Releasing Veterans is Just Business in NFL

We sometimes need to be reminded that professional sports are a business.

The Cleveland Browns reminded everyone of that this week when they released longtime linebacker D’Qwell Jackson rather that pay him a roster bonus that would have had him get over $9 million for the 2014 season.

Jackson has been a solid citizen and a great representative of the Browns since being drafted by Cleveland in 2006. He fought back after missing a year and a half with a torn pectoral muscle and resumed his place as a team leader and a solid player on the field.

However, he was due to be paid as an elite player in 2014, and quite frankly, Jackson is not a Pro Bowl type player.

If there was no salary cap, the Browns could take care of a good soldier, a player who wore the Cleveland uniform with pride and distinction.

And we understand the Browns have a ton of room under the cap right now, but if you are going to pay someone at the rate elite players are getting, they have to perform at that level.

Right now, D’Qwell Jackson is just not an impact player.

And now there are rumors that defensive lineman Ahtyba Rubin could be the next player to draw his release from the team.

The argument is the same. Rubin is a solid player, but he won’t be making the Pro Bowl any time soon, and he is due to be paid like someone who is an All Pro.

If the release of Jackson and Rubin help the Browns keep Alex Mack, a two-time Pro Bowl selection and T.J. Ward, who went to Hawaii for the first time in 2013, both of whom are free agents, then it is well worth it.

Obviously, new GM Ray Farmer, with a fresh set of eyes, wants to upgrade the talent on the Browns, and if you have to get rid of two solid players to keep two real good ones, plus keep cap room to add more good ones, then it really is an easy decision.

Northeastern Ohio sports fans are very loyal, particularly to players who have been here for a while. That’s why there is affinity for the Indians of the late 90’s, and the Browns of the late 80’s.

From a practical standpoint, it is not as though Jackson and Rubin have played during the glory days of the franchise. They’ve been on mediocre football teams, ones that have consistently lost ten or more games for the last six seasons.

Why wouldn’t the team look to replace them with younger, less expensive players that have a bigger upside? That’s being a smart general manager.

As we always say here…the only thing worse than being a bad football team is being a bad, old football team.

The Browns are one of the youngest teams in the NFL, but that shouldn’t preclude management from trying to replace players who are no longer getting better because of age with younger guys.

You can blame the Browns for insensitivity, but the player’s union should share the brunt as well because they have priced average veteran players out of jobs.

If Rubin is indeed released, there is no question that both he and Jackson will catch on with other teams, but at much lower salaries than they would have received from Cleveland.

This is a lesson on sports with salary caps in the 21^st Century. It stinks for good guys like D’Qwell Jackson and Ahtyba Rubin, but that is the reality.

Tribe’s Success Doesn’t Help Dolan’s Image With Fans

There is no question that in the past few months, both the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Cavaliers’ organizations have shown to be less than stable.

Browns’ owner Jimmy Haslam has replaced his head coach, his CEO, and his general manager in a six-week span since the end of the season. In addition, his football has lost ten games or more (the baseball equivalent of losing 100 games) six years in a row, and ten out of the last 11 seasons.

The Cavaliers have been a mediocre franchise ever since LeBron James departed, qualifying for a lottery pick each and every year, and not a low pick either, the wine and gold have had one of the NBA’s worst five records each season.

And recently Dan Gilbert fired his GM and replaced his head coach following last season.

Yet, the least popular owner in the city happens to own the franchise that has had the most success. That would be Indians’ owners Larry and Paul Dolan.

There are several reasons for the lack of popularity, the first being Gilbert and Haslam come off pretty well in press conferences, showing people, whether or not it can occur, that they are determined to bring a championship to Cleveland in their respective sports.

The Dolans probably shouldn’t talk to the media because when they do, they say things like the best fans can hope for is contending every once in a while due to the economic restraints in baseball.

That really doesn’t give fans a great deal of confidence.

To be fair, the Indians have the most stable front office in team president Mark Shapiro, who has been here for 23 years, and GM Chris Antonetti has been with the Tribe since 1998. And they lured Terry Francona, a two-time World Series champion as manager to the same post with the Indians.

So again, why the lack of love for the Tribe ownership, particularly in comparison to the other woebegone franchise on the North Coast?

There is a lack of trust for the Dolan family, even though they are from here, while Haslam and Gilbert aren’t.

