DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Joe Thomas: On Letting Young Players Get Away

The way McCown and Kessler took those sacks, it's almost like they were trying to break their own clavicle.

Okay..............what point are you trying to make?

You must have missed this: "Injuries happen, and we have just had a horrible run of bad luck."

You must have missed this...............all teams have injuries.

4 qb's in 5 weeks though?

We let two very good offensive linemen walk and did not draft a big, strong qb in Wentz.

Where does the blame actually lie?

That sometimes bad luck is just bad luck. Guys get hurt in the NFL every day. Yes, we have had more than our "fair share" of injuries at more than 1 position, and while we definitely do need to shore up the OL. (and as you know, I hated letting Schwartz go) sometimes a guy just gets hit the wrong way, and gets hurt.

We had what I feel was a far superior OL, at least in pass blocking, last year. Nevertheless, we still had to start 3 different QBs, as all were injured over the course of the year.

I think that the team, right now, is so very inexperienced that the WRs don't always know what they should do, and we both know that a single guy being out of position can screw up an entire play, and the QB's timing. I am sure that our QBs feel pressure to make plays because our defense has given up boatloads of points. I definitely think that this is, in some part, why McCown was hurt. He is too tough for his own good, and wants to make a play on every play.

We have seen players injured in walk throughs. We lost a kicker in a walk through, for goodness sake. We have lost 2 Centers. We have lost 2 TE. On defense, Campbell was out for a couple of games with injury. Nate Orchard is on IR. Guys have just been injured. Sometimes it is just bad luck. We certainly have had that in spades this year. It is horrible that we have had so many guys get hurt,especially at such a key position, but sometimes guys just get hurt. I don't think that it is just the OL, though they certainly have contributed to the QBs' problems.

However, I have seen other QBs take shots that were every bit as rough as the shots our QBs have taken, and get right back up. Sometimes luck factors in .... and as much s we hate to blame luck for things on the football field, it certainly does impact play on the field, and it can be a factor in injuries as well.

I think back to a guy like LeCharles Bentley, who saw his career end on the very 1st play of training camp. Injuries can happen at any moment, and sometimes they do just happen.

Yeah........................so?

Look, y'all can make all the excuses you like, but the fact is that this team is severely lacking in talent. That was a conscious decision. Crying about injuries does NOT change that.

I'm not complaining about anything. I am the one who said that players sometimes just get hurt.

On a team that lacks talent and experience to start with, losing players is going to hurt a lot. I don't know how you dispute that. If you are Bill Belichick, with a Super Bowl caliber team, well, even he lost a game when they were down to their 3rd string QB. They have a very good team, but they saw both Garrapolo and Brissett get hurt in the 4 games that Brady was suspended for. They are a great team, and it happened to them. They are a good enough team, overall, to withstand that kind of injury. Why did they lose 2 QBs to injury? Because injuries happen.

I really don't get your point.

I think it is a bottom line business. You either win or you lose.

Excuses are for losers. And the Browns are losers. Dispute that.

If you believe that the Browns are ready to win right now, well then I dunno.

I do agree that it is a bottom line business, but within limits, within boundaries. We made the decision to go with youth. You and I both have been outspoken about the decisions the front office made about players like Schwartz. W#e both think that the front office should have done more to bring at least some of our free agents back.

I think that we would have a better record if we had Schwartz and Benjamin on this team. I think that Gipson is so far superior to Poyer that it's ridiculous. We might not have been able to bring all of our guys back, but I agree that both the optic is bad, and the team has suffered, because of these decisions. I don't believe that Mack was coming back. You disagree, and that's fine ..... but the others would all have helped so far. I also have to add that our OL looked pretty darn good last week, until we lost Reiter. If he hadn't been hurt, well ... I think that we would have had a much better chance at the end of the game to make plays. The play of the OL went down, measurably, once he went out and we moved Greco back to C and had to play a far lesser player at RG.

I do not believe that you can just say that the youth of this team is an excuse. I don't think that you can say that injuries are an excuse. No team, especially one lacking in depth, experience, and yes, talent at some positions, is going to succeed when they are down to their 2nd or 3rd string players. I don't know how you argue that. However, if you want to believe that, well, I'n mot going to bang my head against the wall arguing the point with you. We can simply agree to disagree.

I agree YTown, It's gonna be a uphill climb for awhile. Hope we can gut it out. Go Browns!

Are you aware of how the Steelers REALLY do things? They are the absolute MASTERS of letting their own draft picks go when they get too expensive...they can do that because they draft well and the replacement guys get to sit and mature before being thrust into the spotlight.

If you want to compare us to another team you couldn't do it any worse than you continue to do.

You want cheap? Watch that Bengal team without Sanu and Jones. Their SB window was closing anyway and Mikey wouldn't pony up to keep that offense alive. Bengal fans are back to turning on Marvin and the OC for the offense's shortcomings...THEIR problem is an owner unwilling to pay what it takes to win.

