Daily doses and where all the bad stuff started:
A RAY OF HOPE IN A DREARY WEEK
Daily Doses continued 10-17-18:
By STEVE KING
The mood in Cleveland has been dark and gloomy since mid-afternoon last Sunday.
That’s when it became clear that, even though there was still plenty of time left in the game, the Los Angeles Chargers were going to rout the Browns at FirstEnergy Stadium. The final score was 38-14, ending the Browns’ plans to make it two wins in a row for the first time in a long time.
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Browns fans were bummed. They’re still bummed. In fact, they’ll continue to be bummed until at least on Sunday when the Browns play a road game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
This is, of course, a major rebuilding process for the Browns. Their 2-2-1 record heading into last Sunday raised hopes that the job might be progressing along a little faster than expected. The reality arrived with a dull thud with the one-sided loss to the Chargers. Indeed, there is still much more work to be done. It’s going to take time. The fans are going to have to be patient.
Then came the release on Tuesday – the so-called “off-day” for all NFL players — of the sportsillustrated.com NFL power poll. When the Browns jumped to No. 23 in the 32-team league last week after their exciting 12-9 victory in overtime over the Baltimore Ravens two Sundays ago, the si.com people weren’t exactly effusive with their praise. I was surprised – and somewhat disappointed – by that.
With that, then, I was more than just a little leery of looking at this week’s poll. But just as I was taken aback by last week’s analysis of the Browns, I was similarly taken aback – but in a positive way – by what they had to say this week.
In moving the Browns back just one spot, to No. 24, after that unmitigated disaster of a defeat, the si.com staffers said this:
“This was the first game of the season that the Browns were never really in. But that happens from time to time during the season. They’re still a much-improved team.”
Hmmm.
Hmmm.
I feel a little better about the state of the Browns after that.
Oh, by the way, the team right behind the Browns, at No. 25 for the second straight week, is Tampa Bay, which lost 34-29 at Atlanta last Sunday to fall to 2-3. The si.com people summed up the Bucs by writing, “Now 0-1 with Jameis Winston as the starter, and the 2-0 start feels much further in the rearview mirror.”
For what it’s worth, the Bucs are favored by three points – what the home field is usually worth – over the Browns.
Now, if the Browns get routed by Tampa Bay, si.com will likely not be so kind next week.
WHERE ARE THE BROWNS AT RIGHT NOW?
Daily Doses continued 10-18-18:
To the untrained eye, the Browns, at 2-3-1, appear to be at a bevel point, one of those crossroads games of the season as they get set to visit the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.
Will they return to form and get back to playing like they did for the first five weeks of the season, where every game went right down to the very end and they had a chance to win every one of them?
Or will they perform like they did last Sunday in getting throttled – completely dominated – in losing 38-14 to the Los Angeles Chargers, and start drifting off into the abyss?
Those are both good questions, the answers to which are not clear.
But what does the trained eye see? What does Hue Jackson think? Where does the Browns head coach believe his team is at right now with 10 games left?
He was asked that question on Wednesday as the Browns began their preparation for the Bucs, and here’s what he had to say:
“I think that we are a team that has learned to run the ball. We have run the ball decently. We are one of the better running teams in football today, and that’s after having had played some decent and really good defenses.
“We have not been as opportunistic as I would like us to be. We have gotten quite a few turnovers that have not turned into points, so we need to get better that way. We need to be able to score enough points to win. I do not think that 14-15 points is enough. You have to score 24-28 points in this league to be able to win. Those are things that we need to be able to do better.
“Obviously on defense, we need to be able to stop the run. It is obvious. We are not going to run from that. We need to do that better. I think getting the turnovers that they have gotten, the 16, that has been awesome. We need to continue to do that, but we have to make sure that we plug the holes that we have had. Our players understand that.
“On special teams, I think that there was some improvement, but we still need to see some moving forward, getting better.
“As a football team, I think fundamentally at every spot, we have to continue to grow. That is my message to the staff, ‘Let’s keep pushing that way. Let’s keep getting our young guys better, so that they can perform at a higher level.’
“Pro football is a different game week in and week out because you play different teams, and different teams have different strengths. You have to be able to handle those things. As a football team, especially our young players, we are starting to understand that every week is a new challenge. It is not the same. You have to learn from those things.
“We have enough veteran players that get that. I think that we have enough in that locker room that if we do what we are supposed to do, that we have a chance week in and week out.
“Here is another opportunity for us to get better, another opportunity to go to Tampa and get a win. We have to do our jobs.”
Will the Browns do their jobs? We’ll soon find out.
THE BEST ‘WORST’ THING BAKER SAID
Daily Doses continued 10-19-18:
I’ve written recently about how much I like the way that Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield talks.
Yes, I like the way he plays – perhaps not so much in the 38-14 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers last Sunday, but certainly ss a general rule – but I also like the way he talks. He talks … well, like a quarterback should.
Another great example of that occurred earlier this week when Mayfield said the debacle against the Chargers was his ‘’worst loss.’’
Think about that for a moment.
Mayfield didn’t say it was his worst performance. He didn’t say it was the most off-target he’s ever been in a game. He didn’t say it was his worse completion percentage. He didn’t say it was the fewest touchdowns he’s thrown in a game. He didn’t say it was the fewest passing yards he’s had in a game.
