Bye Week Blues..

So the Browns have a bye this week, which means I'll have absolutely nothing to do on Sunday, except of course, listen to CBS analysts drool over the Patriots vs. Jets game. But I digress, since the season is a quarter of the way through, I decided to look at where the Browns are and make my assessment.

2-2 is nothing to scream about, and honestly it would look a lot better if the week two win had come against a Peyton Manning led Colts, but a win is a win and you take them however you can get them.

Through four games it look like Heck&Holms hit a home run in last years daft, and pair it with their first draft it looks like not just a solo homer either. In 2010 they took Haden, Ward, Hardesty, and McCoy, all of whom started week 4 for the Browns. This year they weren't flashy but solid in adding Taylor, Sheard, Little, Marecic, Pinkston, and Skrine. Right there is 10 players who we have all seen on the field this year.

As I just stated, the 2011 draft wasn't flashy, we didn't get that big, shiny name everyone thought we would with the 5th overall pick, but we may have made the best trade in Browns history. The trade the brass pulled off with the Atlanta Falcons was what might make the Browns a great football team. Instead of taking Julio Jones we added 4 draft picks, including another 1st round pick in 2012. That should have Browns fans really excited! (I'll get back to this later)

Looking at stats, here's something I found really interesting...
Here's the stat lines for two AFC North quarterbacks:
1) 49%, 973 yards, 7 TD, 3 INT
2) 58%, 984 yards, 6 TD, 3 INT
Quarterback #2 is the starting quarterback for your Cleveland Browns and quarterback #1 is Joe Flacco. Everyone wants to judge McCoy and wonder if he is the franchise quarterback, but it's clear to me, given those stats that he can be. Flacco has many more weapons at his disposal on the outside than McCoy does.

Those stats bring me back to the two first round draft picks point I had earlier. It's easy to see the browns need a wide receiver who can make catches in traffic, win jump balls, and stretch a defense. And it is hard not to like Justin Blackmon out of Oklahoma State University. He is 6'1", 215 pounds and has the best hand in college football. Don't believe me? He won't the Belitnikoff award last year, as a sophomore! I know the front office has said they like the wide outs we currently have, but it would be hard not to like Blackmon lining up with Little on the outsides.

And since I'm on next years draft, and we have two first rounders, if you haven't seen LSU's defense play yet, you need to! I would love to see cornerback #17, Morris Claiborne, lining up opposite Joe Haden for years to come!

Ok, back to this years team..

Browns fans have been all in a tizzy with this Peyton Hillis situation, and the fact that he hasn't been rushing for large amounts of yards. The fact is, and all of us Browns fans will have to get used to this, that the days of grinding out yards for four quarters are gone! Holmgren is a west coast guy, Shurmur is a west coast guy, they throw, a lot! Those short, quick passes are like glorified hand offs.

It is nice to have a guy like Hillis who can drain clock when you have a lead, but those methodical, boring drives we've come to know and love are over! It's almost like we were brainwashed watching the old regimes, and that's what we've come to know. But that is not what Shurmur does, he throws, and throws some more. Luckily for us, Peyton Hillis has better hands than most of our receivers so we can continue to find ways to get him the ball!

With all that said, this team would probably look a lot more fluid offensively had the lockout not hijacked the new coaching staffs training camp work. We are getting to the point now where the coaches would have been by preseason had they been able to work with the players on the playbook over the summer. I feel like coming out of the bye week, the offense, should look much better from here on out. Which is good, because starting week 12 we have to run the gauntlet. We'll find a lot more out about this team in the final 6 game of the season.

Just Win Baby

It was one of those games that you should win. At home, against a team that hadn't won a game yet, and traveling into a raucous environment. But for 55 minutes it looked like, well, something you would typically see out of a Cleveland football team.

It was one of those frustrating ones to watch. And it looked like opportunity slipping away from us. The defense had done it's part, playing twice as long as the oppositions defense, and giving the team a chance to win. But the offense, that's what was so frustrating, and it took a huge blow before the game even started. Peyton Hillis was sent home with strep throat a couple hours before the game started, and you could just hear the whispers swirling around this on, "it's the Madden curse." On top of that, the wide receivers were non existent for the first three quarters and Colt McCoy was struggling to get the offense going.

Down 16-10 late in the 4th quarter I felt myself getting that mad feeling knowing what could have been if the Browns would have played to their potential. Then even more angry realizing we were about to lose to a team that was 0-for-the-year, on our home turf. Embarrassing, no excuse, unacceptable, just some of the thoughts running through my mind. Then I took a deep breath, realized I am a Browns fan, and began to accept it.

When we got the ball back on our own 20-yard line with less than 3 minutes to go needing a touchdown to win, there was no reason to believe we could gain 80 yards in that amount of time with the way our offense had been playing.

But as I watched with those thoughts spiraling in my head, my speculation about Colt McCoy began to come to fruition. I liked the Browns decision to draft McCoy, despite the fact he was "undersized" an lacked the "prototypical" arm strength coming out of college, I liked him because he won. He left the University of Texas as the all time winningest quarterback in NCAA history.

Sunday, he proved that. He struggled, the receivers struggled, the whole offense struggled throughout the day. But, when it mattered most, when his team needed it the most, he rose up to the challenge, he took the pressure, and his team, and put it on his shoulders. His numbers at the end of the day weren't flattering: 19/39, 210 yards, 2 td, 1 int, 71.5 passer rating. But the one thing that trumps all of those statistics is Ws.

And rookie wide out Greg Little put it best after the game, "I think the greatest statistics in the league are wins and losses. I don't think Colt cares about his completion percentage. You win the game, so that's all our team cares about anyway. He just stayed composed and made a lot of good plays. He was just very vibrant and upbeat and you could see that pouring out of him in his eyes. He made it happen for us."

That look in his eyes? That is the look of a winner. Someone not afraid to be "the guy" with the ball in his hands with the game on the line. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, the Browns seem to have found that guy.