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Archive for the category “Pat Shurmur”

13 Jan 2012

Steven Gerrard remains the anti-LeBron

Good news, as Steven Gerrard has signed a new deal that should keep him at Liverpool until he retires and that includes an ambassadorial when with the team once he finishes playing.

“This is the club I love and is the club I have supported since I was a young boy,” Gerrard told The Daily Mail. “I am living the dream as the captain of one of the biggest clubs in the world. I love coming to work every day and the experiences I have had since I was eight years of age and first signed for the club, I wouldn’t change them for the world. To extend that and to hopefully have some more good times in a red shirt is what I want.”

Manager Kenny Dalglish highlighted Gerrard’s loyalty to his hometown club.

“In this day and age there’s not many people who go through their football career and represent just one club, especially people with quality like Steven,” Dalglish told The Daily Mail. “If you’re happy where you’re playing, you’re enjoying what you’re doing and you enjoy the football club I don’t see any reason to move, and it’s fantastic for us that he hasn’t.”

Dalglish’s comments remind us of what we wrote when Gerrard signed his last deal with Liverpool.

***

Morris Claiborne, LSU’s All-American cornerback, announced on Thursday that he is entering the NFL draft.

Claiborne, the third-rated player on ESPN Scouts Inc.’s draft board, led the Tigers with six interceptions this season and returned one for a touchdown. The winner of the Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s top defensive back also was LSU’s top kickoff returner, averaging 25 yards per return, with one touchdown that went 99 yards.

Wonder what Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Flacco and Andy Dalton would think about lining up twice a year against a pair of SEC cornerbacks in Orange and Brown?

***

The Indians are reportedly interested in free agent first baseman Carlos Pena, with general manager Chris Antonetti waiting to see if the Dolans will open their wallets.

While Pena is a name that fans will recognize, that doesn’t mean he will solve all the Tribe’s problems at first base.

According to Paul Cousineau at The Dia Tribe:

So, if we’re talking about offensive prowess, Pena’s 2011 numbers look the best…but that doesn’t mean that Pena does not come with legitimate concerns offensively, with the main concern being voiced by a scout in John Perrotto’s piece at B-Pro called “Best Players Still on the Board”: Scout’s view: “He can still help someone, but you better have a good right-handed hitter to platoon with him. He’s completely helpless against left-handers now, so you can’t play him 155-160 games anymore. At this stage of his career, he’s a complementary player rather than a major cog in a lineup, and I’d pay him accordingly.”

“Completely helpless against left-handers now”…oof, we already have a couple of those. Unfortunately, what the scout sees bears out in the numbers as Pena posted a .594 OPS vs. LHP in the NL last year, which comes on the heels of a .675 OPS vs. LHP campaign in 2010 for the Rays. In the last 3 years, Pena has a .704 OPS vs. LHP, a number that has trended down since the 2009 campaign. As a quick aside, Hafner’s OPS vs. LHP over that same timeframe (the last 3 years) is .680, so Hafner has actually been less effective than Pena vs. LHP since the beginning of the 2009 season…and since there would only be one Carlos Santana to go around, you’d still be looking for a RH platoon partner for Pena (or Hafner) if a guy like Pena is signed, warts and all.

Read the rest of Paul’s analysis of the situation here. Hopefully someone can forward the link to the Dolans to help them with their decision.

***

Finally, it was one year ago today that the Browns hired Pat Shurmur as head coach.

Here’s what we had to say about the hiring.

Looking back on what we wrote when Shurmur was hired, we pretty much nailed it.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Indians, Liverpool, Pat Shurmur, Steven Gerrard | Leave a comment
04 Jan 2012

It’s a passing man’s game

In 1994, the NFL celebrated its 75th anniversary and, as part of the festivities, released a documentary on the history of the league.

One of the people interviewed was Sammy Baugh, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1963. Baugh played for the Redskins from 1937 to 1952, and help bring the forward pass to prominence in what was then a run-oriented league.

