All Eyes on Shurmurball

I hate the Ravens. Why?* Because they should be mine, and they aren’t. I also find it infuriating that they are in our division, and repeatedly embarass us. To make matters worse, living in DC I frequently encounter subhumans who for some reason feel compelled** to go out of their way to “inform” me about how I should really love the Ravens since they used to be the Browns, how it was really Cleveland’s fault and not Modell’s, and how I’m petty and stupid for hating them.

Pat Shurmur most know this. He must know how we feel about the Ravens. He must know that winning a Thursday night game against a divisional opponent could save his job.*** That’s got to be the reason he had the team practicing for the Ravens LAST week. A win vs. the Ravens is worth 40 wins over the Bills. That’s why, for one night only, he’s going to abandon Shurmurball. Deep throws. Different looks. 2-point conversions. A fake field goal. A fucking on-side kick to start the game.# I like the idea so much that I can’t even imagine how he wouldn’t do it. It will work, because NO ONE will suspect it.

Fuck it, I’m so excited now just thinking about it that I’m going out on a limb — Browns by 3. And, if he doesn’t have the balls to abandon Shurmurball, he should be fired before he walks off the field. Pre-handshake. Like, as the clock hits zero Haslam is standing next to him like he’s next to a ref about to call a last second time out. That way, I’ll have something be happy about as I stumble home from another Browns loss.

*I apologize in advance for explaining something you already know.
**My theory is that this compulsion is rooted in the shame of being the beneficiary of one of the most objectionable actions in the history of professional sports.
***Sure, the odds of him keeping his job are about 1/679,098, but that doesn’t mean he won’t battle or flash.
#As Frownie is sure to point out, this is what Mangini would do (#WWMD). And, he’s right.

I’ve got $4 dollar vodka and cranberry juice. This is going to be fun.

So I watch the first quarter and see Greg Little fail to catch two passes. They weren’t “drops”, I suppose, and one could argue that they weren’t the absolute easiest passes to catch, but c’mon buddy, put your hands together when the ball is between them.

I like beer.

Battling sobriety.

Positive game notes from last night’s game (will probably repost into Friday Frowns post):

0) Let’s just get it out of the way: Pat Shurmur and Mike Holmgren are gone. A sensational win last night could have steered this ship on a different course, but it’s now sailed. OK, now onto REAL positive notes.

a) Billy Winn. Was literally. Everywhere. A guy with 2 sacks through 3 games, he’s starting to show some of those Shurmurisms (flash, grit, battle, competitiveness) we saw from him in the preseason. Our starting interior is now comprised of two 6th round draft picks until Phil Taylor gets back, and they’re looking okay.

b) Craig Robertson. Was everywhere-er than Billy Winn. Who is this person? Did he attend university? Nobody knows? Well whatever.

c) Brandon Weeden has passed for 997 yards. He is on pace to pass for 3,988 yards. If any of our receivers learn to catch the football as the season progresses, he should pass for roughly 8,893 yards instead.

d) Baltimore advanced the ball and stuff on us, especially in the second half. They also did not score offensive points after the first drive in the second half, which means

e) Our defense played more than well enough to win against the #2 scoring team in the NFL. Piggybacking off this point, they held the Ravens to 3.7 yards per carry rushing.

f) We’ve moved beyond the point of ‘Greg Little might be a good receiver if he can learn to catch the ball’. We’ve moved into the territory of ‘Greg Little might be a monster if he can learn to catch the ball’. Not one of the catchable passes he didn’t haul in was because of the defender. While this is a serious indictment on his ability to succeed at his position at this level, Greg Little got 10 targets, 4 catches. He’s 6’3″, he’s powerful, he’s fast, he’s running the routes (<—- huge) to put himself in the correct position to make the catch. He's doing literally everything he needs to except securing the catch. While this is a huge problem for him, it also means that it gives him 1 thing to focus on to really turn himself into a serious piece of beef on the outside of a formation.

g) The Ravens left points on the field, but other than the botched extra point, the Browns get credit for the rest. The pick on Flacco was great defensive scheming – Dick Jauron out coached Cam Cameron; knowing their tendency to throw the end zone corner fade, he actually had Craig Robertson run a wheel route from the middle linebacker position where he was hinting blitz on the pre-snap read. Stuff like this is really hard for a quarterback to pick up on a post-snap read, because when Flacco was looking to where he was targeting and through his release, Craig Robertson wouldn't even be visible to him. Great call by the Browns here.
Following up on this point, on the missed Tucker field goal, the Browns moved the Ravens back on that sequence, making it a more difficult field goal.

