have gotten a frontline quarterback for nothing.
It just didn’t work. Some players simply can’t or won’t change. When RGIII began praising Puff Gordon— the biggest hot mess this side of Johnny Jamboogie– it was a bad sign. When he dumped his long-suffering wife (whom people in DC though had been a stabilizing influence on him) that wasn’t a good sign.
Throughout preseason, the only things people could talk about was “Look at how he got away from the defense” and “Wasn’t that a pretty deep pass?” Which, as I kept pointing out, were skills that weren’t in question. Signs of progress would have been “Look at how he changed the play when he saw the defensive alignment” or “He followed his progressions and completed the six-yard pass to the backup right end for a first down.”
And a topic that had been furiously debated in Washington– Griffin’s refusal to throw the ball away to avoid a sack, or slide on a scramble to avoid getting hit– was the subject of indulgent chuckles about RG3’s old-fashioned warrior mentality.
So he got injured, and he’s missed over two-thirds of the season. And the only evidence that Griffin might have made progress is that he didn’t spend the last 11 weeks complaining about not playing on Twitter.
One final thought. I have read a few people saying “Should the Browns risk their investment playing Griffin?” The question shows passing acquaintance with reality.
If the goal was to help Robert Griffin regain his status as a frontline player, I agree that it would be nuts to play him.
1. I’d guess (I can’t watch all 32 teams) the Browns probably have the worst line in the NFL at this point. Joe Thomas is aging and ailing. Cam Erving is a few games away from ending his career at center (he’s fouling up the blocking calls; if he stays on the team, his next stop is probably right tackle). Spencer Drango might have a future, but right now he, Alvin Bailey and Austin Pasztor are thoroughly replacement-level.
2. The running game is non-existent; teams are catching onto Terrelle Pryor and Corey Coleman.
3. The defense keeps putting the Browns behind by a few touchdowns, letting the opponents come after the quarterback.
Griffin won’t have many weapons– he definitely won’t play well, and almost certainly won’t last four games.
But it would be insane to shut Griffin down. The whole point of the 2016 season was to see whether he could help the Browns. Look at his contract–his 2016 salary was guaranteed; it nearly doubles ($3.25 million to $6.0) next year. There’s also a roster bonus of $1.5 million.
If he couldn’t stay healthy, didn’t play well or became a behavior problem, the Browns could cut ties after 2016 and only have $1.75 million (the pro-rated part of his signing bonus) on the 2017 cap.
Well they have the answer– he couldn’t stay healthy and he displayed all his shortcomings before the injury. Sane people don’t pretend that year #6 will be the season everything comes together and commit to paying $9.25 million.
If he can’t provide evidence that he can be the quarterback for 2017, he needs to leave. He has the last four games to prove he belongs. Not much of chance, but he’s the guy who decided to go for the extra half-yard on third down.
To: Terry Pluto, The Plain Dealer
Terry:
I know you have to file 30 minutes after a game, but I still don’t understand how you could write a piece like “When it comes to quarterbacks, I’m as lost as Cleveland Browns”. I mean, you’ve been covering the team since 1999; you’ve seen this stuff myriad times before. All you need to do is reread your clip archive.
1. How can you possibly blame the victim for what’s happening?
“Kessler has started eight games this season. Three times he has failed to survive four quarters because he was injured. That’s not a good sign, as Kessler can’t stay on the field.”
Kessler can’t stay on the field? Who could? The Browns are now leading the NFL in sacks allowed (38), quarterback hits (93) and percentage of sacks on pass attempts (8.7%). The play that put him out in this game was a hit by two players.
2. This sentence contains a misleading implication:
“It was harder to know if the rookie quarterback was shaken more by the frigid, wind-whipping, teeth-rattling weather — or the aggressive Steeler defense.”
“Aggressive” could be taken to mean that the Steeler defense was “good.” They’re not. isn’t. Pittsburgh was 14th in points allowed coming into the game– due mostly to games against struggling teams:
I know that seems good, compared to what the Browns were able to do with them (Cincinnati and the Jets scored 31, Baltimore 25 and 28), but it really isn’t. The Steelers have allowed 30+ points three times and 27 in a fourth.
The Steelers came into the game with the fewest sacks in the NFL: 13 in nine games. .Their best pass rusher, Cameron Hayward (3.0 sacks), wasn’t on the field because he’s out for the year with a pectoral tear. But they still managed 8 sacks.
Pittsburgh was “aggressive” in the sense every defense is aggressive– they chased the guy who had the ball and tried to tackle him. The difference between this game and others is that the people trying to prevent that from happening failed.That’s pretty clearly incompetence by Cleveland, rather than great skill by the Steelers.
