Indians move Trevor Bauer to bullpen…for now
September 17, 2015C-Cap Recap: Infante Sorrow
September 18, 2015
What’s up everyone? You ready for the Browns’ home opener? (Tugs on collar.) Me too. I’ll be down there and so will many other WFNY’ers so let’s all high five and drink beers together. That’s what this thing is all about anyway, right? The team is just an excuse for us to hang out together. That’s what I’m saying to myself with all the talk this week about the Browns here and elsewhere. Speaking of which… While We’re Waiting…
Negative Cleveland media and the depressing A to Z podcast …
The best Browns talk is not on your radio. The best Browns talk is not on the WFNY Podcast either. That honor goes to Zac Jackson and Andre Knott who pretty much depressed the hell out of me yesterday when I listened to their podcast about the Cleveland Browns opening week loss to the Jets. Let me correct myself right off the bat and say that Zac and Andre didn’t actually depress me at all. It was one of the key points in their podcast. They’re not doing anything. The Browns are.
It’s an important point from the podcast and one that I think Browns fans have to remember even as they try to cope with their own fragility of ego in the wider world. Tony Grossi isn’t causing the Browns to stink. Mary Kay Cabot couldn’t cause the Browns to win a game more per year if she somehow did her job differently. Adam the Bull and Dustin Fox and Rizzo and Aaron Goldhammer and everyone else are doing the best they can to entertain you, tell their version of the truth, and call it like they see it. Period.
The next time you think a Cleveland team is being driven into the ground by the media, I want you to remember this picture.
The New York media did this to Eli Manning after game one of the 2015 NFL season. Eli Manning is not a perfect quarterback, but he’s a two-time Super Bowl champ, a three-time Pro Bowler and has won 91 games versus 76 losses since being drafted in 2004. So, don’t tell me that the Cleveland media is what is standing in the way of the Browns being better. Don’t tell me the Cleveland media are too negative either.
I think the Browns are improved and I’m once again holding them to the standard of winning eight games, but I also know that they built what appears to be a deeply flawed team. Earlier in training camp I explained to my sister that the Cleveland Browns made it their plan for this year to go into the season with a quarterback who is likely bottom five in the entire league in the hopes that he could do a one-year impression of the fifteenth best quarterback in the NFL. I don’t know what the alternatives truly were for the Browns to start this season, but these are just the facts of the matter.
On top of it, the Browns doubled down on that by conducting a training camp whereby they kept Terrelle Pryor and used him as a weapon – even bragging about it – before cutting him at the last minute. This occurred shortly after the team shipped out Terrance West at the last minute with very little plan on replacing him. That’s not to say that the Browns should have kept Terrelle Pryor or Terrance West at all, but to run through all of training camp with marginal guys like this rather than having planned for replacing them, you’re showing your pitiful hand. You’re showing that you were as prepared for this season from a personnel standpoint as I was for my fantasy draft this year. I bought a fantasy magazine three days before the draft this year and printed out the latest depth charts the afternoon of the draft.
Am I being a jerk? Am I being negative? Maybe. Am I also telling what appears to be the truth? Yep. Does any of this make the Browns worse? I don’t think so, and ultimately I would be telling a very different story if the Browns had signed DeMarco Murray to a guaranteed $21 million on a 5-year $40 million contract. At least then I might have felt like this was a sound plan for a team that knew the best they could do was Josh McCown for a year and maybe a bit of Johnny Manziel or Connor Shaw or whoever.
All that said, I think the Browns will crush Tennessee this weekend. How’s that for negative?
Did you hear Ben Axelrod talk to us about the Buckeyes and Browns?
It was another fun week of podcasts and I always enjoy talking to Ben Axelrod. He can discuss anything and he doesn’t seem like he’s really holding anything back or putting up any kind of front. It’s great to talk to someone like that who is knowledgeable and also a solid conversationalist. Enough butt-kissing. In case you missed it, we discussed whether you would choose the McCown helicopter or the Weeden flag trap.
Your weekly moment of soccer zen…
I pulled this from MLS and I really liked catching more of the lead-up to the rocket goal from distance. The lead-up is so important for people who didn’t grow up with soccer. When they think of football, and possession and how many end with punts and recoveries it’s difficult to translate that directly to soccer. But soccer is very similar in a lot of ways. You may not stop play and punt, but there are soccer equivalents to punting. Likewise this play is like fighting to get into the red zone and then making something happen. The team drove into the red zone, made some maneuvers and took a chance at scoring via the cross. There was no real plan in place with that cross, but good things can happen when you throw the ball into the opposing team’s box, and wow was that a laser shot for the finish.
Seafair – Inferno…
This isn’t necessarily new new, but it’s new to me. I’ve been trying really hard to check out the very best local music that Cleveland has to offer and I’ve listened to Seafair in the past. I’d never really listened to their latest release though until recently and I’m really loving it. I think you’ll love it too even if the video is taking place in the dirty-snowed Cleveland winter that we’re all desperately trying to stave off for another month if we can.
