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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
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12/5/05
12/5/05
No word on Edwards’ right knee
Monday, December 5, 2005 <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>[FONT=Verdana, Times New Roman, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]By Todd Porter REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER[/FONT]
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Edwards in pain.
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CLEVELAND - The serious look on Stan Edwards’ face wasn’t promising. But the father of Cleveland wide receiver Braylon Edwards did his best to put a good face on his son’s knee injury.
Edwards was injured in the fourth quarter of a 20-14 loss to Jacksonville on Sunday. The 6-foot-3, 211-pound first-round draft pick went up for a pass at the Jaguars’ 21 and wrenched in pain on the grass at Cleveland Browns Stadium, grabbing his right knee.
Television replays showed his knee buckling and bending slightly inward as he landed.
X-rays, according to Stan Edwards, were negative.
“He’ll have more tests later on this afternoon,” he said outside the team’s X-ray room at the stadium. “So until then, we don’t know anything. Braylon doesn’t usually get hurt. This is new. We’re hoping for the best.”
Edwards was having, perhaps, the best day of his rookie season. He hauled in two touchdown passes from fellow rookie Charlie Frye, who made his first start at quarterback. Edwards had just one touchdown catch coming into this game.
Team officials only said Edwards would have an MRI later Sunday, or this morning. Ligament damage likely would mean an end to Edwards’ season.
“I know it’s a knee, but I don’t know anything else,” Browns Head Coach Romeo Crennel said.
Edwards has 32 catches for 512 yards. His 16 yards a catch leads the Browns. His three touchdown catches are tied with Antonio Bryant among Cleveland receivers.
Edwards leads NFL rookie receivers in yardage.
“All he said was it was his knee and he heard something pop,” said Antonio Bryant, who talked to Edward as he lay on the field. “That’s all I know.” The Browns have not had much luck with their first-round draft picks. Tim Couch (1999) is out of football, Courtney Brown and Gerard Warren (2000 and ’01) were traded to Denver last offseason, William Green (2002) hasn’t played in five games and doesn’t have more than 10 carries in a game this season, Jeff Faine (2003) has started each of the last two seasons at center, Kellen Winslow Jr. (2004) missed most of last season with a broken ankle and will miss all of this season with a non-football injury, and Edwards was hurt Sunday. Reach Repository sports writer Todd Porter at (330) 580-8340 or e-mail: [email protected].
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
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12/14/05
12/14/05
EXPANSION WOES
[FONT=Verdana, Times New Roman, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Today’s Browns fans know only futility[/FONT]
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>[FONT=Verdana, Times New Roman, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]By Steve Doerschuk REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER [/FONT]
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Repository Scott Heckel RUBBING IT IN Cincinnati Bengals fans, who finally ended their streak of below .500 seasons in 2005, let their neighbors to the north know their feelings. The Browns now are 34-75, a .312 winning percentage, since returning to the NFL via expansion in 1999.
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BEREA - A word of caution to Minnesotans who care about pro football: Perhaps you have imagined a scenario wherein your NFL team can’t finagle a new stadium, skips town, and forces you to get a replacement starting from scratch.
There are better ways to have fun.
That’s one conclusion that leaps out from Repository research of the last 40 years worth of expansion teams.
There have been 10 such teams in that period. In that the Browns are in their seventh season since coming back in 1999, the research concentrates on each team’s first seven seasons, except for the Houston Texans, who are in their fourth year.
Overall, the study covers 67 seasons and megatons of futility. The seasons produced:
Forty-seven losing records.
Seventeen winning records.
Three .500 finishes.
The flagship of the expansion fleet is the Dolphins, who began as an AFL expansion team, went along for the ride in the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, and in their seventh year went 14-0 and won Super Bowl VII.
The leaky rowboat is the Saints, the only expansion team in the last four decades with a worse record for its first seven years than the Browns.
The Saints posted a seven-year record of 25-68-5 (.281) and had fans wearing ’Aints bags on their heads.
The Browns are 34-75 (.312), and can’t catch the Saints. They can do no worse than .303 for their first seven years if they close 2005 with three losses.
Cleveland is unique among the expansion teams reviewed, in that the region previously had a team. Not only that, but the old team created a huge buzz as recently as the 1980s, finishing the decade with three runs to the AFC title game.
