The Boots: Short-Handed Cavs Fall, Colt McCoy Clips and More

The Boots are my form of reporting current information from around the sports world. Boot Ups and Boot Downs are assigned to various events, people or stories as I now use for the University of Dayton’s Flyer News. For possible topics in future articles, e-mail us at Tips@WaitingForNextYear.com.

Boot Down: Home Play – The Cavs fell again at the Q Saturday night, dropping their fourth straight home game by the final count of 99-85 against the Indiana Pacers. Ever since the season-opening victory against the Boston Celtics, Cleveland is winless in the state of Ohio, but has impressively surprised many folks on the road.

On the flip side, not many people expect Cleveland to be competitive without either Mo Williams or Anderson Varejao. The duo missed last night’s game, but shooting struggles and a weak second half plagued the team again. It’s still rough to see the team fall again, and here’s to hoping the losing streak ends Tuesday against Philadelphia.

Boot Up: 25 to 35 wins – Before the start of the 2010-2011 NBA season, there was a lot of contention about the ultimate success the Cavaliers would have. Some estimates went as low as 12 wins, while Plain Dealer columnist Terry Pluto was one of the more optimistic around the country in predicting 46 wins and a playoff berth.

My guess all the way along was somewhere between 25 to 35 wins. That still seems plausible as a 4-5 record against a weak schedule could tend to lean towards that side of .500 by the end of the season. Clearly, Kelly Dwyer and Yahoo Sports were off with that incredibly low pick, but even Pluto was amiss in estimating this team could remain one of the top five in the Eastern Conference.

In the end, the Cavs will continue to fill a nice little niche among those other 10 teams in the East. There will be many times when the team is very competitive (the Boston game), but there will also be frustrating losses such as the past two games. This team just doesn’t have enough fire power on either side to remain in every single game all year and that Vegas line of 30.5 wins is seemingly the most accurate.

Boot Down: Indians Moves – Don’t expect the Cleveland Indians to have a busy offseason for the next few months. As I outlined yesterday, the largest work the team will do in the remaining time in 2010 will be dealing with the final additions to the 40-man roster and preparing for the Rule 5 Draft. By all indications, there is likely little money to spend on free agency and little willingness to do so.

I believe the Indians have started to understand the faults of the David Dellucci, Jason Michaels, Kerry Wood, etc. signings of the last half decade. In this case, the team won’t gamble any long-term money or even a substantial amount of money in 2011 on just one or two players. Expect the team to pick up a few spring training invites with possible minor league guaranteed contracts, and just hope for the best.

Boot Up: Colt McCoy Starring – Please watch this Youtube video while you still can: “Colt McCOY vs New England Patriots 2010 Week 9”

It’s been an amazing transition into the Colt McCoy era for the Browns this season, and that Youtube video shows all you need to know. McCoy got stronger as the game went on, made some unbelievable plays to shift the momentum in Cleveland’s favor, and willed the team to victory. It was just an incredible performance by a third-round draft pick rookie initially expected to sit out the entire season.

Hat tip goes out to the The Nosebleeds NFL Blog for spotting this link. Hopefully Colt can keep up the impressive work today against the Jets.

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Photo via AP Photo/Mark Duncan