Garnett, Stephen A., Braylon, Etc.

A few quick thoughts:

1. I don't think it matters all that much but as a Cavs fan, I'm a little upset that Garnett is out for the playoffs. First of all, the Magic give me far more concern than Boston. While I'm 90% sure the Cavs would beat a healthy Boston team in a 7 game series with the home court, I am far less comfortable playing Orlando. With the Magic's size and 3-point shooting ability, they could very easily get hot and steal one at the Q. Meanwhile, the Cavs have struggled mightily in Orlando. What's more, if Boston still manages to get past the Magic, I think they'll be a slightly more dangerous team playing with an "us against the world" or "nothing to lose" mentality in a potential Eastern Conference finals than they would have been with Garnett out there hobbling around at 60%. Overall though, I'm confident it's not going to matter. The Cavs are going to win the east. That's right, I said it. This is the year and this is the team.

On a side note, what a gift this is for Celtics fans. In spite of what Bill Simmons wrote this morning, we all know that this will give Celtics fans the title defense excuse they are so desperately seeking. Ten years from now, instead of telling everyone that they couldn't defend their title because they were the 3rd best team in the league, they'll be pulling the whole, "yeah, and we were poised to do it again but then Garnett broke down so we never had the opportunity" routine. Leave it to Boston fans to come up with some great revisionist history. Make no mistake: The Celtics had NO chance of defending their title, even with a healthy Garnett. Both the Cavs and Lakers are younger and more talented, and Boston is terrible in the clutch away from home.

2. Well Stephen A. Smith is no longer with ESPN. That's right, the man who built his career on making up stories and being the loudest guy in the room is apparently a free agent. According to deadspin, the worldwide leader asked Smith to take a pay cut and he was not having it. Shrewd career move Steve. I'm sure, given the huge demand for journalists right now, you'll have no problem landing a better gig. Even if you don't though, you can always hang your hat on the lasting impact you made on the sports world with "Quite Frankly."

3. I sincerely hope that the Browns trade Braylon for a first rounder but wouldn't it be fitting that they'd end up spending an insane amount of money on first round picks shortly before the collective bargaining agreement is completely rewritten to include a rookie pay scale.

4. If I were Mark Shapiro, I'd be spending my days studying the minor league prospects of contending teams that need a catcher. Victor's value is going to be sky high this summer and the Indians need to seize the opportunity to move him.

5. I started thinking today about a scenario that would make the city of Cleveland spontaneously combust. Game 7, NBA finals, Cavs win a thriller, the fans are going berzerk as the players hoist the O'Brien trophy, and then, out of nowhere, Lebron grabs the trophy, the microphone, and a pen, and then Ferry walks out with a new 3-year contract that Lebron announces he is signing. I honestly think people would start having heart attacks. Now that would be some kind of something.

Ok, I obviously have nothing more to talk about. That's it for now.

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Meanwhile, in Berea . . .

Does anyone understand what on God's Earth the Browns are doing right now? I've purposely been ignoring them for the last month or so but now I'm just so baffled that I feel like I need to talk about it.

Lets quickly recap the last couple of months for our fine organization:

1. Our only non-atrocious defensive player locked horns with our new coach and tried to piss and moan his way out of town.


2. Our only talented (albeit a complete turd) offensive skill position player, fresh of his own campaign to get himself traded, is currently at the center of trade talks that reportedly have him going to New York for, among other things, a second round pick (hey now, we once got Quincy Morgan and Chaun Thompson in the second round!).


3. Our gigantic bust (although can you really call someone a bust if the only person who didn't expect him to be terrible was the guy who signed him?) of a receiver got drunk in Miami and mowed down a pedestrian in his car...shortly after receiving his big fat bonus check from the team.


4. We've let several sub-par young players leave in free agency . . . and replaced them with much older players of the same, or perhaps even lesser ability.


5. We cut a beloved 34 year-old receiver who, in all fairness, was completely finished . . . and replaced him with a not beloved 34 year-old receiver who, in all fairness, is completely finished.


6. We paid a boatload of bonus money to retain bad players because 1) we didn't have any better options, and 2) unbeknownst to us, the guy we've had managing our salary cap for the last four years didn't know anything about, well, the salary cap.


7. We traded a former first round pick for a second round pick after several memorable years of motorcycle accidents, staph infections, and public throwdowns with the organization.


8. We learned that we don't have a receivers coach, which really isn't a big deal because we don't really have any receivers either.


9. Our director of pro player personnel stabbed a fan on a press tour after the fan questioned the direction of the organization.

