^ You do realize the "west coast" offense originated in the midwest under Bill Walsh. He learned many things from Paul brown when he was with the Cincinatti Bengals and also implemented his own system when he was OC with the bengals.

3rd quarter, we're down 17-3 on the 49ers 40 yard line and Squirter frickin punts the ball?????????????????????

Why? Why? Why? Did he really think we'd get a better oppurtunity to score????

I know this is slightly off topic but I'm a young Browns fan who was in middle school during the Butch Davis/Tim Couch era. I was just curious why he was fired considering he was the only coach to get us to the playoffs since the 99 expansion. Looking back, it's almost unbelievable that they did since it was only their 4th year back from expansion and had worse talent then this current team does.

It says Haden has a sprained knee. Does that mean torn ligaments?

No way you give up the dawg pound man. That fits the browns blue collar, tough identity and helps with our "branding" as a team around the NFL. Without the Dawg stuff, honestly, our mascot, jerseys, colors, team name is all kid of lame.....being named after a dead guy rather than something cool and timeless like "lions" or "bears" ?

The Browns will likely be drafting in the middle of the pack since I believe we'll go .500 this year. When you're drafting middle or late in the first round, I think it's good to just focus on getting the best available player regardless of position (other than a qb or a rb since we have franchise players in McCoy and Hillis).

This way you don't reach for a position and get a guy who is a bust. I'd be happy to draft a can't miss corner or free safety as our first pick if I knew he would be a solid NFL player. Even though we need a LB more than we need a db, I dont want to draft a LB who isn't any better than some veteran we can sign off the street. The key is getting difference makers. Pro-bowl caliber players, not just guys good enough to start to fill a vacant roster spot. That;s what FA is for.

Free Agency is a huge factor. If the Browns are planning to make a playoff move, they can spend their cash on any vacant positions they missed in the draft.

If we draft 17 or 18 we may have a good chance to get the 2nd best offensive lineman available. These guys drop a lot since losing teams want to draft high profile college stars to appease their fan base. We could get a superstar o lineman at this spot.

There will always be quality, proven receivers to pick up in free agency. This isn't as true for o-lineman. We should look to draft o-line unless there is still a potential dominating lb on the board.

@represent said:

That's a hard opinion to follow because if you base it on that a majority of our schedule is shitty teams, so when can you accurately rate the browns? the first steelers game? by then we could be 8 wins deep already.... don't like awe man we beat shitty teams so our record don't matter

Uhhhh yes the xxxx it does, a majority of the games these good teams win off are against OH MY xxxxING GOD against shitty teams, lol so what makes the browns different? get the xxxx out of here.

If we don't luckout against Miami and are sitting at 1-2, do ANY of you say we are going to go 11-5? Shit, after Cinci everyone here was crying about going 5-11 again.

I love the browns, but quit being a delusional homer. This is not our year to compete for the playoffs. We are not an 11-5 football team. We are a very competitive, rebuilding team that is a year or two away from being the best team in the AFC North. Yes, we play a soft schedule, but we will play bad against those teams as well since we are young and inconsistent.

Our coach has not shown he can be a consistent play caller, our qb has not shown he can be a consistent playmaker, our wr corps is belowe average in talent, the right side of our line is weak....

Defensively, we have played against 2 of the worst offsneses in the NFL (Cinci and Indi). Miami's offense I'll conceed we did a good job against, but can we maintain that level of play? We have given up an over 100 yards rushing to a runningack to both Cinci and Miami. Our run defense isn't putting fear in anyone, lets just say that.

Seriously, WATCH the games around the NFL. Other than the Cinci-SF game and the Jax-Carolina game, our game was the most non-eventful, low quality game of the week. Why? Because with Hillis out, Josh Cribbs is our only flashy offensive player, and he is much better on special teams. Our offense is below average and is going to lose us games that we should have won.

Our two wins are against opponents who are 0-3. Both will go 4-12 this year. We lost to an opponent who is 1-2 and will prolly go 4-12.

