Red Right 88

In Cleveland, hope dies last

Archive for the month “December, 2010”

18 Dec 2010
2 Comments

Browns vs. Bengals – Week 15

The Browns look to continue their quest for a .500 record as they head to Cincinnati to take on the Bengals, who are currently riding an 11-game losing streak and who have not had consecutive winning seasons in 28 years.

The Opposition

Cincinnati: 2-10
Offensive rank: 24th overall/15th passing/30th rushing
Defensive rank: 20th overall/15th passing/24th rushing
Strength of schedule: 3rd
All-time record: Cincinnati leads 38-36, with a 23-14 edge at home. The Browns have lost five of the last six they’ve played in Cincy.
The line: Browns +1 (no respect)

What to Watch For

How will the Browns bounce back from last week’s disappointing loss in Buffalo?

How will Colt McCoy look after missing three games due to injury?

Can Peyton Hillis hold onto the ball and find his second wind as the season winds down?

How will the Browns defend the Bengals passing attack this time around?

In the first meeting the Browns double covered Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens had a huge day with 10 catches for 222 yards and a touchdown. But the Browns secondary has improved since then as Joe Haden is turning into a shutdown corner as the season progresses. His growth should mean the Browns can throw some different looks at the Bengals and not be burned so badly in the passing game.

The Best Browns vs. Bengals game I’ve Seen

The 1980 game the Browns won 27-24 to clinch the division title. The Browns won on a 22-yard field goal by Don Cockroft with 1:25 left in the game to end an eight-year playoff drought. The PD’s game story is here. Video is here, here and here.

The Prediction

The Browns offense finds its stride now that McCoy is back under center, Hillis hangs onto the ball, Haden single covers Owens, keeping him under control, and the Bengals losing streak, which started with a loss to the Browns in October, hits 12 games.

Record picking the Browns (using the point spread) this year: 2-10-1

Posted in Cleveland Browns, NFL
16 Dec 2010
3 Comments

It’s Stupid Time in Cleveland Sports

We don’t know if it is the cold weather or the piles of snow that have driven some people to the edge, but it is apparently stupid time in Cleveland sports.

First off was the report from WKNR* “contributor” Sabrina Parr (she’s not listed on the station’s website so we’re not sure what she does) that Browns coach Eric Mangini is done after the season regardless of how the team performs in its final three games. The station’s Chris Fedor, who is listed on the WKNR website as a producer, also claimed that the Browns can’t find a new offensive coordinator because no one is willing to work with Mangini.

Wait a minute, if there are coaches out there who don’t want to work with Mangini, why would it matter since the Browns are going to fire him anyway? Doesn’t the presumed removal of Mangini make the alleged reluctance of someone to work with him a moot point?

More importantly, if any of this were actually true, doesn’t it seem likely that one of the beat writers or columnists who cover this team on a daily basis would have come up with this news?

And doesn’t all this speculation actually run counter to what team president Mike Holmgren, the only person (other than owner Randy Lerner) who actually has a say in all this, said all along, that “The important point there I think is any coach, any staff where I am in the position I’m in, will be judged at the end of the season.”

Moving on.

The Plain Dealer‘s Tony Grossi and Bill Livingston must be dizzy from riding the quarterback carousel if their recent stories are any indication.

First off Grossi tries to sell us that the evolving Browns quarterback situation is somehow a case of the same old Browns:

“It’s Week 14 for the Browns and we’re still asking who’s the quarterback. Isn’t that the perfect metaphor for another Browns’ playoff-less season?”

In a follow-up article Grossi then painted the necessary quarterback switches as some kind of flaw on Mangini’s part:

“Naming Colt McCoy the Browns’ starting quarterback for the remainder of the season might not be a bombshell announcement. But it truly was out of character for Eric Mangini to commit to anybody at the position for longer than one game.”

Livingston tries to hang it on Mangini as if the coach has been switching players at the position just for fun:

“All that aside, the Browns, now out of playoff consideration, have had an unstable quarterback situation this year, which has been coach Eric Mangini’s norm.”

