Written by Jeff Rich

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When you watch an NFL game on television, you expect the announcers to be consummate professionals, and most of them are.  They don’t like ripping on these players, which is to say that they don’t like to pour salt in the wound, so they tend to sugar-coat some things in the interest of being polite.  That’s why we hear our Thursday Night NFL Network booth say something along the lines of, “probably should have been caught”.

It’s a lot more FCC friendly than what we’re saying at home when the ball goes through the hands of Greg Little or Owen Marecic.  You know, maybe it was a poorly thrown ball, or maybe it was difficult to catch because the throw was defended well.  Maybe the stars didn't align properly, or maybe the receiver’s “give-a-darn” factor simply wasn't high enough.  From the couch or the cheap seats, the sentiment is the same…

HE’S A BUM!!!

From Andre Rison to Kevin Johnson to Quincy Morgan to Braylon Edwards to Greg Little, there’s one common theme.  These guys can’t catch a cold.  The rest of the guys, forget them; I’m only concerned about Greg Little because he’s still an active member of the Cleveland Browns.  With Mike Holmgren back in Seattle, doing whatever it is that he does in Seattle, we don’t have to think about him too often, but he fits in this context, even if he never dropped a pass thrown by a Browns QB.  The entire organization was put into his hands and he dropped the ball there, but that’s beside the point.  At his train wreck of a presser last December, he mentioned something about winning games "if we could just snap the damn ball and catch some passes".

I can say with complete confidence that the Cleveland Browns have a quarterback that can get the ball, so the drops are real now.  When Holmgren said that, it was more polite than throwing Colt McCoy or the coaching staff under the bus, which was warranted, even if not politically correct.  The drops, a concept that’s more plural than the letter “S” truly implies, were always a crutch for the McCoy apologists.  I don’t know what it is with this uniform the invites the unofficial statistic to stick out like such a sore thumb, but it doesn't change the fact that McCoy, Derek Anderson, or Brady Quinn were inept at the quarterback position.

Sure, I remember Braylon Edwards dropping the ball plenty, but either memory doesn’t serve properly or there was never any single drop that quite blatantly cost the Browns a game.  Now, there’s no reasonable hypothetical situation that polishes the turd that is the reality of the 1-6 record, but without going to the transcript, but the 2012 season has featured three drops that make you curious about the outcomes of three games.

It isn't exactly his job, but LJ Fort dropped what should have been Michael Vick’s fifth interception of the season opener with 1:23 remaining.  Had he come down with the wounded duck intended for Jeremy Maclin, it’s Brandon Weeden closing out a dreadful performance in victory formation instead of Vick.  Fort already had an interception as part of a defense that carried Brandon Weeden’s dumpster-fire performance, so maybe we let that one-point loss go.  After all, they had fifteen more of these games to lose, did we really want an undrafted rookie from Northern Iowa to shoulder the blame for a team loss?

You cannot let Greg Little off the hook, even in the wake of how terrible his quarterback was in Week 1.  It was early, but he gave away a touchdown, letting Kurt Coleman take a ball away from him at the Eagles 1 yard-line.  A week later, he actually caught five passes for 57 yards and found the end-zone, but his dance with the team down 7 in the fourth quarter drew little fanfare. 

He followed that up with a two catch performance in Buffalo, but it was his drop of a third down pass at the end of the first half that had everyone thinking about how they didn't score.  You see, with Little, we can celebrate all the things he does do, his 81 catches and 4 TDs in 23 games, but it’s the drive-killing that we think of with him.  It traces back to the drops, his 12 a year ago were good for second worst, which tends to take the air out of the offense.

“We can’t play a guy that’s going to drop footballs”

-Pat Shurmur

In Baltimore, the Browns had their chances.  On the surface, Little wasn't abysmal in this one, 4 catches for 77 yards, but it isn't so great when you consider he was targeted ten times.  He dropped two first downs and a TD in a game the Browns lost 23-16.  According to the NFL Network’s crack staff, Little had 11 drops coming into that one.  We’ll accept that at face value since the drop stat is actually quite unofficial. (STATS LLC only has him at five drops on 39 targets for the year-to-date)

He put up a Blutarsky against the Giants, a game where only 2 of Brandon Weeden’s 35 passes were thrown in his direction.  To be fair, he threw 8 towards the new emerging Alpha Dog of the receiving corps, Josh Gordon, and the Browns supplemental pick from Baylor or Utah only hauled in two, but they both put points on the board.  There’s more on Josh Gordon later.  The seldom used Jordan Norwood caught all nine thrown in his direction for 81 yards in a 41-27 loss to New Jersey’s NFC chapter.

In the Browns lone win of the season, the receivers were more efficient for Brandon Weeden, who arguably didn't play his best game.  He targeted Gordon 4 times, 3 of them resulted in catches, including a 71-yard TD strike that put the Browns on the board early.  He went to Little five times, and the return was a pedestrian 3 grabs for 18 yards.  Jordan Cameron caught two of the three passes thrown his way.  Ditto for Josh Cooper.  Not so coincidentally, there was little mention of any drops in the game recaps a week ago.

In Indianapolis on Sunday, Brandon Weeden was good once again.  Lost in all of the catching issues is that Weeden’s stock continues to rise.  He came close, but did not throw the ball to the other team for the first time since Week 2 in Cincinnati.  The receiving corps was good, bad, and ugly.  The latter would cost the Browns their second win in as many tries.

First, Greg Little had five catches on seven targets and no blatant drops.  His scoring catch was spectacular, if you’ll accept “spectacular” as a relative term in the context of what Greg Little does.  Weeden’s Oklahoma State teammate Josh Cooper had four catches, bringing his season total to six; all six have gone for first downs.  Josh Gordon made an outstanding hands catch on a ball that Colt McCoy could not have thrown that brought the Browns to within a point in the 3^rd quarter.

The bad news is that Cooper and Gordon were targeted twenty times, and grossed just six catches for 112 of Weeden’s 264 yards.  That, in and of itself isn’t the ugly part.  That came with 6:38 remaining, when Brandon Weeden salvaged a beautiful throw from mid-field while being hit, the stuff game-winning touchdowns are made of, and it hit Gordon in the hands, but it didn't stay there.  Instead of putting the Browns up 19-17, because we don’t assume extra points in these parts, it fell harmlessly to the turf.

It brought up 4^th Down, and the The Shurmur Rules dictate a punt right there.  Instead of trying to get the one yard from the Colts 41, Shurmur opted for a Reggie Hodges punt, which netted the Browns 21 yards of field position.  You can’t put Shurmur’s choices on the receiving corps, but in this situation, you demand that your receivers protect Shurmur from himself.  They didn't, and one more Shurmur mistake, a draw play to Montario Hardesty that went for four yards inside the last three minutes of regulation, set the Browns up to turn the ball over on downs when they didn't convert on third or fourth down on their last realistic possession.

The Browns lost the game, and to his credit Gordon owned the drop and the blame for the loss.  He knew that non-catch, his first credited drop (according to STATS) of the year, was the difference.

It probably should have been caught.