Part of that comes from the article in Forbes showing the Tribe was making large amounts of profit. While the number may not have been accurate, the magazine should be regarded as a reliable source. After all, the figure didn’t appear in the National Enquirer.

Fans should understand that owners need to make a profit, but they would still like to see more money poured into the product on the field too.

The fans don’t feel like it’s a priority for the ownership to win a World Series for the city. The other owners talk about it, they may not really mean it, but they have enough sense to communicate the desire to the fan base.

This off-season is a perfect example of what we are saying.

Interest in the Tribe, dormant for a while, picked up in September as the ballclub was making a push for the post-season. The wild card home game sold out very quickly.

Yet, some of that momentum has been subdued due to a relatively quiet off-season in which the Indians have lost more (starting pitchers Ubaldo Jimenez and Scott Kazmir) than they added.

That’s the problem in a nutshell.

Had ownership opened up the purse strings even a little and allowed the front office to make a good acquisition, and there were some decent values out there, some trust would have been gained.

Instead, Tribe fans are muttering “same old Dolans”, and counting on Francona’s expertise to return to the post-season.

If they accomplish a playoff spot again, it will help the ownership’s cause. If they don’t, the anger toward them will like get more intense.

Is Haslam the New Snyder?

Just when you think the Cleveland Browns are acting as a normal, professional football team, they throw a huge wrench into the mix.

They announced today that Joe Banner and Mike Lombardi are out as CEO and GM, with Ray Farmer replacing the latter as general manager.

The obvious point to be made is owner Jimmy Haslam was so disgusted by the season and seemingly bungled coaching search, that he couldn’t take the Banner/Lombardi combination for one more day.

Still want to tell everyone that these aren’t the same old Browns?

Look, this is not to say we thought Banner and Lombardi were doing a great job, in fact, we feel quite the contrary.

Banner seemed to be a “me-first” guy, a person who really wanted to coach the team as well as run it, and he didn’t seem to be satisfied with any person who wasn’t Joe Banner.

However, remember that the league recommended Banner to Haslam, the owner didn’t seem to seek him out.

Lombardi comes across as someone who still wants to sit on the lap of Bill Belichick, waiting with anticipation for every word that drips off of the Patriots’ coach’s tongue.

It seemed his solution to every problem was to go back to the Belichick tree.

Farmer helped put together a Kansas City team that had a bushel of Pro Bowlers on a 2-14 team in 2012 and made a major leap forward to the playoffs last season. The fact that Miami was very interested in him shows how respected he is throughout the NFL.

So do we assume things are better in Berea because Farmer and team president Alec Scheiner are more likeable to the fans and media alike?

As with the new coach and his staff, we can’t evaluate how the newest new regime will perform until the Cleveland Browns start playing football games that count in September.

The more disturbing aspect of all this is the growing Snyderization of Jimmy Haslam.

We felt all along that it was Haslam who pulled the trigger on Rob Chudzinski after one season in charge. Could it be that part of the reason Banner and Lombardi aren’t employed here anymore is they told the owner he was being impetuous?

Now, Haslam just fired two people he claimed were part of the solution just 18 months ago.

The Browns’ owner is looking more and more like his counterpart in Washington, Redskins’ owner Daniel Snyder.

Does anyone think that organization is well run?

Since 2000, Washington has gone through six coaches and have amassed three playoff appearances, a boatload compared to Cleveland.

He’s brought in college coaches (Steve Spurrier), veteran coaches with histories of winning (Marty Schottenheimer, Joe Gibbs, and Mike Shanahan), and offensive coordinators (Jim Zorn and new coach Jay Gruden).

They’ve gone 86-122 in that span. While that’s better than Cleveland’s record (72 wins) over the same time period, it’s hardly a winning franchise or something to be aspiring to.

If the Browns go 6-10 this season and Haslam keeps Farmer and Mike Pettine in place seeing some progress, then we can ease off on the Daniel Snyder comparisons.

Until that happens, he appears to be another owner who wants success, but either doesn’t know how to get it, or doesn’t have the patience to attain a winning team.

Either way, no matter how they spin it, it just looks like more chaos at Browns’ headquarters.

A Coach’s Life Isn’t Fair, Just Ask Chud the Scapegoat

It turns out that Rob Chudzinski received just one year to try to turn around the Cleveland Browns, getting fired last night after a 4-12 season.

