Written by Brian McPeek

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Not a bad sports weekend.  As a matter of fact, it was an elite sports weekend.  The Buckeyes take down the Wolverines for the sixth time in seven years on Saturday, and the Browns win a thriller in Baltimore on Sunday in OT after an improbable ending to regulation.  As he does every Monday morning, Brian McPeek checks in with us to recap the weekend that was in Cleveland sports, and it's all wine and roses this morning.

Just Another Day at the Office

Never a doubt.

That Browns win was in the bag the second that Matt Stover hit his 47yd field goal with less than 30 seconds left.

Did anyone doubt that the Ravens would be dumb enough to kick off to Josh Cribbs? Did anyone doubt Cribbs would have another 40+ yard return? Or that Joe Jurevicius would catch a pass with his finger nails on the sideline with 11 seconds left. Did you doubt that Derek Anderson would complete about a 20 yard throw over the middle of the field to Braylon Edwards while Anderson was being dragged to the ground?

All it took from there was Phil Dawson kicking a 51yd field goal off the left upright, through the posts and off the support bar behind the cross bar and back into the end zone where it was ruled ‘no good’ by one of two officials caught up in a maelstrom of confusion.

After a short huddle by the officials to review a non-reviewable play (they termed this review a ‘discussion’), the field goal was ruled ‘good’ (and correctly so, by the way) and the Browns marched down the field on the first possession of overtime to further crush the spirits of the crumbling Baltimore Ravens and win going away, 33-30 (yawn).

Did I mention OT was delayed so that the Ravens could be gathered out of their jubilant, nearly victorious lair…err…locker room?

Simple game plan too.

Fail to score more than three points off three early Ravens turnovers, have Brodney Pool return an interception later in the game for a franchise-record 100 yards, blow another big lead late in the game and then move in for the kill shot.

When 8 out of the last 9 Browns seasons would embarrass Northwestern, you don’t worry about the details of an over-time win over one of your most hated rivals. The Browns, when all is said and done and reviewed and ruled upon, moved to 6-4 on the season and swept the filthy Ravens back into the putrid, filthy gutters of Baltimore.

Survive and advance.

Results aside, it is certainly nice to be done with the stiff defenses of Pittsburgh and Baltimore. The Ravens may be decaying, but their defense is still proud and capable and has some shelf -ife remaining. They made the day difficult for Anderson and the Browns offense but the Browns did get a great, inspired effort from former Raven Jamal Lewis. As always, Lewis ran hard and knocked defenders backward all afternoon in carrying 22 times for 92 yards and a touchdown. The TD came on another 1-yard gender-test of a run in which Lewis barreled into the middle of the Raven defense for the score.

The offense passed the Baltimore-Pittsburgh challenge by salvaging one of the two games. The lessons learned and the growth that the offense experiences the rest of the season may well be directly related to the crucible they went through over the last 14 days.

Not to be forgotten, the defense played very well in the first half and at moments in the 2^nd half as well. It was beautiful to see an opposing QB lying on the turf counting his fillings and it was terrific to see wobbly and misguided passes thrown as the result of some pressure. That pressure was by way of not only some well timed blitzes, but also from a straight up rush at times.

There is no breather next week. The Browns return to the friendly confines of Cleveland Browns Stadium to face the Houston Texans. The Texans beat the Raiders Sunday, something the Browns were unable to do back in Week 3.

But they are at home and they aren’t facing the Pittsburgh or Baltimore defense. It’s time for this young squad to apply the lessons learned over the past few weeks and get after a playoff spot in earnest.

And there’s no one reading this who thought that was even a remote possibility on September 10^th.

Strange days indeed.

You Always Miss Those Special Seniors

The day after the OSU-Michigan is always an emotional one for me.

Another season has ended. Bowl games have, for the most part, also been determined but are months away.

As an OSU fan (and as a Michigan fan as well), you truly care about only two games all year: The Ohio-State Michigan game and that January bowl game.

And we know we’re about to say goodbye to some extremely special seniors that have come to mean a lot to us and have had incredible influence in deciding the outcomes of past OSU-Michigan games (as well as those previously mentioned bowl games).

Look, my emotions can sometimes get the best of me. It was just easier to write a brief letter to the guys I’ll miss the most:

Dear Chad Henne, Mike Hart, Jake Long and Shawn Crable:

Words can’t begin to express the joy you guys have given me over the last four years.

Whether it was your failures in Ann Arbor or in Columbus I enjoyed each one of them immensely. I especially loved this year’s effort at home, where your total yards on offense were about equal to your punter’s best kick of the day.

Hey, it was a heck of a punt.

Mike, if you could run the ball like you run your mouth you’d have won three Heisman’s. Unfortunately you came up just three Heisman’s short of that total. But really, no hard feelings. I just wanted to tell you that you’re easily the biggest tool of your senior class. Your mixture of arrogance, whining and losing every Buckeye and Bowl game suits you very well.

Jake, you and your offensive line mates probably should have just snapped the ball to Mr. Henne and then tackled him yourselves Saturday. It would have save Vernon Gholston a little bit of running around out there and Mr. Henne probably wouldn’t have been beaten to a pulp.

