The Bad News Browns strike again… and again…
February 4, 2015Cleveland State ices Penguins, now 8-2 in conference play
February 5, 2015The Bad News Browns have struck again! Wednesday afternoon, we learned the Browns could be in hot water for Ray Farmer’s Texts From the Press Box and that Kyle Shanahan made a THIRTY-TWO point Powerpoint justifying his exit from the organization. And all this on the heels of Johnny Manziel checking into treatment and Josh Gordon receiving a season-long suspension … again! The only thing the Browns haven’t copied from the Bad News Bears is hiring an alcoholic pool boy as a coach and going on a really tacky trip to Japan. Feels like it’s just a matter of time at this point.
But there are some good things going on in #TheLand…
Bring your green hat, because the Cavs are going streaking! For at least the next several hours, the Cleveland Cavaliers own the longest active winning streak in the NBA thanks to the Atlanta Hawks dropping their first game in 20 Monday night against the New Orleans Pelicans. At 11 games, the Cavs are only two wins away from tying their longest winning streak in franchise history.1 In both 2009 and 2010, the Cavs went on 13 game winning streaks. So, if they beat the Los Angeles Clippers on Thursday night and the Indiana Pacers on Friday night, the Cavs would play for the franchise record Sunday afternoon at home against the Los Angeles Lakers and former coach Byron Scott, in what would make for an extra sweet non-football Sunday. If the Cavs are victorious Thursday night hosting the Clippers, celebrate like Govzilla and eat an entire pizza.2
Timo Mozgov is sitting in locker room eating a pizza. Not a piece of pizza. An ENTIRE pizza
— Jason Lloyd (@ByJasonLloyd) February 3, 2015
But a few more parting thoughts on the NFLâs season-ending celebration before football disappears for several months. Katy Perryâs trippy halftime show proved once again that the networks donât totally know what to do with the halftime show for an event that millions of people would watch even if Tiny Tim sang âTiptoe Through the Tulips.â The leading school of thought appears to be finding a pop star that appeals to women and those disinterested in football, closely followed by finding a noncontroversial rock act that has been famous for decades (even if it’s well past its prime).
This year, NBCUniversal and the NFL brought in Katy Perry, a choice that I joked was the perfect choice if the goal was to âfind a performer both preteen girls and perverted old men approved of.â And boy, did Ms. Perry deliver. She began the show by arriving on the field riding a giant robotic cat like a Zord from Power Rangers (which Wikipedia describes as âimmense assault machines ⊠[deployed] to overcome the periodic antagonistsâ). As the halftime show continued, things became increasingly wacky. Katy Perry repeatedly changed outfits and eventually joined a party onstage complete with beach balls and palm trees that had come to life and began dancing. The show had devolved into something that looked more like an H.R. Pufnstuf episode than a rock concert.
Some online establishments had props that allowed individuals to wager on whether Katy Perry would have more crotch grabs than Marshawn Lynch during the broadcast. If online gambling were legal, I may have wagered on one of these optionsâstrictly as an academic exercise, of course. In case you needed any more proof that gambling is not a destructive vice but instantly entertaining and magical:
https://twitter.com/Sportsbook_com/status/562310599162736640
But regardless of how we remember Katy Perry at halftime of Super Bowl XLIX, the star of the show (and even the game) will always be the dancing sharks. On a day where the Super Bowl could only have been less enjoyable for Browns fans had Drew Carey had been the Patriots quarterback, thank you dancing sharks for being the funniest shit I have seen in a long time. Eat your heart out, Tom Brady.
But what about that play call? FiveThirtyEightâs Benjamin Morris explained why Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell’s decision not to run the ball with Marshawn Lynch on second-and-goal from the one with a chance to win the game was a reasonable decision. By now weâre all aware that the Seahawks threw the ball, the Patriots intercepted it, and the Seahawks lost in devastating fashion.
The planet then collectively lost its mind and decried the decision to do anything but give the ball to Lynch as the dumbest thing anyone has ever done in a game of football. Hindsight is always 20/20 (or at least 20/40), but most critics are acting like they could see the thing from a thousand miles away. Morris explains some of the flaws of that logic.
[Carroll s]ounds crazy, but heâs right: With 26 seconds left and only one timeout, the Seahawks couldnât run Lynch three times in a row. If they rushed on second down, didnât make it in, called timeout, rushed again, and still didnât make it in, theyâd probably be out of time before they could get off another play. So, the Seahawks had three downs to work with, but they could only run Lynch twice at most.
Thus the question isnât whether the Seahawks shouldâve called a runâweâve already stipulated that. The question is when they shouldâve called a run.