We have played 3 dogshit teams and looked like dogshit in each one of of them. The colts was our best game and we played verrrry average. The other two games we were outplayed.

We are not a good team yet and we are so thin at every position that we won't be able to sustain a high level of play for 17 weeks. We are on the right track since we're starting to draft pro-bowl caliber players, but comeone guys....11-5?

I say 7-9 or 8-8 due to softest schedule in the NFL.

@jake24 said:

Greg Little 4 catches for 38 yards...........you call that a positive?! thats so so as so so can get.

Watch the games instead of whacking it to fantasy football. Greg made difficult catches on all downs to help move the chains. He did everything we needed him to do. He can't make plays downfield yet because colt doesn't have enough time to sit in the pocket and deliver the football with accuracy. Right now, we need quick hitting plays that either create short yardage situations or to move the cahins on 3rd and 5.

are u freaking kidding me? 94 yards 2 td's and over 30 yards receiving playing on one of the most NON-EXPLOSIVE and slowest offenses in the league. Not to mention not having one single solitary hole to run through all game, plus being game planned heavily by every opponent we face.

Don't give me the horseshit about his yards per carry. The dude earned every single yard he gained all day. I challenege any other back in the league to outperform Hillis today going against the non-existent holes Hillis had to run through all day.

I thought Cribbs was used effectively today. We have to have him in the game to run pass routes on some plays, otherwise, whenever he is in the game the defense will know its a screen pass.

He is not a great wide receiver in the traditional sense, but he is capable of making plays downfield. He caught a deep pass for a td from Mccoy in pre-season this year. And, just his presence causes defenses to take notice and possibly adjust their formation or coverage. This helps other guys get open.

Cribbs is a bottomline stud. I hope he has proven to Shurmur he deserves more touches and maybe they can add the WildDawg package w. josh in addition to the screen passes that they have added in the gameplan. Anyway to get this guy the ball should be welcomed because everytime he touches it he is electric and gets way more yardage than you thought was even possible to get.

Positives- Josh Cribbs winning us the game on special teams and quick screens. This guy does not cease to amaze me on how many guys he can make miss. Shurmur did a great job using him on offense.

Greg Little's performance was a positive not a so-so. He made tough catches in traffic that helped moved the chains. Perfect execution for the west coast offense. He will catch balls downfield as soon as we get an offensive line that can protect out qb.

Jaball Sheard got to the qb and made plays behind the LOS. He is developing into a playmaker.

TJ Ward showed great coverage ability today. He should be off everyone's shit list now.

Smith made tough catches in traffic and took many shots while doing so. He helped his qb out by being a reliable target.

Hillis was a total beast today earning every yard he gained. I don't believe there is any other back in the NFL that would have got the yardage he got today with the browns lackluster offensive line.

The so-so was Colt Mccoy. He managed the game well, no turnovers, scrambled for a first down, throws well outside of the pocket. He missed a few open looks today (hillis in the goaline the most obvious) he almost had a fumble for loss, and he gets his receivers killed by throwing into zone coverages where the defender is closing down hard. He played o.k, even slightly good, but not anything to be impressed about.

Another so-so is our punter. He is a hige improvement from McGee, but I would have liked to see him pin the colts back inside the 10 atleast once instead of out of bounds at the 18.

The negatives were Shurmur's personell and gametime decisions. Hardest on the goaline was NOT the time to bring in an inexperienced backup off the bench who is out of sync with the whole game. Also, the third and 2 run to marecic just sucked major ass.

Another negative is not scoring td's inside the 10. We need to find ways to score td's. Evan Moore would have been a nice target to throw too. Mixing up the playcalling with play actions on first down can help as well.

The last negative was our run d. They are giving up way too many chunks of yards on first downs. Colts suck at running the football and we let them play in second and short all day long. Thank god Kerry Collins sucks as bad as he does to not be able to take advantage of the weapons he has because our run defense played poorly enough to cost us this game.

