The Cleveland Browns play their first preseason friendly tonight against the St. Louis Rams.
As a Browns fan are you excited? Nervous? Glad you have something to distract you from the Indians?
We join the best and the brightest to take a look at where the Browns are right now in the latest installment of Five Questions in Five Minutes at Cleveland Reboot.
(Photo courtesy of The Plain Dealer)
Former tight end Nate Jackson is releasing a book, Slow Getting Up, next month that tells the story of his eight-year career in the NFL.
ClevelandScene.com ran an excerpt from the book today that highlighted the very brief time Jackson spent with the Browns in 2009.
We will leave it to others to debate whether or not Jackson’s tale of life with Eric Mangini’s Browns is sour grapes from a player who was at the end of his career – Jackson never played in the NFL after being released by Denver in 2008 – or if he is just telling tales to sell his book – although it is hard to imagine anyone buying a book because a player is critical of a coach that two-thirds of NFL fans can’t even name and who carries around a career record that is 14 games under .500.
We are more interested in two takeaways from the excerpt that clearly illustrate why coaches consistently fail – not just in Cleveland but across the NFL.
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian newspaper, Luis Suárez has asked to leave Liverpool, claiming that the club promised him he could go if they failed to qualify for a spot in the Champions League.
Suárez said he will take the issue to the Premier League to try and force a move before the league’s transfer window closes on Sept. 2.
Suárez does not have to go away mad, it’s enough at this point that he just go away.
We have the full report in our latest at World Soccer Talk.
(Photo by Getty Images)
A look at a few items that warrant attention but not necessarily a full post …
The Indians make it out of Miami in one piece.
The Tribe closed out Miami on Sunday to take two-out-of-three against the Marlins and finish 6-1 in their recent stretch against the dregs of Major League Baseball.
The Tribe has now won 10-of-11 and return home, where they have the best record in the majors, to take on Detroit in a four-game series.
The Indians enter the series – the biggest the team has played since probably 2007 – three games behind the Tigers for first place in the A.L. Central Division. They also currently hold the second wild card position.
This is the series the Indians have waited for all year. They have spent the entire season trying to convince themselves, the American League and their fans that they are more than just second-class citizens in what is a Browns town. If they are serious about being contenders for the playoffs, this is the series to show it.
We have to say we were a bit surprised by the push back from fans over the announcement that the Cleveland Browns are working to try and improve the game day experience at home games.
We know (hope?) some of it was general snark, but we read and head enough that it makes us wonder, with the biggest complaint being, of course, that the Browns should “just win more games.”
Like any right-minded Cleveland fan, we have fond memories of going to Browns games in the late-1970s through the early 1990s at Municipal Stadium, even though we knew it was a dump. We also enjoy seeing highlights from games during that time period even though we still know the stadium was a dump.
But those memories are embedded in us because we were watching a winning football team (for the most part), not because the experience at the stadium was wonderful. So, on a basic level, we can understand the “just win more games” argument. But that is taking too simplistic of an approach.
While we understand what the Browns are trying to do, they are missing an opportunity here, which we explain further over at The Cleveland Fan.
What a week for the Cleveland Indians.
The Tribe finished off a 7-0 homestead on Thursday by beating the Chicago White Sox, 6-1. It was a week that included back-to-back shutouts of the Texas Rangers, two walk-off home runs against the White Sox and an eighth-inning rally to defeat Chicago.
By sweeping the homestand, the Indians have now won 11 in a row at home and their 37-19 home record is the best in the American League.
It’s enough to make us think this Tribe team has something special in store for Cleveland over the final two months of the season.
Another day, another twist in the ongoing saga of whether or not Liverpool will part ways with striker Luis Suárez. Just two weeks ago, it seemed as if the Reds had missed their best chance to move on from the talented but troubled Suárez after the team turned down a £30 million offer from Arsenal.
Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers’ resolve was tested again last week when Arsenal came back with a transfer bid of £40 million plus £1. But the Reds still said no.
Now, with the start of the Premier League season less than three weeks away, it is looking at least possible that Arsenal may need to acquire Suárez and that it may come at Liverpool’s asking price of more than £50 million.
We take a look at the various scenarios in our latest post at World Soccer Talk.
(Photo by Getty Images)
Quite the weekend for the Cleveland Indians, who finished off the Texas Rangers on Sunday for a three-game sweep of the series.
It was the Tribe’s first three-game sweep at home against the Rangers since 1980 – so long ago that current Indians broadcaster Rick Manning was on the Tribe roster that year. (Manning hit .234 for the Indians that year, appearing in 140 games for a Tribe team that was 79-81, good for sixth place in the A.L. East, in case you were wondering).
The Indians did not pick up any ground on Detroit over the weekend, thanks to the fact that the Phillies stink, but they did pick up two games in the wild card standings and now sit just one game back of Baltimore for the second wild card spot.
Not a bad place to be heading into the final week of July.
Excellent job by the U.S. Men’s National Team in winning Sunday’s Gold Cup final, 1-0, over Panama.
Brek Shea’s goal in the 68th minute game the U.S. team its first trophy under coach Jürgen Klinsmann, even though Klinsmann was forced to watch the game from a luxury box after being suspended for the match because CONCACAF is a joke.
This is the fifth time the U.S. has won the Gold Cup, but the first since 2007.They also did it with a roster filled with several younger players seeing playing time and gaining valuable experience on the international level.
The Cleveland Browns opened training camp on Thursday with new personnel and a new outlook on the defensive side of the ball.
While there will be plenty of new faces on defense this year, the most important addition may be defensive coordinator Ray Horton.
“We teach legal punishment of the quarterback,” Horton has said in published reports. “You have to get after him.”
We could probably stop this preview right now as those words are enough to warm any Browns fans on a cold Northeast Ohio winter night.
But there is more to look at as we focus on the defense in Part 2 of our training camp preview at The Cleveland Fan.
(Photo by ClevelandBrowns.com)
Red Right 88 