Cleveland Browns News - Browns Daily Dose

Cleveland Browns News and more with Steve King

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Note: This is a Flash Back Post from 8-12-15

*Wednesday, July 29 – Head coach Mike Pettine gives his state-of-the Browns address as training camp gets ready to start the next day.

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As Pettine goes, so goes the Cleveland Browns news. While Pettine discussed his team in depth to the media, the real story was the man talking. That’s right, Pettine himself. The Browns still don’t have their quarterback of the future – at least not one they can be almost be sure of just yet – and until they get that guy, there is a ceiling – not very high, at that – on how good they can be, particularly in the long term. But the second-most important position on a football team is the head coach. Every great team has a top-shelf head coach and a top-shelf quarterback, and the best of those elite teams have a great head coach and a great quarterback who are on the same page – who speak the same language and finish each other’s sentences. The most important relationship in team sports is that of the head football coach and his quarterback. You can’t win a championship without it. The fact the Browns have Pettine means they might – we emphasize the word might – be halfway home to getting that accomplished – getting the right formula, that is. With all the well-documented hurdles he had to overcame in his rookie season of 2014 – Textgate, an unsettled situation at quarterback, the loss of one of the game’s best centers, Alex Mack, for a good portion of the year due to a broken ankle and a disruptive, egotistical offensive coordinator in Kyle Shanahan who wanted to be the head coach – Pettine distinguished himself well. Even the terrible finish of five straight losses to end the season, didn’t do him in. He survived and has come back this year a lot wiser and a lot more experienced. Certainly, Pettine has to win games to remain on the job, and at some point soon, they must number more than seven in a season. In the meantime, the state of the Browns is the state of their head coach, and also the state of their search to find a quarterback who can help him win. The state of their head coach? It is that fans should be cautiously optimistic about his chances to finally be the guy at the top for whom the franchise has looked so long.

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*Thursday, July 30, 2015 – The good performance of wide receiver Terrelle Pryor on the first day of camp (I have already discussed, in detail, Pryor and how much I like him on WHBC with hosts Kenny, Joe and John, so that writing about that would have been rehashing old news). One of the biggest stories on the Browns – at least as long as he’s with the team, and perhaps even afterwards – is Johnny Manziel. After all, he’s a quarterback. He was a first-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. He is a Heisman Trophy winner. He is Johnny Football. He is coming off an offseason highlighted by a very public stay in rehab. He was historically bad in his short time on the field last year. And he has a persona as big as his home state of Texas. Other than that, he’s nobody. No, really, Manziel will always be a topic for discussion. But, as training camp began, what caught nearly everyone’s attention as far as Manziel is concerned? The fact he looked like he couldn’t make the junior varsity team at Berea High School a few blocks away. His passes got knocked down or were errant, or he got sacked. After all that has happened to him since he arrived in Cleveland, most of which has been bad for months now, he might have hit rock bottom with this performance. And he knew it. Following practice, he trudged along, with his head down, toward the door back into Browns Headquarters. He looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. As he walked, a group of fans, mostly kids, screamed for him to come over and sign autographs. The closer he got to the door, the more they yelled. Then, just as he got to the door and appeared ready to go in, he looked over at the fans. That fueled their fire. They hollered louder than ever for him. Last year, he would have waved them off and headed inside. Too cool for school, he was. But now he’s been humbled in any number of ways. That tends to build maturity. So Manziel sat his helmet down and walked over to the fans, who cheered wildly. He signed and signed until he probably had writer’s cramp. Who knows if Manziel will ever develop as an NFL quarterback. But to have that chance to run with the big boys, he must first learn to walk with the little boys. And this act of contrition – of appeasing the young fans when he really wanted to go inside and just get away from everybody and everything – was a definite step in the right direction. It was, to be sure, the most positive and encouraging thing Manziel has done in a long, long time