The Eagles will be trying out your strategy this year. The Colts have used it for years and it backfired on them last week.

The biggest problem with it is inside the 20. It's hard for the offense to score tds in the red zone if they can't run the ball. On the contrary you can suck at pass covrage, but play a bend-don't-break defense and then tighten up in the red zone to hold teams to field goals like the browns defense did last year.

It's really all about matchups. If you're playing in the NFC West, then it would be smart to play in the Nickel defense most of the game since they throw 50 times a game. If you play in the AFC North, then you will get your ass handed to you playing with undersized defenders.

The browns lack of size at lb sure as shit hurt them when we needed a stop under 2 minutes last week.

"It's bullshit man. Hate? It isn't hate, it is called common sense. Holmgren has been here long enough to have put some impact players on the team. We dont' have one single impact player on this team; not ONE game changer, not ONE guy who can turn the outcome of a game around." -from Ghoolie

Josh Cribbs is a game changer. He almost won the game for us last week and single handedly kept us alive in the game.

Hillis is a game changer by his physical down hill running style. If the saints had Hillis rather than Ingram they may be sitting at 1-0 right now.

I completely agree.

Shurmur is getting way too much hate already. We haven't seen this team play enough games to really get to know his tendencies and if his team is IMPROVING from week to week.

That;s basically the reason Mangini got fired. His teams lost the last 4 games of the year when were "technically" still in the playoff hunt. (yes we were mathematically alive at 5-7 We not only lost the last 4, which 3 I believe were aginst divisional opponents, we also looked very bad in them.

The reason why its extremely negative in this forum is that this was such a bad loss. The opponent was dreadful, we were at home, relatively high expectations (media "gurus" like Cowherd have us at 8-8), a divsional rival, and all of the mistakes that were made that lead to the loss.

I can tell you that I was really, really pissed off on Sunday, but it was just dissapointment as a fan. Any rational, intelligent football fan should support a front office who is looking to build a winning franchise, and they should look for indicators on Sundays that their franchise is taking the right steps at improving and building.

If we are patient as fans, we will get there sooner than people think. The building blocks are in place. We already have a franchise left tackle (Thomas), a franchise RB (Hillis), a franchise cover corner (haden), a franchise qb in TIME (Colt) and franchise interior lineman (Rubin and Taylor). All of these guys for the exception of Colt are pro-bowl caliber players. Other potential pro bowlers are T.J Ward (if he sharpens up his coverage skills) and Alex Mack.

The big keys we are missing that are essential are a franchise pass rusher, and a franchise receiver. We addressed these issues in the draft when we got Sheard and Little. They may be busts but that shit happens to every team. Julio Jones would have been nice, but now we have 2 first round draft picks next year to get 2 more franchise players. It's not a bad trade as long as Holgrem and Heckert don't xxxx up.

The reason we are losing is that we are so thin at every position that we are getting bottom tier players that have had to step in and start for us at KEY positions such as O-line and defensive back. If you have shit players at O-line and defensive back then good luck winning games in the NFL.

Where I think Heckert and Holgrem really dropped the ball is with Marecic and Jordan Cameron. Those were shit shit shit picks that I hated from day 1. How do you draft a xxxxing FB and TE when you have a pro-bowl caliber player in Vickers, and a damn solid duo in Ben Watson and Evan Moore at tight end. These picks were wasted, especially when you have gaping holes at wide receiver, defensive back, defensive end, and a thin offensive line.

signing T.O would be a joke move and embarresing to our organization. It reeks of desperation from the front office.

The free agency money should be spent on defensive players and offensive lineman. This teams identity needs to be about running the football well, playing hard-nosed defense, and outplaying your opponent on special teams. The west coast offense should be utilized for balance, but we don't have the personell to use it as a pass happy offense the way Shurmur wants it to be.