Ok, I made that last one up but come on: You didn't even realize it there for a second. I just...I don't even know what to say. I'm speechless. I have absolutely no idea what the plan is for this organization. I mean, there is a plan, I presume. It seems foolish to think that those in charge of the Browns are just haphazardly making moves, but at the same time, I just can't see how any of this fits together and makes any sense.

I have 100% confidence in the fact that the Browns are going to be completely horrid this year....and the year after....and most likely, the year after that. If you look at this roster and the team's cap situation, how could you possibly envision them being successful at any time within the next 3 years? But that's not even the worst part. Teams get bad on purpose all the time. They cut unproductive veterans and replace them with younger guys knowing fully that they're going to experience years of growing pains before becoming competitive again. But that's not what the Browns are doing. They're cutting unproductive guys and replacing them with older, equally unproductive guys. I'm not even being smug when I ask all of you out there to help explain this to me. WHAT ARE THEY DOING!?

And let's not forget, people are actually going to pay thousands of dollars for season tickets to watch this team play next year. I can't imagine what it must feel like to write that check these days. The economy is in the tank, everyone is feeling the pinch, and yet this team is going out of its way to antagonize the poor fans that are still loyal/naive enough to care about it. I looked over and starred at Browns stadium on my way in to work this morning; except today, for the first time ever in an offseason, I didn't feel sad that it wasn't September and the stadium wasn't filled to capacity. I felt sad that we couldn't knock it down and build a casino and hotels there instead. Right now, Browns stadium is just a hulking corpse, peering out from its perch on the lake to taunt us and remind us of how horrible our greatest love has turned out to be.

Come on Cavs. We need you.

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Tony Grossi is Retarded

It amazes me that someone over at the Plain Dealer looks at Tony Grossi's paycheck every week and and thinks it's a good idea to keep signing it. Obviously, whoever that person is, he or she doesn't read the paper.

This morning, Grossi decided to treat Browns fans to two well-constructed pieces. The first, an overview of the situation facing Mangini, included statements such as:

"Lerner interviewed Kokinis on Sunday and a mutual positive feeling emerged."

Now that, my friends, is some hard hitting reporting. But that's not even the best part. By far, the most interesting read in this morning's PD was Grossi's rankings of Browns players' performance this season. Allow me to give you some of the highlights. Keep in mind, according to Grossi, these rankings "are not based on potential, athletic ability or draft status, but on actual production versus opportunity and role, with some consideration given to past performance and to intangibles." I have no idea what that means but let's take a look anyway.

The first five in order are: Rogers, Cribbs, Dawson, Pontbriand, and Joe Thomas. Hard to argue there. But at 6, things start to get really interesting. In that spot, we find our old friend Jamal Lewis. Grossi must've really been impressed by Lewis's "actual production" (3.6 ypc) given his limited "opportunity" (only 279 carries!).

A few more fun tidbits from these rankings:

• Brandon McDonald is 11th while Eric Wright is 23rd. Am I missing something here?


• Kamerion Wimbley is 12th while Steve Heiden is 19th and Lawrence Vickers is 25th. In all fairness to Wimbley though, even for a first round pick, he does have a great wingspan!


• Braylon Edwards is 15th! He must've scored really high on those intangibles. Apparently, Grossi views Braylon's complaining, destroying team chemistry, and telling the fans to blow him as positives.


• At 46th, Donte' Stallworth was not dead last. If I were Shantee Orr, Gerard Lawson, or Travis Daniels, I would be a little curious as to what I did to get ranked below this legendary bust.

You can see the complete rankings for yourself here

Special thanks to Tony Grossi for being terrible at his job and thus, unintentionally funny.

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I Don't Mean to Alarm You But . . .

Well it appears that Berea has taken one more giant step toward becoming the Chernobyl of the NFL today and it has nothing to do with the team's inspired effort on the field.

Per profootballtalk.com:

We got a tip this morning from a reader about a possible altercation in Cleveland. And so we started contacting some of our sources, and the current indication is that something indeed happened.

One source said that the rumor in the locker room is that one player hit another player with a weight, and that the player who was on the receiving end of said weight might have been quarterback Brady Quinn.

So let me get this straight. In the last few weeks, our General Manager has told a fan to fuck off, our star receiver has told the entire city that they think they're entitled to too much, and now, apparently, our potential franchise quarterback (and one of the few guys not yet covered with the heinous stench of this organization) has been hit in the face by another player with a weight. Soak that all in for a moment. That's some operation they're running over there isn't it? I can't wait to see what they have in store for us next. Maybe Joe Thomas can burn down the Cleveland Clinic while Josh Cribbs is inside getting treatment for a staph infection. At this point, if that happened, I would be mildly surprised. I might react by saying something like "Wow, I didn't see that one coming but I guess anything is possible with this group."