Did Chudzinski do a great job coaching this season? No, but he deserved another season to see if he would do better with a quality draft and therefore a better roster. Instead, he became the sacrificial lamb for a front office sensing more anger in an already disgruntled fan base.

The former head coach did make mistakes, most notably in his judgment of QB Brandon Weeden. Although Weeden did play well in the first two exhibition contests, it was clear early on that the football team didn’t respond to him.

However, isn’t the bigger miscalculation by Joe Banner and Mike Lombardi, who didn’t get another quarterback after the season ending injury to Brian Hoyer with the Browns having a 3-2 record. When Weeden struggled in games against Detroit and Green Bay after being put back in the lineup, the coaching staff had no other alternative than Jason Campbell.

And after Campbell became the starter, it made Weeden the only alternative going forward. That’s not on the coach, that’s on the personnel department.

We have been critical of the Browns’ ignorance of the running game, but what choice did they have after Banner and Lombardi dealt Trent Richardson to the Colts for a first round pick in 2014. Yes, it was a good deal (Joe and Mike can pat themselves on the back), but it left the squad without a legitimate running threat.

It would seem to be another case of the personnel people letting the coaching staff down.

Another thing that let Chudzinski down was the defense. After the Browns’ lost to the Steelers in Cleveland to drop to 4-6 on the year, they lost three games in which they scored a total of 85 points. That’s an average of 28 points per game.

However, Ray Horton’s unit allowed 97 points in those games against Jacksonville, New England, and Chicago. And the first two of those games were fourth quarter collapses by the defense.

Had the Browns won two of those games, they would have ended the year at 6-10. Would Chudzinski have been fired then?

Yes, your record is what it says it is, but the former coach was offensive minded and somehow he pasted together a plan (with Norv Turner) to put up 28 points with no running game and a veteran journeyman quarterback.

But he loses his job because the owner and front office want better results?

Supposedly, the team made the decision after the Jets’ game, which came one week after the Browns scored 31 points against Chicago. That means yesterday’s game didn’t figure in the decision.

So, the coach has one bad game and the decision is made to jettison the coach.

Many in the media are complimenting Haslam on a “bold” move. But, it says here he comes off looking like Jerry Jones or Daniel Snyder, an impetuous owner who makes knee jerk reactions. The bold move would have been to see what Chudzinski could do with a year of head coaching experience under his belt.

Nobody wanted Haslam to be like the reclusive Randy Lerner, but with this move he comes off as a meddler.

Firing the coach puts the pressure squarely on the owner and his hand-picked people (Banner and Lombardi) to win and win now. That’s something that has been needed in Berea, but we’re not sure they had to relieve the head coach of his duties to establish it.

Browns Can’t Close Again on Defense.

It is now official that the Cleveland Browns will lose 10 or more games again in 2013, losing their final home game to the Chicago Bears, 38-31 at First Energy Stadium.

It’s the sixth straight season with double-digit losses, and the tenth in 11 seasons. Since returning to the NFL in 1999, the Browns have lost ten or more contests 12 times.

It’s a losing culture and it won’t change until the entire organization, which includes the front office, coaching staff, and players make a commitment that losing is not tolerable, and end the “next year” mentality that permeates the whole building in Berea.

Teams turn around every year in the NFL. This year, it’s Kansas City that was gone from a 2-14 record a year ago to an 11-3 season to this point. Last year, it was Indianapolis.

Here’s who it has never been: The Cleveland Browns. They have a tradition of being a doormat for 15 years.

To be fair, perhaps the Browns can be the Chiefs next season. KC has several Pro Bowl players on their roster in 2012, more than a team that wins two games should have. Rob Chudzinski’s team could have three or four players going to Hawaii in January.

But based on the last 15 years, forgive us for not holding our breath.

Today’s loss represented another collapse by what many people thought was the strength of the team going into the year, the defense. In fact, there were a lot of people (us included) who felt defensive coordinator Ray Horton would be a prime candidate for a head coaching position this winter.

Now, it would be a long shot with the Browns’ defense allowing almost 26 points per game this season, a figure that ranks in the bottom part of the NFL. Horton likes to recite statistics, but the only real stat that counts is how points you allow.