So let’s review: Jake Delhomme was the starter coming out of training camp, Seneca Wallace was the backup and Colt McCoy was No. 3. No mystery, no questions.

When Delhomme was injured Wallace took over as starter. When Wallace was injured McCoy took over as starter. There’s little reason to doubt that McCoy would still be the starter if hadn’t been injured. Just as there was little reason to rush him back before he was fully healed.

This hasn’t been a case of switching quarterbacks because they are not playing well; the Browns have a clear picture of the depth chart and acted accordingly when injuries hit.

Is that so hard to see?

***

We were going to include this gem from The PD’s Greg Kozarik, but it would be hard to top what the good folks at Two One Six Sports put together. Give it a read, you won’t be disappointed.

***

More on the silliness that is currently blowing through Cleveland sports can be found at Cleveland Frowns, and Waiting for Next Year.

***

*Full disclosure: Sirius is Red Right 88’s preferred official radio source. We haven’t listened to local sports talk in six years. Hearing that these are the types of “breaking news” stories the local stations put out just solidifies our position.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Eric Mangini, stupid time
14 Dec 2010

Final Thoughts on the Browns & Week 14

We were planning to put together something coherent about the aftermath of the Browns loss to Buffalo, but spending a combined 90 minutes getting the car unstuck from the street that that city can’t be bothered to plow and then cleaning the driveway took the fight out of us.

And really, what is there to say that we didn’t already know? The Browns are not yet at a point where they can make mistakes and hope to win a game. That was true Week 1 in Tampa and it was true on Sunday in Buffalo.

We’re with coach Eric Mangini on the disappointment.

“In watching the tape and talking to the players, I think the best way I can say it is disappointing,” Mangini said in his Monday press conference. “It was disappointing to me because it’s really not the way that we play football and we’ve made a lot of strides in doing that in terms of eliminating the self-inflicted wounds, putting the ball on the ground five times and interception. That’s taking points off the board and defensively, not doing a good enough job on some game-plan specific things.”

One of the areas that was extremely disappointing was on third down as the Browns only converted two-of-10 third downs against a Bills defense that came into the game allowing opponents to convert more than 44 percent of third downs. Since Jake Delhomme returned as a starter, the Browns are only eight-of-35 on third downs.

“We weren’t very good on third down to extend drives, which doesn’t help; putting the ball on the ground doesn’t help,” Mangini said. “The time of possession was skewed heavy in their favor and that’s a collective deal where, defensively, we need to get them off the field so they can’t eat up the clock and offensively, we’ve got to be able to extend drives so we have more chances to continue to the full complement of plays.”

We’re glad to see that Mangini and the team have embraced our philosophy of win as a team, lose as a team.

“There are things from a scheme perspective that we could’ve done better as well. I’m not saying it’s all playing,” Mangini said. “There’s some things that I feel we could’ve done better from a coaching perspective too and that’s the way it always is. It’s never just the players or just the coaches. It’s all of us. We’re all in it together. When it’s up and down, we all need to pull a little bit harder.”

***

Our biggest concern here is that the Browns lack of talent, depth and growing injuries are starting to catch up with them and that will be exacerbated and exploited over the next three weeks with division games against Cincinnati, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

If the Browns were to stumble as the season comes to a close, that would be back-to-back 5-11 seasons, only this time the season would end with a four-game losing streak, rather than last year’s four-game winning streak.

Under that worse-case scenario the jackals who worry about the temperature of the office furniture in Berea will be out calling for Mangini’s job. And that’s not funny or fun.

The positive part is we get the impression that team president Mike Holmgren doesn’t care what the media wants. It’s not that he’s egotistical, it’s that he comes across as someone confident in his football knowledge and trusting of his instincts. He knows that starting over after one year of the rebuilt Browns management is a no-win situation.

***

As sure as we are that Jake Delhomme’s time as a starting NFL quarterback has passed – he has seven interceptions to two touchdowns on the season – it looks like we’re with him for at least another week as Mangini said Monday that Delhomme’s the quarterback if Colt McCoy isn’t healthy.