Obviously, this story has not been verified (I'm talking about the locker room skirmish, not my imaginary arson/homicide), but, if there is any remote amount of truth to it, even if the player on the business end of the blunt object was someone other than Quinn, it raises serious questions about every single member of the organization.

I knew when the Browns decided that it was a good idea to play out the season with a 61 year old lame duck head coach, they might have some player discipline problems but this is just downright impressive. It's almost as if the Browns aren't even attempting to keep things respectable. Is anyone guarding the henhouse right now? Obviously Romeo isn't but what about Savage? I was under the impression that he still thinks he's entitled to continue running the organization. Quite a case he's making for himself right now.

A month and a half ago, the Browns were a nice little fixer-upper. They obviously had some problems but there was still some talent in place for someone to come in and turn things around. Now?... I would characterize them as more of a radioactive wasteland. Before laying the first brick in the rebuilding process, the new regime is now going to have to come in with hazmat suits and clean this disaster up.

Happy Holidays Browns fans...if there are any of you left out there.

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Rock Bottom

For my first post on the new blog, I wanted to write something memorable. With that in mind, my logical first instinct was to opine on the Cavaliers' record setting start. But, after thinking about it, I realized two things: 1) Its the NBA in December...calm down there cowboy; and 2) the Cavs are a really good team that is in prime position to challenge for a title this year. Truthfully, there isn't that much more to be said about them right now. There will be plenty of time to talk about the Cavs when they hit a rough stretch or prepare to make a move at the deadline.

The Indians? Sure, there's plenty to talk about after some very good moves at the winter meetings; however, keeping in mind that my goal is to make my first post memorable, waxing poetic about minor league second basemen and 30 something closers doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

So, that leaves me with the Browns. Wait a minute, that can't be right. How can I write a memorable post about the most loathsome, disgusting, vomit-inducing team to hit Cleveland in the last decade? Well, after some thought, I have realized that now is the perfect time to write about the Browns. I think of this post as a time capsule. If I really explore my feelings about the Browns now, one day, long into the future when the Browns are a respectable organization, I will be able to go back to this post and remember just how bad things were and how much the good times shouldn't be taken for granted. So, here goes . . .

The Cleveland Browns are an embarrassing organization. And I'm not even just talking about the players. I'm talking about the entire organization, top to bottom. I'm talking about the entity.

When most people talk about the Browns, the begin by talking about the players or the coaching staff. To me, that's missing the point. When a business is failing, you don't look first to the employees or middle management. You go right to the top. The same rule should apply to the Browns. So, with that in mind, lets look from the top down.

The man at the very top is Randy Lerner. The cliche' thing to do when discussing Lerner would be to prattle on about English Football and spout off a bunch of platitudes about commitment and dedication. Truthfully, however, I'm not sure at this point that there is really that much blame that can be placed at Lerner's feet. He spends tons of money and he lets his football people run the organization. At most, he is guilty of being naive and putting his faith in the wrong people, or perhaps more specifically, the wrong person.

That's a nice transition into a discussion of the man that I view to be the main culprit in the continued atrociousness of the Browns: Mr. Phil Savage. I despise Savage. I think he's a smug little weasel. I think he rode into town on Ozzie Newsome's record and has done nothing but destroy the Browns ever since. But, when I say he's destroyed the Browns, I'm not even really talking about his crappy draft record or mostly disappointing free agent signings. I'm talking about his mismanagement of the people below him and the toxic culture he has fostered within the organization. Honestly, I have too many grievances with Savage to write in detail about all of them so I will just list a few of my favorites:

1. Allowing Romeo to retain Carthon 7 games into the 06 season;

2. Being a condescending little penis to the local media while pretending to be Jesus in front of national writers like Peter King;

3. Purposely antagonizing his tight end in the media because he was too childish to be the bigger man;

4. Mediocre overall drafts;

5. Mediocre overall free agent signings;

6. Extending an overmatched coach after one decent season against a bad schedule;

7. And last but not least, telling a Browns fan to fuck off and then letting his head coach handle the press conference discussing it.