3. I also don’t understand why you can’t recognize the pattern embedded in the behavior you’re describing
“But his decision making was SOOO … SLOW … it was painful to watch… [H]e took three sacks when he simply held on to the ball for too long. He seemed confused by the defenses. When his primary receiver was covered, Kessler had problems knowing where else he wanted to throw the ball.”
Where have we seen this before? Only with Tim Couch, Charlie Frye and Colt McCoy. The young quarterback who was supposed to be developed over time gets tossed into the starting lineup due to events caused by incompetence.
He has a terrible offensive line, a non-existent running game and receivers who wouldn’t start for 20+ teams in the league and a coach who won’t stop calling pass plays. And because the defense and the kicking teams are awful, he has to win games pretty much singlehandely.
So the team loses pretty much every week and the media is starting the “Cleveland needs a franchise quarterback” song.
So it’s the second quarter and he drops back for the thirtieth time. Everyone is covered. The line can’t hold off the opponent. The defense is pouring in on him.
He knows what he should do– throw the ball away. Except that the coach pulled him last week for not being able to make spectacular plays– and he knows he’s running out of chances. So he figures he’d better make plays, so he stands back there and get blasted.
One of the hallmarks of watching the Browns is watching them bring in quarterbacks who have been successful everywhere else they have been– who came in self-assured, convinced they can and will change the fortunes of the team– and see every bit of confidence beaten out of him. Unlike almost any other team– where players get better over time– Browns quarterbacks tend to get worse the more they play.
As for why this happens, it isn’t brain surgery– you need to look to the history.
1. The front office ignores the importance of the offensive line. The offense has 11 players– five of them (45.4%) play on the offensive line. Unlike the quarterback, receivers or the running backs (whose involvement in a play will vary, depending on what’s being called), the five linemen always have critical responsibilities.
But only three GMs have ever had the sense to draft players who open holes for the running back or keep the quarterback from getting injured:
No, Mangini doesn’t count– he drafted Mack, but he used John St. Clair and Floyd “Pork Chop” Womack as the right side of his line for two years. . He’s merely better than everyone else, who didn’t bother.
The Marx Brothers– the successors to The Three Stooges– were no exception. It didn’t take a degree from Harvard to see that the Browns were on very shaky ground:
Switching John Greco– a 31-year-old guard– to center isn’t a backup plan. It’s like the Indians saying “If one of our starters gets hurt, we’ll put Andrew Miller to the rotation.” You’re closing one hole, by opening another.
Switching Greco is something you try in an emergency if your center is injured in mid-year. You don’t begin the year with it as a plan, unless you know exactly who you can turn to if Greco has to play. The Browns thought it might be Spencer Drango or maybe Alvin Bailey. But they didn’t know.
And, yes, Terry, spending a third round pick on a player who has played 22 snaps in 11 games is a busted pick. They signed him to a four-year deal; nearly 75% of his rookie year has passed without any value. Thanks to his health problems, he turned 25 today– and they still don’t know if he can play. A player who can’t beat out Pasztor for a starting job is demonstrating that he shouldn’t have been taken that high.
In short, they had issues at all five spots and didn’t do anything about it– unless you consider Bailey and Drango potential solutions.
2. They bring in another nitwit coach who doesn’t bother about the running game. After 11 games, the Browns have 224 rushing attempts. They’re 29th in total carries, for who knows how many times since 1999. And, as usual, they’re in the top-ten (ninth) in pass attempt again.
At 399 passes to 224 rushes, their run-pass ratio (64.0%) is nearly 2-1. That’s 36 passes and 20 runs per game. And that doesn’t factor in either the 38 sacks (which should all be passes) or the 41 quarterback rushes (many of which began as dropbacks).
One of the many things about this team that makes me sick of this team is the new coach’s first press conference. The Browns hire Joe Jakovaszar, and he says, in his opening press conference:
After that inspiring speech, Coach Jakovaszar’s team leads the league in pass attempts, dropped passes, missed tackles, mental mistakes and stupid penalties until he gets fired for cause. And then the new coach delivers the same speech and punts on that too.
It’s very simple. If you can’t run the ball– or won’t run it– teams know you’ll pass and can come after your quarterback. The more they hit your quarterback, the more likely he is to get hurt.Plus, if the defense actually believes you will run, play-action passes begin to work.
Also a running play– unless the ballcarrier is pushed out of bounds– burns 45 seconds off the clock. This lets your defense rest and keeps the other team off the field, so they can’t score.
