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In Cleveland, hope dies last

Archive for the category “Joe Haden”

16 Nov 2010

Final Thoughts on the Browns-Jets

A day later and, while we’re not discouraged, Sunday’s loss to the Jets still hurts.

We like how quarterback Colt McCoy had Chansi Stuckey’s back after the game:

”There’s things I feel I could have done better. I should have made some plays when it counted, especially in overtime,” McCoy said in published reports. ”I definitely can stand up here and I can take some of that. It’s not Stuckey’s fault, it’s not anybody’s fault on the offense. I was the one leading it and I need to make some more plays.”

Too bad we can’t say the same for Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, who named Stuckey the Goat of the Week in his Monday Morning Quarterback column, writing that:

“Tough call. Very tough. Because the similarly deserving Nick Folk of the Jets missed three field goals, including a 24-yarder that would have prevented overtime, and then another in overtime that would have ended it. But it wouldn’t have come down to a tie had not Stuckey made a boneheaded play, getting the ball yanked from his grasp at the Jet 32 with 10 minutes left in OT. Going down there would have given the Browns a first down at the New York 32, and a very good chance at the winning field goal. Instead, a heartbreaking defeat lay, tortuously, just minutes ahead.”

Yeah, on a day when Brett Favre throws three more interceptions to kill the Vikings in Chicago, Stuckey’s the bad guy of the week.

***

We were surprised there was some criticism of Joe Haden for intercepting, rather than knocking down, Mark Sanchez’ pass near the end of overtime. Browns coach Eric Mangini said Haden would have been wiser to bat the ball down and force a punt.

”I’m sure in the heat of the moment when the ball is up there, he’s just thinking about making sure he has his hands on it and he doesn’t knock it up and tap it into the receiver’s hands,” Mangini said in published reports. ”You’d like to because it was third and such a long distance [14], force them to punt and see where it comes out. It’s a hard situation, especially for a young guy.”

We’re not so sure about that. Just look at the end of the Jacksonville-Houston game from yesterday. Houston defensive back Glover Quin tried to knock the ball down on the last play of the game but it ended up bouncing right into the hands of the Jaguars Mike Thomas for the winning score.

So you never know; we’re OK with Haden making the interception. He should work with Abe Elam this week about how to make an interception.

***

We’re still cool with the Browns going for the win at the end of overtime. It sends a message to the rest of the league that the Browns won’t stop fighting until the game is over.

And while a tie may have been better than a loss, we think in the long run this will be better for the team. The coaches can use this as an opportunity to remind/teach the players just how slim the margin is between winning and losing. If the Browns had just been able to make a couple of more plays they would have come out on top.

***

Still not sure how Matt Roth can’t sack a one-legged quarterback and how Eric Wright can’t cover a one-legged receiver on the same play.

***

More injury woes for the Browns as guard Billy Yates is going on injured reserve and linebacker Scott Fujita may be out for a few weeks, according to The Plain Dealer. Hopefully Josh Cribbs and Sheldon Brown can come back for Sunday’s game.

***

Looks like Pittsburgh should have studied the Browns a little closer; maybe then they would know how to beat the Saints and the Patriots.

Posted in Chansi Stuckey, Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, Joe Haden, NFL | Leave a comment
25 Jun 2010
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The Strange Tale of "Slow" Joe Haden

Media personality* Mike Lombardi had an interesting notebook item in his latest column on NFL.com:

“According to coaches around the league, Browns first-round pick Joe Haden has not been very impressive in camps and might not have enough speed to play corner. Maybe all that talk about some in the organization wanted to take Kyle Wilson over Haden was true.”

So Lombardi has talked to other coaches in the league, who somehow have witnessed or seen film from Browns practices, which are private, and have determined that Haden is too slow to play cornerback in the league. And they were able to do this without seeing him perform in pads at full speed.

Very impressive.

This shouldn’t be surprising coming from media personality* Mike Lombardi, as he was critical of Haden prior to the draft, writing that:

“Florida corner Joe Haden has had some top-10 visits, but I keep hearing he’s not a top-10 pick. Hard to pick a speed-deficit corner in the top 10 and pay all that money. Remember, the rookie pay scale overpays the players from the first to the 12th pick in the first round; the rest of the salary structure is effective.”

Apparently the talk the Lombardi is hearing doesn’t take into account what Haden did at Florida, where he played well enough to be a starter on a national championship team that played in the toughest conference in the nation.

Or that Haden improved his 40-yard dash time from the 4.6 he ran at the NFL Combine to the high 4.3 to low 4.4 range he ran at his Pro Day at Florida.