What is more disturbing is that 128 of those points have been allowed in the fourth quarter, including 21 today. And while the Bears did score seven points on defense today, the three touchdowns if the final stanza came from Chicago carving up the Cleveland defense.

In the last five games, all defeats, the Browns have allowed 165 points, which averages 33 per game. 40% of those points have come in the fourth quarter, including 37 the past two weeks combined.

The defense isn’t exactly closing out games.

Horton’s crew has been effective against the run all season, but today the Bears ran it right down their collective throats gaining 179 yards on the ground. The dagger came as a result of Michael Bush’s 40 yard TD burst which gave the Bears a 38-24 lead.

The third down efficiency was terrible too, allowing the Bears to convert on 9 of 14 situations. And the Bears ran the same play three times, a fake reverse with a pitch out to Matt Forte, who gained 127 yards in 24 carries, for big yardage every time. There were no adjustments by the defense.

The only bright spot were the two touchdowns scored by the unit, Tashaun Gipson’s 44 yard interception return and T.J. Ward’s 51 yard run with a fumble recovery.

Offensively, someone (either the offensive coaches or the Bears’ defense) took Josh Gordon out of the game, leaving Jason Campbell to his dink and dunk game. Gordon did get in the end zone on a 43-yard pass play in the fourth quarter, but his 100-yard receiving streak ended with just 67 yards.

The bright spot for the offense was the newest member of the team, RB Edwin Baker who gained 38 yards in eight carries and caught four more passes for 46 yards.

The question is why wasn’t he brought in sooner?

After the optimism of last week’s near miss in New England, the reality set back in that this team can’t avoid losing, and the front office doesn’t seem to mind.

Until that ends, the losing cycle may never be escaped.

Are These Browns Any Different?

The Cleveland Browns appear to be headed to another 10 loss season, their sixth consecutive campaign losing in double figures.

Therefore, the question needs to be asked…what is different with the new regime, headed by Jimmy Haslam, Joe Banner, and Michael Lombardi? The results are the same from the last group, headed by Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert.

These Browns have three possible Pro Bowl players, which would be their most in several years. OT Joe Thomas is perennial, making the all-star team every year he has been in the league. He could be bound for Canton someday.

CB Joe Haden has been outstanding all season long, highlighted by shutting down Cincinnati WR A. J. Green in both meetings between the teams, and he has started to intercept passes this year as well, with four on the season.

Those two have been the best players on the squad the past few years, but this year they are joined by WR Josh Gordon, who may be the NFL’s best wideout who isn’t named Calvin Johnson. He may be the Browns’ best wideout since Paul Warfield wore the orange and brown.

There are several other players who can be considered building blocks for a playoff team, such as C Alex Mack, TE Jordan Cameron, DT Phil Taylor, DEs Ahtyba Rubin and Billy Winn, OLBs Barkevious Mingo, Jabaal Sheard, and Paul Kruger, and ILB D’Qwell Jackson.

All of those players, save for Mingo, were brought in by the prior regimes.

So while Holmgren and Heckert take a lot of criticism for the first round of the 2012 draft (Richardson and Weeden) and deservedly so, they are responsible for putting together the foundation for the future.

Certainly, the prior president and GM also have to be faulted for the hiring of Pat Shurmur, who was a public relations disaster. Rob Chudzinski doesn’t really say anything in his press conferences either (call this the Belichick method), but fans and media can see he has a passion for the city and the game, and the players play like they respect him.

It would have been easy for the team to give a lackluster effort after the Jacksonville game, but the Browns went to New England and fought, and almost knocked off the Patriots.

Chudzinski and his staff do draw negatives with the handling of the quarterback situation, going with Brandon Weeden to start the season when it’s pretty clear he is the least effective of the trio that were on the Opening Day roster.

The front office should be lauded for the Trent Richardson trade, but at the same time should be questioned for not having another decent running back on the roster to replace him, nor did they get another passer after Brian Hoyer was injured.

That left the coaching staff without a running game, putting more pressure on Weeden, Hoyer, and Jason Campbell.

Think about how many more wins this team would have had Hoyer or Campbell started the year and the Browns had even an average running game.

Ultimately, the Banner/Lombardi group will be judged on this season’s draft, which they have spent time accumulating picks for. The fear is they will force a quarterback pick too high (see, Ponder and Gabbert) and will pass on players who can impact the team in 2014.

