RIP To The Greatest. #32

On Friday, the sports world and northeast Ohio lost a legend. Jim Brown, the greatest running back in the history of the NFL passed away.

We can only remember one season of Brown’s unbelievable career, his last season of 1965. That year, he led the NFL defending champs back to the title game, losing to Green Bay in a mud bowl 23-12. We watched that game in color, at a time when no one had colored televisions.

Brown was dominant in ’65, winning his eighth rushing title in his nine years in the league, gaining 1544 yards. He gained 677 more yards than his next closest competitor, the great Gale Sayers, who rushed for 867.

He was the NFL MVP that season.

Famously, he went to make the movie, The Dirty Dozen, in the off-season and when filming took long, and he missed the start of training camp, the Cleveland owner, who will not be named here, gave him an ultimatum. Brown simply retired. In his prime.

When Brown left pro football, he was the all-time leading rusher with his 12,312 yards. The great 49er runner, Joe Perry was second at 9,723. Now Brown is 11th, but there is still one rushing statistic the incomparable Brown still is the all-time leader.

Brown AVERAGED 104.3 yards rushing per game. No one in the history of the NFL has ever done that. The closest is Barry Sanders at 99.8. Nick Chubb, a player beloved by the current fan base in northeast Ohio and rightly so, because we recognize a great runner when we see one, comes in 9th all-time with 84.5 yards per game.

We believe Jim Brown is the greatest football player ever. And we say that because quarterback for us should be in a separate category. Tom Brady is the greatest QB ever, but does anyone really think he could play another position?

We believe Brown would have been a tremendous linebacker or safety, or tight end, or really, whatever the hell he wanted to be.

We would like to ask people who the greatest lacrosse player ever was, and folks would look quizzically when asked. The answer is most people consider that to be Jim Brown. Imagine being the greatest ever in two sports.

By now, everyone has seen the iconic picture of Brown with Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor), Muhammad Ali, former Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes, Brown’s former teammate Bobby Mitchell and several other former teammates to support Ali’s refusal to enter the draft for the war in Vietnam.

That meeting took place on June 4, 1967 in Cleveland at 10501 Euclid Avenue, and was organized by Brown.

We have had many arguments over the years about Brown’s standing in pro football and where he ranks. As we said, we consider him to be the GOAT, the greatest. The only players who we believe come close are Jerry Rice and Lawrence Taylor.

Brown was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971, meaning he lived 52 years after being inducted, and other inductees say when Brown walks into the room, everyone, and these are the greats of the sport, stand up.

That’s the respect Jim Brown had among his peers.

We know the Browns will spend this season remembering their greatest player. On social media, we thought about putting “32” at the 50-yard line all year and highlighting the 32-yard stripes in brown and orange.

We also thought instead of “BROWNS” in the end zone, how about “BROWN” and putting “Jim” above it. A tribute to the greatest Cleveland football player ever.

It is not often we are sad due to the death of a non-family member or close friend. But sadness is what we felt on Friday. We know Jim Brown had some issues in his personal life and we are not minimizing those problems. But the city of Cleveland lost an icon.

And that makes us sad.

No One Said It Would Be Easy For Browns

Based on the misery of some of their fans, it is hard to believe the Cleveland Browns made the playoffs last season for the first time in 18 years and actually won a game for the first time since Bill Belichick coached the team in 1994.

They are envious of other teams, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks. Apparently, the guy who led the team to the post-season isn’t good enough.

We wrote this summer about the top signal callers in the game and we determined the top five QBs in the NFL were in no particular order Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, and Russell Wilson.

Sounds fair, right?

Outside of Brady, who we believe no one questions is one of the best, if not the best, there ever was, the other four guys on that list have combined for three NFL championships. Brady, of course, has won seven.

And right now, Watson isn’t playing because of legal issues and Wilson is injured.

The point is Browns think if they had one of those guys, they would win the Super Bowl. Maybe they would, but the reality is the fans of those teams have those guys and more often than not, except for the team Brady is on, they don’t.

The envy has extended to the Bengals’ QB Joe Burrow as well after last week’s drubbing by Cincinnati over Baltimore. We remember a couple years ago, 2019 in fact, when a visiting team went into Baltimore and whipped the Ravens 40-25.

The winning team’s QB was very good that day, completed 20 of 30 passes for 342 yards and a touchdown.

If you remember that quarterback being Baker Mayfield and that team being the Browns you have a good memory.

Cleveland finished 6-10 that season, while the Ravens went 14-2.

No, we don’t think the Bengals will have the same fate at the end of the season, but our point is these things happen. Yes, Cincinnati is much improved, but let’s see what happens after 17 games (or even after they take on the Browns next week) before crowning them as the new bullies on the block.

