The biggest problem I saw last night was letting Denver convert way too many third downs, particularly third and long. Not an amazing observation, I know, but as Soapbox Monkey said, “where’s our secondary?”
Frankly, I’m amazed that we kept it that close after three first half turnovers (it was three, wasn’t it?)
Again I have to ask: Am I the only one watching? The game ended quite a while ago, how am I the first to post?
That was a great game. Ben was playing well except for the one int.
Next week: Ravens on MNF. Alas, I won’t be watching it because I will be asleep. This could prove costly since the last time I slept through a game we lost…
I’m always watching, I just couldn’t post until now. The first half was dominating, but the second fizzled when Ben threw that silly pick. Fortunately they were able to cruise due to the nice cushion they got before the half.
It was OK. It helped that Ocho Cinco didn’t trouble himself to show up.
Now this is important, not only because it’s the Ratbirds and it’s a division game but because I have $80 on the season series between these two. With money at stake it takes on a new dimension.
Next game is a tough one for me.
On one hand, if Pittsburgh loses and Cleveland wins, we’ll be tied for the division, right? Both would be 2-1 against the division IIRC… you beat us heads to head, is that the next tie breaker?
So objectively, I should want that.
However, it would be painful for me to root for the illegitimate entity in that metropolitan-sized STD-infested crackhouse.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Meteor.
By the way, do you guys still scoff at my pimping of the Browns’ O-line?
Cleveland is the #4 scoring offense in the league. Derrick Anderson has been sacked 8 times in 6.5 games (Roethlisburger is double that at 16, and he’s a much better scrambler). One of the sacks was a technical - he wasn’t actually tackled by the defense, but the ball got knocked from his hand and got kicked out of bounds. While Jamal Lewis’ stats aren’t great at least in part due to injury, the Cleveland rushing attack in general is putting up a healthy 117.6 yards per game (14th) at 4.6 per carry (6th).
Cleveland has a better pass blocking line than Pittsburgh (and probably the rest of the division), a worse short yardage/drive blocking line, and probably equal at popping long runs - what they lack in power they make up for in athleticism, and that can turn a 5 yarder into a 15 yarder or better.
Like I said, I wasn’t trying to insult Pittsburgh’s line, I was praising Cleveland’s line. Looks like I called that one.
Yes, I still do. It’s Cleveland we’re talking about, all I can do is scoff.
I wasn’t praising Cleveland’s line, I’m insulting them and making no bones about it. Your team will get another 60 minutes behind the woodshed soon enough, I’m not sure why you seem intent on pushing that time up for yourself by pimping anything Cleveland in here.
Well, in your opinion. I’ve simply never heard anyone as excited about the pass blocking qualities of an offensive line as their primary index of the quality of that line before. If you’re pass blocking the shit out of people and can’t run the ball, I’d pretty much keep my mouth shut, especially a team out of the old AFC central. It’s a bit like bragging that Jamal Lewis is much better at picking up a block than Willie Parker is.
Pass blocking does not equate to ball control. You can’t take the air out of the ball with pass blocking. Pass blocking does not demoralize an opponent in the same way that an 8 minute relentless drive does.
But hey, you’re 4 and 3, and you squeaked a come from behind victory out over the winless Rams yesterday!
Wow, you guys are like… delusional. Yeah, you guys are right, it’s the same old hapless Browns with the pathetic offense who are only putting up 27.7 ppg (4th highest in the NFL).
Why isn’t the pass blocking ability of a line to be valued? You act as if it’s some secondary or nearly irrelevant thing. It’s one of the two core jobs of an offensive line. Why shouldn’t excelling at it be praised?
Where do you get “can’t run the ball”? Cause I listed those stats too. Cleveland is running the ball at a 4.6 average rush, 6th highest in the NFL. How the hell is that “can’t run the ball”? They only average 117 yards per game, 14th in the NFL, but that’s because they run the ball only 25.7 times per game, 21st in the NFL.
The main reasons for that is that the defense is horrible and the passing offense is very successful. We can’t run down leads late in a game because we have to keep scoring the entire time, so we don’t get as many rushing attempts. And we can keep scoring with the pass until the end, so we do. There’s also something of an injury/running back by committee thing going on, which is why I’m using team rushing numbers instead of any individual back. That… and our passing attack has been successful enough that we haven’t relied on a rushing attack.
None of that means they can’t run, though, as the 6th-highest yards per carry average attests.
Honestly… is this semi-friendly ribbing, or do you genuinely not see the performance of the Cleveland Browns offense, including the offensive line, as a surprise?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not delusional. Our head coach still sucks - the team is mostly succeeding in spite of him rather than because of him. Our defense went fron mediocre to horrible. But there certainly are some positives. No one, myself included, predicted the Browns to be the 4th scoring offense in the league. I doubt much of anyone predicted them to be 4-3 at this stage in the season. A whole lot of people thought 4 wins was what we’d get out of the year, not the first 7 games.