We still remember the look on Baugh’s face when he talked about the modern game and how much he would have loved playing in the modern era. “It’s a passing man’s game,” he said with obvious joy in his voice.

Fast forward 17 years and we can only imagine what Baugh would say about the passing game of today’s NFL.

The rest of the story continues at The Cleveland Fan.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, Pat Shurmur, Seneca Wallace | Leave a comment
13 Dec 2011
2 Comments

Shurmur needs to work on his PR skills

In light of the ongoing discussion about Colt McCoy’s concussion and whether or not he should have gone back into the game last week against Pittsburgh, we’ve discovered one more thing that team president Mike Holmgren needs to add to his off-season checklist to go over with coach Pat Shurmur.

Media relations.

Shurmur didn’t come off very well on Monday when addressing the media on the circumstances surrounding McCoy’s injury.

“Sideline procedures to determine whether the man can play. We followed them and I think that is what’s important,” Shurmur said in his Monday press conference. “Hopefully that clarifies it. Our medical staff works with the player and they determine whether he can play or not. That’s what they do. They work with them. There’s communication. They look at him. They talk to him and that’s what they do.”

Well as long as it’s clear what everyone does.

We still don’t think Shurmur is lying about what happened Thursday night, nor do we think that the Browns intentionally broke any rules or willingly put McCoy at risk.

Shurmur probably should have erred on the side of caution with McCoy, but if he kept him out and McCoy would have questioned the move afterward, it would have been more fuel for the anti-Shurmur crowd. Shurmur was focused on the game and relied on his medical staff; if he had ignored what was happening on the field and attended to McCoy instead, people would have criticized him for that as well.

But Shurmur needs to be able to explain the situation more clearly – especially if the Browns have nothing to hide. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that everyone involved made a mistake; just own it, there’s no shame in that.

Shurmur is still growing into the job as head coach, which includes dealing with the media. He doesn’t come across as someone who would outright lie about something this serious, but he has to do a better job when he’s questioned about things.

***

Peter King had some pretty strong thoughts on Colt McCoy in his weekly Monday Morning Quarterback column at SI.com.

King writes that:

The Browns should build around Colt McCoy, not draft a quarterback in 2012 to replace him. I’d seen snippets of McCoy flailing around this year, but hadn’t watched every throw of a game. And so I watched Thursday night to get some sense of the near- and long-term prospects of the former University of Texas quarterback. And I came away thinking the Browns should stick with him and use a rich 2012 draft to finally build the kind of offense around McCoy that any quarterback would need to succeed.

Mike Holmgren is a disciple of Bill Walsh. I remember when Walsh was shown a few plays of Charles Haley rushing the passer at James Madison; he told his scouts he really wanted him. “If we see him make a few plays like this, we can coach him to do it all the time,” Walsh said, and he was proved a prophet — Haley became a top NFL pass-rusher for San Francisco and Dallas.

Well, on Thursday night, I saw McCoy, with limited help from grade-D skill players, make enough plays to convince me he’s not the problem. Now, I realize he made two or three idiotic throws in the second half — and you’re not going to win doing that consistently. But one of the bad throws came after he was concussed and should never have been put back in the game. And those throws have to be addressed.

But he did enough good things that I came away thinking: Use the three picks in the top 40 next April (Cleveland has its own first- and-second-round picks, plus Atlanta’s first-rounder from the Julio Jones deal last April) to help McCoy, not replace him. Three plays showed a mature quarterback making good decisions:

1. On the first series of the game, using play-action, McCoy set up, looked over his options and found tight end Evan Moore down the left side on a crossing route with a step on linebacker Lawrence Timmons. The high-arcing pass settled into Moore’s arms. Gain of 33.

2. Also on the first series, Josh Cribbs found a gap downfield in the left seam and McCoy made a great touch pass over cornerback Ike Taylor. Gain of 25.