If they wait for the passer to come to them, perhaps with the Colts’ pick, and instead upgrade the football team at several spots, they will be remembered as the group that turned this franchise around.

Bill Parcells once said you are what your record says it is. And right now, Joe Banner and Michael Lombardi are just like everyone else who sat in their chairs.

Browns Find New Way to Lose

You would think that with all the losing the Cleveland Browns have done in the last 15 years that they would have exhausted every possible way to be defeated.

And then you would watch today’s game and think about how they’ve invented a new way to do it.

With almost 12 minutes to go in the game, the Browns led 21-20 and just received the ball back after a Jacksonville punt. The Jaguars were doing nothing, repeat, NOTHING on offense after intermission. It was an opportunity to run clock and move the ball down the field for another score and take control of the contest.

Except that Alex Mack, one of the Browns’ better players, a solid center, snapped the ball over Brandon Weeden’s head and when the quarterback kicked the ball out of the end zone (the right play), the Jags had the lead 22-21.

The resulting free kick was returned 31 yards to the Browns’ 43. A face mask penalty on NT Phil Taylor and one first down later, Josh Scobee kicked a 25 yard field goal and it was a four point advantage, 25-21.

On the Browns’ next offensive play, they regained the lead with a 95-yard completion from Weeden to Josh Gordon, who had another magnificent game, with 3:54 left to give Cleveland a 28-25 lead.

It seemed Rob Chudzinski’s squad might overcome the myriad of mistakes they made and win their fifth game of the year.

However, the Jaguars hit a big play on a 25-yard strike from Chad Henne to Ace Sanders to put them back in business and in Cleveland territory.

The defense stiffened at the 20-yard line and forced a third and nine after Henne was pressured and threw a flat pass over the head of Sanders.

But Joe Haden, the team’s best player, was burned on a double move by former Collinwood High School and Mount Union star Cecil Shorts III for a 20-yard TD catch and the Jags took a 32-28 lead with less than a minute remaining.

The Browns dropped to 4-8 with the loss and yet another 10 loss season appears very likely.

It’s one thing when mediocre, replaceable players are making mistakes to cost a team football games, but now it’s players like Mack, who has made a Pro Bowl, and Haden, who likely will make one this year, making bad plays an inopportune times to cause defeat.

Of course, it may not have come down to those plays if it weren’t for a horrible three-minute stretch at the end of the first half by their quarterback.

With the Browns leading 14-7 at that point, Weeden threw interceptions on consecutive plays, and then fumbled on the penultimate play of the half handing Jacksonville 13 points and a 20-14 advantage at intermission.

Those three turnovers, plus the safety (which is essentially a turnover) cost Cleveland 15 points. These problems are an extension of what occurred the last two games against Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

The Browns’ defense caused just one turnover, and therein is the difference in the game. In the NFL, you simply can’t turn the ball over that many times and win.

As for the season, the names on the front office keep changing, but the record remains the same. Unless something unforeseen happens, another 1o loss season, the sixth consecutive one for the franchise, will happen.

Why should anyone have any confidence in the latest people to sit in the front office.

Three weeks ago, after a win over Baltimore, the future looked bright. Three weeks of turnover and mistake filled football changes everything.

The month of December will feel like an eternity to Browns’ fans all over the country.

Steelers Drive Nail Into Browns’ Season

Some things are inevitable. The winter is cold, water is wet, and the Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Cleveland Browns.

The Steelers are struggling through a disappointing season, but they still managed to come to First Energy Stadium and paste the Browns, 27-11, ending the home team’s playoffs chances in more way than one.

The black and yellow squad also knocked out QB Jason Campbell with a head injury, meaning it’s back to Brandon Weeden, which is just another reason Rob Chudzinski’s team will once again not advance past 16 games.

At the bye week, several media people (and we agreed) said the Browns’ front office needed to bring in a running back and another quarterback seeing the alternative if something did happen to Campbell was Weeden. They failed to do either move, and now will watch Weeden once again prove to everyone he is not an NFL starting quarterback, probably for the next couple of games.

Pittsburgh had one of the league’s worst rushing defenses, yet the Browns could not exploit it, gaining only 55 yards rushing in 16 attempts.

The coaching staff will say the score dictated the passing game, but Cleveland came out and ran only five times in the first quarter (gaining 17 yards) on a cold and blustery day downtown.