80 Comments
I know. I was just kidding. But to your point, we’ll never know.
But for what it’s worth, as much as it was an annual hellish wailing of banshees in my waking nightmares in the late ’80s and all of the ’90s, I really do admire the Michigan fight song. It’s great.
That was awesome.
Love the NY Post headlines. Sports media there (and in Boston, Philly, etc.) play a contact sport Cleveland fans wouldn’t recognize. Will never forget the 1998 screaming headline “Chuck Brainlauch” when in the 12th inning of our ACLS game Knoblauch stood and argued with the ump about supposed runner interference while the ball slowly rolled behind him and Enrique Wilson scored from first on a bunt.
Thank you for clarifying cause and effect. Woe is me, overreaction to opening day losses, all these things are effects. The Browns have no right to any fan support at this point; the Indians are insane to resent undeserved fan support for the Browns. In 40+ years the Cavs would never have come close to sniffing a title but for the raw luck of winning the lotto the year LeBron graduated high school, as opposed to front office competence (please don’t whine about Chones’s foot – with him that team won a single playoff series, and barely).
I like Pettine because he seems like a central casting coach. But my affection is mighty flimsy. This team is awash with distractions from front office to coaches to players when its 16 year history screams for basic competence, stability and quiet. The team opened playing like it was a first preseason game, like it was prepared to lay down as soon as the back up threw a pick. Pettine may not pick the roster but those on it must be prepared and play hard throughout the game. His coaches must develop reasonable game plans and adjust to unfolding game conditions as the personnel permits. In his very first game as a HC Todd Bowles did that admirably for the Jets. We should expect no less from Pettine in his second season.
Hey, I have respect for the Computer Engineering department in that Northern University.
Craig, one of the bands you featured in a While We’re Waiting a couple of months ago, Bully, is playing the Beachland tonight, FYI.
He had a funny name though. I embrace such absurdity.
I agree. Supporting outrage with facts? Fine. Manufacturing facts to create outrage? Not fine.
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Great law school, too.
I hate appearing to side with the lowest common denominator and I want to be upfront that I am not here.
However, the negative tinge to the entire city of Cleveland during football season is something that I have not seen nor experienced in any other city in this beautiful country of ours. I remember the first trip home during the fall after spending a couple years living elsewhere. The shock to the system is tangible.
Hard to believe there isn’t some component to it (though I believe small). However, the fans did not sit on boatloads of cap room the past few offseason when there were glaring holes to address either.
Terrible football team though. Looking forward to that game as per usual this century.
That football team is the worst.
to be fair, the football team where one of the many annoying former Wisconsin coaches is apparently proven to be “the worst” that Northern team cannot even be the best at being the worst, apparently.
or is the other team with the annoying former Wisconsin coach “the worst” hmmm, well, one of them.
I still hear people say “these fans and the media ran Belichik out of town.” Talk about the Big Lie.
I have an easily exciteable UM acquaintance that, whenever the subject is introduced (by him always), about how great the school is…I quickly concede in my best condescending voice that it is a great academic school. They’re just not good at football.
Proudly immortalized by the Cleveland t-shirt economy, of course
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Sugar Ray couldn’t agree more unfortunately for you this isn’t a good thing. I’ll be real anxious to see West take on his former team unfortunately the game will have more to do with the deuce then anything which again, is not a good thing.
When I was living in western NY, it was pretty similar to how it was here. I haven’t been there in about 5 years, but it was pretty much bills/sabers hate 100% of the time. And to be fair, those teams were awful and deserved it.
Embrace the suck Lyndall that’s all you have to do. The only one to blame for that clown show clad in a football costume for Halloween is the Cleveland Browns.
Hey! Leave my fellow VF alum alone.
Does anyone really need to manufacture anything when it come to the clown show in Berea?
you think West is as good as Emmitt? okay, duly noted đ
Like a bigger Northwestern. Those footballers try so hard though. Good for them.
Don’t make me cut you supposedly one can die by a million paper cuts!
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Oh, I love it when the media likes to complain bemoan belittle criticize antagonize and more, AND then claims no responsibility for anything.
I used to enjoy the A-to-Z podcast, but I stopped listening. Because if we are “calling it like it is”, then those guys are like the grumpy old men from the muppets, EXCEPT that the muppets knew they were grumpy old men and A-toZ just pose as old men. Their basic message is: 1) we like to drink beer and eat chicken, 2) our wives put up with us, 3) we claim to have no dog in the fight, but we spend every podcast complaining about how bad the Browns are, and 4) we’re running out of soundbites and now we’re starting to sound incredibly whiney.
Oh, and… 5) when we complain about management –browns, media, everyone–, we have no daddy issues at all.
And to all podcasters everywhere: Being in your 30s doesn’t make you old. Seriously. Enjoy 35-39 without complaint. It gets much worse.
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