But there have only been three seasons since 1999 (2014, 2009, 2004) where the Browns were in the top 16 teams in rush attempts. Only three running backs– Reuben Droughns in 2005, Jamal Lewis in 2007 and 2008, and Peyton Hillis in 2010– have gained 1,000 yards. And neither Droughns nor the 2008 version of Hillis could gain 4.0 yards a carry.
Here’s a fun fact: only 12 players have managed to get 250 yards in a season and average 400 yards. I would bet money that most people can’t even remember all 12 players (I drew a blank on Jason Wright).
| Games | Rushing | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Year | G | Att | Yds | Y/A | TD |
| Josh Cribbs | 2009 | 16 | 55 | 381 | 6.93 | 1 |
| Tim Couch | 1999 | 15 | 40 | 267 | 6.68 | 1 |
| Lee Suggs | 2003 | 7 | 56 | 289 | 5.16 | 2 |
| Duke Johnson | 2016 | 11 | 51 | 257 | 5.04 | 1 |
| Jason Wright | 2007 | 16 | 60 | 277 | 4.62 | 1 |
| Chris Ogbonnaya | 2011 | 11 | 73 | 334 | 4.58 | 1 |
| Jerome Harrison | 2009 | 14 | 194 | 862 | 4.44 | 5 |
| Jamel White | 2002 | 14 | 106 | 470 | 4.43 | 3 |
| Jamal Lewis | 2007 | 15 | 298 | 1304 | 4.38 | 9 |
| Peyton Hillis | 2010 | 16 | 270 | 1177 | 4.36 | 11 |
| Isaiah Crowell | 2016 | 11 | 129 | 561 | 4.35 | 5 |
| Montario Hardesty | 2012 | 13 | 65 | 271 | 4.17 | 1 |
| Isaiah Crowell | 2014 | 16 | 148 | 607 | 4.10 | 8 |
If you can’t run the ball, your quarterback will probably end up hurt– even behind the best of lines. And the Browns’ lines line are rarely even average.
3. Get quarterbacks who have no chance of lasting 16 games. What happened this season was entirely predictable. In 2010, the Browns started the season with Jame Delhomme (the erratic veteran who’d missed 21 games in the last four season) and Seneca Wallace (career backup with all kinds of mechanical problems) in front of Colt McCoy.
You knew the kid would end up playing– just like anyone who’d paid attention to the careers of Robert Griffin and Josh McCown knew they might both go down in the first game of the season.
2004 was another one of those years. 34-year-old Jeff Garcia and Butch Davis weren’t a good fit, 31-year-old Kelly Holcomb was at the end of his run– rookie Luke McCown (not Ben Roethlisberger) was going to be playing by year’s end.
Year in and year out, the Browns stock the quarterback position with people whose careers have shown that they won’t last a full season– either because they get hurt or because they can’t play— and tell the media and the fans “Trust us, we know what we’re doing.” Most of them don’t
And, by the way, it is relevant to discuss Roethlisberger. It’s not just that Butch Davis passed on Roethlisberger– it’s that he traded up to take Kellen “Endo” over Roethlisberger– and then wasted a #4 on McCown even though his brother Josh was already showing he was a bust.
It’s not just The Marx Brothers ending up with Corey Coleman and a pile
of beans instead of Carson Wentz. It’s doing that– then taking Cody Kessler on a hunch–when everyone else who watched him said wouldn’t be able to throw hard enough to play in Cleveland.
The Browns picked Tim Couch over Donovan McNabb because they didn’t think McNabb could play in Chris Palmer’s scheme. They passed up Aaron Rodgers because Phil Savage didn’t know how he’d handle Cleveland’s cold weather (about as epic a fail as you can make) and thought Braylon Edwards catching passes thrown from Charlie Frye would help more.
Jimmy Haslam ordered Ray Farmer to take Johnny Manziel over Derek Carr and Teddy Bridgewater.
There have been times when bucking the crowd was a good idea– while Eric Mangini wasted every other draft pick he got in this trade down, Alex Mack was a better player than Mark Sanchez. The Browns would have been better off not pulling the trigger on Quinn. But they have passed up a lot of guys who were considered to be “can’t-miss”, not just Roethlisberger.
What happened against Pittsburgh is something I’ve addressed so many times over the years that I’ve gotten sick of discussing it:
The Steelers ran only twice and passed 11 times on the next possession– a 15-85% run pass mix. But since they took over the ball with 1:51 left in the half, they had good reason to do it.
And here we come to another “Classic Browns” issue, best dealt with in bullets. At the end of the first half:
How many seasons have we seen that before?
