Red Right 88

In Cleveland, hope dies last

Archive for the category “ring of honor”

31 Aug 2010
3 Comments

Time To Move On

Now that Jim Brown has had his 15 minutes, it’s time for the Browns to move on with the Ring of Honor and the season.

Brown clearly is upset that team President Mike Holmgren is now between Brown and owner Randy Lerner. Brown wrote his own job description – raise your hand if you got to do that at your job – and now that Holmgren has changed his role, Brown is taking his ball and going home.

According to The Plain Dealer, Brown delivered a letter to Holmgren that explained why he’s upset, saying in part that:

“That job description included two things that I think are important. As Executive Advisor to the owner, my job was to use my intelligence, and my logic to advise Mr. Lerner. The second most important thing to me was a clause in that agreement that stated that I answered to no one except Randy Lerner. These two thing were highly important to me because I truly believed, with my educational background, having been a Cleveland Brown for 9 yrs, and having a pretty good knowledge of football, that I could contribute in a valuable way to the organization.“

Brown failed to mention that the time he used his experience to advise Lerner coincided with one of the worst periods in team history. But why get bogged down in facts?

Brown also made some not so subtle claims that Holmgren dealt with him in a racist manner. I have no doubt that Brown has seen and experienced things in his life that I can’t even imagine because of his skin color. If he wants to view his position change through the prism of racism, I can’t really speak to that.

But if he doesn’t want to show up Sept. 19 when the Browns honor the inaugural Ring of Honor class, that’s on him. The team will still show a video clip of his career, the fans will still cheer and the game will go on.

One of the few positives out of this situation is that Holmgren is on hand to deal with this. If this had occurred last year, head coach Eric Mangini would have been the face of the franchise and he would have been dealing with reporters and questions, taking time away from his real job – coaching the team.

Now, Mangini can point down the hall, say “talk to Mike,” and get back to what is really important – getting the Browns ready for the season-opener against Tampa Bay.

Establishing a Ring of Honor is a smart – and overdue – move by the Browns. It’s too bad the induction of the first class will be overshadowed by Brown’s insistence on making himself the center of attention.

***

Good news on the Shaun Rogers situation. Although it would be even better if we actually saw him on the field.

***

More good news, as Tampa Bay cornerback Aqib Talib will be suspended for the season-opening game against the Browns.

Talib’s suspension is for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy. He was also fined one additional game check for an incident in August 2009 where Talib punched a cab driver.

Talib is one of the top defensive players on the Tampa Bay roster after being taken in the first-round of the 2008 draft. Talib led the team last season with five interceptions and he had four in his rookie season.

***

I can’t believe the Cardinals are actually considering making Derek Anderson their starting quarterback. He may be the luckiest guy on the planet.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, Derek Anderson, Jim Brown, Mike Holmgren, ring of honor, Shaun Rogers
28 Aug 2010

Who Should the Browns Honor?

Lost somewhat in all the hoo-haa about who won’t be there, was the announcement that the Browns are finally establishing a Ring of Honor at Cleveland Browns Stadium.

The initial class will be made up of the team’s 16 Hall of Famers. Going forward it gets trickier to try and guess who will be eligible or worthy enough to have their names added to the ring.

“I think, going forward, we are going to work on that, team President Mike Holmgren said in published reports. “We haven’t decided yet quite honestly. I know with our Legends program we have a group. My feeling is that if you go into the Ring of Honor for a particular team, there are a lot of great players that have played here first of all. Not every great player gets to be in the Ring of Honor, that should be something very, very, very special. When we do decide criteria or put a group together to decide who should be considered for that, we are not going to rush in to it. We are going to kind of nail that down and as soon as we figure it out, we will let you know.”

The fact that the team is not going to rush into anything is a good sign. One of the problems when they created the Legends Club was trying to include a player from every decade in each year’s class. That’s not the best way to go about something like this, especially with some of the bad teams the Browns have had over the past 40 years. Looking at that list you can see why trying to be all-inclusive isn’t really feasible.

Not having this be an annual event, where you have to honor someone, works to make this truly a way to honor former players.

Having said that, who might the team look to honor in the years ahead?

It’s really a tough call, starting with the non-Hall of Famers in the Legends Club.

Clay Matthews should be a lock. He played in more games (232) than any other player in team history, his 16 seasons in Cleveland are second on the club’s longevity list and he holds the team record for quarterback sacks with 76.5. We’ve even forgiven him for that lateral against Houston.

After Matthews, it’s just gets harder. Fans will certainly want Bernie Kosar, but if you put him in you have to put Brian Sipe in as well. Sipe holds the Browns career passing marks for yards (23,713), touchdowns (154), attempts (3,439) and completions (1,944).

Sipe and Kosar were both good quarterbacks, but are they in Otto Graham’s class? Can the team really include them? Can you honor one and not the other?

Taking a look at the current team, it’s safe to say if his career continues the way it has so far, Joe Thomas will certainly be a ring member. But what about Josh Cribbs? Just like Kosar and Sipe, if Cribbs is found worthy then you’d have to seriously consider Eric Metcalf.

Browns officials have going to have a tough job with this, but that’s probably OK. You want this to be an extremely special, exclusive group.

Probably the only certainty is that, after the initial group is inducted this year, it may be a long time until the team has to host another ceremony.

Posted in Cleveland Browns, ring of honor, tough decisions | Leave a comment

Post Navigation