What made me sick the most about last week's game was all of the third and longs. We need to control the tempo of the game by shoving Hillis down the defenses throat. If our lineman can't create any holes then that has to be the first issue addressed if you're going to go out and look for free agents. Wide receivers need about 3-4 seconds to get adequate seperation. If your o-line sux and lets the opposition's d-line get to Colt and completely collapse the pocket in 1 second, how the hell are the receivers expected to make plays downfield.

Everyone knows that we need an upgrade at receiver, but many productive receivers are really the product of the system they play in. If you have a coach that has shitty play calling, an inconsistent and thin o-line, a quarterback who is still UNPROVEN and shell-shocked a bit at the speed of the NFL game , then you're not going to be very productive at wide receiver.

Can we atleast wait to see how he performs before we start with the b*tching.

I mean, aren't you glad they brought in another punter to replace McGee? WTF do you guys expect??

I think Buster could see some significant playing time this week. We need his speed on the field. He made a hell of a play on kickoff this week. I wanna see him in pass coverage.

Indy is going to come out in 4 wr sets with wayne, garcon, collie, and clark (playing in the slot). Who is going to substitute in when they come out with this? Patterson?

Don't be suprised to see our secondary get torched with weapons like Reggie Wayne, Austin Collie, and Dallas Clark. Kerry Kollins is not as bad as he played last Sunday. If he gets time to throw, he easily has the ability to throw for 350 yards against us.

This is a big evaluation game for T.J and Usama Young. They will be matched up against Clark the majority of the time. Can they guard him? We know TJ likes to deliver heavy blows, but if he is going to be an elite safety that we're hoping for him to be, he needs to show he can guard guard his man and break up passes over the middle.

Usama needs to be reliable and help out over the top when Wayne and Collie go deep. We can't afford to give up bombs. Make Collins sustain drives and move the chains. The longer the ball is in his hands to manage the game, the more errors the offense will make.

If our safeties play the way they did against Cinci, Clark will be a nightmare for us. On a schematic level, the 4-3 is an easier front for tight ends to get open on. They have less linebackers to jam them. There's also less men to maneuver through. Also, if our 4 man front can't get pressure we'll have to send additional lb's making the tight end wide open as a hot read.

As always, the key for our defense is the ability of our front 4 to pressure collins. But the biggest factor this week is the ability for TJ Ward to man up on Clark and take away the easy throws for collins. If he can cover Clark, Collins will have to make longer throws and essentially "force it" into tight coverage where players like Haden can make a play.

Sheldon Brown is a mismatch trying to guard Collie. But, Usama Young can roll his coverage to his side and offer help to Sheldon Brown. I trust Joe Hayden can keep Reggie Wayne on an island by himself.

I would expect to see the Colts come out guns blazing. 4 Receiver sets and empty backfields. They don't like to run the football and I don't expect to see them try.

I don't think Shurmur was trying to nurse the lead. His strategy was to score more points like any other offensive coach would try to do. Was he effective? No, but I promise you he wasn't content with a 4 point lead. He's not Jim Tressel.

OP,You have a problem with him running HILLIS? Since when is trying to run the ball with Hillis a bad strategy? Other fans (myself included) thought Hillis should have gotten the rock more. The goaline where we settled for a field goal was a disgrace. We should have run on 2nd and 3rd down to stuff it in. Even if he doesn't score in two more attempts, it will prolly be 4 and inches from the goaline where would have likely scored a td.

The problem was the offensive strategy and the punt team (McGee) sucking it up so badly in the first quarter, we were trailing 13-0 before we knew what hit us. Shurmur wants to pass to set up the run, which is a good strategy, but it backfired yesterday. If we would have ground and pounded Hillis, there's no way Cinci gets such good field position and such an early lead.

Colt McCoy had 40 pass attempts. This is about 10-12 too many. It's no secret we don't have the weapons to be slinging it on every down.

Hillis gives you short yardage situation to open up your playbook and move the chains with two yard crossing patterns and short dump offs to tight ends.

I have a big problem with you coming on here and blaming the coach for running the ball to Hillis who is our most valuable player on offense. How else do you plan to sustain drives? Passes to Robiskie and NO mass?