Indeed, his frustration had nothing – absolutely, positively nothing – to do with his individual statistics.
Instead, he said it was “worst LOSS.” He gets it. He understands that the quarterback’s job is not to throw for 350 yards and three touchdowns. It’s not to have an out-of-sight completion percentage. It’s not to hit on 10 passes in a row.
None of that matters one bit.
What does matter, though, is the team winning and losing, and the man most responsible for that is the quarterback. The biggest job the quarterback has is to make sure his team wins the game. If he throws for three scores but the team still loses, then guess what? He failed. Yes, that’s fright, he failed. He didn’t do his job well enough.
That’s just the way it is. Quarterbacks are paid to win. It’s that simple. It really, truly is.
A franchise quarterback is the most important person on the team. You don’t have a franchise left guard or a franchise free safety, but there are franchise quarterbacks because quarterback is the most important position in team sports.
If a team has a good quarterback, then it has a chance to win championships even if some of the players surrounding him are not all-stars. But if a team doesn’t have a good one, then it doesn’t have a chance to capture those titles even if there are a bunch of all-stars surrounding him.
Oh, sure, there are exceptions to the rule, like former Browns quarterback Trent Dilfer when he was starting for the 2000 Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. They won because of their defense, and certainly not Dilfer. But that kind of thing is rare, and the teams that try to do it that way are, almost always, going to fall short.
Understanding all that, then, it was especially good to hear Baker Mayfield talk about his “worst loss” instead of his worst anything else. That will pay dividends for him – and, much more importantly, the Browns – down the road.
DEAL OF HYDE A GOOD MOVE
Daily Doses continued 10-20-18:
When I first heard the news on Friday that the Browns had traded former Ohio State running back Carlos Hyde to the Jacksonville Jaguars for a fifth-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, I was disgusted and disappointed.
“There go the Browns again, trading away another valuable player for a draft choice,” I thought to myself. “For goodness sake, he’s their leading rusher (with 382 yards and five touchdowns).”
If this had been the Sashi Brown-led Browns, I would have remained upset, for he had no idea of what he was doing, along with the fact he felt no need at all to win in the here and now while this massive rebuilding project moves forward.
But my angst lasted for only a few moments, because I realized that John Dorsey, who knows exactly what he’s doing, is the general manager now and the man making all the moves. I trust him, I have confidence in him.
And I know why he made the deal. It’s easy to see.
Hyde is a good player who, because he’s in only his fifth season, should have some good years left. But the Browns have a tough, hard-nosed runner just like him in rookie Nick Chubb, who was drafted with the fourth pick of the second round, at No. 35 overall, in 2018.
Chubb needs to play. Every week, Hue Jackson is asked about Chubb, and the Browns head coach says without hesitation that he needs to get more carries. This will clear the way for that to happen. Now the Browns’ top two backs, Chubb and fourth-year pro Duke Johnson Jr., are young guys who should grow together into what the club hopes – and rightfully so – will be one of the best backfield duos in the league.
In addition, by the time the Browns are ready to contend – really, seriously contend – Hyde will be on the downside of his career. This trade will give him a chance to play for a Super Bowl berth right now. He will fit the Jaguars’ rugged, punishing style perfectly.
So it’s good for everybody involved, which would not have been the case if Brown were still here. With Dorsey, though, it’s another move to get the Browns closer to where they want to be, and need to be.
WHERE ALL THE BAD STUFF FIRST TOOK ROOT
Daily Doses continued 10-21-18:
The Browns return to the scene of the crime as they get set to play the host Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday,
This – Tampa and Raymond James Stadium – is where all the trouble started in the expansion era, and the Browns have never completely gotten back on track.
It was on Aug, 14, 1999 that the re-born Browns traveled to Tampa Bay for their second preseason game. Hopes were high after, just five days before in the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame Game in Canton, they beat the Dallas Cowboys 20-17 in overtime on a field goal from some guy nobody had ever heard of, Phil Dawson. In the locker room afterward at what was then known as Fawcett Stadium, the Browns – all of them, including owner Al Lerner, President and CEO Carmen Policy and head coach Chris Palmer – jumped around and hugged each other as if the team had just won the Super Bowl.
Still giddy after all that, with everyone starting to believe that the seemingly outlandish talk of the Browns becoming instant contenders just might be true after all, the club got flattened 30-3 – and it wasn’t even that close – by a good Buccaneers team. With that, then, the Browns – and their fans – began to come back down to earth and get the first inkling of the realization that this club wasn’t going to win anything other than the No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick again in 2000 by having the league’s worst record.
It’s now nearly 20 years later and the Browns, coming off 10 straight losing seasons, including the perfectly imperfect 0-16 nightmare in 2017, are trying to get it right. With the way their secondary is – there are so many cornerbacks banged up that if you have ever played the position at any level of competitive play, and that includes the city rec league, you should get to Tampa as fast as you can because they might just sign you and play you in the next breath – and with the fact the Bucs have dynamite wide receivers and a great passing attack – it’s going to be hard for the Browns to get it right on Sunday.
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