Savage is a cancer. You can't build a great organization when the man running it is a self-aggrandizing unaccountable childish asshole. It just won't work, and that is why even though I don't directly fault Randy Lerner for this shitstorm, he takes some of the blame for Savage. He should've never extended Savage after last season. There is no rule written anywhere that says that coaches and GMs are not allowed to come close to the end of their contracts, especially when their performance has been a mixed bag at best. Then, even after extending Savage, Lerner should have fired him "for cause" the day he sent the now famous fan e-mail. If Lerner retains Savage after this season, my opinion of him will tank. It has been well documented that Lerner is fond of Savage, but if he lets that friendship prevent him from making a change that is absolutely necessary to improve the organization, he will essentially be telling the Cleveland fans to fuck off in his own subtle little way. Ok, enough on those two.

Romeo. Does anything even need to be said? In a way, it's funny that he's managed to coach this team for this long but in truth, it's just an embarrassment. The fans and the rest of the world have known he's a joke for several years. How the Browns have not yet figured this out is just beyond me. Either they're blind or they just don't care. Whatever the reason, it's not worth talking about anymore because he's out.

So, those are the figureheads of the Browns as an organization. It's pathetic. In the NFL, more than any other professional sport, it's the quality of the organization that really determines the number of wins and losses year in and year out. That's why teams like Indy, Pittsburgh, and New England are usually winners while bad organizations like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Arizona, and Oakland are usually terrible despite the fact that the draft should make things cyclical. A quality organization manages to field a quality team. If you have a bunch of hacks on the sidelines and in the front office, the product on the field will almost always bear a striking resemblance.

Last but not least, the players...and oh what a special day it is to talk about the players in light of Braylon's little rant today. Now listen, I'm not stupid enough to believe that you can't win titles with thugs and primadonnas on your team. Teams do it all the time. But, what I do believe is that you can't have these guys in key positions leading your team, and you have to have enough high character guys and a strong enough head coach to negate their impact (See Giants, New York). The Browns have amassed a nice little collection of turds, shitheads, and worst of all, mental midgets on this roster. Yet, that fact alone shouldn't be enough to make this team this bad. The problem is that not only are these people on the team, they actually "leading" it. That is a perfect recipe for the type of disaster that has taken place this year.

A few noteworthy individuals:

Braylon Edwards: The sad thing about Braylon is that he's going to have at least a few more great seasons before it's all said and done. The guy has too much talent to be bad forever. He's got the football version of the shanks right now but it won't always be that way. He's going to have more pro-bowl seasons, but unfortunately, my guess is they will be in another city. It's a shame that Braylon had to put the finishing touches on his master plan to get out of town after a season in which he had Browns fans pining for the sure hands of Dennis Northcutt. His has lost a significant amount of value. With his talent, he's probably still worth a late first rounder (Roy Williams anyone?) but this is just a huge blow to the future of the team. He's a cancer and they have to get rid of him but man, with the right head on his shoulders, he could've been a great piece for the new regime to build around.

Derek Anderson: Savage botched this one. He was scared that if he traded the Browns first "Pro Bowl" quarterback in forever and Quinn flopped, he'd be massacred. The truth is that the handwriting was on the wall last year when Anderson was terrible in the second half of the season. Instead of working out a trade with one of the numerous quarterback desperate teams this summer and giving the team to Quinn, Savage probably just took a first round pick and turned it into a 4th rounder and a nice little accellerated cap charge. Well done sir. As for Anderson himself, the guy can seriously blow me. Anyone who tells Peter King that the team "got its swagger back" after beating the Bengals is obviously a jackass. Worse, in spite of his laser arm, the fact that he's such a mental midget will prevent him from ever being an upper echelon starter. Anderson's favorite pastimes include disappearing from games in which he starts poorly and loses his confidence and crying to the media about being unloved. Ah, just what I'm looking for in my starting quarterback. Get him out of my life.

K2: I'm sorry....I know he plays hard but I want him out of my life too. He was 100% right in his war with Savage this season but I still want him gone. He can't keep his mouth shut, he doesn't block anyone, and he's got the body of a 50 year old. The Browns should move him while he still has value.

Overall, the Browns are just a sad sad organization in a city in which the fans live and die with their football team. The wounds these guys have inflicted on the fanbase this year will take a long time to heal. Its hard to believe that less than 4 months ago, I was thinking about playoff games after watching the team march down the field and score in their first preseason game. What a sad disgusting season. What a sad disgusting team. God, I want them all to disappear.

This completes my Browns time capsule post. I vow not to speak of them again until the draft.

Now, about those Cavs...

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Back To Reality

image from www.waitingfornextyear.com

14-11. Same story as always. Lousy coaching. Lousy DA. Lousy Braylon. No need to keep rewriting the same problems after each game. Everyone sees them. Nobody in the organization is willing to make a change. Only in Cleveland would an organization be so inept. Nothing more to say. Read the rest of this article