Ok guys, time to report in. I actually had great seats for the game, and it's extremely disappointing that the game wasn't better. I was sitting 23 rows up at the 25 yard line, so no complaints there. About the ONLY good thing was that Josh Gordon caught our only touchdown RIGHT in front of me. He had a slight push off, but made an absurd adjustment for the catch. Good lord that guy is special. Please Josh, please don't torture us any more and keep it together. As we always say, it's only preseason. It's important to remember that when things are going well, and when they aren't. We don't want to jump to any rash outlooks after the 3rd preseason game. That being said, I have to agree with people that say the "progress" we made was deeply disturbing for many different reasons. Right away I noticed our pass rush was nonexistent. I mean, who in the heck is going to get to the QB on a consistent basis? Winston had ALL DAY to throw the ball, and even if we flushed him from the pocket, we had no chance at getting him. The play that sticks out to me was the touchdown Winston threw at the goal line. Initially we had great coverage, and we eventually flushed Winston from the pocket. I forget who, but somebody had pursuit of Winston and drove him to the sideline. It looked like we had a chance to push him out of bounds or force a throw away, but our defender dove about ten minutes early and COMPLETELY whiffed on the tackle. I mean, he wasn't even close. If our defender just pursues the QB and doesn't dive like a moron, MAYBE he hurries Winston up and he throws it away or runs out of bounds. It was truly awful. RG III's numbers don't look bad on paper, but in person is a totally different story. He looked indecisive and timid. The first bomb to Gordon was an ugly ball, and he was WIDE open. Whenever a receiver is THAT open, I can understand just wanting to complete the pass and maybe taking something off of it, but that throw was BAD. A decent toss, not even a good one, would've given Josh the chance to make a move on the safety and score. The safety had the angle, and probably would've gotten him, but Josh is special. Pushing him to the sideline with that pass was not the throw he should've made. He could've lead him a bit inside on an underthrow, and THAT would've been better. The other bomb to Gordon was a decent throw for sure, and Gordon was able to slightly push off and make the absurd catch. You take those away, and Griffin didn't do much. He was sacked five times (four when Joe Thomas left), but the sacks weren't always the result of awful protection. I haven't seen the bird's eye view to know whether or not RG III made the wrong reads, but I can pretty much guess that he didn't get rid of the ball on time on several of those sack plays. Penalties...need I say more? These killed so many drives and extended others for Bucs. Sickening. Danny Shelton is slowly coasting down the busy road of "Browns First Round Bust Drive". Yes, I know he had a forced fumble (that we somehow didn't carry into the end zone...ugh), but this guy was the freaking #12 pick of the damn draft! Can somebody PLEASE tell me what Shelton does that other people in the league can't. Oh, he takes up space? Are you telling me that there aren't other huge DT's in the league? Have you EVER seen Shelton burst through the line and harass the QB? Maybe once? Listen, I understand that he's about to begin his second year, so it's a bit premature to label him as being like just about every other first round nightmare, but I don't see it. I just don't. Justin Gilbert. Uh...not encouraging. Don't want to say he completely sucked, as I believe he had a nice pass break up early, but he didn't impress. Lots of DB's have been torched by Mike Evans and Vince Jackson, so it's not completely fair to judge him from this game. But...I'd like to see more. A big play, a turnover...something. He's the #8 pick btw. Did I mention no pass rush? We stopped the run a little better I thought. Coons made all of his kicks (I think). Running game looked just ok. No huge runs that I saw, and penalties effectively halted any progress made in that department. A holding penalty means punt for our team, I promise you that. At one time we had several 3rd and VERY longs in a row. I remember one 3rd and 16 where we completed a 4 yard pass. Ho-hum. I know that's pretty common for NFL teams to do on 3rd and a mile, but I was hoping for some risk taking. Hue Jackson hasn't really shown any trick plays in the preseason (that I can think of), and that's not a total surprise. Coach wouldn't want to give anything away when it doesn't count, but still...we looked VERY vanilla. I'll write more later, but we don't have much time to get this taste out of our mouth and get ready for the real deal. In case you haven't noticed, we don't exactly shine in season openers. Sam Bradford can be a pretty accurate passer if he has time, and guess what? He's going to have PLENTY of time when he plays us.