We could have signed every darn on of our FAs and we'd still be mediocre. With less cap space, a few overpaid guys who didn't fit or weren't anywhere near as good as they themselves thought, and a ridiculously overpaid, tiny wide receiver.

This rebuild was the only correct answer. Time will tell if they can get to where we all want to go.

A lot of maybes looks like someone is desperately grasping at straws trying to find some one to buy a load of BS.

Looking at the Steelers history you clearly see it takes time to set up the FO and find the right coach and learn to draft and develop players. It didn't happen over night nor in 5 years. They have been in the league ~85 years.

Just to refresh everyone's memory...


New owner Jimmy Haslam wants to model Browns after Steelers

Oct. 17, 2012 at 05:08 p.m.
link

In his robust Inside The NFL Notebook below, NFL Network's Albert Breer touches on multiple topics, including (click on each link to take you directly to the topic):

» Four things he's looking forward to in Week 7.
» One team about to roll off an eight-game winning streak.
» Why Jason Garrett's job as Dallas coach isn't in jeopardy.
» And much more, beginning with the NFL's newest owner and his game plan to rebuild the Browns ...

Freshly minted Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam spoke with strength and conviction after his new peers accepted him into their exclusive club Tuesday, sounding every bit like the football-driven boss that his recently acquired, dilapidated, once-proud franchise needs.

But just a couple hours later, as he headed back to Northeast Ohio from the league's Fall Meeting in Chicago, Haslam pointed forward. And admitted that, in fact, he doesn't have all the answers. So his job now is to try and find them.

"It's a little awkward where we came in, getting announced as new owner at the start of camp, getting voted in right in the middle of the season," Haslam said, his enthusiasm jumping through the cell phone. "But for now, it's going to be no different than what we've done. We announced the transition with Mike (Holmgren) and Joe (Banner). And I'm going to listen, learn and ask questions."



As has been expected for a while, Holmgren is on his way out as team president, Banner is coming in as a chief executive, and more changes surely are on the way.

That shouldn't come as any surprise. It's not like the Browns don't have elements that need fixing. This incarnation of the club has made the playoffs once since it entered the NFL in 1999, while suffering through a jarring 10 seasons of double-digit losses.

As the saying goes, Haslam is just trying to know what he doesn't know. But it's also not as if the new owner doesn't have a rough idea for how he wants to do business. That's because he's been preparing for this for quite some time.

"Probably like a lot of other individuals, I loved football starting at an early age," Haslam said. "The last five or six years, we got more serious. We had the chance to observe it first-hand as a limited partner with the (Pittsburgh) Steelers, and then we let the Steelers know we'd be interested if the chance to buy a team was out there. I can't think of a better opportunity than the one that came up."

Haslam acknowledged that, indeed, his model for building the Browns, at least initially, will be based largely on what he learned over the past three years working with the Rooney family while holding a 12.5 percent stake in Cleveland's AFC North rival.

From a common-sense standpoint, that means current coach Pat Shurmur and general manager Tom Heckert face an uphill battle when it comes to keeping their jobs.

Here's why: Haslam, like Dan and Art Rooney, believes in long-term stability and continuity. As he evaluates the club, anyone he chooses to keep will be kept with more than the immediate future in mind. So guys like Shurmur and Heckert, aside from just winning, will have to show the new boss how they fit into the franchise's vision for the next decade.

Haslam is quick to note, too, that he isn't just cribbing from Pittsburgh on that. His chief officers in his lucrative truck-stop business have been with the company for 27, 24 and 16 years.

"That's the way our company has always looked at it," he said. "You get the right people in place and let them do their jobs."



And that explains why he believes so deeply in what he saw in Pittsburgh, where the Steelers have had just three coaches since the late 1960s. The Browns have had five since 1999, to go with four different general managers.

"It was great training being there," Haslam said. "They do it with character and intelligence. They run that organization the right way. They build through the draft. They're patient. It's just the right way to do it. It was a tremendous opportunity to be with them."

Now he'll go against them, twice a year, in a historically heated but, more recently, one-sided rivalry.

Haslam's already gotten a taste of what it'll be like. He's counseled with Banner, who was in the Philadelphia Eagles' pressure-cooker environment for nearly two decades, off and on since July, and he's been around Cleveland enough over the past few months to notice how important football is to the region.

Last Sunday, as he headed back home to Tennessee, he got a call from Banner following the Browns' victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.

"We were all excited to get the win, but he was blown away seeing the fans' reaction," Haslam recalled. "He said, 'Imagine what it'll be like if we can turn it around.' And I promise you, I'm gonna work as hard as I can to make that happen."

In one sense, for Haslam, this is the finish line. Where some others who buy into football teams are simply investing, his family always saw its time with Pittsburgh as an apprenticeship, which makes this next step the culmination of a long-held plan.