These folks apparently need to have the other three teams in the AFC North be terrible when the Browns are good to feel comfortable. That’s not reality.

The AFC North might just be the most competitive division in the NFL. Three teams made the playoffs last season, and the team that didn’t, the Bengals, has made giant strides. Yes, the other teams are very good, but so are the Browns.

Will it be easy to win the divisional games? No, but Kevin Stefanski’s team is good enough to do so. We would not be shocked if the Browns won each of the next two games to be sitting at 6-3 after nine games.

And as for the other issue people are talking about, the health of Mayfield, let us remind you that professional athletes don’t think the way other people do. They want to play. If it is at possible to be out there and compete, they will go out on the field and help their teammates win.

That’s why Mayfield said, if he’s hurting the team by playing, then he will sit down. But he thinks he can do the job, and so does the coaching staff.

If Stefanski and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt think a less than 100% Baker Mayfield is a better choice than Case Keenum, that’s all we should need to know.

They want to win too.

Yes, if Mayfield takes a big hit on the shoulder again, he likely will miss more time and possibly could be lost for the season. That scenario probably doesn’t change if he sits out this week or the next two weeks. He’s going to have to have surgery after the season.

Just don’t pretend these athletes think the same way as we do. They are different cats.

Baker’s A System QB? How About He Has A Smart Coach.

We have said many times that sports commentators’ opinion on Baker Mayfield is based on what they thought of him prior to the 2019 NFL Draft.

If they liked the former Heisman Trophy winner then, they like him now, and if they didn’t like him, they find another reason for why the first overall pick in ’19 took the Browns to the playoffs last season.

Apparently, those people have a problem admitting they were wrong.

The latest discussion about Mayfield concerns whether or not he is a “franchise” quarterback or a “system” quarterback. We understand it’s summer and no football is going on right now, and the talking heads have to discuss something.

The criticism of Mayfield is that Browns’ coach Kevin Stefanski put him in this offense and that’s why Mayfield succeeded. Isn’t the epitome of coaching looking at a player and putting him in a position to get the most out of his talent?

Stefanski did what any good coach would do. He looked at Mayfield’s strength and weaknesses and did things to maximize the best things he does and didn’t ask him to do what he wasn’t capable of doing.

If that makes him a “system” quarterback, then so be it.

There is a difference between protecting a quarterback that has limited ability and having him make use of what he does well so he can perform better.

Often times, when a rookie quarterback comes into the game without experience, coaches have him dink and dunk down the field giving them safe, low risk passes. To us, that’s being a system quarterback, having the passer try to not lose the game, instead of winning it.

That’s not what Stefanski did with Mayfield. He is very accurate moving out of the pocket on bootleg rollouts, the game plan used those early in games to get him comfortable. We are sure Bill Belichick did the same thing with Tom Brady, and probably Paul Brown did the same thing with Otto Graham. It simply makes sense.

Mayfield takes hits for a lower than average completion percentage, ranking 30th in the NFL in that category in 2020, but really, the Browns’ offense doesn’t have him throwing a lot of short dump off throws to running backs, which would elevate that figure.

A couple of better things to look at is yards per completion, where Mayfield’s 11.7 figure ranks 7th in the league, a half yard behind Patrick Mahomes, and just ahead of Aaron Rodgers and Josh Allen.

Mayfield also ranks in the top five in completion percentage on deep throws, defined by traveling over 20 yards in the air. Wouldn’t you rather have that than a 70% completion rate on a bunch of short passes?

As for being a franchise quarterback? That’s based on results over time. As we have said previously, if the Browns go to the playoffs in 2021, he’ll ascend to most people’s top ten in the game lists.

If the Browns go to the conference championship game or dare we say, the Super Bowl, he’ll be a franchise quarterback. That’s how it works.

But don’t criticize him or any player for having coaches who have the sense to be good coaches and put players in positions to succeed.

Can NFL/NBA Go Back To Thinking Defense Is Important?

Somebody once said about sports that you never hear crowds chanting for offense, but Defense…Defense is heard many times at the end of both NFL and NBA games.

We realize that this will make us sound like “get off my lawn” guy, but really haven’t things gotten out of control in favor of the offense in both professional football and the NBA?

Watching last weekend’s AFC and NFC Conference Championship games, we realized that these offensives are basically unstoppable and the only way to stop a top notch NFL quarterback is to force him to throw quickly by pressure.

The final score in the NFC was 44-21, while the AFC score was 36-17, a total of 118 points between the four teams.

Ten years ago, still in the era where virtually every rule is in favor of the passing game, the scores were very similar. Indianapolis beat New England 38-34, although it was a battle of all time great quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, while in the NFC, Chicago (behind Rex Grossman?) beat the Saints, 39-14.