When Chris Ogbonnaya ran for 10 yards on his first carry of the second quarter (the Browns’ first play of the quarter), it gave him two carries for 15 yards. He was given the ball just twice the rest of the game.

Of course, it didn’t help that on his next carry, he gained eight yards and moved into Steelers’ territory, but coughed up the ball for the second consecutive week. Pittsburgh turned the turnover into three points and a 13-3 lead going into the half.

Starting the second half, the Browns’ held on the 4th and 1, and starting marching into Pittsburgh territory to get back in the game, but that’s when Campbell was knocked out with a blow to the head (no penalty, either thanks to the great NFL officiating crew), resulting in a fumble and a return to the Browns’ four yard line, where the visitors promptly scored and ended the game for all intent and purposes.

From then on, it was a Chudzinski/Turner passing show, with Weeden throwing 29 times in the last quarter and a half, completing only 13 and throwing in a pick six by William Gay to top off another dismal performance.

The game story going in was the pressure the Browns’ defense had been putting on quarterbacks, but they registered no sack on Ben Roethlisberger today, while Cleveland passers were sacked five times and one was knocked out of the game.

Still, with 17 of the Steelers’ points coming as a result of turnovers by the offense, it is tough to blame Ray Horton’s unit. They actually pitched a shutout in the second half.

The defeat wasted a record-setting performance by WR Josh Gordon, who caught 14 throws for a team record 237 yards and a touchdown. Gordon continues to impress, despite people who want to constantly bring up any negative they can find about the second year wideout.

Over the years, we have maintained to be successful in the NFL, you have to run the ball, and you have to stop the run. The Cleveland Browns have mastered the latter, but they will continue to struggle until to do the former. And to do that, they must make a commitment to the running game, even though it’s a passing league.

Today’s defeat means it is time to start looking at 2014. However, if Brandon Weeden has to start most of the games remaining. Even the evaluation process will be difficult.

Bengals Show How to Score Without the Ball

After the first quarter of today’s game against Cincinnati, the Cleveland Browns looked like a team bound for the post-season.

They dominated the Bengals. Andy Dalton threw two interceptions to Joe Haden, one resulting in a touchdown, the first pick six of his career. The Bengals couldn’t run the ball either, and it appeared the Browns were going to get a huge win on the road and put themselves in great shape for an AFC North division crown.

Cleveland was even running the football well, as Chris Ogbonnaya had a 43 yard run, the longest of the year by a Cleveland running back and led 13-0. The era of good feeling ended on the Browns last play of the first quarter, when Jason Campbell was picked off by James Harrison.

Then came the nightmare of the second quarter and all of that went up in smoke as the Bengals scored 31 points in the stanza, and without any real offense either.

Dalton hit TE Jermaine Gresham on Cincy’s first play of the quarter to cut Cleveland’s lead to 13-7.

After a Spencer Lanning punt that was deflected giving the Bengals the ball on the Browns 38, it took five plays, one a flea flicker pass from Mohamed Sanu to Gio Bernard, to take the lead 14-13.

The momentum officially shifted.

On the subsequent drive, the Browns’ offensive line fell apart as Campbell was sacked and TE Jordan Cameron picked up a holding penalty.

The Browns started to throw the ball almost exclusively underneath, and did pick up two first downs the next time they had the ball, but Lanning’s next punt was blocked and run in for a touchdown. It was now 21-13 Cincinnati.

After another holding penalty, it took two plays for the Bengals defense to strike, forcing an Ogbonnaya fumble after a reception and Vontaze Burfict returned it for another score and the Bengals scored 28 unanswered points with their offense running just 10 plays.

And even though they were down just two scores and there was still more than a half to play, and the conditions weren’t exactly ideal, Rob Chudzinski and Norv Turner decided to stop the running game almost completely.

They ran just once more in the first half, and the passes thrown were mostly of the checkdown variety.

The punting unit capped off a dreadful quarter by allowing a 27 yard return by Adam Jones to set up a Mike Nugent field goal. The 13-0 lead at the quarter had been turned into a 31-13 deficit.

At that point, Cincinnati had demonstrated no ability to move the ball against the Cleveland defense, yet they led by 18 points.

