Cleveland Browns (2007 & prior)

[osugrad21]

CPD

Cleveland Browns' Dawson gets kicks out of victory


Monday, December 17, 2007Bud Shaw
Plain Dealer Columnist
No kid on the sandlot imag ines being the kicker, especially when the sandlot is filling up with snow and the wind is turning playground litter into soaring kites.
The running back slipping and sliding for a TD, sure. The quarterback? Always. Just not Phil Dawson on a day like Sunday.
"I would have to say in my nine years here that was by far the most difficult day to kick a football," Dawson said. "Had there been no snow at all, it would've been in the top five just because of the way the wind was blowing."




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[osugrad21]

CPD

SCRIBBLES IN MY NOTEBOOK
Anderson stays cool in cold


Monday, December 17, 2007
Derek Anderson proved he could win a big game in a blizzard. That counts for a lot, especially if you believe the Browns will be in the playoffs, having games when the days are short, the clouds are gray and the wind is angry. A key is not making turnovers, yet being willing to make clutch throws downfield. Anderson did both in the Browns' 8-0 victory over Buffalo in Sunday's blizzard. He was sacked only once, didn't fumble and made sure when he overthrew a receiver -- it was toward the sidelines, where it was hard to be intercepted.
Anderson is now 9-4
as a starter this season and 2-1 in December. Before this season, the Browns had a 9-28 regular-season record after November since returning in 1999. It also was a nice move for Anderson to wear short sleeves, no gloves and project an attitude of, "Cold? You mean it's cold? Not me! This is fun!" And this was the Browns' sixth home win, tying a franchise record with a chance to break it on the last day of the regular season, Dec. 30, against San Francisco.




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[osugrad21]

CPD

Blizzard-like game warms Cleveland Browns fans hearts, says Terry Pluto


Monday, December 17, 2007
Browns fans, this was a day your team made you proud. It was a day when they proved worthy of your loyalty that has never wavered through rain, sleet, snow or a move to Baltimore.
Final score: Browns 8, Buffalo ZERO.
What a snow job!
Of blizzard warnings . . .
Of chattering teeth and slushy seats . . .

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[osugrad21]

CPD

Browns' Davis camps in Bills' backfield


Monday, December 17, 2007Mary Kay Cabot
Plain Dealer Reporter
In the biggest game of the season, linebacker Andra Davis came through with his finest game to help the Browns pitch an 8-0 shutout against the Bills.
Spending almost as much time in the Bills' backfield as their running backs, Davis made four tackles for losses and hit rookie quarterback Trent Edwards twice on third down to force incompletions and punts.
It was clearly one of the finest games of Davis' six-year career here and the best this season.


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[osugrad21]

CPD

Cleveland Browns running back Jamal Lewis goes over 1,000 yards


Monday, December 17, 2007
JOHN KUNTZTHE PLAIN DEALERBills receiver Lee Evans, top, holds onto a catch as the Browns' Brandon McDonald makes the hit late in the fourth quarter.
BROWNS INSIDER
Lewis plows his way to grand day



Browns running back Jamal Lewis went over 1,000 yards for the sixth time in his eight-year career, thanks to his 163-yard effort against the Bills in the snow-globe game.
"One-thousand yards is a great accomplishment by any running back, but I'm just trying to win and do what it takes for this team to win," he said. "I know if I do well, this team will do well."
Lewis attributed his season - and his 34th career 100-yard game - to his offensive line and the rest of his teammates. He's had three 100-yard games in his past four outings.
"The offensive line played phenomenal," he said. "They come off the ball and try not to let defenses get penetration on us. I love running behind them."




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[osugrad21]

Canton

Winter-wear win sets up Browns to clinch playoffs Sunday at Cincy
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Steve Doerschuk
Repository sports writer

CLEVELAND Sunday?s 8-0 siege against Buffalo might have been the Browns? biggest win of the expansion era.

It called to mind the most embarrassing loss.

Almost three years to the day earlier, in weather as brutal, the offensive linemen from a weather paradise, San Diego, set out to prove they were tough enough for Cleveland?s cold. They all played in the cold and snow in short sleeves.

In a comparative wuss-out, several Browns linemen dressed for winter. Mom might have approved, but Browns fans became disgusted during a 21-0 loss.

On Sunday, before heading into snow, cold and misery that kept a few thousand fans home, Cleveland?s offensive linemen made a pact.

?It was kind of a no-brainer,? guard Eric Steinbach said. ?I talked to the other four guys on the line.

