You would have thought last night’s 37-34 loss to the New York Giants in the Meadowlands was game 1 of the 2008 season. The outrage in this town is about as deafening as the horrid start to a 2007 season that turned out pretty neat. This isn’t so much a review of that ugly game as a point to get our fellow Cleveland fans to mellow out. Last night’s game sucked and there were some concerns that reared their ugly head in the game, but to act as if the 2008 season is doomed is ridiculous.
No…the Browns aren’t going to sit Derek Anderson now for Brady Quinn going into the season. We know a certain percentage of the fan base hang on any little mistake Anderson makes and just lets him have it. I laughed last night at the sports’ bar I was at while half drunk idiots were booing Anderson left and right. Then any time Quinn would make any kind of mistake, the place was silent. Look I like Quinn as a QB, but I also like Derek Anderson…let’s give Anderson a little breathing room for crying out loud. Unfortunately, that’s like trying to offer advice to a brick wall. If the Browns are smart, DA will be the guy who gets dealt eventually because the guy is never going to get a break in this town for any reason and if Quinn gets traded and does well while Anderson still shows inconsistencies later in his career, Browns’ fans will literally murder Phil Savage. Nevertheless, this is Anderson’s team right now and the Browns are going to live and die with him in 2008.
No…the Offensive Line isn’t crap overnight. The O-Line didn’t play all that well against the Giants’ vaunted D-Line. They came out flat and got pushed around a bit. I’m sure the coaching staff will remind them of that plenty of times moving forward. Does this mean we’re in for a long season and the O-Line is suddenly a cause for concern? NO.
Yes…the secondary is a major concern, but we knew that already. We were reminded of that last game by a guy named Clowney. The kids back there covering are doing the best they can. Last night, they just so happened to run into Dominik Hixon who looked like Jerry Rice for one game in his career and was probably offered a large sum of money to make the Browns look stupid by his former college QB Charlie Frye.
Yes…the Browns were pushed around last night, but if it’s going to happen, it better be the stinking preseason. It’s the coaching staff’s job to take this performance and light a fire under the team’s ass moving forward and use games like this as motivation. Romeo has taken the blame for this kind of stuff before, so he better put his foot to the throat of the Browns and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Yes…the increased injury list is our other major concern right now, but the best news out of this is that most of these injuries aren’t serious. Derek Anderson was believed to have suffered a minor concussion. He may likely sit out this week, but should easily play the final preseason game and be ready for Dallas in week 1. We’ll wait and see how Brodney Pool (concussion), Josh Cribbs (ankle), and Leon Williams (neck) fare with their injuries, but none of them seemed too serious.
No…this performance doesn’t mean we’re going to come out of the gate of the 2008 season and lay down to the Cowboys and the Steelers. Some of our fan base seems to think that is the case. Look…the Browns are notorious for keeping their plans under wraps during the season on both sides of the ball reserving a good chunk of their blitz packages and their offensive plays for the regular season. We play the Giants again during the regular season. Sure the Giants probably kept a lot to themselves as well, but when teams are playing each other in the preseason and not putting their best looks on the field or their best plays, things could be a lot different when it matters. We’ll go on record and say that the regular season meeting between these two teams will go a lot better for the Browns regardless of the final outcome.
One lousy performance in a preseason does not make a player and a team going into the regular season. It’s a freaking preseason game that the Browns can rebound from. It’s worth being concerned about, but to be proclaiming the season dead already and saying this team isn’t as good as we all thought they would be already is going to extremes. If that was the case, Derek Anderson would be bagging groceries at your nearest Giant Eagle right now based off of last year’s preseason performance. Also, the Browns’ offense in 2007 would have been at the bottom of the NFL in most statistical categories after that stinker of a preseason they had during their failed QB competition in which no one aside from Brady Quinn and the third stringers could put TDs on the board.
Let’s put it this way…if the Browns show up for games like this during the regular season, we can get very upset since getting into the playoffs in the AFC is going to be like breaking into a well guarded safe. It’s going to be a tough road, so every one of the 16 games this team plays is going to be important. But to lose our lunch over last night’s messy performance is wasting too much anger right now. Let’s reserve that kind of stuff for the Indians’ 2008 season and keep a level headed outlook as the Browns’ season approaches. It’s not over yet and the sky isn’t falling. It will be OK. That is unless the Browns do this against Dallas.











