Written by Jeff Rich

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I’m not really afraid to fly, but I do dread the method of air travel in every way imaginable.  It isn’t so much the flight itself as it is the process.  There’s a process for getting to the airport.  There’s a process for getting to the airplane.  There’s a process for getting on the airplane, and then a similarly painful process to get off the plane at the end of the journey.  Frankly, everything in between is just gravy.

I probably shouldn’t say it’s the process as much as it is the people who regulate these processes and my fellow travelers who have such a difficult time carrying out these relatively simple tasks.  From the booking agents to the TSA agents to the flight attendants, they all have one thing in common; they don’t care about you or your ease of travel.  On a recent trip, one of my fellow travelers was being selfish, so I made verbal reference to it on behalf of myself and all others affected by this selfish behavior.  Though the most pointed word I used was “selfish”, one of the flight attendants made an effort to cool me down.  At the end of the flight, no one exchanges pleasantries, and from the flight attendants, you get the industry standard, “Buh-Bye”.

It’s not “good-bye”, it’s “buh-bye”.  It’s the type of parting words that most Browns fans would offer as he is dismissed from his duties as Head Coach of the 2-7 Cleveland Browns entering the 2012 Bye Week in Week 10.  The only problem is that he wasn’t dismissed.  The Bye Week is typically the best time to dismiss your coach in-season, if that’s something that you want to get into, but we haven’t seen the Browns waving the white flag like that too often.

The last time the Browns made a change in-season, it was more about Butch Davis walking away in 2004, due to mental health reasons.  Butch wasn’t dismissed or replaced during the Week 8 bye for the 3-4 Browns, and it wouldn’t have appeared prudent to do so.  Headed into the bye, they went blow-for-blow with a good Philadelphia Eagles team (the eventual NFC Champion), but came up short in a 34-31 OT loss. 

The Browns fell to 3-7, coming out of the Bye Week in poor fashion, and that’s when Davis couldn’t handle it any longer.  The team was left in the hands of interim coach Terry Robiskie, who would lose 5 straight before getting in the win column with a 22-14 victory at Houston in Week 17.  Pick your poison there, did you prefer the mentally weak 3-7 coach or the 1-5 interim guy with the thankless job of carrying a non-playoff team across the finish line?

At that point, they were two seasons removed from the playoffs, and that was just a one-and-done wildcard appearance.  They were a far-cry from the Super Bowl, or even the AFC Championship, under Butch’s charge.  The last time a move like this was made during the season, a coach that did take them to the AFC Championship the year before was replaced by Jim Shofner.  Bud Carson will be passed by Pat Shurmur in the record books for games coached (26) when Shurmur puts on the headset at the Jerry Dome on November 18th.

Carson, the alleged architect of the Steelers’ defenses that allegedly won Super Bowls in the 70s, got off to a good start with the Browns.  He was 9-6-1 in 1989, making a solid first impression at Three Rivers Stadium with a 51-0 beatdown of his former team, and ending the season with a Conference Championship defeat in Denver.  That wasn’t uncharted ground for the Browns, but the 17-week season was new to everyone in 1990, not that Carson ever enjoyed the week off.

Two wins in nine tries just wasn’t enough for Art Modell, and the Week 10 bye served as the perfect time to give Bud his walking papers.  Carson’s last game as Head Coach of the Browns was a 42-0 home loss to the Bills, getting their revenge for a 34-30 playoff defeat in Cleveland ten months prior.  It was the second time the Browns were shut-out by more than 30 points.  Unfortunately, Jim Shofner didn’t fare much better.

The interim Head Coach was shut out just once, a 35-0 Week 16 loss in Pittsburgh, but it wasn’t Shofner’s worst loss in terms of point differential.  He lost his first four games by margins of 12, 17, 15, and 44.  He did manage to steal one victory, a 3 point game over the Falcons at The Stadium, but closed the season out with the two division losses before Modell would call on Bill Belichick to turn things around in 1991.

For as special as he became with New England, “Mumbles” was nothing special given the week off to prepare for an opponent in his five seasons with the Browns.  He was 2-3 in the first game following the bye and 19-25 in post-Bye Week play from 1991-1995.  He entered his first bye with a 2-2 record, but his team came out flat with two weeks to prepare for the 3-2 Jets, going down 14-0 in Week 6 before losing a respectable 17-14 contest.  They’d go 4-8 in a season that saw 3 three-game losing streaks broken up by consecutive wins twice.