Chad, I really can’t find it in my heart to criticize you. You’re just kind of a pathetic figure that never seemed to get any better from the day you walked onto campus all the way through your senior season. Nice job with that. It’s not easy to do at a so-called ‘major program’.

I’ll bet an NFL team will likely even get caught up in loving your height and your arm strength and give you a chance with their organization. And I’ll bet that four years later they will look back at you as a bitter disappointed to them too.

Oh Mr. Crable. Right here from Massilon, OH (I-O!!!…. just kidding with that. Couldn’t help myself). You could have been a hero an hour down the road in Columbus. Of course you’d have had to do it as an oversized safety though. Or maybe a fullback. You know what? Maybe fleeing to Michigan was the right call for you. With Hawk and Schlegel and Laurinaitis and Carpenter, etc, etc., etc., you may not have gotten on the field in Columbus. Hey, at least you got a face-full of it twice in your glorious Michigan career.

Seriously though, I understand you boys are feeling a bit down about the four straight losses to the Buckeyes. But keep your heads up. You’ve still got that bowl game record to fall back on.

Best of luck to all you boys. I’ll never be able to hear any of your names without remembering these past four years. Each of you is a living reminder of a triumphant and glorious period of this OSU-Michigan rivalry.

Hope you enjoy that the rest of your lives. However miserable they may be.

With Love,

Ohio.

Oh God. That felt good. Not as good as the 14-3 OSU victory that made it possible, but pretty damn close.

Enjoy these days Buckeye fans. You may never see the likes of this kind of domination in this series again.

No Pretense… I Like It

I’m taking my cue from Lake County’s most wildly successful sports prognosticator, www.theclevelandfan.com ’s own, Lead Pipe. Lead routinely refers to the Cleveland franchise on the NBA as the Cleveland Cavalier. No ‘s’ because there truly is only one that matters.

And Lead’s right. For all intents and purposes this is a one-man team.

I agree that Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Daniel Gibson can help, but without LBJ running the show and getting them their shots, this team is a lottery-pick winner.

Be that as it may, the Cav have evened their record on the year after a nice win over Utah and Carlos Boozer this past Friday.

Some will say LBJ beat the Jazz despite missing Eric Snow, Donyell Marshall and Larry Hughes. Those folks will tell you the Cav are 5-5 and treading water until they can maybe get some of those guys healthy again and back on the floor.

Don’t you believe it. The Cav is 5-5 because those guys are gone. Those guys are the catalytic converters and governors on the Cav-mobile. They are expensive and entirely unnecessary pieces and parts that do nothing but slow down the car.

Eric Snow is the governor switch. With him engaged your speed is limited and you can never exceed a certain pace.

Donyell Marshall is like an expensive, specialized piece of stereo equipment that you installed in the car that never did work correctly. Sure, were a few times you turned it on and it sounded great, but most times you turned it on it just wasn’t right. There was a hissing or a screeching or something that sounded a lot like bricks hitting a rim that just made you understand it was better if you never used it anymore.

Larry Hughes is that 5^th tire that hangs off the back of some Jeeps. You know, the one that is attached to the rear lift-gate. But this was a tire the Cav spent a boatload of money on. And it keeps going flat. No one can figure out what the hell is wrong with this rotten, useless tire that doesn’t even help propel the vehicle when it isn’t flat.

In fact, even on the rare nights when it is inflated and able to be used, it keeps falling off the damn back of the car and getting in the way of everything. LBJ goes for a drive down the lane…uh oh... there’s the useless spare tire clogging up that lane and getting in the way.

On a couple occasions when the Cav have installed the 5^th wheel on the front, drive side of the Cav-mobile it’s proven to be incapable of pulling the load and hasn’t been close to getting anything to its destination. Then it inevitably goes flat again or tears a valve stem or hits a curb and needs patched.

No Cav fan. This is not a case where you hope to hold serve until the cavalry comes back. The cavalry may come back, but they’re either unarmed like Snow or they can’t shoot straight like Marshall and Hughes. Right now is the ideal time for LBJ to continue doing what he’s doing. And aside from that being 40-10-10 seemingly every night, he’s making it perfectly clear that he doesn’t need the missing persons and he’s just better off without them.

I called for it last week and the week before that and I like where LBJ is taking this squad. He’s revitalized Z. He’s set up Gibson to succeed in the shooter role while minimizing the pressure on Gibson to run the offense. LBJ has, to the extent its possible, made Damon Jones relevant again from the offensive side of the court.

I give Cav Head Coach Mike Brown credit. He’s not getting in the way. The guy who should have the ball all the time does have it all the time. The guy who the offense should flow through is making sure it does. Maybe that’s a reward for LBJ becoming this team’s defensive stopper over the course of the summer, something Brown clearly respects and appreciates. It’s clearly contagious and the rest of the roster has followed LBJ’s defensive lead.

Maybe it’s just because Brown clearly has no other choice and no other options. That’s probably the more likely reason but at this point I don’t care and neither should Cav fans.