3. In the third quarter, on third-and-eight, down 7-3, McCoy faced a five-man rush and moved up in the pocket. Feeling pressure, he threw the ball about five feet to the right of tight end Alex Smith, because that was the only window open to make the throw — Troy Polamalu, Ryan Clark and William Gay converged on Smith and seemed ready to pancake him. But the throw was zipped in perfectly, Smith made a diving catch, and the Browns had a first down. Good judgment, great throw.

Of course, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this if McCoy didn’t make some brain-fart throws. But I believe he can be coached out of those — it’s what Bill Walsh would believe, watching him — and I believe some of that stems from the fact that the Browns are a poor offensive team as a whole.

McCoy has holes. He also has a coach, Pat Shurmur, who can correct those, and is in an offense he’s so well-suited to run. He’s well-liked and respected in the locker room. If I’m Browns GM Tom Heckert, I’m looking for an offseason upgrade at wide receiver (the Browns need two), guard, running back and tight end … before I even think about replacing the quarterback.

***

Finally, Brian Daboll is the NFL’s Typhoid Mary, as his crappy play calling as an offensive coordinator got his head coach fired for the second year in a row.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, Pat Shurmur, Peter King
12 Dec 2011
1 Comment

Source: Browns may have made regrettable mistake

As we pointed out yesterday, the Cleveland Browns now find themselves under the spotlight for their mishandling of Colt McCoy following James Harrison’s illegal hit during Thursday night’s game.

According to ESPN: the team’s handling of the situation is being labeled as a “blatant system failure” by a union source because the team’s medical staff did not conduct proper testing before sending McCoy back into the game.

The NFL and the NFL Players Association’s chief physicians — Dr. Elliott Pellman and Dr. Thom Mayer — have conducted the initial review, sources said, and both the league and the union will continue the process that one source says will “likely” be the catalyst for the placement of independent neurologists at each game site in time for the 2012 season.

It will be interesting to see what the NFL comes up with as they review the situation. If it leads to having an independent neurologist at each game, then something good will have come out of the situation.

Short-term, however, it raises questions about what the Browns are up to on the sidelines during the game. We still find it very hard to believe the team willingly put McCoy back into the game knowing that he had a concussion – there’s no benefit to McCoy or the team under that scenario.

And making a mistake is not the same thing as having malicious intent.

But if the NFL can determine the team intentionally ignored McCoy’s symptoms and put him back in the game knowing that he had a concussion, then the franchise needs to be fined heavily – starting with coach Pat Shurmur.

We understand that things can get hectic on the sidelines, especially at the end of a close game against a division rival, but the coach’s job is to know what is going on and act accordingly. The player is always going to want to go back into the game – it’s the coach’s job to make sure the player is not putting himself or the team at risk.

Lost in all this is the fact that Harrison’s hit was clearly illegal and now he may face a suspension.

According to ESPN, the NFL will look at the hit and, at the very least, fine Harrison. If he is suspended for a game or two, Harrison would be the first player suspended under the league’s crackdown on player safety violations.

“Our staff is going to be looking at that play along with every other play that happens this weekend, and they’ll make their decisions,” NFL Roger Goodell said.

Fines are obviously not working, so maybe a suspension that could cost the Steelers as they position for the playoffs, will finally do the trick.

***

What if we told you that, against the Steelers the Browns would:

  • Win the turnover battle.
  • Knock Ben Roethlisberger out of the game.
  • Win the third-down battle.
  • Commit fewer penalties.
  • Force Pittsburgh to be inefficient at scoring points.

The Browns should win, right? Well, that’s what they did Thursday night and it still wasn’t enough, as Cold Hard Football Facts points out:

Cleveland forced 3 turnovers while surrendering just 2 (4-2 if you count Pittsburgh’s meaningful turnover on downs). Cleveland forced Roethlisberger to the sidelines for a whole 6 minutes of game time (an eternity for Ben), leading Ben to limp and slide through the second half. Cleveland held Pittsburgh to its second worst 3rd Down conversion rate of the season (25%) while converting 43.75% of their own. Cleveland was the more disciplined team as Pittsburgh committed 6 extra penalties for 43 extra yards. And Cleveland forced Pittsburgh to travel 29.71 yards for each point they scored, the least efficient scoring output from Pittsburgh since Week 1 (and this a team that is known to be inefficient this season coming in at No. 23 in the league in Scoreability).