h) Phil Dawson

i) Getting back to Weeden, while his completion percentage was atrocious at under 50% (25/52, 48.1%) he threw 4 Hail Marys to finish the game out. I am not crediting the one he threw out of the end zone. The other 3 are desperation throws (I felt the Browns should have called a post route to the sidelines with 0:15), so let's say 25/49. Now let's say the receiving corps catches just 4 of the passes they could have caught – thinking the stat guys are going to give them 4 drops, but beyond that there were at least 4 more, and I think 8 more, passes that were catchable. That would put him at 29/49. Basically, if his receivers catch 4 of the dozen or so passes that touched their hands without resulting in completions (a fair thing to ask, I know some of those were tough ones but several weren't), that puts his completions outside the 3 hail marys right around 60%. From an accuracy and decision making standpoint, Weeden played well enough to win, even with the pick 6. He moved around in the very small pocket (line was getting collapsed around him all night) enough to avoid all but 1 sack where he stood like literally no chance. Other than the awful toss out of the end zone, there wasn't a single throw where he let the pressure visibly affect his throw, and this is the biggest point, because the biggest of all the question marks is whether he can throw under duress. No one game is going to answer that question, but that's a scary bunch of guys to be acting cool against. Again, other than his bad throw out of the end zone, and his bad pick 6, I didn't feel Weeden made any other really bad judgment calls. That's 2 bad calls on 52 dropbacks, and we're in game 4. If he keeps this up, we'll have to lavish him with Chips McCoy praise of moxie and poise and such.

Basically, Weeden has in three of his four games looked to be the prospect we thought we were getting. Let's see if he can keep up that trend.

j) Josh Cribbs is alive.

k) After Josh Cribbs almost wasn't alive, the Browns' special teams coverage units (and our defense as well) started getting kind of nasty with the Ravens. As much as I don't like the NFL being bloodsport, I would have gone even further, but this was a Browns team that didn't look timid against the vaunted Ravens at any point in any phase, even when they weren't executing well.

l) Richardson managed to scrape out 3.5 ypc when only getting 14 carries. Note that the Ravens, who averaged 3.7 ypc, broke a 21-yarder by Pierce; their running game looked like crap against the Browns outside of that (aside from that one 20+ run, their ground attack was good for less than 3 yards per carry). Point being, if Richardson got 25 attempts, there's more of a chance he rips off 1 or 2 big runs, and our receivers were having immense trouble hauling in passes. Shurmurball. Oh, while our offensive line was playing generally like mediocre sh*t, and he actually hit the hole on one play before Owen Marecic, his lead blocker (tail blocker….WTF?), Richardson showed some of that touted power (REALLY showed it) by hauling bad guys several yards with him after contact.

m) speaking of our receivers, Richardson caught all 4 passes thrown to him. He had 6 targets, one of which was to his buttocks while he was blocking the sh*t out of a linebacker and another was a throw away 10 feet over his head out of bounds. He averaged over 14 yards on these 4 receptions, where he had the opportunity to run in space. A Ravens cornerback also veered away from him and swatted at him half-heartedly when he was running at full speed. Maybe he saw Richardson's attempt to murder an Eagles safety who tried to tackle him head on in week 1. Richardson is also averaging over 8 yards per reception. So tonight he showed that he has the burst to get into the hole when it actually exists, power to go straight through tacklers, agility to make guys miss, hands to be an every-down running back, and the ability to stand a blitzing linebacker up straight. As much as I don't think you should spend a 3rd round pick on a running back, he seems to fit the bill as a top-notch offensive weapon.

o) I'm going to stop now. G'night everyone.

p) Phil Dawson.

Schlereth is once again proving why he’s one of the best in the business, giving the Clowns some love: http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=8434126

>>>The Browns are a minor-league operation with minor-league talent. Before Thursday night’s game, the Browns had dropped 11 passes in the first three games. They dropped three more in the first half.>>>

Just for context, the guy is talking pretty specifically about the receivers, and goes on to say that with better receivers, the Browns probably would have won. It’s a fair point; although another fair point would be that our ?#1?? was out. Another fair point is that our best player on defense was out too.