While We’re Waiting… So sick of losing.
November 25, 2013Cleveland stuck on four wins as season begins circling the drain
November 25, 2013Who caught your eye? Did someone stand out? Who blew it? That’s what were interested in this morning. Winners and losers.
WINNER: Josh Gordon. It was the obvious and probably only legitimate ‘winner’ on the Browns from Sunday’s game. Gordon set the franchise record with 237 receiving yards and tied a team record with 14 receptions. He registered his fifth 100-yard receiving game this year, the most by a Brown in a season. He caught his fifth touchdown as well. Sure, about a hundred yards were in garbage time. At least he didn’t quit.
LOSER: Ball Security. Four more turnovers in this game from the offense. Campbell, Weeden and Ogbonnaya all lost fumbles. Ogbonnaya’s was really costly as the Browns were driving at the end of the second quarter with a chance to get right back in the game after Pittsburgh’s touchdown. The Steelers would end up with a field goal off that turnover and go into halftime with a ten point lead.
Campbell’s fumble set the Steelers up inside the Cleveland’s five yard line. Weeden also threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown. Two gift touchdowns and a field goal off those turnovers. Insurmountable given the way the Browns were playing.
LOSER: Depth. The Browns are starting to hurt big time at key positions because of injury. Craig Robertson couldn’t play Sunday and his back-up Tank Carder was hurt before halftime. That left Darius Eubanks as the only option opposite D’Qwell Jackson. The Browns are also down to their last healthy quarterback in Brandon Weeden. Buster Skrine suffered a rib injury towards the end of the game.
LOSER: Player safety. Campbell was hit in the head on the play in which he suffered a concussion, and yet there wasn’t a flag thrown. It seems that if the league is going to try to tell us they are all about player safety, then somehow these things should be reviewed or something.
Alright. Who were your losers? Anyone else out there worthy of the winner tag?
40 Comments
Winner: Every single practice squad QB in the league.
“Campbell was hit in the head on the play in which he suffered a concussion, and yet there wasn’t a flag thrown.”
Campbell just needs to realize that, until he’s a big star like Drew Brees, his safety isn’t quite as important.
Winner: Me. Due to a family situation, I had to give up my tickets to this game on Saturday. So, I didn’t sit through it outside in the frigid temperatures and wind.
Loser: My Eyes. I still watched this game on TV, and it made my eyes bleed.
Surprised you didn’t include the fans as losers for thinking this time it was going to be different.
Although, come to think of it, you could probably just include that line item on a weekly basis, not just when the Browns play the Steelers.
Loser: Obie- two weeks in a row where he has lost a costly fumble. Turnovers have killed this team the past two weeks
Loser: Haden- A. Brown seems to have his number for some reason
Losers: Us fans that saw Campbell get bullied, choke-slammed to the ground, and ultimately taken out of the game; just to see Weeden throw away any playoff aspirations this season. It has to be doubtful that Weeden could beat Jacksonville next week as it looks like Campbell will have to go on the IR.
LOSER: The Greatest Fans in the World, allegedly. Look, we get it. You don’t like seeing Weeden coming off the bench. But grow up already. The booing is embarrassing
With the way the Browns and Cavs have disappointed, I guess we should have filled Progressive Field when we had the chance.
Winner:
– Steeler Dominance: aging stars, replacement starter rookies, coaching staff and FO stay free of any fear that this is a real rivalry, that the Browns are anything but a W on their schedule. Not a player on the Browns is physically or mentally ready to change that rusted status quo.
Losers:
– Ray Horton: on the surface doesn’t look like the fault of the defense at all. But yesterday was a bad-weather game they coulda/shoulda been near dominant. Banner intentionally stripped the offense at skill positions. But Horton got what he needed: his FAs, the top draft pick, his scheme choice, and the defense still came out flat at home against a mediocre Pittsburgh offense. The biggest sin: zero pressure on the QB – Horton’s self- proclaimed specialty – let Roethlisberger get the max out of what he had. And even without pressure the defense also let a large lumbering rookie RB get very decent yards up the middle. And also couldn’t contain bubble screens at all, or adjust to the no-huddle they knew was coming. Today I’m fed up – let Horton go be a HC. The team won’t lose all that much that they can’t get elsewhere. Horton is full of quotes, but one of the most overrated local coordinators in recent memory. A 4-3 defense under Dick Jauron would not have done any worse yesterday.
– The Current FO: Had a chance to start installing that winning culture, and your gift to Chud is a cold-weather running game consisting of an old street FA with no training camp and a gas tank on empty and Ogby, who has established slippery hands on carries and catches all season. So maybe you had to jump at the chance to sell Trent high. A back-up running back plan is not this hard. Put a promising guy in there and give him a chance.
– The 2012 Draft: an historic chance to propel the org out of the muck, now fully revealed as an unmitigated disaster. Mitchell Schwartz …ugh. Your right tackle cannot be so easily tossed around by Pittsburgh, period. The Browns cannot compete in the division if either starting tackle is as marshmallow soft as Schwartz was yesterday.
