Charlie Frye looking about par for the course
Let’s get the facts straight:
1. The Browns played like they were the Oberlin football team on Sunday. The game was over by the second quarter. It was a complete and utter failure in all phases of the game. The offense was highlighted by two inept QB’s, a line that could neither run block nor pass block, receivers who dropped passes, and the Browns’ standard amount of drive-killing holding and false start penalties. Did I mention the turnovers and sacks? A banner day for the unveiling of new offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski’s (a.k.a. Chud) sophisticated new offense. Chud, you’ll have to learn like all of your distinguished predecessors that you have to simplify things first for the Browns players. See if they can grasp the fundamentals, simple stuff like blocking, running, catching and throwing before you start throwing in zone blocking schemes, motion and the such. The D made Toothlessburger look like Joe Montana with an effiecient four TD performance. While making the Big Faced One look all-pro, the defense still managed to find time to give up over 200 yards rushing. Hats off to you, gentlemen. The only solace I can take in this is the fact that those poor, presumptuous Steelers fans will take this game as a sign that their offense is on the right track, when it’s destined for mediocrity. How about the special teams? The punter whom the Browns signed Saturday morning botched a snap on his first punt of the game, leading to a play on which the Browns were charged with four penalties. Once that beauty was sorted out, the Steelers got the ball on the Browns 20, thus leading to a chain of events that resulted in a disastrous loss.
2: The Browns released their starting QB, Charlie Frye two days after the game. Charlie was a battler. He was tough (he played last year’s season finale with a broken wrist to show his teammates how much he cared about the team). He went to Akron (the Zips have always been a personal favorite). He’s from Willard, OH. He grew up a Browns fan and idolized the great Bernie Kosar. He showed some wheels and ‘escapability.’ He lit it up at the senior bowl before he was drafted. I swear I heard somebody on the NFL Network quote a scout saying that Frye reminded him a little bit of Brett Favre. He made some things happen in his first pre-season action. Then when he first got into regular season games, he was able to move the offense a little bit and that was improvement! For those reasons, I made the decision that he could be a viable NFL QB. That led to me touting that he “is like Bernie Kosar with wheels.’ Eventually I jumped completely onto his bandwagon. Now that Charlie’s been released I’m starting to realize I might have overlooked a few of his important deficiencies. He doesn’t have a great arm. He fumbles a lot (which the members of the Browns message board attribute to his small hands). He forces the ball. Sometimes he locks on one receiver, this leads to interceptions. He makes terrible decisions, specializing in the field of making terrible decisions in the 4th quarter, late in the 4th quarter. His long balls tend to flutter (again the small hands). And, he seems to have a far off look in his eyes when he’s interviewed. Despite those realizations, I still wish he wasn’t gone. Certainly he has enough talent to back up Brady Quinn.
The combination of the opening day disaster and dropping Charlie Frye might have thrown me into a season long funk in previous years, but luckily I was able to garner some words of wisdom from a fellow Brown’s fan on Sunday. I was in a Browns bar in the nations’ capital watching the Browns get crushed with 50 other Browns’ fans. Midway through the second quarter I almost set the record for the quickest I’ve given up on a Browns season. Luckily there was a drunken, obnoxious, talkative Brown’s fan from Medina, OH (he was awesome) who was ready to step up with the words of wisdom I needed. This was the sort of guy who I was pretty sure was going to get in a fight with the lone Squeelers fan in the bar. And who, when I mentioned that the Steelers fan was also a Yankees fan, muttered “I feel like dumping a pitcher of beer on his head.” I was actually contemplating leaving this place at halftime so I could spare my eyes from further horrors, and the guy looks at me and says “don’t sweat the score. All that matters is that we have 11 guys on each side of the ball giving everything they have, sweating and bleeding in orange and brown.” I guess that’s what we’ve been reduced to since the bad man (would the Dark Underlord of Lucifer have been too strong here?) took our team away from us. But screw it. Maybe that’s what it’s all about for us Browns fans. You can make fun of us for the team since 1999, Winslow’s motorcycle accident, the Drive, the Fumble, Red Right 88, Tim Couch, Gerald Warren, Courtney Brown, William Green; the list goes on and on. You can say as fans we’re unruly, rude, crude, drunk, delusionsal, classless, unrealistic, crazy, and kind of dimwitted. Fine. And maybe I shouldn’t be learning life lessons from the drunkest guy in the bar. But as long as we have 11 guys on offense and 11 guys on defense playing their hearts out in the orange and brown, we aren’t going away.
I say this is Brady Quinn country now! Keep the seat warm Mr. Anderson. Soon we’ll be able to talk about what a terrible decision Miami made taking Teddy Ginn Jr. over Brady Quinn. The 2007 draft will go down in history as the one that turned the Browns around. The Bengals are as good as cooked this week. Did you know that Brady Quinn put up more reps on the bench press than some of the offensive linemen at the combine?
Charlie Frye looking about par for the course
God bless the Browns. and God bless that drunk browns fan.