Cleveland Browns News continued…

*Friday, July 31 – General Manager Ray Farmer probably didn’t shock Cleveland Browns news outlets when he said Manziel still has the skills to be an NFL starter. Well, of course, Farmer is going to say that. He has to. He drafted Manziel. He has staked his reputation – and maybe even his job in Cleveland – on Manziel making it. That’s an old story, and an obvious one. It was just the second day of training camp. The preseason is still a long ways off. The regular season? That seems light years down the road at this point. But maybe – just maybe – the biggest pass there will be throughout camp and the preseason was thrown today when quarterback John McCown connected with Dwayne Boe on a 50-yarder. It was right on the money, hitting Boe in stride. A real thing of beauty without question. If you didn’t know better, you might have thought the guy delivering the ball was named Kosar, Sipe, Nelsen or Ryan. Yes, it was that good. The biggest question with this Browns offense is whether any long passes will be thrown. Not completed, really, just thrown. You have to throw long – even if you have no chance of completing it – to get those safeties out of the box. Until you prove you will use the deep ball, the safeties will creep up into the box and become extra linebackers who will help to choke off the running game. With nine defenders near the line of scrimmage, there are just too many players to block. But can McCown throw the long ball? And if he can, is there anyone fast enough and competent enough to get downfield to catch it? The answer to both questions was believed to be a resounding no. But that McCown threw deep and was accurate, and that Boe ran past a pretty good secondary to catch it, gives everyone food for thought. For if the Browns can be legitimate threats to use the deep ball regularly – Kosar always said you had to throw at least one deep ball a quarter – it will not only open up holes for the running game, but also clear out room for receivers running the short and intermediate routes by making those safeties sprint downfield covering the long passes. The Browns think they will be good defensively, and much improved on special teams. If they can be complete offensively – or at least complete enough to make defenses play them honestly – then this team can legitimately have a chance to win every game. McCown’s pass to Boe served notice that such is possible. But probable? We’ll hold judgment on that.

Cleveland Browns News continued…

Saturday, Aug. 1 – Owner Jimmy Haslam gave us some interesting Cleveland Browns news when he said “not going to blow things up again” in reference to firing Pettine and Ray Farmer if things go badly this season. It was a day for important men and ka-booms at Browns training camp. Haslam gave Pettine and Farmer a vote of confidence by saying he was “not going to blow things up again.” Should Haslam have gone out on the limb and done that, putting himself into a tight spot if the season ends up being a disaster? Yes, of course he should have. It was absolutely, positively the right thing to do. The owner has to stand by his men – at least in the public’s eyes – in order to take some of the pressure off them so they can continue to rebuild a team that, when they inherited it, was not very good. As much as the Browns and their fans want the rebuilding to take a few quantum leaps forward this season, with a 10-6 record ensuing, that is not likely to happen. Yes, winning is important, but so is stability at head coach and GM. A team can’t win if it has no stability at the top. Haslam needs to do everything he can to get that stability, and he did all he could today in that regard with his very public and very direct backing of Pettine and Haslam. … Now here’s the other part of the story. A visitor to camp today was none other than Jim Tressel, who played his high school (Berea) and college (Baldwin-Wallace University) football just a few blocks away from Browns Headquarters. He’s never tried to hide the fact that he’s been a lifelong Browns fan – and a big one at that, as evidenced by the fact he was dressed in Browns garb from head to toe, save for the scarlet and gray tennis shoes. Hmmm. Those colors sound vaguely familiar. As the story goes when he was head coach at Ohio State, he listened to Browns contests on the radio as he was reviewing tape on Sundays from the previous day’s Buckeyes contest. And, of course, there were for many years rumors that he might end up coaching the Browns someday as the franchise continued to misfire with its coaching hires. That ship has since sailed, of course, as Tressel has gone into college adminsistration first at the University of Akron and now at Youngstown State University, where he serves as president. Tressel came to Browns camp to visit his Ohio State products on the team, including safety Donte Whitner, wide receiver Brian Hartline and wide receiver – and former quarterback — Terrelle Pryor. It was the misdeeds of Pryor and some of his teammates in Tattoogate that caused Tressel’s coaching career at Ohio State to get blown up, as it were. It was interesting – and ironic – to see Tressel and Pryor together. Tressel tried to get the president’s job at the University of Akron, but was beaten out for it by Scott Scarborough. Shortly thereafter, Tressel was heartily welcomed back to Youngstown State, where he was a very successful head football coach before taking the Ohio State job in 2001. In fact, YSU wooed him back “home” as if he were a five-star recruit. YSU views getting him as a real coup, that Akron’s loss is its gain. With yet another bit of irony, Tressel’s visit to Browns camp came as the dust was still settling from massive – even historic — cuts at UA made just days before by Scarborough, resulting in the loss of 213 positions and entire departments. People angered by the move – and there are many of them — are accusing Scarborough of systematically blowing up the school, its reputation and its relationship with the community, piece by piece by piece. As popular as Tressel is at YSU, Scarborough is now that unpopular at UA. We’ll see how it all shakes out not just with Scarborough, but also with Haslam, Farmer and Pettine. But this much is certain: The embattled Scarborough can only hope someone at UA stands up for him as much as the Browns owner stood up for his GM and head coach.

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