in NFL Articles
NFL Week 10 Recap - Oh the Cleveland Browns
by Charles Jay
NFL Pro Football Betting
NFL - THE DAY AFTER
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE - WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
The Cleveland Browns' situation is a mess, but there is nothing wrong with putting it into perspective. During Monday night's 16-0 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, the ESPN announcers started to discuss the week's events, lowlighted by complaints made by Jamal Lewis and other Browns players about practices, including walk-throughs, being too long.
As Cleveland's ineptitude on offense got downright monotonous, color commentator Ron Jaworski suggested that perhaps these guys weren't spending ENOUGH time on the practice field.
I'm sure that's not a completely original thought, but I'm glad it was brought up, and by a former NFL player no less. These guys need to practice, and practice A LOT, and there's no way to get to where they want to go without it.
When I hear from a guy who isn't producing a whole lot as it is (just 385 yards in seven games) on a 1-8 team that has scored just five offensive touchdowns and tallied 29 points over a six-game period, that practices are too hard, I know I'm hearing from a loser, and I could give a s**t whether once upon a time he rushed for 2000 yards in a season or not. Vince Lombardi, who by all accounts was a pretty successful coach, would have chased someone like that right off the practice field, and onto the waiver wire.
It's one thing to hate a coach's practices. It's quite another to hate it and then cry about it to the union and to the press. Lombardi's players hated practice too. If you've ever seen them being interviewed by NFL Films they will explain to you that they were treated like "dogs." The difference is that they knew it was necessary. They knew, for example, that the famous Packer power sweep wasn't going to run by itself. It takes repetition for those things to work. It takes - yes Jamal - PRACTICE.
You can get on Eric Mangini's case for some things, I suppose, but he inherited these losers. You can get on him for mishandling the quarterback situation, but that doesn't really explain why, when he uses Derek Anderson in the fourth quarter, he has a quarterback rating of THREE-POINT-ONE (that's right, 3.1). It doesn't fully explain why Brady Quinn, who was taken in the first round and accepted all the money that accompanies that draft position, throws four-yard passes into the ground. At some point, no matter how bad you think a coach has handled the quarterback situation, a guy has to execute SOMETHING at SOME POINT when he goes in the game. That only comes by practicing and repetition. From what I understand, Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry, being paid far less than these current Browns, both in the literal and relative sense, stayed on the practice field long after the final whistle until they got it right.
If Jamal Lewis doesn't want to deal with that reality, let him retire NOW instead of at the end of the season. The same goes for every other member of the Cleveland Browns team who thinks he's being "pushed too hard." Believe me, if they haven't been pushed out the door by now, it hasn’t been hard enough.
FREEMAN CREATES NEW ATMOSPHERE IN TAMPA
I have to tell you - I don't get the NFL's "Sunday Ticket" this season because I found that there was so much out there to switch around to that I never found myself actually sitting down to watch a football game. It's too confusing, and maybe I'm just too old not to be confused by that. Next stop, I guess - the NFL's "Red Zone" channel.
Anyway, I comment first on what I actually saw, and it was indeed plenty.
One of the biggest impressions I got from Sunday's action is that Josh Freeman is one rookie who is going to do just fine. When I first saw him in the pre-season, and even in his abbreviated stint against New England out in London, he truly had that "deer in the highlights" look about him. I mean, they were trying to simplify things for him and he still looked lost. Once they handed the starting job over to him, however, he has looked like someone who is unquestionably in charge of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense.
Don't get me wrong; he's going to go through the process where he makes those rookie mistakes; everybody does. For example, he was just 14 for 31 in his starting debut against Green Bay. But he seems to have an eye for the end zone (3 TD passes against the Packers), which is unusual even for a lot of guys who have had a few years of experience, and he does not wilt when the pressure's on. This guy has a rocket for an arm, which is one of the main requirements scouts look for, but he also is sort of a cross between Ben Roethlisberger and Daunte Culpepper in the way he combines sheer size (6'5". 250 pounds) and escape ability to buy himself more time. He's also not afraid to run for the first down.
What the Tampa Bay coaches say is that he is a quick study and is not scared to assert himself with his teammates. He doesn't have a lot of help in his receiving corps, and one can almost guarantee that as he continues to develop a rapport with Kellen Winslow Jr. it will produce some TD's while at the same time drawing double-teams from the opposition. It was actually kind of a shame that the Bucs' defense couldn't hold Miami on that final drive where the Dolphins kicked the field goal to win the game.
Fantasy owners will look at his stats (51% completions, 417 yards in a little over two games) and won't be overly impressed, but file this for future reference as you're doing your handicapping - the team plays with more hope and more confidence when he is at the helm. I expect Tampa Bay will put itself in a position to win (or at least cover) in most weeks.
BELICHICK SHOULD OWN UP TO DECISION
Bill Belichick's awful decision to go for it on fourth down and place Peyton Manning 30 yards from victory in Sunday night's game will no doubt be sliced and diced on the internet, radio and television for the next week, so I'm not going to pile on to that except to elaborate on one point in particular.
"We thought we could win the game on that play. That was a yard we thought we could get" was Belichick's quote after the game, instead of taking the blame for blowing it.
Of course, it was fourth and two, so a yard hardly mattered.
The "what have you done for us lately?" mentality is so much a part of the coach's mantra, that past accomplishments mean nothing when it comes to cutting or benching a player. That's what is essential when it comes to evaluating a player's performance - you see it every year in training camp, don't you? Coaches need to live with that in reverse too, and take all the abuse that goes with it.
Belichick has won three Super Bowls. Lately, he has made a call with two minutes left that handed victory to the other team, and put his own club three games down to the Colts in the race for the all-important home field advantage in the AFC.
He's lucky he's got those rings, because if he was in Washington, or Oakland, or Buffalo, or Detroit, or Seattle, or a number of other NFL cities, we'd have been watching a press conference this morning, and Belichick's insipid quotes wouldn't have been a focus of attention, because it would have been the general manager or owner talking instead.
Know what I'm saying?