Year Two was a little bit better for Billy.  Despite starting the season 1-3, and let’s give him break for trying to win with Todd Philcox there, he bounced back nicely after the bye.  By then, they’d hit a low point in a 12-0 loss to Denver, neither team reached the endzone, so David Treadwell accounted for all of the scoring in a Dawsonian-type effort.  It was Mike Tomczak who struggled to get more than 75 yards in the air, while rushing greats Gaston Green and Reggie Rivers did enough on the ground to set up four field goals and little else in a game that somehow did not involve Pat Shurmur.

Three consecutive wins only brought the W-L record to 4-3, but the defense was playing some inspired ball, going 14 straight quarters without allowing a touchdown.  The run wouldn’t last, and the Browns only went 6-6 after the bye, just slightly ahead of the pace from their woeful 1-3 start.

The NFL tried to get a little too cute in 1993, and added a second bye week, making the season 18 weeks long.  It was not well received, and actually dumped after one season.  I’d actually forgotten about that, if I even realized that it was happening at the time, so I’m going share the recap that Bill Simmons offered on ESPN.com in 2010.

Q: Was there a tipping point during that 1993 season when everyone threw their hands up and said "The double byes must go immediately"? 

A: Actually, there was! How did you know? The NFC East and AFC West received byes in Week 8, which meant that four of the league's best eight teams (Dallas, Kansas City, the Giants and Raiders) were shelved, and also, CBS (who had NFC rights) lost local bumps in Dallas, Philly, Washington and New York. Of the eight Sunday afternoon games, our "marquee" AFC matchup was Buffalo (which finished 12-4) at the Jets (8-8); for the NFC, it was San Francisco (10-6) at Phoenix (7-9). A ratings calamity.

(Important note: Now that we have 32 teams, DirecTV and perpetual parity, the quality of those Sunday games wouldn't be nearly as problematic. I'd rather see them bring back double bye weeks then stretch the season to an 18-game orgy of concussions. But that's just me.)

I really can’t sit here and state a real opinion one way or the other, 19 years later, what it was that threw things off in 1993.  We could say that two bye weeks knocked a team that was constantly trying to gather their sea legs out of rhythm; they lost both games following bye weeks by double digits.  Still, they were 3-1 going into their first bye, then 5-2 coming out of their second bye.  We might blame bye weeks all we want for the season going in the tank, but it was Week 10, the Browns loss to Denver in their eighth game of the year that spelled the beginning of the end.  It was the last game for Bernie Kosar, who was no longer “oh, so young”, as a Cleveland Brown.  The QB Controversy was clearly too much of a distraction, and the team went in the tank, finishing the once promising season at 7-9.

The Browns made the playoffs, their only appearance under the reign of Bill Belichick, and it looked like they were figuring things out finally.  The NFL gave them a bye in Week 6, and they had won four of their first five.  They were a bit short-changed on their bye week, having to play on the Thursday following their weekend off, but on the other hand, their short week wasn’t so short.  On the Thursday in Week 7, they defeated the Houston Oilers 11-8, the only game with such a score in NFL History.  They’d go 6-4 in their last 10 games to finish with 11 wins and 4 losses; it was good enough to draw New England in the Wild Card Round.

The next year wasn’t unbelievably promising.  Headed into their Week 7 bye, the last mid-season bye the “Cleveland Browns” would have for half of a decade, the home team was just 3-3 and obviously regressing from their playoff bound team of the year before.  Having a week off to prepare for a 2-5 Jacksonville team that had just lost a battle with the playoff bound Bears didn’t spell success for Belichick.  The Jaguars took a 20-6 lead out of the gate, and held the Browns off for a 23-15 win.  This is the part where we’re thrilled to have Cincinnati to kick around, an OT Week 9 win in the Queen City and a 26-10 over the Bengals in Week 16’s farewell game at Cleveland Stadium book-ended a 6 game losing streak.

Belichick, after being dimissed by the (literally) nameless Baltimore franchise, went back to work for his mentor, Bill Parcells, with the Jets and eventually New England.  He assumed the Head Coaching duties with the Patriots in 2000.  Since then, he’s been 9-3 in the game immediately following the bye, and 83-28 overall after the bye.  Of course, he’s taken those Patriot teams to 5 Super Bowls, and is 61-28 in games played before New England’s bye week.

When the Browns returned in 1999, Chris Palmer never really had to deal with preparing for any games after a bye week.  With the Browns coming into the league as the lone expansion team, it brought the total number of teams to 31, meaning a team had to have a bye in every week of the season, including the first and last week.  Ideally, we took the more apathetic fan bases, and had their teams start the season in Week 2.  As a result, the Chargers took Week 1 off in 1999, and the Bengals followed suit in 2000, opening with the Browns in Week 2.

