Coaches Mangini, Daboll and Seely Sent to The Dawghouse For Browns Loss to Jets

THE DAWGHOUSE

Welcoming Those Ol' Browns Blues 

I've got the blues today...Monday morning Browns loss blues. 

I hate to see my team lose, especially yesterday's game versus the Jets, when three upset wins in a row were within reach and would've been as sweet as a child's laughter or a Bobby Mitchell swivel hip fake. 

Sure, I've felt like this before. Back in the days of the Drive and the Fumble, it would take me until Wednesday or Thursday to bounce back enough to face the world, where I live side by side but not heart to heart with 49er fans who in those glory days were too engorged with gluttonous glee to be humble about their team's embarrassment of riches. 

When I first moved to the Bay Area, the Niners sucked. I could go to Candlestick on Sunday afternoon and buy a ticket for any seat location in the park. But then Bill Walsh and Joe Montana and The Catch brought everyone out of the woodwork and into the malls to buy dusty Niners' apparel, and suddenly the landscape shifted to one of 49er mania.   

It was tough for us Browns fans back then. Bernie and the boys were pounding at the door, the hinges were creaking, some screws popped out, but football's fickle fate intervened and denied them entrance into the big dance. 

So, like all Bay Area Browns Backers, I had to dig down deep, triangulate some rationale for solace and hope for the future and wince and daydream as the Niners won and won and won. 

I was blue from Sunday to Thursday in those days.   

Funny thing is, I've not experienced the blues like that until today. In other words, since "the man whose name shall not be mentioned" ripped the team from Cleveland, and throughout all the expansion madness and up to the present, I've not suffered these Browns loss blues. 

I've been excited then dejected, upset, bewildered, really angry and disgusted, but not blue.   

And the reason I feel so bad today is the same reason I have hope: It's because this Browns team is finally showing signs of becoming winners. They've busted out of the box, and are competing to win football games, attacking and doing whatever it takes, emotionally enthralling their teammates and sending fans back into a state of justified yet almost forgotten fanaticism.   

You see, when the team isn't organized or properly motivated to win, it doesn't matter so much to me when it loses. But when they play with spirit to win, employ creative brain power, use their limited personnel to best advantage and demonstrate a wildfire approach to winning football games, then it really hurts when they lose.   

This is a turning-point new team since the battle of New Orleans, and I'm glad my old Browns are back. I see an organization and a jelling team on a rapid forward march to winning football, respectability, leadership of our conference and the crown so many of us so deeply desire. I don't know who's doing exactly what in the chemistry mixture of Holmgren, Mangini and Daboll, but the concoction might just be positively explosive and I look forward to the creation of bigger more potent bangs.   

Yes, I have the Browns loss blues, but I heartily welcome them because it's the true signal that my team is back on the right track. 

And ladies and gentlemen, this team looks to me very similar to those sad sack 1979 49ers who believed in creative coaching, a not-first-round draft pick QB, little ballyhooed receivers and then quickly created a true and lasting football dynasty.   

In THE DAWGHOUSE for the Jets Game

Special Teams Coordinator Brad Seely will sit in the putrid pooch palace for a week because of the premature call for an onside kick after the Browns first score. Why gambit giving uneven Sanchez a chance to boost his QB confidence quotient from midfield? Better to have let our defense carry the load, not well-timed trickery. 

And yes, I liked the way we went for a gutsy pass on first down from our endzone in the overtime period. It almost went for a big gain and could've possibly been a touchdown. 

But both Coach Eric Mangini and Offensive Coordinator Brian Daboll stay in The Dawghouse for one more week because they did not make the right gutsy call earlier in the game. They should've lined up to kick the extra point to tie the game but employed a wily wrinkle two-point conversion to win the contest outright. 

It was the perfect time for skullduggery, and since the Jets had owned the ball for almost the entire second half and the Browns defense was worn down, it would have been the ultra-crafty lightning strike that electrified and illuminated the entire NFL. 

Bow-wow, baby.