Stuff like this is the reason that I ridicule Pro Football Focus. Danny Shelton is now one of the NFL’s top run stuffers? Where was he on those 16 plays when the Browns were getting blasted? Where were all the other guys that PFF and Doug Lesmerises insist– with no evidence to support them, other than their subjective opinions– are playing well?
Can’t run the ball, can’t stop the run– but let’s talk about the rookie quarterback and not mention the passes dropped. And let’s bring in the veteran failure, so he can give us the worst pass attempt since Brandon Weeden’s flip-flap-flippity-flop against the Lions.
So let the Browns play McCown– not Kevin Hogan– against the Giants. Let things stew for two weeks, then bring back RGIII. Let him play as many games as he can survive (not likely to be many) and then… well, who cares? Let’s bring back Ken Dorsey or Thaddeus Lewis. (If I were Kessler, I’d refuse to play. Why get yourself beaten up before you get cut?)
What happens to the Browns is not a mystery. And if they want it to stop, all they have to do is hire me as GM. I might not make the team better, but I will certainly avoid doing the same damned, dumb stuff they’ve been doing for the last 18 years.
Best,
Geoff
I was going to write a long analysis of the Atlanta game, but the topic was so unappealing that I put it off until far too late. The key takeaways are:
1. The Browns lost 24-13. Atlanta could have had more points, but the backup kicker (who is only there to make sure the #1 isn’t hurt in a meaningless game) missed a field goal.
2. They weren’t facing a strong opponent. Atlanta went 8-8 and played the second-easiest schedule in the NFL last year.
3.Atlanta wan’t really trying. Their first team defense played much of the first half, but Coach Dan Quinn was shuffling players in and out, trying to see if his young players were ready. On any given snap, there would be 7-9 players who started in 2015, with the rest players they were trying to develop.
Atlanta didn’t even bother with their offense:
4. Cleveland had their usual issues. The Browns have a patented formula for losing 10 games, and we saw it in this game again:
The only positive thing is that Robert Griffin did the two things everyone knows he can do: scramble and throw long passes. His TD to Gary Barnidge was a poor throw– Barnidge deserves most of the credit for bringing it down– although Griffin did at least throw it in a spot that nobody else could get to.
The pass to Terrelle Pryor was a good play, even if Falcon corner Desmond Truffant was loafing until Pryor got by him. Like Nassib, Pryor had another nice showing.
The goal for tonight would be simple:
1. Not lose the time of possession battle 2-1. In both exhibition games, the opponent has spent twice as much time on the field as the Browns. Green Bay held the ball for 39:44; Atlanta 39.59. Since coaches never play starters in the fourth game, tonight is the last chance to get anyone work. Since the offense isn’t getting enough plays to give people a chance to play, so many of the roster decisions can’t be based on game production.
2. Have some rookies play well. Corey Coleman hasn’t played at all; I’ve been told that coach Hue Jackson is lying about how serious his ankle injury is. DE Emmanuel Ogbah hasn’t been anything specia.
Of the third-rounders, Nassib has pl;ayed well, but OT Shon Coleman looks like a developmental player. Thgat’s a problem, because Cam Erving has looked as bad as every other Ray Farmer #1 pick. he might start the season at center, but John Greco will end up finishing it. That means the Browns will need both a right guard and tackle. So we’ll be lookign at Austin Pasztor and Spencer Drango.
The final #3, Kessler’s “Smooth As Silk” Whiskey has played like the low-round pick he should have been.With Austin Davis having a concussion, this means the Browns will end up cutting him and keeping Josh McCown, giving them by far the worst set of quarterbacks in the league.
They might look better tonight, because Tampa is such a terrible team. They went 6-10 a year ago, playing a weak schedule; new coach Dirk Koetter won’t be able to fix what is broken with QB Jameis Winston. The Browns will need to overwhelm them to show any evidence that they’ve improved; I don’t expect to see that
It’s foolish to get upset about the score of an exhibition game. Especially the first game, where the majority of players won’t even be on the team two weeks from now. As I explained earlier, the point of an exhibition game is to see if any rookies lived up to the hype– and if any players still on their rookie contracts have progressed.
For that reason, I won’t rage at length about the Browns performance in their 17-11 loss. I’ll just sum it up by using a technique made famous by Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson and Ron “The Ghoul” Sweed.
Ladies and Gentleman, your 2016 Cleveland Browns!!!
Are you happy to see RGIII named the starter, Geoff?
“Happy” is pushing it a bit. I would have preferred not to see Griffin join the team; I don’t think this experiment will end well. But since they did sign him, yes, he should be #1. He should be #1 until the day he is injured or released.
Delay of Game 