The Cleveland Browns are a team with no identity. That is to say no positive identity.
Right now, they are looked at by the rest of the NFL as a doormat or a bumbling organization.
This season hasn’t done anything to change people’s minds.
They’ve lost a game, the season opener in fact, when the defense fell asleep and allowed a wide receiver to streak down the field unguarded to score a go ahead touchdown.
They lost another when their long snapper rolled a snap on a short field goal, causing Phil Dawson, one of the better kickers in the sport, to miss a 20 yard field goal.
Browns’ fans have spent most of this season talking about strep throats, pulled hamstrings, and concussions, not football.
The team president is claiming that no one on the Browns’ sidelines during a game saw a vicious hit that put their quarterback out of the game.
You have some players saying that same cheap shot, by a player who has put three Cleveland players out of games the last two years with hits to the head, wasn’t that bad.
And that’s how it has been since 1999, the year the franchise returned to the NFL.
The disturbing thing is hiring a football man like Mike Holmgren to run the organization was supposed to change things. So far, it hasn’t.
Cleveland football fans are hungry to support a winner, but they aren’t patient enough to monitor the process of building one. Yes, yes there’s that word again, process.
Pigskin fans here think they know the game, but in reality, they don’t know as much as they think.
Think about how many fans have talked about how the Browns need to run the ball to win. The reality is when Cleveland has had their best stretches as a franchise, it has been when they had great passing games, with QB’s like Otto Graham, Frank Ryan, Bill Nelsen, and Bernie Kosar.
Think about how many fans have said that Seneca Wallace was on a “hot” streak because he completed one pass last Thursday night!
Still, Browns’ supporters feel they’ve been sold a bill of goods, considering all of the things that have happened this season. And that’s just a small list.
Everyone felt the Holmgren regime would signal progress, and it would start right away. Not a new rebuilding process that would lead to viewing a team that struggles on a weekly basis.
Holmgren himself said last season that going 5-11 wasn’t acceptable, yet here we are once again, with the Browns having to win two of their last three games against quality opponents (and yes, right now Arizona is playing very well) to show improvement in the win column.
That would be regressing.
Yes, the Browns have gone from one of the oldest teams in the NFL to one of the youngest. That alone would bode better for the future.
But many of the mistakes are being made by either the coaching staff or the public relations department.
Greg Little dropping passes doesn’t make fans happy, but at least we can understand he will get better.
Pat Shurmur will learn from his mistakes too, but is it too much to expect the right number of people will be on the field? Or the team will be lined up properly when the opponents are running a play?
Just look like a professional football team!
It’s hard to have faith with all of the sloppy errors made all season long by the Browns.
After all these years, we thought we would see a football team that made us proud.
Instead, it’s like watching a Will Farrell movie about football.
JD
Cleveland Sports Perspective 