In a few days, the NFL regular season opens up with the now traditional Thursday night contest between the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers and the previous year’s winners, the New Orleans Saints.
As for the local team, the Browns will start playing for real on Sunday when the Cincinnati Bengals visit the lakefront.
If autumn is coming in Cleveland, then fans are strangely optimistic about the Browns.
This year, they have some right to be.
For the first time in who knows how long, the front office and the coaching staff are on the same page. They both want to win, and they both want to accomplish it in the same manner.
You couldn’t say that when Eric Mangini was in charge, you couldn’t say it when Romeo Crennel was the coach and Phil Savage was the general manager.
Really, the only time you could say it since the team returned to the NFL in 1999 was when one guy held both jobs, like Butch Davis and in Mangini’s first year.
With a back loaded schedule that includes six winnable games in the first seven contests (Bengals, Dolphins, Titans, Raiders, Seahawks, 49ers) , it says here the Brownies will finish the season 7-9 or 8-8. And they could make the playoffs if they can win three or four divisional contests, which is difficult because four of the games are against Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
The Browns have a QB in Colt McCoy that is perfectly suited for the west coast offense which new coach Pat Shurmur will run this season. They will have a solid running game with 1000 yard rusher Peyton Hillis, who took basically no punishment in the pre-season to keep him fresh, and Montario Hardesty.
And the passing game will look like a legitimate NFL offense, which will make the performance of the young wide receiving crew look much better than they did in 2010. McCoy will also exploit his very good tight end corps of Ben Watson and Evan Moore.
The biggest question will be whether or not the offensive line can keep McCoy’s jersey clean, and more to the point, healthy. The injury to G Eric Steinbach hurts, and T Tony Pashos needs to stay on the field, which hasn’t happened in the last two years.
It is said that the only thing worse than being a bad team is being a bad, old team. Since the Browns were 5-11 last season they can be classed as a poor team.
And last year on defense, they had a lot of age with veterans like Shaun Rogers, Ben Coleman, David Bowens, and Eric Barton.
That’s not to denigrate those players, several of whom played well for Cleveland last year. It’s just not the way to build a team. That has to be done with younger guys.
This season, the defense has just two players with 10 or more years of experience, CB Sheldon Brown and LB Scott Fujita. So, this is a unit that should improve as the year goes on.
GM Tom Heckert rebuilt the defensive line by drafting DT Phil Taylor and DE Jabaal Sheard, one year after he changed the secondary by picking CB Joe Haden and S T.J. Ward in the draft, and acquiring Brown in a deal.
You would think next year the linebacking crew will be the object of Heckert’s revamping.
The Cleveland Browns are on the right track. They are getting younger, building through the draft, and have a young quarterback who can lead the team in place. They may not challenge for the playoffs this year, but they are no more than a year away.
Browns’ fans can finally see light. The chaos which surrounded the franchise since 1999 is finally being put in order.
JD
Cleveland Sports Perspective 