In many ways, Cleveland did exactly what they needed to do. Well, except score points. Pittsburgh’s defense stepped up in the game forcing Cleveland to travel more than the full length of the field for each point they scored (101.33 YPPS). Cleveland may have converted third downs just about at will on Pittsburgh’s side of the field, but the Pittsburgh defense clamped down past the 50. In fact, Cleveland converted 7 out of 8 third down opportunities on their own side of the field and converted a perfect 0 out of 8 third downs in Pittsburgh territory.

Just another fun day in paradise for the Browns.

***

Finally, several of the early season darlings of the NFL have crashed back to earth.

Buffalo is 1-7 after starting 4-1.

Oakland is 3-4 after starting 4-2.

Cincinnati is 1-4 after starting 6-2.

Tampa Bay is 0-7 after its 4-2 start.

Detroit is 3-5 (which should be 2-6 after the refs somehow missed a blatant face mask penalty at the end of Sunday’s game against Minnesota) after its 5-0 start.

Just wanted to point that out.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, controversy, NFL, Pat Shurmur
10 Dec 2011
3 Comments

Better effort, same result, more controversy

The Browns finally came through with what looked like a solid effort Thursday night against Pittsburgh, but of course it wasn’t enough, as they fell to the Steelers.

That’s nothing new for the franchise, as the Browns have now lost 15 times in the past 16 games and 21 times in the past 23 games against Pittsburgh.

No matter who is the coach, no matter what offense or defensive system the team runs, the Browns have come up short time and again against the Steelers.

But, this being the Browns, it can never just be about another loss.

Colt McCoy’s concussion – thanks to an illegal hit from James Harrison – and how the coaches and medical staff handled it during the game have put the franchise in a spotlight that is better left avoided.

After sitting only just two plays, McCoy came back in and threw an interception in the end zone. Whether or not McCoy should have been back in the game so quickly has now become an issue.

And the Browns find themselves facing questions of “what did they know and when did they know it?”

“We go through the strict protocol to evaluate whether there is concussion like symptoms,” coach Pat Shurmur said on Friday. “Seneca (Wallace) was in the game for two plays. I was told that Colt could go back in the game. He came up right next to me and said, ‘I’m ready to roll,’ so he went back in.”

McCoy’s dad had a different take on the matter.

“He never should’ve gone back in the game,” Brad McCoy told The Plain Dealer. “He was basically out (cold) after the hit. You could tell by the ridigity of his body as he was laying there. There were a lot of easy symptoms that should’ve told them he had a concussion. He was nauseated and he didn’t know who he was. From what I could see, they didn’t test him for a concussion on the sidelines. They looked at his (left) hand.”

Wait, what? McCoy’s dad is speaking up? Oh boy.

We get that McCoy is worried about his son, but does he really think talking to the media is going to help? Colt McCoy is not a 15-year-old sophomore in high school, he’s the starting quarterback (for now) on a (presumably) NFL team.

No matter how you feel, it’s not really your place to talk out about how the team is handling things. That’s what agents are for; or, if you are Kellen Winslow, you handle things yourself.

It seems unlikely that the Browns would put McCoy back in the game if they didn’t think he was alright. After all, at various times this year (including Thursday night) they have kept Ben Watson, Owen Marecic, Mohamed Massaquoi and Scott Fujita out of games after they suffered concussions.

“I felt like the management from the point that it happened through yesterday was just fantastic,” linebacker Scott Fujita, a member of the NFLPA Executive Committee, said in October after Fujita was diagnosed with a concussion. “So that makes me feel really, really good. I couldn’t be happier with the way (trainer) Joe Sheehan and our doctors handled everything.

