Sunday, September 21, 2008

What have we learned after three games?
Right now, the Browns are not a very good football team. It may be because of injuries. It may be because of overconfidence. It may be because of bad coaching.

Then again, maybe it's all those things.

Romeo Crennel is taking a lot of heat. Usually, I defend him, because I have wanted badly for him to succeed. And let me say that I think the best the Browns would have gone in this stretch was 1-2.

The fact is, Crennel should remain the coach for the rest of the season. Changing coaches in the middle of the year never helps anything. My main problem with Crennel is the lack of discipline. How many times in today's 28-10 loss to the Ravens were the Browns whistled for illegal formations, false starts, and delays of game?

Crennel can only do so much from the sideline. The Browns played a decent first half, only to implode in the third quarter. Most of the blame for that falls on Derek Anderson, who practically handed 14 points to the Ravens will ill-advised throws. We keep waiting for "Good Derek" to emerge, but he's been almost all bad through three games.

Is Brady Quinn the answer? Maybe, but just installing him won't help if he has to face the type of rush Anderson did today.

Again, the Browns are without two high-quality offensive linemen and two starting receivers. The playmakers that are playing are banged up as it is. But everything was magnified by the turnovers.

The defense? It was pretty decent in the first half, put in ridiculously bad situations in the third quarter and worn down by the fourth.

Suddenly, the secondary does not seem like the biggest issue facing this team.

Forget playoffs, division, everything. The Browns need to stop thinking about the hole they are in and start thinking about the Bengals. There is no point in looking back, no point in trying to make up for three losses.

A win is what is needed. Just one.

It won't solve everything, but it will make things better, if only for a week.

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1 Comments:

At 12:52 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

A couple of years ago, you wrote that nothing will probably ever change for the Browns until Randy Lerner sells the team. I'm beginning to think you're right.

The Lerners are good people, and Al Lerner was taken way too soon, but the track record of the people they've brought in to run the team speaks for itself.

Carmen Policy was a flim-flam man. Dwight Clark hasn't worked in football since Butch Davis muscled him out. Davis was a paranoid, power-usurping egomaniac. Chris Palmer and Romeo Crennel just don't possess the management skills to be good NFL head coaches. Phil Savage is best-served as a scouting director. I don't think he's really GM material.

Maybe I'm being too harsh in light of an 0-3 start, but when things have been this bad for this long, with only mild success to dilute the endless suck, the best place to start looking for answers is usually at the top.

 

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