That fact made it very curious when Chudzinski went for it on 4th and 5 at the CIN34 on the Browns’ first series of the second half. He could have pinned the Bengals back with plenty of time.

He got away with it because Campbell hit Josh Gordon for a 74 yard touchdown pass on the next possession, closing the gap to 31-20.

Chudzinski’s gambling tendency got the best of him early in the fourth quarter, as he went for it on 4th and 3 at the Browns’ 27 with almost 11 minutes left in the game. The Browns were down 18 at the time, and that quickly became 21 as Nugent hit another field goal that didn’t need any gain by the Cincinnati offense.

The Bengals gained just 224 yards on the game and caused two turnovers. Horrible play by the punt block team (resulting in 14 points) and a huge fumble recovery which put another seven points on the board won this game for Cincinnati.

The coaching staff (once again) put their quarterback in a horrible situation by ignoring the running game and when they did run it was only on first down. There was no creativity. This on a day the Browns averaged five yards per carry.

In an ironic twist, former Brown Bobby Rainey, cut a few weeks ago by Cleveland, gained 160 yards for Tampa Bay today.

Maybe the offensive line simply doesn’t block for the run very well.

Despite the loss, the Browns are still very much in the playoff chase, just a game back for the second wild card spot, just a game behind the Dolphins and Jets.

A win next week against the Steelers at home and then against Jacksonville will put the Browns at 6-6 and right in the thick of it.

As long as the special teams improve and the coaching staff stays with the running game.

Do Browns Need to Run the Ball?

The running game has certainly been de-emphasized in today’s NFL.

It used to be a tenet about good teams that they had to be able to run the ball and also be able to stop the run.

Earlier this week, Browns’ All Pro OT Joe Thomas scoffed about his team’s lack of a running game, saying something to the effect that it really isn’t important anymore.

Is he correct?

We looked at the top 10 rushing teams in the league this year and found more teams that are winning than losing.

The top two rushing teams to this point are Washington, who led the league last season and are currently sitting at 3-6 on the season after last night’s loss to Minnesota, and Philadelphia who are 4-5 on the 2013 campaign.

That certainly supports Thomas’ opinion that the ground game isn’t a prerequisite for winning.

However, looking at the rest of the top ten shows the following teams: Seattle (8-1), San Francisco (6-2), Green Bay (5-3), New England (7-2), New York Jets (5-4), and Kansas City (9-0).

Notice that several of those squads also have Pro Bowl caliber quarterbacks in Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, a possible future Hall of Famer in Aaron Rodgers, and a definite enshrinee in Canton in Tom Brady.

The other two teams among the leaders are Buffalo (3-6) and Oakland (3-5). Thus, six of the ten having winning records.

Conversely, the worst running teams in the NFL shows only two teams with a winning record: New Orleans (6-2) and Dallas (5-4).

Atlanta (2-6) is the worst team in the NFL on the ground, followed by the woeful Jacksonville Jaguars at 0-8.

The Giants (2-6), the Ravens (3-5) and Pittsburgh (2-6) round out the top five.

So, what we can conclude is that you have a better chance of being successful if you can run the ball, which when you think about it, isn’t really a change in conventional wisdom.

That brings us to Thomas’ team, the Cleveland Browns, who rank 25^th in the NFL in rushing.

A closer look shows that coach Rob Chudzinski and offensive coordinator have had to be very creative in getting some of the yards on the ground the Browns have accumulated.

The trick/gadget plays used by Turner have accounted for 15% of Cleveland’s running game. That would include reverses by WRs Josh Gordon and Travis Benjamin, plays out of the wildcat formation by MarQueis Gray, and the fake punt by Josh Aubrey that went for 34 yards.

Taking away those eight plays would lower the Browns’ average yards per carry by a half yard (3.7 to 3.2), and the latter figure would rank third worst in the National Football League.

The flaw in Thomas’ logic is that if you are a good team, a winning team, you have to be able to run the football to protect leads. In reality, the Browns were lucky to be able to burn over six minutes off the clock last Sunday in the victory over Baltimore.

As the weather conditions at home get more severe, the ability to run the football will become more and more important.

That’s why the front office needs to do something during the bye week to improve this aspect of the game.

If the Browns want to be a winning team, perhaps one that can make the playoffs, they have to be able to run the ball, particularly late in games.

A majority of the good teams in the NFL can do just that.