Twenty years ago, the Patriots beat the Jaguars 20-6, and the Packers beat the Panthers 30-13. That’s a total of 69 points.

So, almost 50 more points were scored this weekend in conference championship games! These are supposed to be the best of the best teams.

Thirty years ago, the NFC title game was a shutout, the Giants beat Washington 17-0. It was the third consecutive whitewashing in the NFC. Since then, there has been just one shutout in a conference title game, in 2000, when the Giants beat the Vikings 41-0.

It simply has gotten too easy to throw the football in the NFL. Granted, we had four of the best QBs in the game playing last weekend, but the four combined for 68% completion percentage on 172 throws with 11 touchdowns and just two interceptions.

Do you realize that four of the all time leaders in passing yards are playing right now? They are Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Eli Manning, and Ben Roethlisberger. Add in Peyton Manning, who retired after last season, and that’s half of the top ten.

Two more passers, Philip Rivers and Carson Palmer, are in the next five in terms of yardage.

In basketball, the NBA changed the rules a few years to encourage offense, as the games were beginning to have scores with both teams in the 80s, and it wasn’t an enjoyable game visually.

So, they basically said you can’t hand check the point guards. So, now the sport, once dominated by George Mikan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Shaquille O’Neil, is controlled by point guards.

Currently, four of the top ten scorers in the NBA are point guards (Russell Westbrook, Isaiah Thomas, James Harden, and Damian Lillard), and two more (Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving) rank 11th and tied for 12th.

Quite frankly, these guys are too quick to guard out of the floor, and with the ability to “carry” the ball, when the opposing team needs a stop, they put it in the hands of one of these guys and they deliver.

To that point, the four guys in the scoring top ten are also in the top ten in terms of free throws attempted, as is Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has the ball in his hands a lot at crunch time.

FYI, twelve players take more free throws than LeBron James. Take that for what it is worth.

We aren’t suggesting going back to the way things were 20-30 years ago, but perhaps the rules restricting defense can be relaxed in both sports, especially in the NFL where the quality of play has declined in recent years.

It used to be said that defense wins championships. Right now, that can be crossed off the sports cliché lists.

Is Garoppolo The Guy Browns Should Want?

It would be an understatement to say many in the media who cover the Browns are obsessed with the quarterback position.

It is literally all some of them talk about.

We feel the Browns will address the position this off-season, either through the draft, using one of their four choices in the first and second rounds, or by trading for a veteran currently a back up on another team.

Most of the speculation on the latter centers around New England’s Jimmy Garoppolo or Cincinnati’s A.J. McCarron.

Should the Browns go after either of these passers, who both will be free agents at the end of the 2017 season?

We liked Garoppolo coming out of the draft in 2014, but the Browns went in another direction.

It has been reported that the Patriots want the same price as the Eagles got for veteran Sam Bradford, that being a first and fourth round pick.

The difference is that Bradford had 64 NFL starts under his belt, while Garoppolo has just two. So, the first thing would be for Bill Belichick and Nick Caserio to get back to reality and set their sights a little lower.

Of course, they may say if they can’t get that price, they will go ahead and keep Jimmy G. and continue to groom him as Tom Brady’s replacement.

Garoppolo came into the NFL as a guy with a good arm and a very quick release, which would be a sharp contrast from the quarterbacks the Browns used in 2016, who seemed to hold the ball forever.

In his two starts with the Patriots this season, he completed 42 of his 59 throws for 496 yards and four touchdowns. Keep in mind, he has Patriots machine, the best franchise in pro football over the last 15 years, behind him.

So the question is how much would you give up for a little used young quarterback who has been around the league for three years.

The difference between Garoppolo and the others in the Tom Brady back up club (Matt Cassell, Brian Hoyer, and Ryan Mallett) is that he is the highest draft choice of the quartet.

Cassell wasn’t a starter at USC, Hoyer was a free agent from Michigan State and Mallett was a third rounder, and had a bad senior season. Garoppolo was a second round choice, and probably would have gone in the first round had he played for a major college program.

So when people say to be wary of trading for a Brady backup, be advised that Garoppolo is a cut above the rest.

However, that doesn’t mean the Browns should give up the 12th overall pick for a guy who has started just two NFL games.

On the other hand, why not move the first pick in the second round?

As we wrote earlier, the Browns are likely to address quarterback with one of the picks they have in the first or second round, and if you are going to draft one, you might as well trade for someone who has two more NFL starts than anyone you will draft.

And if you aren’t going to draft a QB this year, then surely you would use a high pick on a passer in 2018.

The best option might just be Jimmy Garoppolo, especially if DeShaun Watson is gone before the 12th selection based on his performance in last night’s title game.

Why not deal for a guy with at least a slight track record of success in the NFL?