As depressing as it is that the Cleveland press spent the entirety of Eric Mangini’s two seasons here openly begging for the dismissal of the first decent football coach the Lerner-era Browns have ever had, it’s understood that Mangini is gone, that Pat Shurmur is the new head coach, and that it’s certainly not worth getting too worked up over a new coach-friendly slant in the papers after these folks blew so much gas to have Mangini run. Yins and yangs, turn, turn, turn, whatever. Which might actually be fine if these people could muster even just a spot of respect for their readers, or just a shred of honesty on which to prop their lowest-common-denominator vendettas.
Instead we have the Plain Dealer’s Tony Grossi, eliminating questions as to his status as the worst hack in NFL press history at an amazing and alarming pace. The same Tony Grossi who also happens to be the leading voice of the credentialed press for the worst franchise in modern league history, reacting on Monday to the Browns impossibly embarrassing season opener against the Bengals.
It all started innocently enough. “Hey Frowns, Grossi’s melting down on Twitter again, you gotta check this out … ”
Somehow Tony doesn’t think Mangini would have done any better on Sunday. Just because. Somehow. Of course. Fine fine fine. Nevermind (again) that the Browns never lost as 6-plus favorites under Mangini (and actually lost as favorites only once under the former head coach (when the Seneca Wallace-led Cleveland team amazingly weighed in as two-point chalk to the eventual AFC West champion Chiefs in Week 2 last season)), nevermind that Mangini’s Browns, as physically overmatched as they might have been on a few Sundays early in 2009, never looked as unprepared to line up for a football game than the current edition did in the first quarter last Sunday, and nevermind that Mangini’s Browns never got done by a pee wee trick like the Shurmur’s did on the game-winning quick snap (which wasn’t actually a quick snap, and maybe not even a pee wee trick) touchdown to A.J. Green.
Mangini wouldn’t have done any better last Sunday because Tony says so, and you guys should be patient, because Tony saw some good out there on Sunday. Of course, if Grossi has proven anything over the last two years, it’s that he knows how to spot the silver lining around even the darkest clouds.
And Mangini isn’t coming back anyway so why can’t everybody just let it go.
Which again, might actually be fine, if it wasn’t for things like this:
So let’s assume that Grossi actually had been saying all week that the Bengals were more talented than the Browns (hard to say since he didn’t really put that in writing, and actually joined a unanimous Plain Dealer panel in picking the Browns to win the game, by 4 points, noting that “[l]osing to a rookie quarterback in his maiden game is not the way to jump-start a new era”). It’s like Tony thinks we can’t remember (or couldn’t just look up) what he said about the Cincinnati team some nine months ago when Mangini’s thoroughly injury-ravaged Browns lost to the Bengals by two points on the road at the end of last season, without getting done by any pee wee tricks, and with only 25 penalty yards on three flags to help the bad guys.
Last season, Grossi could hardly wait to tell us that the Bengals were “the NFL’s dregs,” “cupcakes,” over which Mangini’s injury ravaged troops should have “rolled over” for an “easy win.” Grossi added that the depleted Browns “played down” to Cincinnati (as opposed to last Sunday when they apparently “played up” to a more talented opponent and just missed), and he used this series of canards to justify his conclusion that last season’s last Bengals game made Mangini’s future as head coach of the Browns “black and white.” (Really, please read what Grossi (and some of his cohorts) wrote about last year’s loss to the Bengals here (and here)).
So since nobody could possibly believe that the current edition of the Browns is any less “talented” than the Ray Ventrone and Nick Sorensen-laden M.A.S.H. unit that Mangini was forced to run out against the Bengals in Week 15 last season, we have to assume it’s that the Bengals have made some massive improvements on last season’s “cupcake” status. The Bengals, who this season are roundly touted as one of the worst teams in the league, a nearly unanimous pick to finish at the bottom of the AFC North (whereas last year’s edition was a popular pick to repeat as division champs), who are starting a rookie quarterback instead of Carson Palmer (and following that rookie up with Bruce Gradkowski), the same Bengals who’ve replaced two Hall of Fame (if fading) wideouts with a rookie (albeit an extremely talented rookie) and a fourth-year nobody, and who lost one of the most best young cornerbacks in the league, Jonathan Joseph, to free agency. These Bengals aren’t cupcakes at all. There’s no rolling over these guys.
That’s all. And the point isn’t that the Bengals aren’t a better team than the preseason touts seem to think (we said as much here on Monday). It’s not that Pat Shurmur doesn’t deserve patience after one game as an NFL head coach (he surely does). Nor is it that an Eric Mangini-coached Browns team would have beaten the Bengals last Sunday (there’s absolutely no doubt that Year 3 Mangini’s Browns would have destroyed the Bengals last Sunday, of course). The point is just that Tony Grossi keeps writing lies in the newspaper about Cleveland’s favorite thing when his job is actually to do the very opposite. And of course, again, that any market that supports this guy as the most widely-broadcast custodian of truth with respect to such a cherished resource has surely gotten exactly what it’s deserved from this resource since it returned to existence in ’99. Lord deliver us from the Pain Dealer please please please, etc. Amen.
Hope everyone’s having a decent Wednesday. We’ll be back tomorrow with something much more fun.