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[osugrad21]

Canton

TODD PORTER: Dawson aims to the left and hits it so right
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Todd Porter
Repository sports writer

CLEVELAND

Down there in the little world that is Browns hysteria, Phil Dawson seemed trapped in a snow globe. The Browns? best playoff chances rested on the 5-foot-11, 200-pound placekicker?s foot. They needed him ? like they have so much this year ? to take out the Buffalo Bills on a Sunday taken from Thomas Kinkade?s canvas.

The football gods didn?t just sneeze in the face of Cleveland?s playoff hopes, they huffed and they puffed. They never did blow down little Dawson.

Into winds gusting more than 40 miles an hour and bringing a mini-blizzard off Lake Erie, Dawson?s 49-yard field goal kissed the back of the stanchion support ? which might as well be his target now ? and the ball bounced the Browns? way again. Cleveland?s 8-0 win did wonders for the franchise?s fragile psyche, not to mention its playoff aspirations.

?We?ve been getting a lot of breaks all year, and it?s gratifying to be getting those good breaks, instead of the bad ones all the time,? said linebacker Andra Davis. ?The good teams get good breaks. In the past, let?s face it, we weren?t a good team. This year, we?re a good team.?

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[osugrad21]

Canton

Another in a long line of big Dawson kicks
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Steve Doerschuk
Repository sports writer

CLEVELAND If you didn?t already have the idea this is the Browns? year, you did when the man from Dallas hit the D-spot again.

?Twenty-to-one against making this,? someone said as Phil Dawson lined up for a 49-yard field goal.

Why even try it? Only an accident lawyer could love the footing. Snow coated the field. A crazy wind was blowing.

Converting a bomb, though, would give the Browns an 8-0 lead just before halftime.

?The importance of being up by 8 on a day like this,? Romeo Crennel said, ?is huge.?

As nature brewed on a grand scale, Dawson kicked the ball. It seemed doomed as it sailed low through the storm.

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[osugrad21]

Canton

PLAYOFF PICTURE: Browns can clinch Sunday at Bengals
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Steve Doerschuk
Repository sports writer

The Browns? run to the playoffs comes down to this: Win at Cincinnati, and they?re in.

Lose at Cincinnati but beat San Francisco, and they still have a good shot. The Christmas kicker: Lose two, and they still have a chance.

That?s how big beating the Bills was. Beating the Bengals looms as large.

IF BROWNS BEAT CINCINNATI

Browns clinch playoff spot because:

1) Their final record could be no worse than Tennessee?s.

2) Because their record against AFC foes would be 8-4. That?s the top tiebreaker applying to the Browns and Titans, which can finish no better than 7-5 against AFC teams.

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[osugrad21]

Canton

Snowy and windy? Lewis? kind of day
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Todd Porter
REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER

CLEVELAND As the winds gusted above 40 miles an hour, Browns Offensive Coordinator Rob Chudzinski grinned. He wouldn?t throw the ball 30 times in a game more suited for sled dogging, would he?

?Rob doesn?t care about the weather,? quarterback Derek Anderson said, laughing. ?We?re still gonna throw it.?

Perhaps only as a means of distraction. What the Browns did Sunday on a cold, wintry day at Browns Stadium was hook their offense up to a sled dog. When ?Chud? yelled ?mush,? Jamal Lewis pumped his legs.

Lewis gained 163 yards on 33 carries to lead the Browns to a win, and a whisker from a playoff berth. The veteran running back, signed by the Browns to a one-year contract to see how much he had left, also went over 1,000 yards for the season.

Lewis has had four 100-yard rushing games for the Browns, and two in a row. Since the middle of Novemeber, when the NFL?s elite make a playoff push, Lewis has gained 569 yards and is average nearly 5 yards a carry.

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[osugrad21]

Canton

POINTING OUT: Crennel shows confidence in Dawson
Monday, December 17, 2007
By Todd Porter
Repository sports writer

THEY WON IT HERE

Brutal, blustery wind. Snow and ice on the field. Halftime, and a chance to get warm in the locker room, is seconds away. Romeo Crennel never hesitated when he sent kicker Phil Dawson onto the polar ice cap that was Cleveland Browns Stadium for a 49-yard field goal into the wind. Dawson hit the kick perfectly. He started it left of the left upright and let nature take its course. The kick hit the stanchion ? again ? and Dawson gave the Browns an 8-0 lead that might as well have been 38-0 considering the conditions. Dawson said Crennel?s decisiveness in the making the call to kick gave him confidence. ?It?s a lot better than look over and seeing your coach hem-hawwing around about it,? Dawson said.

