The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Browns’ great legacy being tarnished
Struggling Blue Jackets scouting Monsters players
From 1950 to 1973, the Browns had only one losing season. Since then, they are 249-360-10, and any hopes of a turnaround appear to be off in the distance, Jeff Schudel writes.
Somewhere the ghost of Paul Brown is laughing. Or crying, depending on how long it holds a grudge.
The first head coach of the Browns built a dynasty that lasted long after he was fired by Art Modell following the 1962 season. What the Browns have become is a franchise in decay, like one of those crumbling 400-year-old abandoned palaces overgrown with vines that archeologists occasionally discover in a jungle.
Check out these numbers, and they don’t even include the four years the Browns won the AAFC four straight years from 1946 to 1949 before joining the NFL in 1950.
From 1950 to 1973, the Browns had only one losing season.
They were 5-7 in 1956 in their first season without Otto Graham at quarterback and a year later were back to their winning ways at 9-2-1.
Brown was 111-44-5 from 1950 to 1962, Blanton Collier was 76-34-2 from 1963 to 1970 and Nick Skorich was 26-14-2 from 1971 to 1973 before the decline began.
The combined record of those three eras in the regular season is 213-92-9. Since then, the Browns are 249-360-10, and even that doesn’t tell the whole story of how bleak most of the last 40 years have been, because from 1986 to 1989, in the height of the Bernie Kosar era, the Browns were 51-211. If you take those four years away, the Browns are 198339-9 from 1974 to today.
Now, as the Browns get ready to face the Pittsburgh Steelers at Heinz Field at 1 p.m. on Nov. 15, they are only 10 games over .500 since their start in the NFL.
The record of 462-45210 wouldn’t be so pathetic if management didn’t consistently try to use “the rich history” of the Browns to sell tickets.
• The Browns rank 31st in the NFL in rushing with an average of just 82.3 yards a game because first-year offensive coordinator John DeFilippo panics.
Johnny Manziel handed off only one time in the second half of the game in Cincinnati. Isaiah Crowell lost four yards on the second play of the third quarter and that was the end of the running game. That’s what you get when the guy calling plays hasn’t done it before.
“Three of those passes we had in the second half were run/pass options where we ended up throwing the football,” DeFilippo said.
“I was trying to get us in a rhythm. I was trying to do anything to make sure to get us the first down. There were a couple situations where I tried to just put the ball in play with a boot, with a rollout pass or something like that and just put the ball in play. It didn’t work out in our favor.”
The Browns’ first first down of the second half was achieved with three minutes to play.
Hot start for Love
Kevin Love is off to an amazing start in his second season with the Cavs. The shoulder injury that ruined the playoffs for him last spring and probably ruined the Cavs’ chances of winning their first NBA title is far behind him.
“I’m getting a lot of great looks where I want to be and trying to attack the glass more,” he said. “From a comfort standpoint, I feel a lot better.”
There is an open question whether Love will continue to get the ball as often when Kyrie Irving comes back from a fractured knee, even though Love is a forward and Irving is a guard.
“I’m getting a lot of different looks this year,” Love said. “I don’t know if that’s a product of Kyrie and Shump (guard Iman Shumpert) being out, but from a comfort standpoint and how the offense breaks down, so far getting near the basket is a lot better for me.”
Love is averaging 16.4 points and 11.9 rebounds through nine games.
• After soccer, basketball
is arguably the most widely played game worldwide. Not surprisingly, the Cavaliers are among the most popular teams in the world. In fact, during the NBA Finals last year, a Chinese reporter said LeBron James of the Cavs and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers are the most popular athletes in China, and that includes natives of that country.
The Cavaliers’ popularity also extends to Israel, where Cavs coach David Blatt coached Maccabi Tel Aviv before taking over the Cavaliers last season.
Blatt, born in Boston, returned to Israel in the offseason. Before the Cavaliers left on their current road trip, he talked about what a hit the Cavs are in Israel.
“The interest in the Cavaliers and the NBA – well
the NBA has always been – but the interest in the Cavaliers in Israel is just overwhelming,” he said. “They probably live-broadcasted 75 percent of our regular-season games last year and playoff games, and people are waking up at all hours of the night to see the games live, even though they can catch them the next day on delay.
“I’m just really happy and proud of the people in Israel taking interest in what we’re doing here and how they really, really follow the Cavs and support the Cavs.”
Monsters in waiting
The Columbus Blue Jackets are reeling, and 17 games into the season, at 5-12, it’s a little late to keep saying it’s early.
The Jackets were 0-7 when Todd Richards was fired. They are 4-5 under John Tortorella.
Help is right up Interstate 71, but so far the Blue Jackets have resisted reaching out to the Lake Erie Monsters, their AHL affiliate.
Blue Jackets Assistant General Manager Bill Zito was at The Q on Nov. 13 to watch the Monsters play the Grand Rapids Griffins. He was much more interested in the players as individuals than he was in the final score.
“We have a 23-man NHL roster,” Zito said. “You need to have a spot to bring someone up as a replacement. It’s not as easy as bringing a player up like a jayvee guy to the varsity in high school.
“But if a player deserves to be with the Blue Jackets, we’ll call him up. We’ll make a spot. The decisions are being made on merit.”
The Monsters are 7-30-2 and in third place in the Central Division.
I didn’t know that
… Until I read my Snapple bottle cap.
No word in the English language rhymes with month or orange. … The first person in the United States arrested for speeding was a cab driver. … Dairy cows drink up to 50 gallons of water a day. … A snail breathes through its foot. … The patent for the fire hydrant was destroyed by a fire. … Tennessee was previously named Franklin after Benjamin Franklin.