Both.
It won’t last. Two losses to the Steelers will put the Brownies out of contention for the division, and therefore out of reach for the wild card. Playing for second in the AFC North is playing for 1st loser. It’s great that you have a reason to stand up and cheer, but don’t let it get to your head. The Browns of old are bound to reappear.
So then, you expected greatness from the Cleveland Browns offense. You were ahead of the curve.
I’m really looking forward to Monday night. The Ravens are vulnerable, and beating them should sew up the division for the Steelers, barring a complete meltdown, which won’t happen.
I don’t know what will happen going into the playoffs - Tomlin is a new coach, there are still problems that need to be addressed in the next draft. But a lot of the fundamentals are solid, and the program is on sure footing from the looks of it.
A Monday night win would be huge.
For one, just because of all the reasons I mentioned before. Sure, it’s great, but look at Cleveland. As great, apparently, as their pass blocking might be, it’s led them to be 4-3 against opponents who have a combined record of 21 and 31 (with 8 of those 21 wins coming from the Patriots, and 5 from the Steelers). As great as their pass blocking might be, they are 10th in the league in passing yards. It’s just such a strange aspect of the game to really get all excited about.
Cleveland is 14th out of 32 teams in rushing.
Cleveland is in a 8 way tie for 10th best record in the league.
If you want to pick yards per carry instead of total yardage as an index of success running the ball. Which nobody does. Well, almost nobody.
Really, again, I don’t know of anyone who gets excited about good pass blocking and bad run blocking.
Unfortunately, the Rams and the Dolphins only show up on your schedule once this year.
How is the O-line responsible directly for our record? We have the worst statistical defense in the league, and quite possibly the actual worst - I would imagine that they have more to do with the losses than the 4th-ranked scoring offense.
You seem to be attacking straw men. I never said Cleveland was going to go undefeated or even that they were a great team or anything. I just said that, while the Cleveland O-line has been historically considered horrific, they’ll be one of the best units in the league this year. So far it looks like I’m right.
They’re not 14th because they can’t run it, because 6th in YPG shows that they can. They’re 14th because they don’t have much of a chance to run it, as 21st in attempts per game shows. The defense is so bad that Cleveland can’t run out the clock on a lead, they have to keep scoring. That keeps the attempts per game down, which in turn keeps the totals down.
So? What does this have to do with the O-line? Surely you recognize that the 4th-ranked scoring offense isn’t holding this team back.
This is just ignorant. Efficiency stats are used all the time. Arguably the most important stat for a QB is yards/attempt.
You wouldn’t seriously say that an O-line that ran 30 times per week for 3 yards a carry for 90 yards run blocks better than one that ran 15 times per week for 5 yards a carry for 75 yards, would you?
The low attempts per game isn’t because of the inability to run block, it’s because of the inability to create situations where running a lot is appropriate, and that’s almost entirely on the shoulders of a pathetic defense.
If the Browns had a good defense, their running yards per game would definitely go up. Does that mean the O-line would magically be better?
Where do you get “bad run blocking” from the 6th most efficient run game in the league? Even if you use the totals, it’s still upper half - more average than bad.
Fortunately we’ve still got Baltimore, Arizona, the Jets, Buffalo, Cincinatti, and SF.
You asked why great pass blocking wasn’t more laudable. I answered by indicating that it just isn’t associated with winning football. Sure, it’s important, and a quarterback generally needs time, but it doesn’t control a game. If you want to avoid a shootout because your defense sucks, there’s nothing better than keeping the ball out of the other guy’s hands.
You’re making my point. If they’re not running the ball much, they are more prone to have a misleading yards per carry number, which is why people don’t pay attention to it in the absence of total yardage. To wit:
So, according to your logic, Batch, Feeley, Frerotte, Boller, Martin, Romo, McNabb, Warner and Bollinger were better QBs in 2006 than Peyton Manning. Guess I should have picked one of them for my fantasy team last year. Except that Manning won me the championship.
For me, and I would have thought for anyone in the AFC (central) North, average running games ARE bad. It seems like you want a west coast run-n-gun type team. Good luck with that.
This is just nonsense. Sounds like you’re deriving this from some sort of incorrect interpretation of a correlative relationship. For instance, announcers are always saying “teams that run X times per game win X amount of the time”… but that doesn’t necesarily mean that running made the team win, it often means that winning made the team run - a team with a lead, and hence, a larger chance of winning the game, tends to run more.