General Manager Phil Savage, who took over after the expansion Browns’ sixth season, knew at the start the landscape had been warped.
“There’s a lost generation of Browns fans out there,” Savage said. “They haven’t enjoyed the feel-good atmosphere of a quality, winning product.
“We need to get our fans to a point where they are experiencing the happiness that comes from consistently winning NFL football games.”
SUPERMEN THEY’RE NOT
It was wise for Savage to avoid hanging his hat on consistently winning Super Bowls.
The last 10 expansion teams, the first of which was in 1966, have produced three Super Bowl wins, two by Miami in its seventh and eighth seasons, one by Tampa Bay in its 26th year.
Of the 10 teams, two reached the postseason in their second year, two made it in Year 3, three in Year 4, two in Year 5, three in Year 6, and two did it in Year 7.
That’s 14 playoff seasons, including just the one run, Miami’s, to a Super Bowl.
On the flip side, within the assorted first seven seasons, the expansion army has produced:
• One winless season;
• Five two-win seasons;
• Six three-win seasons; and
• 10 four-win seasons, not counting Cleveland’s current 4-9.
That’s 22 certified USDA prime turkeys.
That the Browns are on their third head coach since 1999 represents tumult even by expansion standards.
In Cincinnati, Paul Brown ran the team for its first eight years, then ran the front office.
Tampa Bay stuck with John McKay for nine seasons. Tom Coughlin made it through eight years with the Jaguars.
Expansion teams with two head coaches in their first seven years included Atlanta (Norb Hecker, Norm VanBrocklin), Miami (George Wilson, Don Shula), Seattle (Jack Patera, Mike McCormack) and Carolina (Dom Capers, George Seifert).
The only teams with three head coaches in their first seven seasons are the two with the poorest winning percentages, New Orleans (Tom Fears, J.D. Roberts, John North) and Cleveland (Chris Palmer, Butch Davis, Romeo Crennel).
DAYS AHEAD?
The Saints and Browns have plenty of company in terms of long-term futility.
“Like I said all along,” Crennel observed this week, “it’s slow progress. There is still a lot of work that we have to do to improve this team.”
Can the work finally get done, so the Browns can be rid of expansion-related issues?
Nothing is guaranteed.
After producing no record better than a 5-9 in their first seven seasons, the Saints’ next seven records were 5-9, 2-12, 4-10, 3-11, 7-9, 8-8 and 1-15.
For some expansion teams, though, the eighth year was a charm. The Dolphins won a Super Bowl. The Bengals went 11-3. Atlanta had its best year, 9-5. The Seahawks reached the playoffs for the first time.
When Savage arrived from Baltimore, he said setting a timeline for success would be “a mistake.” He added, “The timeline right now is, let’s get better.”
Nearly a year into his work, he still won’t be pinned down on that timeline.
Happiness, for Savage, is “staying focused” on the new regime’s way of easing the expansion era’s pain.
Reach Repository sports writer Steve Doerschuk at (330) 580-8347 or e-mail: [email protected]
The not-so-magnificent seven
A review of the first seven seasons of expansion teams over the last 40 years (start-up year listed under team).
Team: Falcons Dolphins Saints Bengals Bucs Seahawks Jaguars Panthers Browns Texans
Start year: 1966 1966 1967 1968 1976 1976 1995 1995 1999 2002
Season 1 3-11 3-11 3-11 3-11 0-14 2-12 4-12 7-9 2-14 4-12
Season 2 1-12-1 4-10 4-9-1 4-9-1 2-12 5-9 9-7* 12-4* 3-13 5-11
Season 3 2-12 5-8-1 5-9 8-6* 5-11 9-7 11-5* 7-9 7-9 7-9
Season 4 6-8 3-10-1 2-11-1 4-10 10-6* 9-7 11-5* 4-12 9-7* 1-12
Season 5 4-8-2 10-4* 4-8-2 8-6 5-10-1 4-12 14-2* 8-8 5-11 —
Season 6 7-6-1 10-3-1* 2-11-1 10-4* 9-7* 6-10 7-9 7-9 4-12 —
Season 7 7-7 14-0* 5-9 7-7 5-4* 4-5 6-10 1-15 4-9 —
Record: 30-64-4 49-46-3 25-68-5 44-53-1 36-64-1 39-62 62-50 46-66 34-75 17-44
Average: .327 .515 .281 .454 .361 .386 .554 .411 .312 .279 *-Reached postseason
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OSUBasketballJunkie
Never Forget 31-0
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12/15/05
12/15/05
What’s with Bryant?