Even if McCoy is healthy – or as close as he can be – the Browns should sit him for another week just to be sure. There’s no reason to rush him back.

***

As always, lots of good stuff on the Browns at Cleveland Frowns and Waiting for Next Year.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, NFL, snow | Leave a comment
13 Dec 2010
4 Comments

A Bad Day in Buffalo

Oh boy.

The Browns lost their last chance to finish the season with a winning record in an ugly loss on Sunday to the Bills. And along the way they showed that, while they have come a long way this season, they still have a long way to go to be a consistent winner in the NFL.

We subscribe to the theory of win as a team, lose as a team, so we hate to point fingers at one particular unit, but this loss hangs squarely on the offense.

The Browns took the opening kick off and moved smartly down the field with the running game, reaching the Buffalo six-yard line in just five plays, all rushes. But once they hit first and goal the drive stalled, as Peyton Hillis ran three straight times for five yards, leaving the Browns facing a fourth-and-goal at the 1.

Perhaps a play-action call would have been beneficial on first down in that situation, but the Browns were moving the ball and Buffalo does have the worst rushing defense in the league.

The Browns chose a Phil Dawson field goal rather than go for the score on fourth down. We would have been OK with the Browns going for the touchdown, what with the Bills weak run defense and all, but it was the first drive of the day and you want to get points early.

“I did think about [going for it], but I felt like the game was going to be close, like a one-score game,” coach Eric Mangini told The Plain Dealer. “I figured we would have more drives later on.”

We did too, coach. Unfortunately that first drive was the highlight of the day for the Browns offense.

After gaining 49 yards on the opening drive, Hillis would only gain another 59 yards the rest of the day. And once again he had no support in the running game, as Mike Bell ran three times for eight yards and Josh Cribbs added minus 11 yards on a botched end around.

This is a problem we’ve all seen coming for weeks now: Hillis is the Browns only running option so teams can key on him; there is simply no one else they need to worry about at all. Unfortunately there is nothing the team can do about it until the off season.

Same with the passing game as tight end Ben Watson had only one catch on the day. The Bills knew that Watson was the only person in the passing game they needed to worry about and it showed.

The Browns put up 54 yards on that opening drive, they would only gain another 133 yards the rest of the game.

Which brings us to Jake Delhomme.

Delhomme just wasn’t very good, going 12-for-20 for 86 yards. He had two fourth-quarter turnovers – a fumble and an interception where he was hit on the throw – that killed the Browns last chances to tie the game. He couldn’t move the Browns past midfield at all on their five second-half possessions.

Look, Delhomme was supposed to be a stop gap this year at the quarterback position. From all reports he’s been great mentoring Colt McCoy and that’s wonderful. But he is clearly past his expiration date as a starting quarterback in this league.

Since returning to the starter’s role three weeks ago, the Browns have gone 8-for-35 on third downs under Delhomme. He’s just not moving the team and there really is no good reason to keep him in the starting role now that Seneca Wallace is healthy. The Browns have options, they need to use them.

Speaking of things we don’t need to see anymore, it’s time the coaches sat down with Hillis and put the kibosh on his hurdling obsession. It’s unnecessary and it led directly to a fumble on Sunday when the Browns had a chance to take control of the game.

After the defense forced a turnover and gave the offense the ball on the Buffalo 25-yard-line, Hillis ran the ball on first down and tried to hurdle Bills safety Jairus Byrd, who knocked the ball loose and the Bills recovered.

“You knew from watching film that he has been [hurdling] for a while,” Byrd told The Plain Dealer. “If you get him in the open field, he’s going to try to stiff-arm you or jump you. It was something I knew was coming. I prepared for it.”

That was one of three fumbles by Hillis, to go with the one by Delhomme and one by Cribbs. In one absurd sequence in the third quarter the Browns fumbled three times on one drive and were lucky to recover all of them.