Loser: Every team that I love. Man, this was a really rough sports weekend for me. My Browns get beat down at home by the hated Steelers. My Cavs lose back-to-back games, the first of which they had in the bag being up by 12 with like 3 minutes left, the second of which they were never in. My Hokies lose both games of the Coaches v. Cancer Classic in Brooklyn… lost the second game against Seton Hall in spite of holding a late lead due thanks to a triplicate of blunders in the last minute of the game by senior Jarell Eddie, who had played extremely well up to that point. The first game the Hokies were in for about 15 minutes before Michigan State realized who they were and Adrian Payne showed my team how a real high-major forward plays basketball. Oh, and my Washiington Capitals also racked up two losses over the weekend. Thank God the VT football team had a bye… they surely would have lost as well.
are you trying to say the fans have battered spouse syndrome? You may be on to something
Winner: My fantasy team thanks to Josh Gordon.
Loser: Me, for being foolish enough to get my hopes up even after we got embarassed by the Bengals.
Winner: Me, not having to waste my Sundays the rest of the season. The return of Weeden guaranteed that.
I hope not, because battered spouse syndrome is something serious and meaningful that doesn’t apply in a sports situation.
Don’t worry, Harv. Mike Lombardi has his eye on a quarterback that will be a 5th round steal who will come in and save the franchise. Because Lombardi is just that good.
Loser: Browns, again. How hard is it to win 3 division games? 4? We are now under .500 and require a win v. Pitt in week17 just to get to 3 division wins or we’ll be under .500 yet again in the division. So.Freaking.Frustrating.
Winner: Me for seeing Brownie for a split second during the broadcast. Yay!!
Loser: The fans who think a new QB from any source, other than the draft, will be ready in time for next weeks game.
Winner: Josh Gordon. That’s it.
Loser: Everyone else. The players, the coaches, and the fans.
I’m going to particularly single out Chud here. He’s supposed to be a Browns fan who “gets it”. I was excited earlier this week when he referred to this is “Steeler week.” Well, if he put extra emphasis on this game with the players this week, he either did a piss poor job communicating it or the players just didn’t respond. Home game with our “arch rival” (I use that term loosely) with playoff implications, and THAT’S what we get? They looked uninspired and unprepared from the first snap. We looked like the wimpy kid who was hoping that the bully wouldn’t see us on the playground so we wouldn’t get our lunch money taken again. No attitude. No fire. Nothing. Both teams had a lot to play for. Only one acted like it. Totally unacceptable.
It was interesting walking out of the stadium yesterday. I’m usually mad after games like this. But I wasn’t for some reason. It was more of a “what the hell was THAT?” feeling. Stunned and bewildered. Numb, inside and out. They looked like the “same old Browns” again, after I had spent the last 11 weeks convincing myself that things were different. Then we get embarrassed at home by the worst Steeler team in the past 15 years, and I have to listen their a-hole fans talking crap to me in my own stadium as I’m walking out. I’ve gone from thinking about buying season tickets next year to wondering if I even want to go to another game at all anytime soon. Maybe I need another hobby. Maybe I just need to take a break from this team for the rest of the season. It’s just so….draining…to invest so much time, money, and energy into this franchise only to see what happened yesterday. Again. (sigh)
at this point I have no reason to jump on Lombardi. Not after the QBs Savage and Holmgren drafted were Brady Quinn, Colt and Weeden. A mediocre but legit starter would be a major upgrade. As I’ve suggested before, I’m thinking they should do something radical like take two QBs in this draft, maybe with a first and that extra third rounder, and let football Darwinism determine whether either survives.
I think we’d be foolish to NOT take 2 QB’s. We have the extra picks, and we aren’t going anywhere until we get someone competent at the position. Double your chances of getting a good one. Hoyer and 2 rookies in camp is fine with me.
Are you sure the booing wasn’t for the fact that Campbell was just mauled and no flag was thrown?
I’m positive.
Honestly I couldn’t understand how Campbell got blasted on that play. The Steelers didn’t disguise that they were blitzing two from the left side, Ogbonnoya picked up the inside guy (correctly), and Campbell should have been getting rid of that ball instantly. I have no clue how he didn’t see it coming, everyone else did.
Booing rarely works out for the fans. It causes no impact on the field, and it can be mis-interpreted by a lazy media any number of ways. You’d think we all would have learned after the plastic bottle sh*tstorm (I refuse to use “gate” words)
LOSERS: The front office. After last week’s second quarter debacle, they could still have kept the fans believing we were headed in the right direction with a win yesterday and that the 2Q last week was just a fluke. Yesterday signified that that wasn’t the case, and that this team is still years away. Years this fan base can’t give it.