Thursday, December 15, 2005
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>[FONT=Verdana, Times New Roman, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]By Steve Doerschuk REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER [/FONT]
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Repository Scott Heckel RECEIVING LEADER? Browns wide receiver Antonio Bryant tries to pull away from Bengals defender Deltha O’Neal after catching a Charlie Frye pass during Sunday’s loss to Cincinnati. After a strong preseason, Bryant has had an up-and-down regular season in 2005.
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BEREA - The oohs of summer froze over.
Smatterings of boos, hints of unhappiness and tinges of mystery have flurried with Antonio Bryant’s mostly OK 2005.
“Antonio hasn’t been everything we wanted,” Head Coach Romeo Crennel said Wednesday, “and that goes to the inconsistency with the drops.
“He is the leading receiver on the team. He has made some plays.”
Bryant was the Browns’ brightest star in training camp, making hay with Trent Dilfer while the Browns’ other former Biletnikoff Award winner, Braylon Edwards, held out.
Thirteen games in?
Bryant is a puzzle, pushing through his first full Browns season with Edwards out until 2006, and with Charlie Frye in the saddle.
The veteran, Dilfer, was won over by Bryant in August. Bryant had paid some dues. Edwards was a rookie waiting to get paid a ton.
The compliments flowed.
After Bryant barely showed up in a win at Green Bay, Dilfer said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to get the ball to A.B.”
He did, seven times, at Indianapolis. Then came the season highlight, for Bryant, maybe for the whole team.
The Browns trailed the Bears 10-6 with three minutes left. Then Bryant caught a long touchdown pass from Dilfer. Then, looking very smooth in the end zone, Bryant did it again.
The Browns were 2-2. It was a mirage.
‘HIS LITTLE QUIRKS’
Bryant has set himself up for a long career as no worse than a No. 2 receiver. He has 51 catches for 750 yards. Last year, he had a 58-catch, 812 season split between Dallas and Cleveland.
The flaws, though, make you wonder how much he will be worth in the unrestricted free agency market he can hit in March.
He has been unlucky. Game-turning calls at Houston and against Jacksonville went against him on long catches that might have led to wins. He was ruled out of bounds on each catch. Replays made it impossible to say if he was.
The key drops, though, don’t involve luck. There have been too many of those.
Then there is the question of temperament. After a loss at Pittsburgh, Bryant said no Steeler could cover him. After Sunday’s loss at Cincinnati, when asked if he thought the game plan was conservative to account for Frye’s youth, Bryant indirectly said the Browns wasted his talent.
“Every time the crowd got loud,” he said, “I look up and saw No. 85 (Chad Johnson) running deep down the middle of the field.”
Bryant has a smoldering personality. It has been hard to tell how well Crennel likes him.
“He has his little quirks individually,” Crennel said, “but he wants the team to win. I don’t think he’s done anything to go against the team.”
Does Crennel want Bryant back? “He might not want me back,” Crennel said. “It’s a two-way street.”
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
When Bryant signed as a No. 63 draft pick with the Cowboys in 2002, he pocketed a signing bonus of about $1 million.
His four-year contract, picked up in progress by the Browns after last year’s Quincy Morgan trade, has paid him $225,000 in ’02, $300,000 in ’03 and $380,000 in ’04, and will have grossed him $455,000 in ’05. His total haul comes in under $2.5 million.
Edwards has a five-year deal that will pay him at least $18.5 million and could reach $40 million.
Frye’s view of Bryant?
“A.B.’s one of the best route runners I’ve seen,” the rookie said. “He gets in and out of his cuts real fluid. He’s hard to cover.”
Dilfer says Bryant is good for Edwards, partly because of the precise routes.
“I told Braylon, for him to be the perennial Pro Bowler and superstar that we all think he can be, he needs to become a craftsman,” Dilfer said. “Everybody can run fast and jump high and catch balls, but very few are craftsmen. “If he can become a craftsman, he’ll be one of the very best in the league.” Reach Repository sports writer Steve Doerschuk at (330) 580-8347 or e-mail: [email protected]
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(Andra Davis)