You make it sound as if passing games were just some sort of gimmick that some offenses use occasionally but that it’s not a big deal. Passing games are as integral to modern offenses as running. Having an elite pass blocking line does wonders for your offense, and having a horrific pass blocking line can completely trash your offense.
The currently most dominant teams in football are winning on the strength of their passing games.
Could you justify this? I’m not necesarily disagreeing, but on what logical basis are you making this statement?
Could you answer the question I posed earlier? That is: You wouldn’t seriously say that an O-line that ran 30 times per week for 3 yards a carry for 90 yards run blocks better than one that ran 15 times per week for 5 yards a carry for 75 yards, would you?
Firstly I didn’t say that that single stat was the only factor by which QBs can be judged, just the best one. A guy with 9 yards per attempt that throws a pick every 4 passes obviously isn’t very useful. It’s a big part of the picture, but not the whole one. It correlates more strongly with good quarterbacking than TD/int ratio, yards per game, completion percentage, yards per completion, etc. does.
Really now, let’s not be ridiculous. You’re including guys on that list don’t have enough statistics to make such an average useful. You try to counter my point with Frerrote, who threw 3 passes, with a 33 yard completion, and hence over 10 YPA, as if that were really useful data. Hey, why not just say I claimed Brad Maynard, Chicago’s punter, was the best QB in the league, since he threw one pass all year and it was for 37 yards?
You’re inferring things that I never said, yet again.
And you’re trying to infer the performance of the O-line by things they don’t control, rather than their actual performance. If the Browns had a stifling D, they would run a whole lot more, and hence rack up more yardage. Would they then have a better run-blocking O-line, even though we’re talking about the very same players?
Anyway, you make it sound as if I were claiming the Browns were an awesome passing team and a pathetic running team, but I never did. Remember that this whole thing stemmed from me saying that the Browns possibly had the best O-line in the AFC North. I then compared and contrasted them with the Steeler line.
The Steeler line has been fairly poor for a good while now in pass protection. They’ve overrated as a whole because of that. I do admit, however, that they’re an elite run blocking line. They can convert 3rd and 1s as well as anyone.
In contrast, the Browns have more athletic linemen who can’t drive block as well, but can use athleticism to run block. They’re inferior in short yardage drive blocking, but superior in pass protection. I’m just comparing the strengths of each line. Pittsburgh has an elite run blocking line, but average to poor pass blocking. Cleveland has an elite pass blocking line, with average to good run blocking.
It appears that the much vaunted (at least here) Cleveland offensive line is getting handled, because Seattle is up 21-9 at the half. Cleveland’s line is who we thought they were. If you want to crown them, then crown their ass. But they are who we thought they were.
In other news, Joseph Addai is an absolute stud. He is taking New England’s defense to school. I wonder who Bellichick’s spy is in this game, because he’d better be taking good notes or the Patsies and pretty-boy Brady are going home with their first loss.
None of that changes that the real game this week is on Monday, where the Steelers, undefeated at home on MNF for the last 16 years, lay the wood to the Baltimore Browns, thus earning me some cash and cementing the Steelers’ hold on the division.
The Bengals lost to Buffalo taking them to 2-6.
Cleveland is down 21-16 in the third.
I’m watching the Pats/Colts. It is tough for me to decide who to root for, but I think I’d like to see the Pats lose. So far that is looking like it might happen… 13-7 in the third.
I do want to say though: I was impressed with Brady during the CBS’s pre-game show. I thought he showed some class. Sure, they all have to say “It’s not me, it is my team.” But he sold it. I liked what he said about last week’s game and people saying that they ran up the score. He said that they were just trying to do the best job they could and he said: can you imagine if he were having a low scoring game and the other team’s defense were shutting him down? Would he be out there saying: Why didn’t they go more easy on me? Why didn’t they let me complete a few more passes? No, he would be saying: I have to toughen up.
All good points.
I guess I still want them to lose.
The Bungles of old are back. They even took Ocho-Cinco off the field on a stretcher. Sucks to be him.
Anyway, I didn’t mention that because they have reached the level of irrelevancy for both the playoffs and the division.
Checking in on the Pats-Colts game: I guess Bellichick’s bagman did take good notes, because the Colts can’t get anything going, and while the Patsies are still down they’re looking better than they were in the first half.
…and I spoke too soon yet again. That was a magnificent pick by Brackett, and the personal foul on New England made it even better from my point of view. As mucch as it hurts me to say it, I want the Colts to win, and win big. Just so Sourpuss on the Patsies’ sideline and his pretty boy don’t get to wear the mantle of undefeated. That’s all we would need, an even more insufferable Bellichick.
Wow. I think that int will end the game. (There’s only 2:26 left now.)
It was an interesting day. The Pats really earned it.