Cleveland Browns Have Lots Of Excuses, One Win

The Browns seem to be living up to expectations this year—the incredibly low expectations head coach Eric Mangini set before the year started.

What has been apparent since the day training camp opened is that there are plenty of excuses. Some of these excuses are being presented as rationalizations, but they are excuses nonetheless.

The swampy morass the Browns seem to be continually mired in is becoming harder and harder to watch because there is no end in sight. Since returning in 1999, the Browns have made the playoffs once and only had what could be considered two good seasons.

Going into the 2009 season, most rational Browns fans weren’t expecting a playoff team, but they were expecting improvement. So far the team has lived up to the lowered expectation of not being a playoff team, and let everyone down in the improvement department.

Mangini finds himself under constant fire from the fans and the media. The firestorm from the media is mainly self-inflicted, so he’ll get no sympathy from anyone on that front. However, the fan ire is becoming more and more justified when you look at some of the decisions he’s made, and how he’s gone about them.

The quarterback situation in Cleveland is a mess, and it’s been written about ad nauseum, but it best illustrates why fans are upset with Mangini.

In 2007, Derek Anderson's stats in the first eight games (including the second half of game one after Charlie Frye was benched) were 148-for-257 for 2,108 yards with 17 touchdowns, nine interceptions, a 57.6 percent completion rate and a 91.7 QB rating.

Once opposing defensive coordinators had some tape on him and were able to break him down, Anderson’s stats fell to 150-for-270 for 1,679 yards with 12 touchdowns, 10 interceptions, a 55.6 percent completion rate and a 73.7 QB rating.

Looking at Anderson after Brady Quinn got some starts looks even worse.

Here are Anderson’s stats from the two games he played after Quinn got injured last year and so far this year: 69-for-148 for 667 yards, two touchdowns, seven interceptions with a 46.6 percent completion rate and a 44.51 QB rating.

After the loss to Pittsburgh on Sunday, Mangini said he still think Anderson presents the team with its best chance to win.

Now throw into this mix the accelerators on Brady Quinn’s contract, where if he takes at least 70 percent of the snaps this year, he’ll start earning around $9 million in incentives.

This situation is ripe for conspiracy theories, and rightfully so, but if this whole benching Quinn situation is to give the Browns the best chance to win, how does putting a quarterback who has shown steadily decreasing numbers accomplish that?

But once again, there are excuses. The receivers can’t catch the balls. It was windy. The team came down with Swine Flu. Hank Poteat didn’t wear his lucky socks.

Of course, receivers have to catch the balls thrown to them since that is their job, but Anderson was 9-for-24 on Sunday. Not every single one of those incompletions was due to Butterfingers McGee and the Brick Hands Orchestra.

The quarterback controversy during preseason, in retrospect, was horribly mishandled by Mangini. He favored playing mind games rather than preparing his team, and the results speak for themselves.

Looking at offensive coordinator Brain Daboll’s schemes, it doesn’t look like one thing has changed since Anderson started taking snaps. Quinn was eviscerated for checking down too quickly and not throwing downfield, but most of Anderson’s pass attempts have been for less than 20 yards.

Granted Anderson has flung the ball downfield a little more than Quinn did, but not enough to justify the Quinn criticism. Daboll simply runs an ultra-conservative offense that relies on the running game and short passes.

In fact, only the Oakland Raiders average fewer passing yards than the Browns. To further put to rest any selective criticism of Quinn, the Browns are averaging 4.9 yards per pass attempt this season. That number ranks the Browns dead last.

In case nobody noticed, Anderson’s touch on short and mid-range passes is terrible. They usually are behind the receiver or at his feet. Even when he hits the numbers, the pass is flung so hard it bounces off their jersey before they can catch it.

This is not to say Quinn is the answer, nor is it to demand Quinn be given his job back immediately. Quinn played terrible for 10 quarters and now he’s on the bench. However, the reasons for his benching now sound more like excuses to cover up Daboll’s mistakes.

Since Daboll also makes the least use out of what little talent he has, Mangini constantly has had to cover for the lack of the Wildcat formation promised during preseason.

Joshua Cribbs finally got some Wildcat snaps last week, the first time since Week One. There were lots of excuses for that, but no real reasons.

Daboll is a rookie coordinator with very thin qualifications for the job, but Mangini knows him and trusts him to do as he is told. It also gives the Browns another excuse for looking overmatched on the field since Mangini has done nothing about it.

That’s the core of the problem with Mangini this year. He seems to be in constant “evaluation” mode with his players. If he’s still evaluating, that means he isn’t focused on winning the games.

Read the transcript of any Mangini press conference and all he ever talks about is where the team is in the “process.” He never once talks about “X's and O's” in a “How we will win the game” manner. It’s all about the process.

Meanwhile, the team has one lackluster win and looks rudderless on the field.

Then there is the defense, which has performed about as well as its talent could provide until last week. Defensive coordinator Rob Ryan seemed to go into a shell versus the Steelers. There was no pressure on Ben Roethlisberger, the receivers were wide open, and tackling was amateur at best.

Ryan promised shades of the “4-6” defense this year, but the team really hasn’t shown it.

What was shown on Sunday was a pass rush so weak Roethlisberger had time to read the defense a half-dozen times each play. Receivers were so wide open that they had time to fall down, get up, change into a clean uniform, and then gain some extra yardage after the catch.

The zone the Browns played didn’t have a lot of logic to it as I saw Brandon McDonald run AWAY from a receiver after he’d caught the ball on one play. I made sure to watch the replay to confirm that.

Mangini preached patience before the season started, which is code for “Bad team, don’t blame me.”

That the team needed a serious rebuilding project isn’t being argued. However, this team looks even worse than last year when they went 4-12.

There is hope to eke out some victories toward the end of the season when we face the Chiefs, Raiders, and the Jaguars to finish it off, but that doesn’t mean the team has gotten any better.

Denver head coach Josh McDaniels boasts very similar pedigree to Mangini, and granted the Broncos have more talent than the Browns, but his team is 6-0 compared to Cleveland’s 1-5. Like Mangini, he was under a constant barrage of negative press.

The difference, it seems, is that McDaniels seems is bringing the best out in the talent he has while Mangini and gang only seem to find new lows. 

That's a reason, not an excuse, and Mangini better start finding reasons his team can’t even perform up to a collegiate level. Or all his talk about playing “good, smart football” will mean about as much as a win in preseason.

McDaniels eschewed excuses and found a way to win.

The fans in Cleveland are tired of excuses. Mangini needs to stop the constant evaluation of the roster and start winning games.