But in another, more important sense, as Haslam sees it, this is just the beginning for the new owner. He admits he has more questions than answers at this point.

Still, for Clevelanders, he seems to be a breath of fresh air. Randy Lerner had become a largely absentee owner, despite his local ties. Where that was a case of someone breaking away, Haslam -- who is planning to split his time between Knoxville and Cleveland -- is arriving and trying to root himself in the community.

What he sees isn't much different than what he's seen back home with the college football program he and his family have been involved with forever. Neither is the goal.

"The analogy is this -- the town of Knoxville rises and falls with the Vols," he said. "It's similar in Cleveland. When I'm back in Tennessee on those Saturdays after a win, there's a bounce in everyone's step, everyone's happier. The goal here is to give Cleveland some happier Sundays."

Come on YTown. You know that four QB injuries in five weeks is way more than just luck. Let's be honest here Bud.

How could he had learned the building process if he was hired 39 years after the fact? He wasn't part of the process as you yourself state.

I agree with you.... I don't think most people consider the ripple effect of firing the staff or the front office.. how it impacts everything all the way down through scouting to contracts, etc...

RG3 was bad luck, pure and simple. He gets knocked out of bounds at the end of a run, and busts his collarbone. I don't know how you try to "strengthen" a collarbone. (and I speak as a veteran of collarbone issues and surgery)

McCown was injured the same way this year as last. He holds the ball a long time. I cannot remember whether he was hit quickly or not when he was injured this year, but this is the 2nd year in a row me broke his collarbone.

Kessler was sacked and bruised his chest and ribs. He will reportedly be OK to go this weekend. guys do get the win knocked out of them in this game, especially QBs. I do think that the constant shuffling of the OL, necessary because we have had injuries there as well, has hurt the cohesiveness of the OL unit. I am really disappointed that Reiter got hurt because he really looked good a week ago. I think that he might be our best C. Unfortunately, he is gone for the year with an ACL. I was not a fan of signing Bailey in place of Schwartz ...... but that is what it is.

Anyway, QBs do get knocked out of games, and it happened to Kessler. Unfortunately we also lost Whitehurst for part of that same game, on a play that looked really, really bad, and thankfully may not have been as bad as it looked. he actually returned to the game.

So, we have lost 2 QB to injury. (for more than the remainder of 1 game) This is not good, but it does happen. It happened to the Patriots, They started Garoppolo, and lost him to injury. Then they started Brissett, and he is on IR after being hurt. Now they have got Brady back and then they got Garoppolo back from injury. Injuries happen.

~40 years after entering the league and ...

Jap Douds 1933
Luby DiMelio 1934
Joe Bach 1935-1936
Johnny McNally 1937-1939
Walt Kiesling 1939-1940
Bert Bell 1941
Buff Donelli 1941
Walt Kiesling 1941-1942
Walt Kiesling & Greasy Neale 1943
Walt Kiesling & Phil Handler 1944
Jim Leonard 1945
Jock Sutherland 1946-1947
Johnny Michelson 1948-1951
Joe Bach 1952-1953
Walt Kiesling 1954-1956
Buddy Parker 1957-1964
Mike Nixon 1965
Bill Austin 1966-1968
Chuck Noll 1969-1991

Coaches later.

As if this is somehow relevant in 2016.

Not sure how choosing to run rather than dumping the ball off to an open Barnidge is bad luck. I think it was more of the same w/him....poor decision making.

Here's why: Haslam, like Dan and Art Rooney, believes in long-term stability and continuity. As he evaluates the club, anyone he chooses to keep will be kept with more than the immediate future in mind. So guys like Shurmur and Heckert, aside from just winning, will have to show the new boss how they fit into the franchise's vision for the next decade.

Haslam is quick to note, too, that he isn't just cribbing from Pittsburgh on that. His chief officers in his lucrative truck-stop business have been with the company for 27, 24 and 16 years.

"That's the way our company has always looked at it," he said. "You get the right people in place and let them do their jobs."

I'm not going to expand much at this point in time on this quote, but anyone who's been genuinely objective about the history here under Haslam will understand the relevance of the highlighted (or is it highlit?) portions.

Not trying to join the posse because I try to stay out of your bashing of the FO ad nauseum, but I will say that if Haslam keeps discovering - in his mind at least - he hired the wrong football people, sooner or later he's gotta wonder if that's his strength.

Only because he has yet to be able to fulfill that philosophy successfully with the right people. It's not a matter of saying one thing and doing another.

Would you agree that at least on paper, Chud, Norv, Horton, Banner, and Lombardi should have been a recipe for success?

I know I believed it. I recall saying that if we couldn't turn it around with those guys we wouldn't.

