@hoorta said:

I'll happily take you up on this one. On paper, there's no way the Browns can beat the Bengals. And I don't like Christmas ale, thank you very much. I don't like any of that bizarre crap in my beer. FWIW, I've only lost one bet on line taking sucker bets. Ghoolie beat me once. If I had sent Guido to collect on all the money I was entitled to from RatBird fans who thought their team was actually going to win more than 7 games in 1996, I would have won over $1,000 bucks.

Mostly because we always play the Bengals tough and it's primetime.

@bbedward said:

I'll happily take you up on this one. On paper, there's no way the Browns can beat the Bengals. And I don't like Christmas ale, thank you very much. I don't like any of that bizarre crap in my beer. FWIW, I've only lost one bet on line taking sucker bets. Ghoolie beat me once. If I had sent Guido to collect on all the money I was entitled to from RatBird fans who thought their team was actually going to win more than 7 games in 1996, I would have won over $1,000 bucks.

@diehardbrownsfan said:

@diehardbrownsfan said:

So many know it all's in here. I'm fucking amazed.

you must be talking about the browns front office.

@tour2ma said:

I think we'll win. But kickoff I'll believe that we steamroll them. But I believe that we are going to win every single week.

And I actually agree. Totally irrational, but I agree...

@hoorta said:

it should be a massacre. bengals o has not erupted lately. they will thursday night.......

@hoorta said:

Bye week......Pettine stays. DC's head rolls though....maybe another coach or two.

@the-gipper said:

If there's a Thursday Night Massacre in Bungle Town, It's going to get so ugly- I don't see anyway possible Pettine can "Stay the Course".

Need a new DC.....and while McCown can be OK at times....I think we need to get the fresh blood evaluated at QB.....be it JMZ or Davis.

@flugel said:

I think we can find another DC candidate that can run hybrid fronts compatible with a lot of the personnel we have. This would actually promote more growth for Mike Pettine than staying in his comfort zone today.

First, post 172, your long one was really good stuff.

As for the above, great angle that hadn't really come up to this point. Group think is a deadly sin...

@the-gipper said:

That's probably true Gipper. That said, I never got the impression this was O'NEIL's defense. It's Pettine's defense that is getting puppeted through O'Neil with a turbulent learning curve full of growing pains for the DC and players. If Jimmy ends up demanding that Pettine fires O'Neil - he's basically firing a part of himself. Not much different than when Modell wanted Marty to hire an OC back when Marty wanted to keep Infante's offense after he was gone. The problem wasn't the design of the offense it was the lack of organizational skills and lack of experience our Infante replacement had that led to big clock management blunders. More specifically, if it wasn't coming from Lindy Infante - it wasn't going to look like his offense to anyone but the Head Coach with the idea. I think we can find another DC candidate that can run hybrid fronts compatible with a lot of the personnel we have. This would actually promote more growth for Mike Pettine than staying in his comfort zone today.

Last week, we began the game with the defense playing good. It was our offense that gave up the first TD while their turnovers and penalties never gave us a vibe they were going to be worth more than 2 FGs all game long. I wonder how it would have played out if we could have ever possessed the ball for a 7 -8 minute drive punctuated by a TD.

@the-cysko-kid said:

I'm never that smart. I get on the bi-polar coaster every Sunday and go from game face to X's and Uh-O's. Then, I get to read "Fire the Coach" every week from the same knucklehead that thinks Al Golden or Ken Whisenhunt is the solution to all our problems. Once in a while I buffer my expectation like the Denver game before the Browns reel me back into "hey we can win this game!"

This week? I'm not that smart again.

@miktoxic said:

No one is asking a new regime to walk in and win a Superbowl.

They are asking the new regime to draft good football players, make good FA acquisitions, and play hard passionate football on Sundays instead of this lazy sloppy infested bullshit Pettine and Farmer put on the field.

someone please give me an example of what team did this and where are they at now?