We don’t know, Haden looks like he knows what he’s doing here.

None of that matters because media personality* Mike Lombardi is hearing things. Very bad things.

This is where he loses us. As a media personality, rather than a reporter, Lombardi is in the business of stating his opinion, which is fine. We all watch these guys play football in college and think that this player or that player would be a good fit for a particular team.

If he thinks Kyle Wilson is/will be a better player than Haden, that’s OK. But once the pick is made, why do you have to continually try to discredit someone just for the glorification of your own ego? Why not just say, “if I had been making the pick, I would have picked this player and here’s why”?

But to continually manufacture items with no sourcing to stand behind it, that just comes off as childish.

For all his faults, we think Eric Mangini knows something about defense. We’re sure Rob Ryan knows defense. And Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert know the type of players a team needs to succeed in the NFL.

If they say Haden’s the man, that’s good enough for us.

*We refuse to refer to Lombardi and his ilk as journalists. As someone with a journalism degree who worked in the newspaper business for more than a decade, we still believe in proper sourcing, having people go on the record and standing behind their comments. WI don’t put much faith in stories that are attributed to “league officials,” “people close to the situation” or any of that nonsense. That’s not reporting, it’s just throwing crap against the wall and hoping something sticks.

Posted in bad reporting, Cleveland Browns, Joe Haden, NFL
24 Apr 2010

Brilliant!

Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert hit a home run in their first draft with the Browns. From filling major holes in the secondary with the picks of Joe Haden and T.J. Ward, to playing the waiting game perfectly and landing Colt McCoy at the exact right time, this has been one of the best draft days since the team returned in 1999.

It’s heartwarming for Browns fans everywhere to finally have credible, knowledgeable, NFL-caliber people in charge of the team. With their years of combined NFL experience working in harmony to rebuild the team, the Browns are finally on the road out of the NFL’s wasteland.

The team formulated a plan and stuck to it, rejecting the urge to over trade or overrate players and take them too high. Holmgren and Heckert also made a point to select players in the first two rounds who can step on the field in September and play – not in a couple of years but now – and who will not be inexplicably placed on the inactive list on a weekly basis.

In fact, Tony Grossi of the Plain Dealer reported that “all the Browns’ draft picks so far are considered by the team to be serious contenders for starting jobs as rookies.”

What a novel approach, not redshirting your draft picks but actually allowing them to play.

Finally, Holmgren and Heckert saw the late-season win streak of last year as the smoke-and-mirror show it was, so they wisely determined that the team can’t have any long-term success with the QB play it was receiving. So they waited patiently for McCoy – accepting the possibility that they would miss out on him – again showing that not only do they have a plan, but that they understand the reality of quarterback play in the today’s NFL.

“I wasn’t going to force-feed it that much,” Holmgren said of the waiting game for McCoy. “Sometimes it just kind of falls to you. If it was going to happen, that’s kind of the way I wanted it to happen.”

And they know that if you can give a rookie QB a few years to mature the odds increase dramatically that he will succeed. So there will be ridiculous quarterback competition this summer in Berea and no chance that McCoy will be named the starting QB this fall. Jake Delhomme and/or Seneca Wallace will handle the position this year and possibly even next. McCoy will be given the time to mature and the opportunity to succeed that is vital in the NFL today.

And Brett Ratcliff can start working on his resume.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, Joe Haden, NFL draft | Leave a comment
23 Apr 2010

The plan is coming together

It’s all starting to come together for the Browns during this weekend’s draft.

When was the last time we could say that?

Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert resisted the voices and did not trade up for Sam Bradford, despite the insanity of a rumor floated out by ESPN’s Michael Smith that the Browns were offering to give up most of their picks in this year’s draft and picks next year to St. Louis to move up.

It’s so comforting to finally have credible, clear-thinking people in charge of the Browns.

And when Eric Berry went off the board the Browns stuck to their plan to fix the defensive secondary and selected Joe Haden.

Things only got better from there as not only did no one bite on drafting Colt McCoy (not a total surprise), but Jimmy Clausen also fell into the second round. And unless a team trades up in front of the Browns, this sets the Browns up perfectly to grab the QB of the future in the second round if they want to. Or they can fill one of multiple holes elsewhere on the team because, let’s be real here, when you rank 31st on defense and 32nd on offense you have a lot of holes to fill.

The last time the Browns drafted someone named Joe in the first round, it worked out pretty well. Optimism remains high that this Joe will be just as solid of a pick.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Joe Haden, NFL draft, optimism | Leave a comment

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