They say a win is a win. How true. No matter how pathetic the Cleveland Browns looked against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday afternoon, all that will be noted when people look back on this one is that the Browns came away with the win by the final score of 20-12. Forget the atrocious play of QB Derek Anderson once more, forget the mere 43 yards rushing Jamal Lewis came up with after the game’s very first drive despite the Bengals having only the 28th ranked rush defense in the league, forget the 9 penalties (most of which were mental in nature), forget the fact that the Bengals were playing without their leader, captain, Pro Bowler, All-Pro QB Carson Palmer and instead had a QB making his first start since 2005 and who played his college ball at Harvard, forget the fact that the Browns were losing 6-3 to an 0-3 team with no QB heading into the 4th quarter. No, instead, people (the Browns) will say that all that matters is coming out unscathed with a win and that the Browns are now 1-3 instead of 0-4.

You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not beaming with enthusiasm after having to sit through yet another inexcusably poor performance for 3 quarters, and even into the 4th quarter. This was a game in which the Browns mustered only 134 net yards rushing and 127 net yards passing. Derek Anderson managed a QB Score of -9 for the game, a vast improvement from his QB Score of -121 the week before, but it was still his 3rd consecutive game with a negative QB Score.  [Read more...]