Beanie’s back, Browns win, it doesn’t get better, does it?

Guess who’s back? That’s right, Beanie is back at the helm and just in time to right the ship that was sinking faster than the New York Mets in September. (Oh, the “thank goodness Beanie isn’t here today” jokes were still funny the 853rd time it was used. Way to be creative people.)

Also getting old is this “You suck more. No you suck more” crap with Ohio State and Michigan. From now on, no more comments about either one of the schools if there is nothing about either in the post. Annoying habits of both fans will result in comments being deleted. And using the school names in the sentence does not count as reason to talk about them. However, this one does. New commenter I hate you all, was right on with his Michigan will win today comment on Saturday morning. That was as good as a prediction as Beanie saying the Indians would finish .500. 

Italy was amazing. I won’t bore you with the details but it was simply amazing — the food, the drinks, the history, the towns, the people (especially the smoking at 18 year old I sat next to on the plan ride home who could barely speak English), and the food (again). If you want to see pictures, I have 396 of them but I figured I’d only post them on request. Now it’s the worst part of returning from any trip, especially one from somewhere sweet like Italy. I have to answer “how was your trip?” 49 times and mostly to people who I really don’t care to talk to.

It sucks to be back. Not so much sucks being in America, but it sucks being here at work. Not working and just eating and drinking was the way to live. 

I really followed nothing in the line of sports while in the homeland. That was one thing I missed and because of it, I have very little to say about what I missed because I don’t know what I missed. Yesterday it was nice to sit around and watch football. However, the football I watched was only a slightly higher quality than what I watch on Friday nights. The Browns and Bengals looked like a bunch of drunk bar guys who decided to get together for a pick-up tackle football game. The second game, the Dallas Washington game was a good game except for Dallas not giving the ball to Felix Jones one time. Really? The dude had a touchdown every game and you don’t let him even touch the ball?

Some notes on the Browns game…

Cleveland won but does anyone feel good about the win? It might go down as the worst ‘W’ of all time.

At least we know the formula for the Browns winning a game is – play a winless team who is using their back-up quarterback who has four  career starts and played his college ball in the Ivy League.

So last year you had 15 touchdowns. This season you are expected to be even better. You are a showy guy who likes attention. Touchdown celebrations is your time to show off. You have all offseason to think about, and practice your celebration for your first TD of the year. You don’t score in the first three games so the anticipation is building in your body for the time to break out your long awaited touchdown celebration. You finally score in the fourth game of the year. You make the catch, spike the ball and what do you do next?

Play the air guitar? And not just a normal air guitar but and rock out, drop to your knee wave your arm around air guitar. Really Braylon? That’s what you did. The air guitar? You should be more ashamed of that than you are of the 76 dropped passes and yelling at Steve Sanders (no not of 90210 fame, although he would be just as good on this team, if not better) about pass routes.

How come Romeo doesn’t understand how time works? At the end of the first half, you have two time-outs left. The Bengals are obviously settling for a field goal and ran the ball with some 40 seconds left on third down. Instead of calling a time out with more than 40 seconds on the clock, you let Cincy run the clock down to 15 seconds (or whatever it was) and give them a 6-3 lead at halftime. Call the timeout, get the ball back with 30 seconds and a time out and you got a chance to tie the game. A good return by Cribbs makes that a very realistic possibility. Another example (this one isn’t as bad since in the long run it didn’t matter) after the fumble recovery in the fourth quarter with 2:04 to play, why not take a shot at the endzone. Obviously running the clock down and kicking a field goal all but assures the win, but the clock is going to stop after the first play because of the two-minute warning so why not take a shot? You got to go for the throat and the “kick ‘em while their down” approach. Not the “I can’t wait until this game is over so I can get a Donato’s pizza with double cheeseburgers as the topping” approach.

The situation is 4th-and-five from the 38-yard line (may not be 100% the situation but very close). Do you a) kick a long field, b) go for it since, c) punt it and get only 18 net yards because the kick is going to more than likely be a touchback, or d) take a time-out and think about it? If you are the Chocolate Dumpling, you go with e) none of the above, take a delay of game penalty, then punt it for a touchback. Good call.

It doesn’t appear the Browns are going to be going to the playoffs this year. Your team looked horrible in the first half (and even worse in the third quarter). Your quarterback was awful and fighting with teammates. Your back-up QB is a dreamboat of a first-round draft pick who looked so good with the wind blowing through his hair on the sideline. The perfect situation to bring in the back-up to start the second half and give this team some new life. But no, the Chocolate Dumpling (looking to the left like he sees someone eating his bucket fried chicken) isn’t that smart. The Browns had no business winning this game but, since the Bengals had even less, someone had to win. I think it should only count as a 1/2 win.

So welcome back to me. I know you missed me all so much.