For whatever reasons though, that team was unable to create that 10 yr vision or a successful environment. Norv reportedly had some words for the FO at the end of the season about not being supported and I recall banner talking during preseason how Chud was caught off guard when he traded TRich away. Now, the trade ultimately was a wise move by Banner, but it appears he was making personnel decisions without Chud's input.

Now I don't know enough about what took place behind closed doors to assign any kind of blame, but I think it's reasonable to say that regardless of why, that combination just wasn't working out. Maybe it was a situation that could have been fixed, maybe not.

Then when we get to Pet and Farmer, it's not like we had anyone else who wanted the job...

Maybe Haslam is as fickle as some think he is. I just see things that to me say it's not as simple as all that.

Hell No ... No clue why he hired Banner .... NONE .... OK .. This not true .. Cause the NFL recommended him ... HORRIBLE HIRE ... And it was clear right away when he made his 1st hire in Lombardi ... Talk about a HORRIBLE TRACK RECORD ...

And it played out just like it did in Phili for Banner ... He got to power hungry and lost his job ...

Then the thief listened to the morons instead of his coaches and fired the coaches ... Then he finally hears enough bad things and fires the dynamic duo ...

The sole reason we have MONEYBALL is cause Haslam SUCKS at this ... He keeps talking about BUILDING a team that will reach consensus ... BS .... The FO should be nothing more than info gatherers and organizers ... The real dialogue should happen between the scouts/coaches ... And this isn't a gas station board meeting ... CONSESUS MY ASS ... Ask Bill Walsh or Billicheck about CONSESUS ...

This is going to blow up also ... Just watch and see ... 2 moves at this point really scare me and make me wonder about the pieces in place ...

- I can't imagine Hue was OK with letting Schwartz walk .. He had to know that was going to be a problem .. I think the HARVARD BOYS won that one ...

And if Hue didn't know that was going to be a problem .. Then GOD HELP US ...

- All the WR's we took in the draft .... Makes no sense to me ... I think it was 100% clearly ANALYTICS driving the decision ... Why else would u draft 4, 5 or 6 RECIEVERS in the same draft .. Crap ... How many WR's do teams carry on their rosters? ...

- same thing with all the trade downs ... I didn't mind the first rnd. Trade downs .. But once we hit the late 2nd/early 3rd .... At some point the extra picks aren't worth the value because of the talent level drop off ...

It was clearly quantity over quality ... ANALYTICS DRIVEN no doubt ...

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out over the next 2 or 3 years ... If executed properly any "process" can work ... This one is going to have to find the very thin line between ANALYTICS driven decisions and FOOTBALL driven decisions ..

Next FA period will be very very telling for me .. Cause MONEYBALL and FA are not a good mix .. MONEYBALL doesn't overpay folks and no one signs in FA w/o being overpaid ...

It was entirely analytics driven because the numbers dictate that drafting is a game of numbers -- the more you take at a given position, the higher your chances of finding a couple of successes long term for that position.

That said -- we drafted four(?) WR, and I'm not sure we have even a single long term answer among them. Coleman is useless if he can't stay on the field, and once he gets there he has to get open and show himself worthy of being that #1 WR. The others, so far, are just a bunch of guys.... nothing special among any of them.

The quality of the players we got is an entirely different argument ... Although I guess maybe they are related in some ways ... Naaaaa ... There not ... Different argument bro .. *L* ..

I wonder what position or two they'll throw all our picks at next year? .. There's no lack of positions we need that's for sure ..... *L* ....

With that said .... When we do decide to focus on the QB spot I wonder if we take 4 or 5 of them .. Odds are we'll definetly find a Brady in there .. *L* ...

I can't believe Hue signed on to this .. It would STUN me .. And if he did .. GOD HELP US ..

Like I said .. Next FA period will tell me a lot ...

Vers - I'd rather take a shot with a Kessler type draft pick or an RG3 type long shot than invest HIGH DRAFT PICKS on a QB I am not in love with ....

Not a big fan of just using a HIGH PICK on a QB just because we need one .. There REALLY EXPENSIVE DARTS to be taking shots with .. Naaaa .. I'm gonna spend a VALUABLE ASSET on a QB, it's gonna be a QB I LOVE ...

If Jimmy becomes a FA .. Lets go .. Other than that .. The Pats don't make bad trades .. YOUR GOING TO PAY A PREMIUM to get him .. And I have not seen near enough of him to spend a high pick on him ...

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one ...

Well Diam, quit beating around the bush and tell me what you really think !

I never said a first round pick. I said a package. If we want a good qb, we are going to have to invest in one. Look man, what are all those high draft choices we have over the years--and including this year's group---really done for us.

If they believe in Jimmy G, they should be willing to pay for him. But again, I don't think he will be available. There is also the question of how well they evaluate qbs. They passed on Wentz, brought in RGIII and drafted Kessler way before where I think he should have been drafted. Not looking that hot thus far.