“Obviously there’s so much heightened awareness [in the NFL about concussions] and I’m an older guy in my career and with a family and stuff, so certainly you think about those big-picture things,” he said. “But again, I feel confident in the doctors and stuff and trust me, I know a lot about this issue, I’m on every email list. I think I’m pretty up to date on some of the concerns, so, yeah, I feel good about where I’m at right now.”

If the team was so careful with the other players, why would they just rush McCoy out there without checking him out or if they thought he was injured?

“If he would’ve shown symptoms of a concussion, then, I wouldn’t have put him back in the game,” Shurmur said. “It would’ve been out of my hands anyway because I would’ve been told he can’t go back in the game. With the way it happens, that was a tough, physical game. Everybody got knocked around. If he had the symptoms, he would not have gone back in the game, absolutely not. He just said, ‘Hey, I’m ready to go.’ I was told he was ready to go too.”

According to The Plain Dealer, McCoy was coherent in answering questions after the game and accurately described the interception. By the time the team arrived in Berea — about 2 a.m. — McCoy was woozy enough that teammate Evan Moore had to drive him home. By Friday morning, he drove himself to the Berea facility for further exams and was diagnosed with a concussion.

The fact McCoy’s conditioned worsened in the hours after the game fits in with what Fujita said happened to him.

“It’s one of those things that kind of builds and builds,” Fujita said about his concussion. “I feel good that I have a couple teammates and a coach who kind of noticed that my demeanor was off and they alerted the people.”

So it seems possible that McCoy was coherent enough that the team doctors would clear him to go back in the game, even if it turns out after the fact that they really should not have. The Browns probably mishandled the situation, but it seems unlikely they did it with the intent of putting McCoy in danger.

If there is a silver lining in all this, it’s that the Browns have an extra three days off before their next game in Arizona, which gives McCoy extra time to rest. But at this point, the Browns should really hold him out of the Cardinal game to make sure he’s OK.

Having Seneca Wallace start one game isn’t going to hurt anything. Wallace is not a threat to take the starting job and, even if he misses one game, we’re confident that the Mike Holmgren, Tom Heckert, Shurmur power trio will have seen enough of McCoy this year to be able to make an accurate determination on him at the end of the season.

Now if they could just keep Brad McCoy away from the microphones.

(Photo by The Associated Press)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, concussion, Pat Shurmur
25 Oct 2011

The Colt McCoy question

“We’re constantly looking for the things that are part of what we do that he does well.” – Browns coach Pat Shurmur

Cleveland Browns coach Pat Shurmur addressed the topic on everyone’s mind in the wake of the team’s 6-3 win over Seattle on Sunday: just what do the Browns have in quarterback Colt McCoy?

“This is a little uncharted, playing without an offseason,” Shurmur said in his Monday press conference. “I think it’s important that (McCoy) just improves each week. At the end of the year we’ll just add it up and see where it’s at. It’s a little bit hard to define right now. If we would have had a full offseason with all the OTA’s you would have had a better idea where he was during training camp, then you can judge the improvement during training camp and then so on. This is a little bit uncharted as far as marking the progress I think.”

Shurmur’s comments are spot on and show that the Browns are handling the McCoy situation exactly the way they should – by letting him play.

The only way we’re going to know if McCoy has what it takes to lead the Browns into the playoffs on a regular basis is to let him play this season. Too often in this town we’ve seen coaches mishandle the quarterback position, not being able to settle on one player, benching quarterbacks after two games only to make them starters again later in the same season.

And it has to end for the team to have any hope.

This isn’t an endorsement of McCoy as the long-term answer. The stats through six games are certainly not pretty – 27th in completion percentage, 33rd in yards per attempt, 32nd in passes of more than 20 yards, 28th in quarterback rating.