Exactly! Because the Seahawks only had one timeout, they only had a guaranteed two-way go (the option to run or pass) on second and fourth downs. But by running a conservative pass on second down (if it’s unsuccessful and not a turnover), then the playbook remains open on third and fourth downs. The pick/slant the Seahawks ran is generally a low-risk play thatâs a touchdown or incompletion ninety-seven percent of the time. Had Carroll tried running it up the gut on second down, wasted his timeout, then ran it again on third or fourth unsuccessfully, everyone calls him an idiot for that. Malcolm Butler, who had zero interceptions in his career, simply made one of the best plays in professional football historyâif he arrives .1 seconds later itâs a touchdown and if he arrives 0.1 seconds earlier itâs pass interference. Give Butler some credit and donât mistake Carroll’s questionable call for an indefensible call.
Do you like burritos?3 Because Kyle Stock and Venessa Wong of Bloomberg Business compiled an excellent collection of tales on the burrito giant of giant burritos, Chipotle. The oral historyâcomplete with Chipotle founder Steve Ells, several of the company’s present corporate officers, and former business partnersâtells the story of a burrito shack started in Colorado by an aspiring chef and funded by his parents that improbably became a corporate powerhouse with over 1700 locations with the help of cultural converse McDonald’s.
The story is worth reading for a variety of reasons, but some of the stories are worth highlighting. First is founder Steve Ells’ conversation with his father and retired engineer Bob Ells as Steve neared the end of college.
Bob Ells: So fast-forward to the middle semester of his senior year at college. We were having dinner one night in Boulder, and I said, âSteve, what are you going to do when you graduate?â
Steve Ells: I wasnât sure what I was going to do, and my friend Cyndi said, âYou should go to cooking school.â I wasnât thinking about a career, but I thought, âThatâd be fun!â
History repeatedly proves that some of the boldest ideas come from people unwilling to consider the possibility of having a career. Working away a lifetime seems dull, so they just invent instead. Another memorable moment is when the folks running Chipotle went on their promotional tour prior to the launch of their IPO.
Jack Hartung (CFO, Chipotle; former CFO, McDonald’s Partner Brands): I remember feeling a little bit insecure. We hadnât spent time with anybody on Wall Street. There was one meeting with a very large investor who came in and said, âThis is like Taco Bell, right?â We had to do some explaining.
Steve Ells: On the roadshow, people said, âWho are your customers?â I just said, âPeople who are hungry, you know, people who like to eat.â
Monty Moran (Co-CEO, Chipotle; college friend of Steve Ells): We priced at $22 a share, and then the damn stock couldn’t open for like 90 minutes. It wouldn’t open until it was at $44 a share. It literally doubled on its first trade, which represented a huge loss of money to Chipotle. But obviously, it represented a pretty exciting time for us to see how loved our company was and how much demand there was for our stock.
Brilliant. âPeople who are hungry, you know, people who like to eat.â The Bloomberg feature isn’t just burrito porn of moist tortillas overflowing with juicy steak and succulent carnitas as hot sauce and sour cream seep out the sides: it’s a fascinating story of a guy with a great idea who made a company run by him, his parents, and his college friends, and turned it one of the most admired companies in the world. Nearly every success story begins with a great idea that succeeds because a smart and passionate person saw the idea’s potential and carried it to its conclusion.
The triumph of Chipotle is the triumph of ingenuity and culture: Steve Ells saw the potential of building a business around people, ingredients, and an innovative business model. China may lead the world in manufacturing and building things, but America still leads the world in imaginative ideas. Someone please forward this article to Browns management and highlight the bits about ingenuity and culture, because the organization could use some of the vision that allowed Steve Ells to build Chipotle. And when the Browns get you down over the next few months, go eat a burrito.
- Via Basketball-Reference.com. [↩]
- Govzilla is the leader in the clubhouse for Timofeyâs official nickname. The Mozgov Nicknaming Committeeâs deliberations and procedures are top secret, but the Committee assures constituents that there are other great names in the running. [↩]
- No movie review this week after the last two. But there will be something movie-related before the Academy Awards. [↩]
32 Comments
The Moz is a monster of a man. Eating a Mama’s pizza w/ a 2 liter of Coke was standard all-nighter at the lab practice in college. I am sure that it is nothing to Mozzie.
And, thanks for giving more credit to Butler than blame to the Seahawks. I agree.
I have read numerous takes on why that last play was the right call by Seattle, but I’m sorry: not buying it. I get the stats and the percentages and all that, but my eyes told me that Lynch was beasting by that point, and was less than a yard from pay dirt. Momentum belonged to him and to Seattle. If they somehow do get stopped, you have two plays and one of the best QBs in the league at using his mobility to make plays. Credit Butler for his play, but he never should have had that chance. I’ll never see that game as anything other than a choke by Seattle.