Bottom line it was a frustrating loss. But it doesn’t undo the good the Browns have done this year with moving the team forward. The loss does highlight the holes the team has and all the work still left to do. The front office and coaching staff don’t appear blind to that, so we can stay confident that things are turning around, despite how we feel after today’s game.

The Browns now need to refocus and get ready to travel to Cincinnati next week. Because if they lose to the 2-11 Bengals and come home at 5-9 to face the Ravens and Steelers, it may not be a pretty sight.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, frustration, Jake Delhomme, NFL, Peyton Hillis
12 Dec 2010

Browns vs. Bills – Week 14

The Browns head to Buffalo today as they continue their march toward a .500 record in the rain of snow of western New York.

The Opposition

Buffalo: 2-10
Offensive rank: 27th overall/23rd passing/17th rushing
Defensive rank: 25th overall/9th passing/32nd rushing
Strength of schedule: 1st (barely edging out the Browns)
All-time record: Cleveland leads 15-5-2, including playoffs and AAFC games. The Browns are 6-2-1 in Buffalo, winning four of the last five.
The line: Browns opened as a one-point underdog, but the game is now a Pick ’em

What to Watch For

Today’s expected bad weather should favor the Browns, as their offense is better equipped to play in poor conditions.

The Browns should turn the offense over to Peyton Hillis, Lawrence Vickers and the offensive line to control the ball and keep the ball out of Jake Delhomme’s hands as much as possible. Especially as we’re not really sure how Delhomme will react to playing in cold weather.

Hillis is only 38 yards away from a 1,000-yard season and he should have no problem hitting the mark today against the NFL’s 32nd-ranked defense. The Bills are giving up 170.9 yards a game, a full 25 yards a game more than the 31st-ranked Denver defense, and have given up 14 rushing touchdowns on the season (compared to four for the Browns defense).

The bad weather and a ball-control offense will help the Browns defense against Buffalo quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. Since taking over as the starter, Fitzpatrick has thrown 20 touchdowns, is completing 58 percent of his passes and has an 84.5 quarterback rating.

The Bills have been competitive against the league’s toughest schedule – suffering three overtime losses, a five-point loss to Miami and a three-point loss to Chicago. After an 0-8 start, the Bills are 2-2 in their past four games and would be 3-1 if Stevie Johnson hadn’t dropped a sure touchdown pass against the Steelers two weeks ago.

The Best Browns vs. Bills Game I’ve Ever Seen

An easy one this week: the Browns 34-30 win in the 1989 playoffs that wasn’t over until Clay Matthews intercepted Jim Kelly at the 1-yard line with three seconds left. You can watch Matthews’ interception here, NBC’s game intro is here, Eric Metcalf’s kick-off return for a TD and a Bernie Kosar-led touchdown drive.

The Plain Dealer‘s story is here. No surprise that the article portrays the game as one the Bills lost rather than the Browns won. Some things never change.

The Prediction

After starting the season 1-5, the Browns are continuing their slow march back to .500 as they are now 4-2 over the past six games. Today’s game against Buffalo presents a great opportunity to continue the journey.

As is the case every week, the Browns can win today if they don’t turn the ball over and don’t hurt themselves with silly penalties or mistakes. At this point of the season, the coaches and players know what they need to do, it’s just a question of if they can do it.

This week the answer should be yes, as the Browns control the ball and win a relatively comfortable game.

Record picking the Browns (using the point spread) this year: 2-9-1

Posted in Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, NFL | Leave a comment
12 Dec 2010

Week 14 Picks

After another perfect week – our third in the past five – we’re back on top in the 2010 Cheddar Bay Invitational at Cleveland Frowns.

So who do we like this week?

Green Bay (-7) vs. Detroit

Denver (-5.5) vs. Arizona

Baltimore (-3) vs. Houston

And for the money: San Diego (-7) vs. Kansas City

Posted in Cheddar Bay, NFL, point spreads | Leave a comment
09 Dec 2010

Browns May Be Ready to Flex

We were looking at the NFL schedule today and noticed that the league had decided to not flex out of Sunday night’s Philadelphia vs. Dallas game.