This being Cleveland, half the fans always want the back-up quarterback to play. Of the other half, the majority just want someone else. But that doesn’t work and it’s not how you run a team.

The Browns need to stay the course with McCoy. They need to be certain whether or not he’s their quarterback. And the only way that is going to happen is by letting him play.

There is probably nothing more important this year than for the front office and coaching staff to be able to make a definitive decision on the quarterback position for the future.

If McCoy can stay healthy through 16 games – and that’s no certainty with the play of the guards and the right tackle – there is no doubt that we will all know the answer the morning after the Jan. 1 game against Pittsburgh.

“I know my job is to go out there and play and give our team the best opportunity to win,” McCoy said after Sunday’s win. “If you start to think about what people are writing or what somebody says, that just creates things in your mind that don’t need to be in there. I’m going to give it my all every week, in practice, in meetings and in the games. If you do that, then good things are going to happen. I think we need to focus on our team and give ourselves the best chance to win.”

You can’t really ask for anything more than that.

***

One hundred and forty-six total yards of offense.

No first downs until the 5:26 mark in the third quarter.

Sixteen total yards of offense in the first half.

One passing yard in the first half.

Six total points.

The Browns’ box score from Sunday’s game against Seattle? Think again.

Those are the offensive numbers the Baltimore Ravens put up Monday night against Jacksonville.

You know, the first-place Ravens, allegedly Super Bowl contenders? That’s all they could do against a 1-5 Jaguar team that is playing for a lame duck coach before an apathetic fan base.

But to hear the anti-Holmgren crowd tell it, the Browns are the worst team in the history of forever after their win against the Seahawks.

Think Ravens’ fans would have been crying this morning if Baltimore would have figured out a way to win while only scoring six points?

Yeah, we didn’t think so.

***

We could have sworn it was guard Jason Pinkston who got blown up on Sunday by Red Bryant on Bryant’s two blocked field goals.

But the Beacon Journal‘s Nate Ulrich wrote that: In the second quarter, Oniel Cousins lined up at left guard and fell on one knee while trying to get out of his stance, allowing Bryant to break through the line and earn his first block. In the fourth quarter, Alex Mack played left guard and kept his head down as Bryant maneuvered past him for another block.

Alex Mack, huh? Guess the Browns should have drafted Mark Sanchez after all.

(Photo by Cleveland Browns.com)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Colt McCoy, Pat Shurmur, slumping offense | Leave a comment
22 Sep 2011

The Browns are grown-ass men!

Alex Mack is the latest Cleveland Brown to go on the record about how things are different in Berea under new coach Pat Shurmur.

“It’s not acceptable to make mistakes (under Shurmur), but it’s — tolerable is the wrong word — a learning experience more than a lynching experience,” Mack told The News-Herald. “We had a lot of team corrections (the last two years). The theory behind it was as a team you’d see where people made mistakes and hold everyone accountable.

“On the same hand, other guys don’t know what you’re coached. If you keep it in your own meeting group and get it aired out, that’s better. Everyone knows you. But to have a DB get beat and have the coach yell at him — I don’t know how to cover anyone, and I don’t need to know. It’s hard for him to get embarrassed in front of the whole team. If it’s just your group of core guys, and they know how good the receiver is. It’s easier to bear.”

Mack joins a growing list of players who are embracing the changes in Berea from former coach Eric Mangini:

  • Joe Thomas: “I’ve been so impressed with coach (Pat) Shurmur and the staff that he brought in and the way he teaches the players. He won the respect of some of the leaders on the team right away with the way he treated them.”
  • D’Qwell Jackson: “(Coach Shurmur’s) created a great environment for us to want to come to work. You can tell the players are more involved. We have a lot more opinion about things.”
  • Scott Fujita: “Coach Shurmur is going to turn over the keys to us and say, ‘You need to run this thing the right way. I don’t need to be the guy policing the locker room. That’s on you guys.’ I think we embraced that. This is good for this group of guys.”
  • Sheldon Brown: “You have guys who go home to their families, to their kids. You’ll tell me I can raise a family, but I can’t behave and act like a pro? Give me the locker room. He understands that and I think that’s why the guys love and respect him.”

