What an amazing weekend. Went and helped a friend ready their house to put it on the market, got my truck ready to sell, and spend the two evenings hanging Festivus lights. Even had my first ever bit of anxiety while 20 feet in the air doing so. I didn't watch a minute of football, college or pro, and I felt great! After looking at the box score from yesterday and reviewing play-by-play, I really am glad to have skipped out. My only real option for watching the Browns is to drive about an hour to the nearest Backers Bar, but I just cant bring myself to do it (even when there's free food). The Browns are still my team, but I think we need a little time a part from eachother. Ive been thinking about snagging up the Rams as a secondary team for no other reason than me loving the white on blue Ram helmet. Have a good holiday everyone.
I have to say Dogside, that's a great idea. I might just give myself an early birthday present and treat this season like the Browns are...practice for next year. We pay attention to OTAs and Training camp, but we rarely jump in the car more than once to go see them, or watch them on TV, we simply come online to talk about and check up on them. I'm not sure I can invest emotions into this team right now. We just put an offer in on a house yesterday and if it's accepted, the next month and a half will thankfully be overwhelmingly busy, with holidays, moving, etc... This could be a blessing in disguise...
Thank you SAS! We've been looking for the right one for a year and a half... We have found only two in that time frame and were beat to the punch on both occasions. Our realtor got us in this one before it actually hit the market, so we are hopeful that it will get accepted and we can move on. It's been stressful and the Browns haven't helped at all...
I don't want to stay negative all day, but here's number three in line of guys who should be fired today. Crowell has admitted to thinking about his contract "constantly". He's gone in the offseason anyhow... why keep him as the primary back when Duke Johnson Jr. is so much more talented and you drafted a guy in Matt Dayes who's fresh and could be hungry to prove himself? He's producing career low's in yards per carry, long runs, and touchdown percentages. He's on par to finish the season with 734 yards, 3 TDs, and an additional 267 yards in the passing game.
Duke is not so much more talented....hes more versatile, but hes not a workhorse RB and is fragile....I think the OL is vastly overrated when it comes to run blocking
Where Do You Go From Here | Immediate Reaction Six-game interim head coaching job for Gregg Williams. The Browns' defense has steadily improved, kept them in multiple games (including yesterday's), and shown a ton of growth, despite not having a single Pro Bowler, losing its best player (Collins), and shedding several veteran starters in the preseason (Haden, Davis). More than Williams earning his keep, Hue Jackson has proven to be one of the worst head coaches of all times. The 1-25 record aside, he consistently draws up horrendous game plans, limits the snaps of his best players (Njoku, Johnson), and stands by a rookie QB who had no business starting and in fact, put that rookie into an awful spot to begin the season. Bench DeShone Kizer. You can point to his league-worst completion percentage, win percentage, QB rating, turnovers, etc. They're all bad. More concerning now for me was how bad his footballs looked yesterday in a snowy, windy Cleveland day. Being 6'4" and 230 with a strong arm (e.g., "looks like an NFL quarterback") is all well and good, but it takes more than arm strength to cut through bad weather - it takes sound fundamentals and the ability to throw a quality football (read: spiral). Kizer cannot make that happen. He's played himself out of the starting position and possibly out the NFL with the fifth-worst rookie performance of all time. Kessler, Hogan, and nearly any free agent off the street would at least begin an incremental step forward at the most important position on the field. Bench Isaiah Crowell. His 3.6 yards-per-carry is enough of a reason for this to happen, even if we didn't have an exponentially more talented player on the roster behind him. Crowell is a free agent who won't be coming back to Cleveland - Tashaun Gipson basically confirmed that this week in his media interviews. But the real kicker is that Johnson - averaging 5.2 yards-per-carry thi sseason - is a free agent after 2018. Maybe running backs grow on trees, but the Browns will be in the position to take a very good one this April (Saquon Barkley) and with Crowell's departure they will absolutely need to draft one at some point. Giving Johnson the starting job would be a good way to gauge how successful he can be getting more than the nine touches he's seeing this year.
Not sure how you can call him fragile... he hasn't missed a game in his NFL career thus far. He was limited as a rookie in training camp with a hamstring and had a concussion in his first pre-season game... and nothing since. He broke his ankle as a sophomore (against FSU, which I guess is why you believe that) but returned from the injury as a junior and played in every game. He left Miami (FL) as the leader in rushing yards, rush yards-per-attempt, first in total yards from scrimmage, fifth in rushing touchdowns, sixth in total touchdowns.
Yards-per-reception Johnson: 9.0 (season), 9.1 (career) Crowell: 9.3 (season), 9.0 (career) Yards-per-rush Johnson: 5.2 (season), 4.4 (career) Crowell: 3.6 (season), 4.1 (career) Receptions-per-game Johnson: 4.6 (season), 3.8 (career) Crowell: 1.8 (season), 1.5 (career) Total touchdowns Johnson: 4 (season), 7 (career) Crowell: 2 (season), 22 (career) Rush attempts-per-game Johnson: 4.6 (season), 5.3 (career) Crowell: 12.9 (season), 11.4 (career) Yards-per-game Johnson: 65.4 (season), 58.1 (career) Crowell: 62.3 (season), 60.0 (career)
One: Duke IS more talented -and- more versatile. Two: IMO, the only reason you call him fragile is your Noles bias. Three: Sadly, you might be right about the O-line.
He literally out-performs Crowell, despite not getting the same number of attempts. Johnson is getting 9.2 touches per game. Crowell is getting 14.7. That's a difference of 6.5 touches - 39 more over the rest of the season. As a starter, Johnson could conceivably get this in the first quarter of games the rest of the way and Matt Dayes could spell him and pick up the remainder of the touches.
Stopper . . . If you're so good at predicting the future, why do you keep betting on the Browns (plus points) and losing?
With a head coach who vehemently hates running the football, the Browns are tied for 7th in the NFL in rushing yards per attempt (4.3). Of the teams ahead of them on per-attempt basis, on the Falcons (232, 4.5) and Packers (236, 4.4) have few attempts than the Browns (238). Unlike those teams, the Browns have a QB who's only positive contributions on the season have been as a running back (40 attempts, 201 yards, 5.0 average). No team has fewer rushing attempts than Cleveland when you discount the QB's attempts. One other major indicator of the head coach's failure is the QB's starting for the teams ahead of the Browns in rushing: 1 - Saints. No clue here... this used to be a pass-only team who's won eight in a row with defense and rushing (you know, what Cleveland should have been doing) 2 - Cowboys. Top 5 pick running back. Second-year QB. 3 - Chiefs. Have always emphasized running game and defense, again... what Cleveland should have been doing 4 - Jaguars. Top 5 pick running back. Terrible QB. 5 - Eagles. Second-year QB. 6 - Bears. Rookie QB. 7 - Falcons. Highest-paid RB. 8 - 49ers. Terrible QB, rookie QB playing. 9 - Texans. Terrible QB, rookie QB playing. 10 - Titans. Have always emphasized running game and defense, yet again... what Cleveland should have been doing. So the only teams not starting either bad or rookie QBs are the Saints and Falcons - who have the highest-paid running back in the NFL.
Here's the reality - the Browns have one shot left a winning a game this season. It's three weeks from now against Green Bay. This team absolutely must start a new QB for those two games in between to get some live reps with them in order to have a chance in that game against the Rodgers-less Packers. It's literally the last shot we have to avoid 0-16 infamy.
Theres a reason he only gets 10-15 touches a game....also vs Det they were giving up the lay down TD and that scrap Kizer just throws a miserable fade and this week all he has to do is not turn it over and low and behold my FSU stud has to be in the right spot at the wrong time...smh