@browns52 said:

There's a lot of misplaced anger and frustration that wants it as easy as firing the HC that was sentenced to playing gridiron chess with pawns. If it was ever that easy, we wouldn't be firing Head Coaches every 2 years with shrinking volumes of interested candidates in the aftermath. If we fire a Head Coach just to find we're choosing between Al Golden and Ken Whisenunt at the end of this year - why? We fired Mangini to hire Pat Shurmur and we won even less games the next 2 years than the previous 2 years. When we fired Chud for Pettine, we not only improved by 3 wins - but our competitive value improved to 60 minutes as teams like Carolina, Buffalo, Balt twice, Indy and Pitt either had to erase 2nd half deficits or ties with us. That was an enormous improvement we need to keep in mind considering how long we've sucked at finding upgrades to the previous Head Coaches we were disappointed in.

At 1 point in Pittsburgh, they came to a cross road where the owner had a decision to make between keeping GM Tom Donahoe or HC Bill Cowher. Unfortunately, they upgraded the GM considerably which also improved the drafting for the philosophy/schemes of the Coaching Staff. Knowing which person was the bigger anchor to progress sure changed the direction there.

When Mike Pettine worked in NY with 2 shutdown corners securing the back end, the front 7 of the D was good enough to make 2 consecutive AFC Championships. In our 2014 draft, he may have told Farmer he wanted an elite corner or one determined by the scouting dept and Farmer to be the best. That said, none of us really knows to what extent he had autonomy on making the decision of corners. There was also a damn good offensive line winning time of possession wars throughout the learning curve of Mark Sanchez. They had Nick Mangold, D'Brick Ferguson, and Alan Faneca just to name a few. NY made that an easier place to play QB. I can't blame our staff or front office for expecting continued progress from our offensive line for the running game this year when I overrated what they projected just as much. I get the feeling Pettine was hoping to have that NY model here but we've had trouble keeping our #1 and our #3 corners healthy this year while Gipson (after being disappointed w/contract) has been injured most of the year. That's 3 DBs we went into the year really counting on folks. It's impacted things.

My frustration after watching a WR Corps only contribute 8 TD receptions to the running game that was carrying us throughout much of 2014 - is we added ZERO to help the QB in our red zone passing game in 2015. As I mentioned somewhere, the COACHING is actually getting a career best out of the wing span/catch radius of our 6'6" TE Gary Barnidge. Benjamin leads the WRs again in TD receptions but most of those were from outside of the red zone beating corners deep.

I'm also frustrated we drafted a QB that only half of those in charge gave a stamp of approval to. Doesn't matter if me or any other fan was excited or nervous about it - we're a franchise that can't afford to flush any more first round picks down the toilet. If the divide was that big to the extent that all we'll ever do with the pick is make a 3-4 year intern out of the QB - ummm WTF? That didn't do 1 person in the front office, coaching staff or fan base any favors.

If we DID draft a guy like Carr - would Farmer/those in charge have been smart enough to surround him with guys like Cooper and Crabtree outside or keep the QB sentenced to tiny 5'7" targets with not much of a catch radius? Even worse, I can't imagine QBs like throwing short slant passes downward when there's a bunch of pass rushers over 6'3" tall. That asks a lot of your QB. We're lucky McCown isn't playing like he's 36 years old; but he's getting beat up enough to feel like he's 40 right now. If we had enough outside to respect, it would open things up for the running game as we started to find during our 0-5 conclusion in 2014. We're not promoting a balanced attack QBs need.

Knowing Kikko Alonso was defensive rookie of the year with O'Neil as his position coach; while our LBers improved considerably in coverage in 2014 (Craig Robertson in particular) - I'd keep him as a LBer Coach only and advise Pettine to hire a new DC immediately if I was Jimmy. I'd also make whoever is accountable for messing up the draft inform me how he's going to improve that process. If I don't like what I hear, I've already been busy researching candidates that can't do worse. I'd also try to talk with the team leaders and emphasize their importance overall or empower Pettine to have this chat. If Joe Thomas would have walked up to the tune box blasting in our locker room immediately after the loss in St Louis and crushed it by stepping down on it with 1 foot - I guarantee it would have created a church mouse effect while delivering the message to everyone that needed to receive it.

@mark-o said:

I don't think that is true......but with another poor performance against the run......and Chris Johnson is right now the #2 rusher in the league.....I just think that O'Neil will be digging his grave deeper.

@browns52 said:

That's not what you said. You said if we lose to the Cardinals someone is gettting fired.