Josh Gordon may have checked himself into rehab
July 24, 2014Animated: Watch Corey Kluber dominate the Royals
July 25, 2014It’s Friday and it’s been a great week of podcasts. Did you check them all out?
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Setting standards for the Browns isn’t easy… As the Browns sit on the precipice of starting training camp, I feel really good about the team. Shocking, I know. I’ve given in to the fact that these feelings mean absolutely nothing. I’ve talked myself down this road before where I convince myself that the defense has it together in such a way that they’ll carry the team. Or more specifically in the recent past, I’ve convinced myself that the Browns can be carried on the back of a player like Peyton Hillis. Each time there’s one thing that’s horribly consistent. I’m always wrong to be optimistic.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t like Mike Pettine, Ray Farmer, Brian Hoyer, Joe Thomas, or anyone else who will be entering camp this week. It doesn’t mean that they won’t finally cancel the pity party that I seem to have annually around Thanksgiving. It’s merely to point out that the burden of proof is on them.
I like the off-season moves. I like the draft. I’ve been hard on Johnny Manziel, but you all know pretty well that I like him a lot too. I like Ben Tate and Terrance West and Jordan Cameron and Joe Haden. I liked the idea of drafting Justin Gilbert to hopefully raise the level of the secondary not named Joe Haden. I liked the free agency acquisitions of Karlos Dansby and Donte Whitner. Right now, that’s not worth much of anything.
I’ve liked moves in the past too whether it was Frostee Rucker, Jason Campbell or Ben Watson. Even as some of those players worked out alright, it didn’t matter. By the end of the season those were just new names that replaced old names, both of which were only capable of winning four or five games in a given year.
That’s why last year I stopped with predictions and just set standards. That’s why again this year, even as I support this team and the moves they’ve made to improve, I won’t give them a pass just yet. Yeah, I’m co-signing as much as any fan or commentator can co-sign on a team’s personnel moves, but it’s not on me to produce results or say that the team has done enough to produce those results. It’s merely my job to set realistic expectations.
So I’m going to do it again this year and say that my expectations are for this team to win eight games. It might be a game more or a game less, but I think that’s reasonable to ask. It’s a league with year-over-year turnarounds all the time. It’s also a year where the Browns spent a healthy amount of time bringing in veteran free agents as well as newly drafted picks.
Again, I can’t co-sign for all the players they brought in, but it tells me this team wants to win more games than they did last year. It tells me that this is a team that won’t be content executing a lackadaisical first year in some pipe dream of a five year plan. And with that in mind my standard is eight wins and I think that’s more than fair. That’s still a failure in a lot of NFL cities to go 0.500. So with that, you’re welcome Cleveland Browns. Now show me something.
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Speaking of football, I would have found this interesting or funny once upon a time, but now the idea of youths pummeling each other on a football field just leads me to think of head injuries. Do we need to adopt weight classes like MMA and boxing?
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Weird Al Yankovic has the No. 1 album in the country. It’s really crazy when you think about it for a variety of reasons. The music industry is in a weird spot in terms of, you know, “sales.” Weird Al released eight music videos in eight days to promote it. He’s also an age where he’s not completely over the hill as a performer and yet his target audience that he has built since the late-70’s is probably as big as it will ever be. I grew up on “Eat It” and “Fat” and “Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White.” And here I was this week playing “NOW That’s what I call polka” for my son which parodies Mylie Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” among other songs. My favorite song, though, is one that didn’t sink in for me when it was a real song, and that’s Royals by Lorde. No, it wasn’t until Weird Al unleashed “Foil” on us that it stuck in my head like an incurable disease.
That’s enough for me this week. Have a great weekend everyone. Listen to some Weird Al.
52 Comments
cmon man, delete that. we don’t need to give the dumb schlub the spotlight he so desperately craves.
this guy was a moron. just forget about Modell. and totally please forget about this guy. makes all of us look like jackasses.