“The atmosphere is really nice,” Mack told The Plain Dealer. “To come to work and not be dreading it from what’s going to happen and how you’re going to get yelled at or what’s going to show up on the screen and just knowing that like, ‘Here, guys, we made mistakes, and let’s get better,’ and have a kind of lighter atmosphere is going to help guys stay upbeat. It’s easier to learn.

“It’s not acceptable to make mistakes, but it’s a learning experience more than a (chastising) experience.”

It’s not uncommon for players to have a positive reaction to a change in the coaching staff. But when you look at the names behind the quotes, you realize these are not just company men trying to get in good with the new coach. Fujita and Brown have been part of winning organizations, and Thomas and Mack are among the best in the league at their positions. When they say things like this, there is some credibility behind their words.

There are three things keys coaches have to do in order to maximize their chances of being successful:

  • Put the players in situations where they can succeed. If you are coaching the Patriots you can run a highly complex offense because you have Tom Brady at quarterback and he has built up a knowledge base over the course of his career. Try to be complex with a career back-up and an over-the-hill veteran and you are out of work.
  • Not everyone learns the same way and you have to figure out who on your team is an auditory learner, a visual learner and a tactile learner. Trying to teach everyone the same way doesn’t work. That’s why Shurmur’s approach of having the position coaches, who work with the players the most and should know how to teach them, work with the players to correct mistakes is a good approach.
  • Just like how not everyone learns the same way, everyone doesn’t respond to the same types of motivation. Some players need a pat on the back, some a kick in the ass. As a coach, you need to know the right approach to take; again you can’t treat everyone the same.

We seriously doubt players need to be humiliated in front of the entire team to understand they made a mistake. Sheldon Brown knows if he blew a coverage. Joe Thomas knows if he blows an assignment, all he has to do is look at the quarterback lying face down on the field. They don’t need to be treated like children.

But while the players can talk all they want about being treated differently, they have to show they have earned that right with their performance on the field each Sunday. That means no stupid penalties, no putting themselves before the team, etc. You want to be treated like adults? Then you better come through for the coach when it counts.

Look, there’s no universal way to coach an NFL team. Offensive coaches can win, defensive coaches can win, player’s coaches, hard-ass coaches, there’s room for everyone if they have the right approach.

We just hope that Shurmur’s approach is the right one for this Browns team.

(Photo by The Plain Dealer)

Posted in Alex Mack, Cleveland Browns, coaching philosphy, Pat Shurmur | Leave a comment
21 Sep 2011
1 Comment

Shurmur riding high after first win

Fresh off his first win as an NFL head coach, Pat Shurmur is moving up the coach rankings at ESPN.

Shurmur has an 80 percent approval rating following the Browns 27-19 win over Indianapolis, fifth highest in the NFL and tops in the AFC North. Cincinnati’s Marvin Lewis (39 percent) and Baltimore’s John Harbaugh (45 percent) are in the bottom 10.

Not bad for a coach who only met most of his players a little less than two months ago.

***

To commemorate New York’s Mariano Rivera recording his 602nd career save, it’s worth looking back at one big game he couldn’t close out: Game 4 of the 1997 American League Division Series.

Never gets old.

***

Finally, we’re all aware that Fox News is anything but “fair and balanced,” so we guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that attitude extends to Fox Sports.

According to Jim Romenesko at The Poynter Institute, during the Week 1 broadcast of the game between the Bears and the Falcons, Fox Sports showed the following newspaper “headlines”:

Cutler Leaves With Injury
Cutler Lacks Courage
Cutler’s No Leader

Daryl Johnston was working the game as an announcer and told viewers that “these are the actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago.”