In turn, the NFL needed a team to take the Week 17 bye, and you needed a certain type of team for that.  In some aspects, this team would be one that didn’t have a leg to stand on, in order to reject playing in 16 consecutive weeks, a team like Alfred Lerner’s Browns.  They were the ones that caused the uneven number of teams.  Also, you wouldn’t want a playoff team getting an unfair advantage, being in the clubhouse while potential playoff adversaries battled in late December.  With the deck being so stacked against the Browns, there was positively no fear of the Browns being among the fortunate to qualify for the post-season.  In fact, this concept is not lost on the Browns in the present day, but that’s beside the point.

It was the aforementioned Butch Davis that would take over for Chris Palmer (5-27), who was not fired until 9 days after the Browns January 2nd bye.  Butch had the Browns at 4-2 headed into their Week 7 bye.  It was the first time in the three-year expansion history that the Browns had won four games.  This guy knew what he was doing, or so we thought.  Things looked promising for the Browns, holding a 21-7 fourth quarter lead over the Bears at Soldier Field in Week 9.  I was watching in a bar in Tempe, Arizona, but the Yankees and Diamondbacks were getting ready for an epic Game 7 in downtown Phoenix.  Even being from Cleveland and being a lifelong Browns fan, it felt safe to walk away from the TVs, and go downtown to witness history.  Long story short; there was a late Bears score, a successful onside kick, a successful Hail Mary, and a pick-six in OT.  So yeah, the Browns lost after the bye week in 2001.

In the end, Butch would be 1-2 in games following the Bye Week, but 1-3 if you count the mess he handed Robiskie in 2004.  In the 2002 season, that’s the one where the Browns finish 9-7 and land in the playoffs, the former coach of The U would win 2 straight after the bye.  They were 5-2 for the remainder of the season, after a 4-5 start.  Take away that “majestic” season, and Butchie was 5-13 overall following the week given to regroup.

The fact that Romeo Crennel was 3-1 with the Browns immediately following a bye week may prove these numbers to be insignificant.  Don’t get me wrong, if you take the macro approach, he was 18-28 in 46 post-bye week games, and he’s 0-2 following the Chiefs bye this season.  But, he put together a nice win in Chicago in 2005, and his team played a game against the previously undefeated, defending World Champion Giant on Monday Night in 2008 that can be described as nothing short of pristine.  His 2007 team was actually the better team in Week 8 at St. Louis, follwing a bye, but the victory over a hapless Rams team was uninspiring.  Of course, the same could be said for Romeo’s tenure in Cleveland.

Eric Mangini was 1-1 in games following the bye week, and there was really a balance between the 2009 loss to the Ravens on Monday Night Football and the incredible 2010 victory over Belichick’s Patriots.  Though it can be quite relative and always relevant when speaking of the Browns, the team was in a state of disarray when they hosted the Ravens, and lost 16-0 in front of a national audience.  This was the game that sets the events in motion to create a football czar position for Mike Holmgren to assume.  The Browns were 1-7 and would fall to 1-11 before winning their last four games.

A year later, despite a 2-5 start, things really felt like they were on the up and up.  A Week 7 victory in New Orleans had things going in the right direction for the off week, and the team bounced back with a 34-14 domination of the Patriots.  I’d put it right there with Crennel’s Monday Night Miracle as the best after-bye game in Browns history.  Unfortunately, the season peaked right there, Mangini would lose 6 of his next 8, and the season would end on a 4-game losing streak, one that cost Mangini his job.

Then, you have Pat Shurmur, who is, by the way, still employed by the Browns.  He’s coached as many regular season games as Bud Carson, but Carson will always lead him by two games in the post-season department.  We are in the midst of Pat’s second bye week, but if last year is any indication, we don’t have a lot to look forward to in Dallas on the 18th.  Last year, after a week off, our beloved Browns looked apathetic and unprepared for the inept Raiders in Oakland, and they lost by 7.  I’m not nearly as optimistic about their chances to do that well against Jason Garrett’s Cowboys.

Shurmur led them to a 2-10 record after the bye, which came after a 2-2 start, but included an 0-5 finish.  The good news for Browns fans, and the players on the team, is that there are only 7 games left.  If Shurmur season-ending losing streak is limited to 5, I’d be surprised.  But fear not, the new brain trust is at work, and it only a matter of time before they offer Pat a parting salutation.

Buh-Bye!