How the historic week went down

MDDawg

Great article from Profootball talk on how the team handled the covid setback and prepared. One of the takeaways is the synergy of coach and GM, we're really lucky to have them and this organization is going to win the SuperBowl with that duo.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/01/11/cleveland-browns-nfl-playoffs-fmia-peter-king/

GBfan2011

@mddawg said:

Great article from Profootball talk on how the team handled the covid setback and prepared. One of the takeaways is the synergy of coach and GM, we're really lucky to have them and this organization is going to win the SuperBowl with that duo.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/01/11/cleveland-browns-nfl-playoffs-fmia-peter-king/

I loved that game last night!

The Gipper

Hopefully a new Era has been augured in.

Such historic mismanagement in the past 20 years. Eventually things had to turn around. And now we think they have.

SdBacker80

@the-gipper said:

Hopefully a new Era has been augured in.

Such historic mismanagement in the past 20 years. Eventually things had to turn around. And now we think they have.

It’s funny how GM, Coach, QB are just so important in today’s game and to think most if not all of the past 20 years - we were 0 for 3 there.

It makes your approach to offseason easier too. We need back 7 players- much easier task when you don’t need to replace one of these elements I mentioned above and just center your focus on ancillary pieces.

Tour2ma

@mddawg said:

Great article from Profootball talk on how the team handled the covid setback and prepared. One of the takeaways is the synergy of coach and GM, we're really lucky to have them and this organization is going to win the SuperBowl with that duo.

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/01/11/cleveland-browns-nfl-playoffs-fmia-peter-king/

Just stumbled across this myself and was about to post it...

Great read... especially the second section which should be titled, "The Saga of Blake Hance". It's as funny as it was timely.

Here it is...

A week in the corona-wracked season of the Cleveland Browns begins, actually, on the Saturday before the week started. This was the day before the Cleveland-Pittsburgh regular-season finale, and GM Andrew Berry was worried. Cleveland’s two offensive line coaches, Bill Callahan and Scott Peters, tested positive for COVID-19, and the Browns couldn’t take the chance that the virus would bubble up Sunday and take a player or players off the offensive line.

Berry phoned Jets GM Joe Douglas, a friend, in New Jersey at 9:38 a.m. Berry didn’t want to blindside Douglas by pillaging one of his practice-squad players without telling him. So Berry explained about the line coaches, and his fear that there might be a spread, and he needed an insurance tackle, and he liked second-year practice-squadder Blake Hance of the Jets. The Jets were going to Foxboro that day, and Berry wanted to make sure he could sign Hance before the Jets left for Massachusetts. Douglas understood. In fact, he had Jets personnel coordinator Christina Wedding print Hance’s Jets termination letter and his agreement with Cleveland, so Hance could sign them and they could be filed with the league.

Now for the COVID issue. It’s good that Berry liked Hance—the Browns were going to try to sign him for 2021 camp anyway—because Cleveland needed a player who was within driving distance of Cleveland and had been in a regular team testing program. Huh? If a player flies to a new city, he must test negative for five days while quarantining because of the risk of COVID-contact in an airport or airplane. If Berry had been the Seattle GM, with the nearest NFL city 15 hours away by car (Niners), it would have been totally impractical to get a player on the same day it occurred to a GM to sign him. But there are 11 NFL teams within a seven-hour drive of Cleveland. Hance was on one of them, six-and-a-half hours and 443 miles away by car, and he had tested negative that morning in Florham Park, N.J., home of the Jets. He had a car. After signing the contracts, Hance packed his things, hopped on I-80, and was at the Browns’ Intercontinental Hotel by 7 p.m., ready for virtual meetings with his new team.

In an elevator at the hotel, masked, he saw someone he recognized. Hance was a training-camp cut of Washington in 2019, blocking in camp for quarterback Case Keenum. Now he saw Keenum, the backup to Baker Mayfield.

“I know you, right?” Keenum said, trying to place the face—hard to do, when the face is masked.

“Case, it’s Blake—Blake Hance,” he said.

Whoa. Keenum wondered what this masked man from his past was doing in the Browns hotel the night before the biggest game of the year.

“I’m on the team now,” Hance said.

Blake Hance is going to have a great story to tell his grandchildren one day. Said Berry, who started the wheels turning: “It’s very much a 2020 story.”

Tour2ma

The Hance saga also testifies to the relationship Berry has developed/ is developing with his peers.

Something Sashi never learned the value of during his stint.

Ibleedbrown

I wonder if the Jets GM did an ABBA impression?

“Baby he’s still free

Take a Hance from me...”

Tour2ma

@ibleedbrown said:

I wonder if the Jets GM did an ABBA impression?

“Baby he’s still free

Take a Hance from me...”

So bad it's funny...

Well done.