Who among us has not eaten an entire pizza by himself?
And am I the only person in the universe that doesn’t think Chipotle is all that great? I like the tacos, but to me the burritos are just a giant glob of indistinguishable melded flavors. And the atmosphere is often so loud I can’t hear myself scream at my kids.
Carroll was feeling froggy…you could see it on his smarmy face…and decided to get cute.
One of Belichick’s faceless, plug-and-play, well-trained minions did exactly what he was drilled to do, and the rest is history.
Score one for hard work and effort.
I always preferred Baja Fresh.
Baja Fresh, Moe’s, Neato Burrito (local where I am) – all better, in my HUMBLE opinion.
That halftime show was as close as possible to what the Simpsons would do if the Simpsons was a live-action show. Once I convinced myself that this is what they were trying to do, I enjoyed it.
http://static-mb.minutebuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/homer.gif
I get not wanting to leave NE with time to score, but I’m still punching it in first chance I get, not worrying about the next two downs. But maybe that’s why I’m not an NFL HC
I didn’t eat a lot of Chipotle before going off to college, and UofM has two burrito places – Pancheros and Big Ten Burrito – that I fell in love with and ruined Chipotle for me.
And I can put back an entire Donatos, but prolly just because it’s thin crust.
re Mozgogv’s nickname, Im quite partial to “Captain Timo”, if anyone gets the reference, could potentially draw in a younger crowd if they partnered with a certain company…
I miss Donatos. I remember when it was just a small operation in Columbus. Haven’t had one of those in years.
Donatos would destroy it, here in Savannah.
The Simpsons did do it in the early ’90s:
#peaceoffering đ
http://38.media.tumblr.com/55c0c0c46dc12c76ce5128ee409147ca/tumblr_mopiw6K8ab1rgh9l8o1_500.gif
I think they would here in PA, too.
” … show had devolved into something that looked more like an H.R. Pufnstuf episode than a rock concert.” Kind of obsessed with that line. Nice work.
At the risk of drifting out of my lane, when did a pop star looking terrified of a fall while she lip-syncs atop a giant mechanical thingamabob become a good idea? Like, doesn’t each detract from the other? Are people so numb they just need moremoremore, pile this upon that and make sharks and suns dance and smoky explosions and whateverthehellelsewecanthrowinthere until it’s all a steaming pile of unrelated gibberish from which you should extract whatever you like if the stew stinks?
You only picked my favorite episode of all-time!
And no peace offering is ever necessary. I left my enemies in the desert. I’m serious, at some point we need to find a local watering hole and get together; talk all things sports, Simpsons, head medicine, and even politics. We’ll find there’s more in common than not.
Nice to see you found a home in the CFL, though. Hope that Argonauts gig works out for you!
So, who’s rockin’ the shark suit to the home opener?
Ate a lot of Dontato’s competitor…Casanos…in college.
They’re still more of a smaller chain, as far as I know. Been a lonnng time.
Nick Swisher, probably.
Freebird’s Burrito. Mmmm.
Chipotle is nothing special. Great marketing and some good luck getting in with McD to help franchise it out. But, hey, good for them on their success.
You know it, broseph
The issue wasn’t that it was a pass. The issue was that it was a pass that the defense knew was coming.
yep, that’s good coaching right there. much like last year how Seattle took away Peyton’s favorite routes because they knew what was coming.
completely agree it was the wrong pass anyway. get Russell out of the pocket and have him toss it in the stands if something doesn’t open up to play for Lynch.
I also don’t how Carroll claimed the call was about not leaving too much time on the clock. If that’s the case, why call the 1 second quick slant?
I’ve gone to both extremes on the play. Initial reaction: worst call ever. Slept on it: well, it’s defensible. Today: Carroll deserves all the criticism he is getting.
People like spectacle. I’m not a Perry fan in the least and I thought it was one of the better half time shows I’ve seen. Memorable, at least.
There’s the Frowns’ annual draft party at the Map Room.
Yeah, the slant is a high percentage play, but in that situation, with 30 seconds left in the freaking Super Bowl, I have to go back to Woody Hayes’s observation that of the 3 things that can happen if you pass, 2 are bad. As you said above, it’s the obvious pass play to run; thus, you give the ball to Lynch or at least try to have Wilson run it. Call time out if it doesn’t work.
He (or more likely Bevell) was trying to make sure they got all 3 plays. That’s it. The rest is just covering behinds.
The pass was high and a little late. If it is thrown lower, less chance for INT or tip ball into the air.
The lines are ridiculous too (for Chipotle)