Charge! Cavaliers Unveil Name of Canton D-League Team
October 13, 2011Should the Browns Be Interested in Brandon Lloyd?
October 14, 2011While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
Craig participates in a Q&A with a Raiders blog- “What matchup are you looking forward to in this game? I wouldn’t say I am looking forward to it, but I will be watching Kamerion Wimbley and hoping the former Brown doesn’t get the better of his old team. Cleveland fans loved Wimbley, but always thought he was miscast. The Browns seemed to run the 3-4 in spite of themselves over the last few years. They finally switched back to the 4-3 this season, but that was only after about five years of drafting defensive ends and failing miserably at converting them to 3-4 outside linebackers. The Browns used to occasionally ask Wimbley to drop into coverage. It seemed like the dumbest, most ludicrous, hard-headed thing in the world. Why draft a guy who doesn’t fit your scheme? Better yet, why not use a scheme that fits your guys? That was a long-winded way of answering your question, I know.” [Thoughts From the Dark Side]
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Great piece on former Cavalier Terrell Brandon- “The Terrell Brandon chapter is often forgotten, when paging through the history of Cavaliers lore, even though he was awesome. He wasn’t really part of those Mark Price teams (even though he was a solid back-up) and he wasn’t part of the LeBron James years either. In fact, when Brandon was playing for the Cavaliers, LeBron came to his basketball camp as a 7th grader. If the galaxies could have realigned somehow, and Brandon could’ve replaced Jeff McInnis, Eric Snow, Damon Jones, Larry Hughes, or even Mo Williams for one season or even two with James…oh well.” [Brendan/Stepien Rules]
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Comparing the Raiders and Browns- “Beyond the flawed Frye corollary, the Raiders and Browns share a football heritage that is firmly rooted in memories of a glorious past. While the Raiders can claim AFL dominance and three Super Bowl championships, the Browns boast grainy images of AAFC and NFL superiority, culminating in a now inaccessible 1964 title. However, recent history has been less than kind to both teams. Both the Raiders and Browns have suffered from a particular extreme of poor NFL ownership. While Davis has often misguided his franchise with an unyielding hand, the Browns’ Randy Lerner has proven to be one of the league’s most tepid or possibly even invisible owners.” [DK/The OBR]
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“Where Cleveland needs to improve is on offense, which happens to be coach Pat Shurmur’s specialty. The Browns don’t have an identity on offense. This is the most overused cliché when it comes to struggling offenses, but it couldn’t be more true in Cleveland’s case. It’s difficult to build a personality on offense when the faces change from play to play. On one snap, the Browns line up Mohamed Massaquoi, Brian Robiskie, Ben Watson and Peyton Hillis. On the next play, it’s Josh Cribbs, Greg Little, Evan Moore and Montario Hardesty. Shurmur says shuffling personnel causes defenses to adjust. But it seems as if it’s been a harder adjustment on the offense. The Browns rank 21st in total yardage, 17th in passing, 27th in rushing and 26th in scoring.” [Hensley/AFC North Blog]
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Finally, another gem from the Tumbler. [WFNY Tumblr]
8 Comments
Thanks for the TB piece.
Why bring up Lerner now? Hes done what Cincy fans, Oakland fans, and probably some Dallas fans have been yearning for- Got a big time football guy to run the organization. He has an open pocket bookand has tried to install a guy that can make this a respectable team from the top down. Who cares if hes here or not, its not effecting anything!
@2 – exactly. Lerner is doing what he should do, which is write the checks and let Holmgren and Heckart make the football decisions. Not real sure why anyone would have a problem with that…
@2 and 3 – You can’t separate Lerner’s inept ownership from the situation the team is in now. As Craig’s post mentions, he is responsible for the Crennel and Mangini hires that led to 6 years of organizational incoherence that we are still trying to recover from.
Holmgren and Heckert have been a good corrective to that mess, but Lerner’s failures continue to reverberate through the team in its current state and present developmental challenges.
@humboldt – that is fine, but it takes time for a new owner to find the right people and figure out how to get the franchise running properly. the steelers were terrible for 39 years before the Rooney’s figured out how to hire doctors to inject the team w/ steroids before it was en-vogue in the NFL (errr, I mean hire the proper FO and coaches).
following on the non-joke portion of my comment: Lerner was at least willing to literally pay for his mistakes (yes, literally used correctly). he fired those who were not working out and moved onto a different model. he finally has gotten to a model where the president oversees the FO and coaching staff and everyone is completely on the same page at how to accomplish the goals. I don’t know if it will work out, but the beginning stages look promising and I hope they continue to build.
Holy Crap!! I love that Tumblr site!! GREAT STUFF there.
This piece on Terrell Brandon cries out for some context. I loved the player, but “arguably the best at his position”? C’mon, he was not the best NBA point guard any year, not with Magic and Payton and Thomas and Cheeks and Stockton and … That claim was based on a standard Sports Illustrated “shocker” headline, like predicting the Carter/Snyder Indians to win the world series. And as I remember the story was based solely on the excellent stats Terrell was putting up that year. He was never considered him among the very top PGs in the league.
The context of the trade was that Embry was devastated by Jordan knocking out the better-rounded Cavs teams in the era of the superstar player. He chucked his template of solid citizen/teamwork and decided he needed an alpha player, any alpha, and the results were disastrous. The NBA lockout followed and Kemp used his unstructured time to gain something like 80 pounds and do who knows what else.