LOSER: Ray Horton. The Browns’ D has been fantastic for the most part all year, but the points being attacked are the same every time: Bubble screens, screens in the middle of the field just beyond the line of scrimmage, and attacking Haden’s overconfidence. How many times do the Steelers have to run that WR hitch pass behind the inside guy before you stop it? How do you let them run it on 1st and goal after you’ve seen about six of them? Throw in the lack of pressure whatsoever and Horton was a loser yesterday.
LOSER: Joe Haden. Haden is awesome except his overconfidence. When he thinks he’s better than whomever he’s taking, he gets lax and they beat him for a big play. Brown was 5 yards past him before that ball was thrown and there is no reason for Haden not to have been staying with him.
LOSER: Jason Campbell. For all the criticisms of Brandon Weeden, at least with him in the game there’s a threat of a deep pass. Campbell can only dink and dunk, and even within those options he checks down so quickly it doesn’t matter. Campbell is what we thought he was – a not terrible backup QB who can’t really create drives because he’s limited, he can just take what’s there and hope it’s enough. He also somehow didn’t see an open blitz pre-snap and it got him concussed, which sucks for him and for us.
Also, fun stat to throw in in defense of the D – points allowed not off turnovers on the CLE side of the field vs. points allowed off turnovers/scored by DST of other teams:
MIA – 17, 6
BAL – 14, 0
MIN – 17, 10
CIN – 6, 0
BUF – 17, 7
DET – 24, 7
GB – 31, 0
KC – 20, 3
BAL – 18, 0
CIN – 3, 38
PIT – 13, 14
That’s 180 vs. 85, or 16.4 vs. 7.3. It’s bad enough that the O stinks and can’t score, it’s worse when they put the D in bad spots or straight up give up scores. More importantly it shows how much a competent offense could do here: This D gives up 16 points a game despite everything else. If there was an offense that scored just 20+ points a game and only gave up say 3 on average we’d have a winning team, especially when you consider that the D would be more rested and not feel so frustrated.
If someone wants to boo when Weeden sails a pass way over an open receiver’s head or throws a three-yard dink on 3rd and 8, fine.
But when your QB is just entering the game as an injury replacement, the booing is childish. The players notice it, and it makes us all look bad.
Winner: My GTA:O character which was able to level up, since video games are an excellent alternative to browns football.
That really bothered me, too. It’s the most difficult position in sports but the blitz came from what should have been well within his peripheral vision. You see it, you have a hot read, or step up, or at least get rid of it. He never reacted. Then I realized: he’s Jason Campbell, a 32 year old back-up. Dick LeBeau knows what how to mess up Jason Campbell or any similar quality dreck we throw out there real good.
After what we’ve witnessed the past couple of weeks I’m on board with the Browns using every draft pick they hold in 2014 on a quarterback. It simply has to end.
Sure, they have multiple holes to fill, but they also are sitting on a giant pile of unused cap space that they can use to fix all the problems they ignored this past off season.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are taking fan applications.
Where do they play… Regina? I have a long-standing beef with Saskatoon.
I mean, who doesn’t????
Yes, Regina.
Which reminds me of an off-color Seinfeld episode . . . .
I can see the Browns taking a second QB and stash him away within the practice squad for an entire year. However it’s likely that the Browns will draft 1 QB to work with and use the other draft pick on some other position of need.
Lighten up little fella. People like you are the reason this country is going to hell in a hand basket. Either get a sense of humor or go live in a country where this sort of talk gets you 30 lashes.
Yes, because having a measured level of perspective on something serious is, like, a total buzzkill. People who are able to keep pro sports from being likened to something that really matters are ruining this country, for sure.
Loser: Brandon Weeden – he gives us zero hope of winning a game under center at this point. Coming off the street, Caleb Hanie gives us a better chance to win SUN than Weeden.
No words. Should have sent a poet. A really, terrible, cynical poet.
I just need to jump in here: at what point did Banner strip the offense of skill position players?
– Traded TRich, but he sucks.
– Kept Gordon
– Signed Bess
– Cameron is a legit TE
– Dion Lewis got injured
– MoHard got injured
Gordon single handedly won me my fantasy game this week.
this is fair, “strip” was not appropriate verb. (Cameron, Hardesty, Campbell, Hoyer and Norv are irrelevant to my point but I get it). When I wrote this I was more blowing off steam than going for precision. Here’s what I meant: whatever Richardson is or will be, he helps balance an offense and holds off the pass rush way more than Old Mr. Creaky Sitting at Home for a Year. And to not get a warm body back-up QB at the bye despite knowing Campbell is already hurt and Weeden is horrible is a white flag for the rest of the season on that side of the ball.
While I understand your point, I still disagree. Richardson doesn’t do anything for an offense. Perhaps he kept defenses honest at one point last year or early this year because of his perceived ability.
But that myth is long gone now. He is equivalent to Willis now.
I do agree that they needed to get another warm body at the bye. That was completely stupid. Like, I honestly don’t know what they thought they were doing.