THEY SAID IT

? ?Lew? ... he?s our best defensive player. We love to watch him and get a kick out of him and how hard he works.

LB Andra Davis on RB Jamal Lewis? 163-yard sled-dog performce.

?I?ve never played in anything this cold, even messing around in your backyard throwing the ball around with your neighbor. I felt like a kid out there. I was having fun with it. The worst was the wind. You throw it and think you know where it?s going and it ends up out of bounds. You?re like, ?OK, that?s the way she goes.? ?

Browns QB Derek Anderson was trying to throw the football through wind gusts for more than 45 miles an hour.


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[osugrad21]

Canton

BROWNS NOTEBOOK: Bad day for punters
[FONT=Verdana,Times New Roman,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]By STEVE DOERSCHUK

Repository sports writer[/FONT]
Monday, December 17, 2007


Not warm enough

Warmups were more entertaining than most 2006 Browns games.

The first player dressed was Buffalo long snapper Ryan Neill. He took the field alone and made snap after snap, preparing to avoid exactly what happened later.

Bills punter Brian Moorman moved his pregame stretching from the field to a warm concourse. He worked on his hamstrings while the Medina Highland marching band went by.

The gigantic tarp came off at 9:45. The field was immaculate. The snow started at 10. The field was coated by 11.

At 2, when Neill snapped to Moorman with the Browns nursing a 3-0 lead, Cleveland Browns Stadium was wrapped for disaster.

Moorman went to the last two Pro Bowls. It wasn?t like this in Hawaii. The snow-slicked ball sailed over his head and landed near the goal line.

He had time to pick it up but opted to kick it into the fans in the low rows.

It was a safety.

8 points, 9 catches

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[osugrad21]

Canton
Buffalo deals with miserable weather
Monday, December 17, 2007
BY Mike Popovich
REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER

CLEVELAND It came roaring in before kickoff.

Lots of snow, lots of wind, just miserable conditions people from Cleveland and Buffalo somehow get used to.

The winter storm that struck during Sunday?s game at Cleveland Browns Stadium was quite a sight to Bills defensive tackle Larry Tripplett.

?I?m from California, so I definitely haven?t seen anything like it.? Tripplett said.

?There were countless times I couldn?t get out of my stance without falling. I didn?t know football could be played like this.?

Neither could Buffalo running back and fellow Californian Marshawn Lynch.

?It looked like something I saw on the Discovery Channel, like something about the North Pole,? Lynch said.

The worst thing about the experience for the Bills is their playoff hopes were buried in the snow. The Browns held on to beat Buffalo, 8-0.

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[osugrad21]

Canton

Bills defend calling screen on final play
Monday, December 17, 2007
BY Mike Popovich
REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER

CLEVELAND With no timeouts and precious few seconds left in a win-or-else game, conventional thinking was that Buffalo would take a shot at the end zone from 10 yards out.

Bills quarterback Trent Edwards instead threw short to Fred Jackson. The Browns snuffed out the Buffalo running back and likely his team?s playoff hopes.

Browns defenders Chaun Thompson and Sean Jones stopped Jackson for no gain on fourth-and-five as Cleveland held on for an 8-0 win. The Browns moved to within a win of their first playoff since 2002, while the Bills were eliminated from postseason contention.

There were 3 seconds left when Thompson and Jones wrapped up Jackson. Even if Jackson got a first down without scoring, the Bills would have been hard-pressed to run another play.

So why throw a screen pass on a snow-covered field instead of throwing into the end zone?


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[osugrad21]

MJ

Looking like men again
Jim Ingraham, Morning Journal Writer
12/17/2007




CLEVELAND -- Now THAT was a football game. For men only. Hairy chested, bare-armed, heavily-tattooed, muscular men willing to play a man's game under manly conditions.


You got a problem with that?

Yes, the Browns are now finally, manfully, officially back. We know this because they are playing important, meaningful, man-type football games in Cleveland in the month of December, when men play football and boys play out the schedule.

Yesterday, playing under conditions that made Washington's winter at Valley Forge look like a summer day in Rio de Janeiro, the Browns moved one step closer to the playoffs with an 8-0 win over the Buffalo Chills, er, Bills.

''This,'' said Phil ''Captain Carom'' Dawson, ''is what being a Cleveland Brown is all about. Playing late in the year at home, with a chance for the playoffs, in horrible weather.''

Here's to you, Don Cockroft, Galen Fiss, Mike Pruitt, Jerry Sherk, and, yes, Fair Hooker.

''That,'' said Joe ''I'm from here so I know what this is all about'' Jurevicious, ''was football weather right there.''


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