Hunt suspended eight games – Are eight games enough for you?
By STEVE KING
Eight games.
Are you surprised that, as it was announced on Friday, the NFL has suspended Browns running back Kareem Hunt without pay for only the first eight regular-season games of 2019 for violations of the NFL Personal Conduct Policy in connection with physical altercations at his residence in Cleveland last February and at a resort in Ohio last June?
All of the so-called experts seemed to believe – and understandably so — that Hunt would probably get 12 games and perhaps even all 16. I never heard anyone – anyone! – offer the opinion that it might be just eight. That appeared to be out of the question.
I have a longtime good friend – an early 60-something woman from the Greater Akron area who has been a big Browns fan all her life and was physically abused by a man a few years ago – who would have suspended Hunt until about the 2030 season.
Really. I’m not kidding.
In fact, as she has told me any number of times, she never would have signed Hunt I the first place and remains extremely upset that her Browns did.
And I get that. I understand her feelings. I certainly do.
It’s something I struggle with myself, and will continue to struggle with going forward. I tell her that if the Browns hadn’t signed him, some other team would have. There’s a radio sports talker in Detroit who, when I catch him every afternoon coming home from work, rips the Lions apart for not signing Hunt and praises the Browns for having the savvy to take the chance.
I mention to my friend that Browns General Manager John Dorsey, because of his relationship with Hunt from his days with the Kansas City Chiefs, was the perfect guy to do it. If anyone can get Hunt rehabilitated both personally and professionally, it’s Dorsey.
My friend counters by saying the Browns are the worst team for him to go to since he is a Willoughby South High School graduate and University of Toledo product. She says he needs to get away from his longtime friends who no doubt had a big hand in dragging him into the mud of physically abusing women.
Good counter.
The Browns – all of them, from the top of the front office to the last guy on the practice squad — need to understand all this, and that the questions and scrutiny aren’t going away anytime soon. So they have to be patient and accommodating to the critics of Hunt’s presence on the team. Dong so – biting his tongue and not lashing back – will be Hunt’s greatest challenge. It isn’t producing on the football field, for he has already proven without a doubt that he can do that in a big way.
And therein lies the reason – that incredible ability — why Dorsey and the Browns are rolling the dice on Hunt.
Stay tuned.
Browns haven’t won anything yet
Yes, the Browns, with all the things they’ve done since the middle of last season, punctuated incredibly so by Tuesday’s trade for former New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., are the talk not just of the town, or Northeast Ohio, or the state, but rather the whole country – in any sport at any level.
The Browns are getting all kinds of love from everyone – even some of their AFC North opponents, including their most hated rival, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But, at the expense of raining on everyone’s parade and ruining the party, let’s be very clear about one extremely important thing – that is, the fact that the Browns haven’t won anything yet in 2019, not even a preseason game or even a coin toss. Training camp doesn’t start for more than four long months.
So while it’s fun, let’s pump the breaks on all that Super Bowl championship talk. Instead, let’s first set the goal on having a winning season, something the Browns haven’t had since 2007.
Browns General Manager John Dorsey, the architect of this incredible rebuild, at least on paper, addressed this on Thursday during a conference call with the Cleveland media.
“Expectations, I hear a lot about that, but I know this – good football teams, they win in the fall,” Dorsey said when asked how head coach Freddie Kitchens and the Browns will handle the heightened expectations.
“What we have done is we have added some talent. Now, the chemistry part has to take over with it. Teams win in the fall. They do not win in March, and that is good teams. With regards to Freddie, Freddie is one of those individuals who I love because he is so straightforward and honest. He is direct. He is going to set expectations high. There is that accountability level. He will make players be accountable. He is the same guy every day. That is who he is.”
But who are the 2019 Browns overall? We won’t know that for a long time.
The chaos in Cincinnati continues
What’s going on with the Kansas City Chiefs?
That’s what everybody in the NFL, especially now the Browns, are wondering
First it was running back Kareem Hunt, who, when he was still a member of the Chiefs, was caught on video kicking and punching a woman. Kansas City quickly released him and, of course, he was subsequently signed by the Browns and, just several days ago, suspended for the first eight games of the 2019 regular season.
Now it’s current Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who is being linked to alleged child abuse at his home in Overland Park, Kan., just outside Kansas City.
If the situation gets worse for Hill, would the Chiefs end up cutting him, too? Who knows?
Hill was their best running back, and Hill is their top pass-catcher. How would the Chiefs look without both of those players next season?
How quickly things change in the NFL. It was just two months ago that the Chiefs nearly made it to the Super Bowl, losing in overtime to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. Now the team – the entire organization, really – is mired in controversy, chaos and a predicament in which there are a lot more questions than answers.
It is forcing every team to take a deeper look at the backgrounds and disposition of their players. Indeed, if it can happen in Kansas City, in the middle of farm country, where you don’t expect things like this to take place, it can happen anywhere, anytime to any team.
Longtime Browns fans will remember when, in 1989, as the Browns were trying to break down the door to the Super Bowl, they lost star running back Kevin Mack for a good portion of the season because of his being suspended for his involvement with drugs.
Mack was able to get his life back on track and resume his career with the Browns, who stood by him. He now works for them in alumni relations.
Hopefully there is a positive ending for Hunt and now the situation with Hill.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs and their fans have got to be shaking their heads.