Looking at Week 15 there’s no way NBC would give up the Green Bay at New England game.

But things get interesting in Week 16, when San Diego is scheduled to play Cincinnati in the Sunday night slot. There’s no way the NFL and NBC want to show the Bengals in primetime in front of a half-empty stadium. So that opens up the possibility for another game to move into the slot.

But which one?

The game of the weekend, New Orleans at Atlanta, is already set for Monday Night Football. It’s doubtful that Fox would give up the Giants at Green Bay game as that will have major playoff implications.

That’s where the Browns come in.

It’s quite possible the Browns will have climbed back to .500 by Week 16 as they have the Bills and the Bengals the next two weeks. That means they would be returning home on a 6-2 streak to face Baltimore.

It will take a little bit of a leap of faith on NBC and the NFL’s part as they have to flex the game at least 12 days in advance. But if the Browns have a strong showing on Sunday in Buffalo they certainly should be under consideration.

With the way the season has been going so far, a primetime game against a hated division rival the day after Christmas feels just about right.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, NFL, primtime | Leave a comment
08 Dec 2010

Seven is just a random number

As kids, Schoolhouse Rock taught us that “three is a magic number.”

But there are some in Brownstown who would have us believe that seven is the real magic number – as in “Eric Mangini needs seven wins to keep his job.”

We’ve been through this before. Cleveland Frowns has covered this. Pretty much anyone who has watched the Browns play this year got the memo that the team has improved and there’s little reason to believe a different coach would have produced more wins. Consider that:

  • The Browns have started three different quarterbacks this season – one that probably shouldn’t be a starter in the NFL anymore, one a career backup and one a rookie.
  • They have no NFL-caliber wide receivers on the team.
  • They have only one viable option at running back, Peyton Hillis.
  • They continue to start John St. Clair at right tackle.
  • They start two rookies in the secondary.
  • And, oh yeah, they’ve played one of the toughest schedules in the NFL.

Apparently that doesn’t matter to some. We get that, before the season, writers covering the team and the league have to come up with projections and predictions about how the Browns will do.

But once the season starts, shouldn’t people adjust their expectations to fit the reality that is happening on the field? Maybe grasp that a team that beat New England and New Orleans, and was competitive in a stretch of tough mid-season games is improving?

Herm Edwards taught us that “you play to win the game,” and wins and losses are an important measuring tool, but you have to take into account everything that goes on with a team during a season.

Luckily the one person who’s opinion counts in this situation, team president Mike Holmgren, understands what is going on. Let’s remember what he said in a press conference following the Browns bye week in November (the important stuff is in bold):

“The important point there I think is any coach, any staff where I am in the position I’m in, will be judged at the end of the season. It will take thoughtful thinking and I’ve said this before and I said it when I first came here, I think it’s important that you take some of the emotion out of it if you can. At the end of the year, everyone catches their breath a little bit, think about it and hopefully make an intelligent decision. I also said this, wins and losses are not the only criteria. The crummy part of our business is that most of the time, it is the main one. I thought my least year in Seattle, 4-12 on the surface they should have fired me. Based on record, 4-12 is my worst record of all time. It may have been my best coaching job because we were playing with young people that gave me everything they had, but they just weren’t good enough, we got so injured. If that taught me anything, it taught me that now in my position, there’s more to look at.”

Holmgren’s thought process couldn’t be any more transparent: “wins and losses are not the only criteria.” “There’s more to look at.”

Is that not clear? Holmgren will look at the big picture, weigh everything that went on this season and make a determination.

And when Holmgren holds his season-ending press conference and the question “Will Eric Mangini be coaching the Browns in 2011” is asked, we’re willing to bet the answer will be:

“Of course, why would we make a change?”

***

As this is the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon, it’s worth the time to check out ESPN’s Outside the Lines piece on how the news of Lennon’s death broke on Monday Night Football.

We were familiar with the story, but never knew the behind-the-scenes story of how ABC came up with the scoop.

