Written by Brian McPeek

---

By rights I should probably come up with about 600-700 words to describe Sunday’s Browns’ game, but every time I sit down and put hand to keyboard the only two words that come to mind are ‘horse crap’.

Actually, those two words are all you need to summarize the Browns 6-3 win over the Seattle Seahawks. Marion Motley moved a few piles, Lou Groza kicked a couple field goals and Bradbury Robinson, at the urging of innovative offensive guru Walter Camp, attempted a few of those crazy forward pass things to secure the win and move the Browns record to 3-3 on the season.

There’s not really much more to say. If you watched the game you can’t read this because the blood is still pouring from your eyes, and if you didn’t watch, regardless of what else you were doing, you made the right call.

The Browns defense played well throughout the day. Yes, it was against Seattle who was led by the incompetent Charlie Whitehurst and who was also without Marshawn Lynch, but they played well and did what they had to do to make Whitehurst look like Whitehurst and not like Bruce Gradkowski. The Browns caused a couple turnovers, harassed Whitehurst and clamped down on the Seattle vertical passing game and they kept the Seahawks out of the end zone all day.

Well done defense.

The offense, on the other hand, continued to look like monkeys humping a doorknob. There was the usual array of 4-yard passes on 3^rd and 9 and there were precious few throws down the field. To make up for that lack of imagination and creativity there were dozens of rushes into the strength of the Seahawks defense that resulted in Montario Hardesty carrying the ball 33 times for 95 yards.

To be fair, the Browns did dominate the time of possession with their running game. Hardesty, Colt McCoy and Chris Ogbannaya (signed just a couple days ago off the Houston Texans roster) combined to run 44 times for a 141 yards and, as a result, possessed the ball for 42 minutes to the Seahawks’ 18 minutes.

That’s how you win a 6-3 game. The reason you have to win a 6-3 game is because McCoy and the Browns offense can’t move the ball via the pass. McCoy was 20-35 for 178 yards on Sunday with no TDs and one interception.

It’s time to stop blaming McCoy’s ineffectiveness on everything except McCoy. On Sunday he continued a worrisome habit of missing open receivers and looking panicked at the slightest hint of pressure (and he WAS pressured all day even on 3-step drops and quick throws). He missed Ben Watson a couple times by wide margins and he nearly got Mohamed Massaquoi killed on a couple others. The bottom line is McCoy is not throwing the ball very well at all and he’s losing any confidence he had built up with his decent play from last season.

Yes, he’s been put in a tough situation with new personnel and a new offensive system but he’s also not making throws that are open and that he’s made his entire life. McCoy was a 70% passer at Texas but he’s seems unwilling or unable to make throws into smaller windows or ‘throw guys open’ by putting the ball in a spot where his guys can make athletic plays.

Until McCoy starts hitting those throws he and the Browns are going to continue to see defenses put everyone within five yards of the line of scrimmage and the running game and short passing game (and therefore the entire offense) are going to struggle to move the ball.

And that will lead to more 6-3 type games if the defense is superb (and facing 2^nd team QBs and RBs). And 6-3 games will lead to me scheduling my annual colonoscopy and check-ups on fall Sundays.

When all is said and done I obviously prefer a record of 3-3 to 2-4. It’s just that I also prefer not being subjected to watching the Browns get there.

 

By Popular Demand…

These are my educated and completely unbiased thoughts on the NBA lockout….. Bwahahahahah!!! and a huge LOL!!!

I think the last few weeks of meetings and accusations and hatred between the owners and the players has been as entertaining as the regular season would have been anyway. It’s easily and by far as entertaining, actually. Especially as a Cavs fan who would have been watching a rotten basketball team.

It does suck for hard core NBA fans and I have friends and acquaintances that are exactly that. I feel for those guys because the NBA is their love and their passion and that’s been taken away from them. That blows and most of us can empathize with them over that. I watch NBA basketball. A lot of it. I watch as many Cavalier games as possible and any other game that’s on most evenings because it’s entertaining and I’ll almost always choose sports over anything else on television. I’m just not hard-core like some guys who plan their nights around it. It’s killing those guys.

But from my standpoint as a Cleveland Cavalier fan who watched one of the biggest assholes in NBA history rip the hearts out of a collective fan base on national TV? I’m enjoying this beating and I will enjoy watching the players bleed. I enjoy seeing them deprived of doing the one thing many of them don’t completely suck at and I love the pain it’s causing them. I look forward even more to the pain it causes the rank and file when they start missing game checks because that will serve to create an even wider gulf between them and guys like LeBron and D-Wade who don’t need the Association to live well.

I know it doesn’t hurt those marquee guys financially, but it tickles me that someone is finally getting over on them, even if that ‘someone’ is a bunch of petulant, whiny, filthy-rich, underhanded group of owners.

I don’t care.

I don't care the slightest little bit about the players. Not one of them would piss on me if I was on fire and there's not a handful who have the slightest bit of loyalty to me or any other fan that supports them. And if it were baseball or football that was going through this turmoil I'd feel exactly the same way. 

