NFL Analysts Pleased With Browns’ Direction
So the baseball season is over, and the basketball season has yet to begin. That leaves us with just our beloved Brownies playing real games right now. Normally, that would be cause for nothing but more heartache and upset stomaches. But not this year. Optimism is abound when it comes to this year’s Browns. Now, lets not all get ahead of ourselves and try to keep things in proper focus and scope, and lets not overreact to the quotes I’m about to paste. The last time the Browns were .500 after 6 games was 2004. That season we were 3-3, playing the undefeated Eagles at home in Week 7. We were leading in the 4th quarter and looking to go to 4-3 on the year. Well, the Eagles tied the game in the 4th, and then won the game in overtime and by the end of the season, our record was 4-12. So just because we’re 3-3 right now, there’s still a LONG season ahead of us and a lot of uncertainty in the upcoming weeks and months. Remember, this is a franchise which hasn’t even won back to back games since weeks 5 and 6 of the 2003 season, so lets start small and try actually putting together some win streaks. Since our return in 1999, only once have we won more than 2 games in a row, and that was when we won 3 in a row in weeks 2 through 4 of the 2001 season. Those numbers are shocking and an embarrassment to the team, the city, and us fans. So before we start proclaiming ourselves “back from the dead”, lets first just try to string together some nice wins.
With that being said, lets take a look at what the analysts said about the team today. First up is Scouts, Inc’s Matt Williamson writing in his chat for ESPN.com,
Adam (OH): Is 8-8 a realistic guess for the Browns this season? If not then what?
Matt Williamson: That is realistic. Should beat STL without a ton of problems this week. I think 9 wins is steep though.
Williamson even thinks that a 2nd place finish in the division isn’t outside the realm of possibility,
Jay(Los Angeles): AFC north has to considered one of the toughest divisions in football. The good but under achieving Bengals could be the worst team in the division
Matt Williamson: Agreed. Don’t sleep on the Ravens either. Just look at their injury list-a LOT of Pro Bowls on that injury list.
Yahoo’s NFL experts Jason Cole and Charles Robinson released their NFL Power Rankings today, and both showed optimism in this year’s Browns team with Cole placing the Browns 10th on his rankings and Robinson sliding the Browns in his top tier at number 12. Cole had this to say about the Browns,
“As for the rest of the top of the league, you would have gotten some seriously long odds on a parlay from me that Cleveland and Kansas City would have been in the top 10 of the league. Yeah, the Browns are a pretty big reach at No. 10, it’s not like anybody else deserves to be there right now. Seattle needs to figure out if it’s going to be good or not after a couple of ugly games preceding the victory over St. Louis.”
Finally, for a look ahead to what the Browns may be looking at with their first pick in the draft next year (in the 2nd round….Brady Quinn is our 1st round pick next year, remember), Scouts, Inc’s draft analyst Steve Muench fielded some questions for ESPN.com today, and had this to say about the Browns’ pick,
Mike (Cleveland): My Browns need serious help on the D-line! What prospects would project to when they which seems to be in the middle of the second round?
Steve Muench: The problem is their not going to get a true nose tackle for good vlaue at that point in the draft. So they may be better served taking a chance on Texas A&M’s Red Byrant in the third or fourth round or possibly Fresno State’s Jason Shirley in a later round. If they take a defenisve end there, USC’s Lawrence Jackson is a possibility though not an ideal fit. North Carolina State’s DeMario Pressley is another name worth throwing out there.
That’s all I have on the Browns for today. I’ll my Week 8 preview for this week’s game at St. Louis a little later in the week.
Trouble In Happy Waters?
LeBron James doesn’t seem particularly happy these days. It would be nice if he was just cranky still because his beloved Yanks fell to the Tribe in the playoffs this year, but unfortunately for us all, there’s some actual merit to his gripes. I said last week it would be interesting to see how LeBron handled the absences of Sasha Pavlovic and Anderson Varejao, who are holding out for ridiculous amounts of money they’re probably not going to get. Well, we’re starting to see some of that come to fruition. I wondered whose side LeBron would take on this matter, and as reported in Chronicle-Telegram today, LeBron hath spoken:
“We’re worse,” James said following the Cavaliers’ first workout since an eight-day stint in China. “We’re not as good when we don’t have those guys. We all know that. Those two guys are a big part of our team.”
LeBron would continue,
“We didn’t do any reshaping,” James said matter-of-factly. “We didn’t do any regrouping. You start to think a little bit, ‘How are we going to continue to get better?’”
“Me being the leader, I am geared for them not being here,” the 6-foot-8, 250-pounder said. “As an individual, I know I am ready. When I’m ready, I know our team is ready. Their names are still in the locker room (above their lockers),” he said. “They’re still a part of our team. At the same time, we have to go with who we have. … Some things are going to happen in the next week or so where we know for certain what is going to happen with those guys.”
I actually empathize with Danny Ferry and his situation. He simply cannot bid against himself and sign the two players for more money than the market seems to be dictating that they are worth just to appease his biggest star and most valuable asset, no matter how much it must hurt to hear LeBron’s pleas for help. And for what it’s worth, I also empathize with LeBron and the situation he finds himself in. Here we are about to enter year 5 of the LeBron James Era, and is the team really any better than they were in year 2? Consistently carrying this team all by himself year in and year out has to be exhausting. It has to be frustrating. So maybe it’s a bit simplistic and a bit of a reach to read too much into any kind of deeper meaning in LeBron’s comments other than to state the obvious….we got embarrassed in the NBA Finals last year. We had zero chance of winning a single game, let alone an entire series against the Spurs. And LeBron knows it. And to look at this year’s team as it stands at this exact moment and to see that it is clearly weaker than last year’s team, perhaps LeBron really is only asking for the help he deserves. It will just be up to Danny Ferry to decide what the best way to get some help in here will be. Choose wisely, young man. Choose wisely.
Small Market, Big Stage
We always hear a lot of talk about the small market Indians. I guess that’s true, I mean, there’s no denying what our payroll looks like ($61.29 million) and where it ranks (23rd in the majors). I just always find it kind of funny because I don’t remember a lot of talk of the Indians being small market when names on the team included the likes of Robbie Alomar, David Justice, Jim Thome, Orel Hersheiser, Denny Martinez, Sandy Alomar Jr, Matt Williams, Travis Fryman, Kenny Lofton, Marquis Grissom, Omar Vizquel, etc. The point being, a team is as big or small market as the size of their owner’s pockets. Detroit used to be a small market team, but now they are 9th in payroll and the are always one of the teams mentioned as candidates for any big signings, so obviously they’re not so “small market’ anymore. Granted, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, and Philly have built in advantages due to the sheer size of those cities. But after that small handful of teams, there’s really no such thing as big market or small market….only big spending owners and small spending owners.
Anyway, as reported today in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Game 7 of the ALCS drew HUGE ratings,
“Sunday night’s Game 7 drew an 11.7 rating, which was 8 percent better than the 10.8 earned by last year’s NLCS Game 7 between the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets. It was the highest-rated LCS game since 2004.”
So obviously the Red Sox had a bigger hand in those ratings than the Indians did, but it still goes to show you that people were interested in watching our team play baseball, and if the ratings “nightmare” that the media predicted for a Cleveland-Colorado World Series had come true, I’m not certain it would have been the fault of the Indians being there. But then again, I’m also not sure why people wouldn’t have wanted to watch a World Series matchup between a young, fun, energetic team like Cleveland and a team like Colorado who is equally young and fun and boasts a hot streak unlike any we’ve seen before. No, I think the ratings might have been ok.
Cleveland Sports Authority 