Turns out, that was a blatant lie. The headlines sounded fishy so the Chicago Tribune checked around and found out that Fox Sports fabricated the headlines to sell an angle they decided the game needed.

Not sure why Fox just couldn’t televise the game and let the stories come naturally, but there you go.

(h/t to UniWatch)

(Photo by the Associated Press)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Indians, jounalistic integrity, NFL, Pat Shurmur
02 Sep 2011
2 Comments

Is first-year success bad for a coach?

Heard an interesting conversation the other day on Sirius NFL Radio when the hosts (may have been Bob Poppa and Ross Tucker) were discussing first-year head coaches.

The discussion centered on how fans (and the media) perceive coaches and, if you are successful your first year on the job, do the expectations become unrealistic for years two, three and four?

They used Miami coach Tony Sparano as an example, who led the Dolphins to the playoffs his first year in 2008 by going 11-5 against a weak schedule. The Fins have been 7-9 each of the past two years, and now Sparano is an early season candidate for “coach on the hot seat” honors (thankfully we don’t have to worry about that nonsense this year in Cleveland).

So because the team had a good first year under Sparano, expectations were raised, perhaps unrealistically, which lead to increased pressure on Sparano.

The hosts talked about whether it would be better for a first-year coach, who is generally busy that first year cleaning out the former coach’s players, to have a poorer record the first year to keep fan expectations realistic, then build off that as they work to remake their team.

They weren’t advocating that as an official team strategy – no Suck for Luck campaign, for example – more of just a conversation to fill time while we all wait for the start of the regular season.

We thought it was interesting, though, because we seem to go through coaches here in Cleveland at a rather quick rate.

It’s pretty safe to say that we are all beyond ready for the Browns to start winning, so we’d hate to think of the team intentionally taking a step back this season. But we’re confident the team will bring its best each week.

It’s possible the Browns will finish with more wins than last year’s 5-11 team, simply because they play an easier schedule this year. Out are New England, the Jets, New Orleans and Atlanta. In are the NFC West.

But that’s not what we’re looking for. We don’t want a team that is competitive only when it has an easy schedule (think 2007), but one that can compete every year, no matter how the schedule shakes out (yes, we’re going to say it: think Pittsburgh. No matter what, you can always go into the season expecting the Steelers to win double digits and compete for a playoff spot).

The Browns need to continue working to build a system that will make the team competitive every year. While it would be great to see the team go 10-6 this year, that doesn’t help if they are 5-11 the next two years. We could live with 6-10 this year if that turns into 9-7 next season and 11-5 the year after that. We have to stop judging everything on a one-year basis.

We’re not sure yet how good the Browns will be this season, but we are sure of one thing: no matter what the final record is, fan expectations will be out of proportion to reality.

It’s what makes us all Browns fans, after all.

(Photo by The Associated Press)

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Pat Shurmur
24 Aug 2011

Browns lock up their cornerstone

Josh Cribbs, Peyton Hillis and Joe Haden may be the heart of the Browns, but Joe Thomas is clearly the hardworking soul of the team.

So it was no surprise that the team and the Pro Bowl left tackle have agreed to a seven-year contract extension worth $84 million, including $44 million guaranteed.

And you don’t have to read too hard between the lines to realize that the changes that team president Mike Holmgren and general manager Tom Heckert have made since arriving in town played a big role in Thomas staying with the team.

“We’re really building something special with Tom Heckert and Mike Holmgren and I think this program is headed in the right direction,” Thomas told The Plain Dealer. “It was really important for me to make this a real long-term deal so that I can finish my career here.

“I’ve been so impressed with coach (Pat) Shurmur and the staff that he brought in and the way he teaches the players. Tom Heckert’s been drafting guys I really want to be around and I want to be part of this really great thing that’s going on now. The way the team has picked up the new offense, plenty of mistakes have been made, but you can just see the potential there. It’s so exciting to be part of it.”

Read more…

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Joe Thomas, Josh Cribbs, NFL, Pat Shurmur | Leave a comment

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