Yes,rooting for the owners over the players is like rooting for genital warts over Chlamydia but that’s just how I feel. Make no mistake, the owners winning this battle means absolutely nothing for the fans. Ticket prices will not be lowered, great players won’t come to Cleveland in free agency and the great players drafted here will leave. That is written in stone. This isn’t about fixing those issues and guaranteeing competitive balance. This is a straight up cash-jack by the owners and they are swinging lead pipes and chains against the players.

That’s fine with me.

Again, I hate it for guys who live and die for the NBA and who love watching the greatest athletes on earth ply their trade. But personally, I’m all for this pound of flesh being taken.

And it’s going to be taken. The owners never had a care in the world or the slightest desire to truly negotiate with the players’ union. This was always about tying the players to the table and starting that big saw aimed at their groin. This was always about crippling the players in terms of revenue percentages and never about a truly equitable split of proceeds.

Here in Cleveland we don’t care as a whole if we miss Kyrie Irving develop in front of our eyes. We don’t look at how the arena workers and people who make their money on game night are affected. We don’t care about the adverse effect on the bars and restaurants downtown.

Is that selfish? Hell yes it is. But it’s no more selfish than getting on national TV and making a spectacle of yourself so that your massive ego can be fed and you can make a fan base sick to its stomach.

I’ll say it flat out: I’m still pissed about ‘The Decision’ and how it went down and if my feelings about the lockout are spiteful, small and misguided then so be it. I’m tired of watching players manipulate the system to, what I perceive anyway, the detriment of most NBA cities. I’d bet a lot of money that I’m not alone in that regard.

So give me more pent up hostility and poisonous Twitter comments from players directed at ownership. I’m enjoying it. Give me more pictures of Baron Davis dressed like a hipster lumberjack behind Derek Fisher at press conferences. I think it’s awesome on many levels. Let me hear Kevin Garnett whine about how unfair the owners are being. I find it ironic.

Most of all, to fuel my vengeful and spiteful soul, let the lockout continue so I can watch the bloodshed.

And there will be blood. Buckets and buckets of it until the owners get everything they wanted and then throw the players a bone by talking about a partnership with them and how they feel the deal they eventually strike is fair and balanced for both sides. Then they’ll talk about how this benefits the long-term health of the league while they’re actually just counting their bigger piles of cash.

If you really believe anything the owners say to try and salve the open wounds of the players then you probably thought that July 8, 2010 was all about the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich, CT. It’s about the money. It’s always about the money.

But for me it’s about the blood. Let it rain red.

What Was the Point?

Can someone explain why I should feel better about the Cleveland Browns simply because Mike Holmgren spoke for an hour Thursday and said absolutely nothing? Why is so much of the fan base now placated that the Walrus actually went before the assembled media and said nothing new to anyone?

Do all team presidents speak to the press after week five? What did we learn?

Paraphrasing Holmgren:

The Team- It’s young. Sometimes they look good, sometimes they don’t.

His own status- I’m committed to building a winner here. Maybe I’ll be here after my 5-year contract is up, maybe I won’t.

Pat Shurmur- Doing a good job and is often hard on himself.

Quarterbacks- You really need one.

Colt McCoy- Going to play all season if healthy so the organization knows what they have.

Peyton Hillis- Trying to get something done with his contract but negotiations won’t be made public.

Awesome. Thank you. Someone help me in off this ledge.

Holmgren had said earlier that he wasn’t going to be in front of the cameras and the media as this was Shurmur’s gig. That’s fine and dandy. And if that’s the case then Holmgren shouldn’t have gone on the radio in Seattle with an old broadcasting buddy and talked about the Browns or the Seahawks. While it’s ultimately meaningless that he went on air Seattle, it was just bad form not to discuss the team with Cleveland media first. This is his home and this is his organization and this fan base should hear his words first, if any are forthcoming.

But why do we feel the need to hear from the guy at all? Are we that insecure that we’ll ignore what we all plainly see if someone with Holmgren’s reputation simply tells us that everything is fine and going according to plan?

The one revelation that did come out of the Holmgren press conference was that he is considering hiring an offensive coordinator to assist Shurmur with the play calling duties next year.

What?

Is he telling us that a rookie head coach in the NFL is better suited to call his own plays than a 2^nd year coach? Is this an indication Shurmur is in over his head? Or is this telling us that this year was a wash from the start and that my remaining tickets are worth dimes on the dollar in 2011 (not that I hadn’t already figured that out on my own)?

I think Holmgren should have gone with his initial inclination, which was to not say much of anything at all. He really should have known better.  I didn’t expect anything other than five or six wins this season anyway. What I do expect is the professionals running the team to be professionals. I think Holmgren stepped in it when he went on Seattle radio and then felt obligated to try and clean up his mess with his press conference Thursday. But in my opinion he made a bigger mess with his press conference. He underestimated the effect his Seattle interview would have with this fan base.

Then he said nothing of consequence for 60 minutes other than intimating that the head coach he personally selected is overwhelmed by the play calling duties.

He really should have done better.

Just continue to build this team like you did in Green Bay and Seattle. Let the ledgers ledge and let those who will stomp their feet and pout stomp their feet and pout. Winning will cure what ails this fan base and the silent majority understands that’s not going to happen overnight.

Follow @Peeker643

 

*Photo Credit- Yahoo! Sports