Okay, I know I wasn't expecting the Browns to win today but...man. Wow.
First off, the offense was in a word, offensive. This whole "west coast offense" thing is really on my nerves. Case in point—we had the ball on the one yard line. First down and one. What do we do? We throw a freaking play action pass to freaking Alex Smith! We have Peyton Hillis! Run the damn football! Ground 'n Pound!
Maybe that's just not the offense we should expect, but if I'm a head coach—better yet, if I'm an offensive lineman, that's what I want. We need one yard, we should never have to pass the football. Never. And yes, I know we got the touchdown, but that is always going to bother me.
Speaking of having Peyton Hillis...Oh, where to start on this one. What in the wide, wide world of sports are the Browns doing with him right now? We come out in the third quarter down 14-7, this guy is on the sideline without a helmet. Everybody wonders, "WTF is up?!" and the Browns beat writers tweet that the Browns say there's nothing wrong with him, it's a "coaches decision." Then, they tweet that Hillis pulled his hamstring. And about a minute later, he's in the game! Then we hear he was only in there for pass protection, and that he can't actually run the ball. I don't know who is running PR over there for the Browns, but Holmgren seriously needs to decide if this guy needs to be fired or not, because this is way past ridiculous.
If Hillis is hurt, fine, he's hurt. But don't say he's not hurt, then he is hurt, and then put him into the game! That just means you're putting the player at risk if that's true. And this is all happening on Shurmur's watch, and I'm really not his biggest fan right now.
First off, the way he handled Hillis not playing the Miami game is disgusting. Hillis literally lost 10 pounds, had a fever, and I'm sure his throat was killing him. I've had really bad strep throat, it sucks the life out of you. And for Shurmur to go on the podium and say, "It's my understanding that Peyton was sick," is absolutely absurd. He should've said "Peyton was sick and couldn't go, if you'd lost 10 pounds in a week and had a fever, you probably wouldn't be going to work either." I think that's logical, no?
But I digress, the real issue at hand with Shurmur is that his offense right now just can't get a darn thing going. And it's such a shame too, because the defense has played remarkably well. The defensive unit only gave up 10 points today—the other 14 came from horrendous special teams play.
Taking a look at the stats, Colt McCoy threw way too many times yet again today, completing just 21 of his 45 attempts for 215 yards and 2 touchdowns. Why is he passing so much? Well because the Browns refuse to do anything offensively in the first quarter, so they start out down, and then have to pass. Plus, with Hillis being hurt, Hardesty just doesn't seem ready to take the full load of the offense. Oakland's defense was not ranked well at all against the run, and we really should've been able to at least get 100 yards total, but the offensive line couldn't get their reach blocks all day long, meaning there were no outside lanes. The most telling stat of all from the running game? The longest run of the day from a running back was Hardesty for 7—yes just seven—yards. That's never going to be good enough.
The defensive side of the ball continues to impress in some ways, but disappoint in others. They got fairly lucky that Jason Campbell had to come out of the game, because when he was at the helm they really couldn't stop the Raiders on third downs. They did hold Darren McFadden to under 100 yards, with 91 on 20 carries, but all told the Raiders had 40 carries for 151 yards.
But the biggest offender of the day was the special teams unit. I said this in the Halftime Blurb, I believe, but I don't know that we ever had a touchdown return last year under Mangini, and if we did it certainly wasn't often. (Update: According to Terry Pluto, the Browns hadn't had a kickoff returned on them since '08. The longest return was 46 yards in '09, 32 yards last season. I thought I was right about that.) The last couple of years, we did the little things well—very few penalties, and good execution on special teams. I'm really, really missing that right now, especially because Marv Albert was saying the whole game, "Oh, I wonder if they'll fake!" Why didn't Shurmur think that too?
The bottom line? Today the Browns should have come out fresh from the bye week, but instead they came out the same old "let's not play offense in the first quarter" way and they totally stunk. The Raiders didn't even need that extra emotion, because the Browns couldn't move the ball.
But this team is going to have to get a whole lot better, because right now it just seems like each week they're getting worse. And in Cleveland, that's just not going to cut it.
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