And it’s interesting to look back at how news was spread just 30 years ago. Cable TV and ESPN were in their infancy, no Twitter or Internet, no cell phones, no 24-hour news channel. How different things would be if something like this happened today.

Rest in peace, John.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Eric Mangini, magic numbers, NFL | Leave a comment
07 Dec 2010
2 Comments

Think Before You Write

While our primary focus is on Cleveland sports hear at Red Right 88 headquarters, we occasionally offer insight and opinion on European football, most notably over the summer with the World Cup and, when time permits, our favorite English team, Liverpool.

There’s much we love about the beautiful game, from the passion of the fans, to the songs, the stadiums, relegation, the fact that the game works well and is available on TV in high definition and, unlike some American sports (baseball) it is fairly easy to pick up the basics and follow what’s going on pretty quickly. And the fact that the game is foreign just makes it more interesting.

We picked up the game during the 2006 World Cup and started following Liverpool shortly after. And because we’ve only been a fan for a short time, we tread carefully when we write about the game. We try to stick to games, players we like, things like that. One area we work hard to avoid is diving too far into the darker parts of the sport’s history. Frankly, we’re so new to the sport that it would be foolish to do so, as we just don’t have the depth of knowledge as fans who have been following teams for generations – literally in the case of Liverpool as the team was founded in 1892.

And the one area we would never feel qualified to discuss is the Hillsborough tragedy, where 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives during a game against Nottingham Forest.

Unfortunately, Alex Beam of The Boston Globe has no such reservations.

In a column, Hardball in Liverpool, Beam writes about how John Henry’s New England Sports Ventures (owners of the Red Sox) are still in the early stages of its ownership of Liverpool. The point of the column seems to be to grind an axe against NESV. Beam writes that:

In a lengthy interview with one of the fan sites, Redandwhitekop.com (kop refers to a part of Anfield stadium), Henry confined himself to boilerplate Belispeak: “This club needs everyone on the same page every day. Every day. We need everyone focused on what needs to be done in the next match facing us and during that match,’’ blah blah blah. He comes across as bloodless and dispassionate, talking about soccer in the same breath as his auto racing interests and baseball — one management template for all. That kind of talk won’t sit well by the Mersey, believe me.

But then, inexplicably, Beam goes off the rails and brings up Hillsborough, classifying it as a riot:

The few sane people I have talked to about Liverpool understand that these are early days for New England Sports Ventures and that meaningful changes probably won’t come until Liverpool’s season ends in May. None of those sane people are in Liverpool, however. Even by the deranged standards of European soccer, Red fans are totally bonkers. Their excitable Internet fan sites are still agonizing over a 21-year-old soccer stadium riot that killed 96 people. One website, Thisisanfield.com, is publishing yet another exhaustive history of the incident, and still actively promotes a boycott of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun, two decades after the paper accused Liverpool fans of pickpocketing the corpses, and other outrages.

Why you would bring up a tragedy that killed 96 people when you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about? And why would you judge a fan base for mourning the loss of their own? What purpose does that serve, other than to broadcast your ignorance to everyone?

Needless to say, the outrage over the article was quick. Rather than run a retraction or, better yet, an apology, The Globe ran a correction:

Because of a reporting error, Alex Beam’s column on Tuesday in the “g” section mischaracterized the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster involving Liverpool soccer fans as a “riot.” The official investigation into the disaster, which cost 96 lives, placed the blame primarily on poor crowd control and inadequate stadium design.

OK, we know we’re just a fan blog and have nowhere near the reach or influence of a newspaper such as The Globe. But once upon a time we were a working journalist and we still carry those standards with us. We try to have fun here, but we also work hard to be accurate when we write.

And, most importantly, we think before we write. Clearly those same standards are not in play at The Boston Globe, which paints a sad portrait of the state of journalism in this country.

If you want to learn more about what happened that day at Hillsborough, visit This is Anfield for its series of articles about the tragedy.

Posted in bad reporting, Boston Globe, Liverpool

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →