Written by Brian McPeek

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With all due respect to my colleague and Cleveland Fan stalwart Gary Benz, it’s not the little things that are killing the Browns. Unless you consider not having a healthy or effective quarterback as a little thing in NFL terms. 

I want you all to chew on this for just a second as you digest the Browns 20-10 loss to Atlanta: we are all lamenting the fact that Seneca Freaking Wallace was unable to play the second half on Sunday. 

Once more with feeling: wins and losses for the Cleveland Browns come down to whether Seneca Wallace is healthy enough to play instead of Jake Delhomme. 

Yeah, that’s where we are. And that should literally scare the shit out of you. 

Seneca Wallace, a career backup/slash type of player in Seattle for eight years, a quarterback so excellent that he’s started damn near a dozen games in that eight year career, is the key to the Browns having any chance to win a football game right now. 

Why? 

Because Jake Delhomme, he of the two year $12million deal, is an official autopsy away from being pronounced dead.  

He’s this guy. In fact, the man carrying Jake may be Mike Holmgren and he might well be willing to pay to have Jake hit in the head with a club and killed. 

I know I might chip in right about now. 

Anyway, a few random, off the cuff, from the scene of the crime (Section 119) thoughts regarding the game Sunday: 

1. If Peyton Hillis were a horse someone would have mercifully taken him behind the barn

on Sunday and shot him in the head. Watching Hillis limp on and off the field was brutal. That kid was in a world of hurt all day and yet still kept answering the bell. 

2. If Brian Daboll were a horse he’d be a miserable nag who was stuck giving little crap-pantsed kids rides around the yard on their birthdays. Dude? Running tosses left and right with a guy like Hillis is stupidity personified as it is. Doing it when he can’t effing walk is short bus material. You need to go (I don’t even know where, other than just someplace away from  wearing a headset here) solely because you are a complete and utter idiot. Which is more than enough reason actually. Do us a favor and lick an electrical transformer.

 

3. Eric Wright, you sir are the Brian Daboll of defensive backs. Not only can you not consistently make plays but, on the rare occasion you do, you act like a giant douche-bag. You were not a miserable piece of crap before the season. In fact, you were actually quite mediocre in recent years which immediately elevated you to exalted status in Cleveland. But you can now confidently take your place with any other PoS that’s played here in the last 11 years.

You are dog crap my brother. And you’re not even likeable on top of being dog crap. Why don’t you take a spot next to Mr. Daboll on the outlet licking platform. 

4. Dear officials:  this is the NF Effing L. This is not the North American Man-Boy Love Association. The penalty you called on Scott Fujita in the first quarter that led to Falcon points was disgusting and vile. If you guys prefer to watch men play touch y-touchy with each other on Saturday nights in your rooms that’s your own business. But put that shit away on Sundays and let them play football.

 

5. Dear Jake: you’re really, really  hurting me badly. Sincerely, your pride, legacy and self respect.

 

6. Rest on Tuesdays Josh Cribbs and Joe Thomas. Not on your laurels please.

 

More later. After I clean the vomit off my shoes and re-group. Just another day where the tailgate fare and company was better than the crap on the field. 

Grief Counseling  

I’m getting a big kick out of some NBA fans (who also will tell you that they have a rooting interest in the Cleveland Cavaliers) telling me I need to get over my ambivalence surrounding this year’s Cavaliers team and the NBA in general. 

Few of these people actually live in the same general area of the country as I do but that doesn’t stop them from being an expert on how we’re supposed to handle our emotions. 

For these people I have a very simple message: shut your cake holes. 

I’m perfectly comfortable wallowing in the misery created when a certain athlete went on a certain network and ripped the throats out of a certain city. I’ll get over it in time and return to watching the Cavaliers with the same level of passion as I have in years past. 

But it’s certainly not going be based on when you think it should happen. I don’t care that the Heat’s collection of talent makes the NBA a far more interesting league for the general basketball watching public. I don’t care that there are compelling stories across the NBA not only in Miami but also in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City and Boston and…. 

I don’t care. 

I don’t care that you, the learned people with such a developed world view, consider my view to be childish and immature, not to mention narrow-minded and parochial. I live here, in the city that had its throat ripped out. I have only the point of view that living here my entire life provides. 

I don’t give a shit if that disappoints you or angers you that I can’t see the forest through the trees. There is no forest and there are no trees as far as the NBA in Cleveland is concerned. The trees and the forest were clear-cut in July. The basketball landscape was strip-mined. Hopefully with time that landscape is again full of trees. But right now you can still see the tracks of the wrecking crew that ripped it apart. 

I’ll be back watching this new version of the Cavaliers. It may even be as soon as opening night. But don’t have the audacity to tell us here how to handle the disappointment and the heartbreak.  

Uneasy Lies the Head 

Oh boy. 

I was really comfortable with the Buckeyes drafting off of Alabama straight through December and into the BCS Championship game. I was more than comfortable with Alabama having the eyes of the football-watching nation on them for a couple more months. 

But with the Crimson Tide falling to South Carolina on Saturday and the Buckeyes throttling Indiana, Ohio State will wake up Monday as the #1 team in the country. And when they wake up and look in the mirror they’ll see they’re wearing huge targets on their chest from this point forward. 

How the Buckeyes handle that and take care of their business with the specter of #1 hanging over them will determine their fate this season. And they’ll get a really quick and thorough test in handling it all next Saturday in Wisconsin when they take on the Badgers. 

On Saturday OSU looked like a #1 team in the country. Terrelle Pryor played pitch and catch with Dane Sanzenbacher, Devier Posey and Brandon Saine all afternoon in an easy 38-10 win over the Hoosiers. It was basically a 7 on 7 passing drill for Pryor who was never called on to run with the ball and never asked to roll out of the pocket. Quite possibly to make sure his injured quad wasn’t an issue Pryor dropped straight back all day long and found wide open Buckeye receivers running free. 

In what was arguably his best passing performance in his three years in Columbus, Pryor completed 24-30 throws for 334 yards and 3 TDs on the afternoon. He was careful with the football as well and didn’t toss an interception. That’s the kind of performance that Heisman voters pay attention to and that Head Coach Jim Tressel takes notice of as well. 

Pryor does still have to figure out when to just throw the ball away. Likely under strict orders not to run with the ball he did take three sacks that could have been avoided. But that’s nit-picking. Pryor looked great for most of the day and he’ll have to continue to build on that kind of performance now that the Buckeyes have assumed the top spot in the nation. Pryor and OSU will fall under much greater scrutiny starting today.

 

Ready or not boys. Time to dial it up.