Lions and Browns frustrate in defeat
Written by Dave Woolford | | news@toledofreepress.comThe view from ground level (and below):
How long, in light years, will we of passion for the NFL representatives in our area have to wait for something good to happen or something bad to happen less often or will nothing of consequence continue to happen in a defenselessness world of devastation?
In other words, are the Cleveland Browns or Detroit Lions ever going to win again?
How much pain do we have to endure on a weekly basis during the season that starts and ends on the first weekend of the NFL campaign as far as the Lions and Browns are concerned? We’re very caring, patient fans who have been cursed. What did we do wrong? We’re victims of our own environs, a football hotbed that becomes cold-blooded on Sunday afternoons.
Metaphorically speaking, our two NFL representatives are both train wrecks. They’re not disasters waiting to happen. They’re disasters waiting to happen again and again and again. It’s foreseeable. It’s unavoidable.
We have new coaches, new quarterbacks, new logos and supposedly new mindsets, but after watching both teams fall to 0-2 our only response can be, “So what’s new?”
Since their 1999 expansion return to the NFL, the Browns are just 54-108 with one playoff experience and three coaching changes. They’re on their way to losing at least 10 games for the sixth time in the past seven years. Their biggest rival was Pittsburgh, but the Steelers have beaten them 11 straight times and now consider the Browns their biggest patsy.
As for the Lions, 21 months without a win is pushing perpetuity. Their loss to the Vikings last Sept. 20 was their 19th straight, tying Chicago (1940s) and Oakland (1960s) for the second-longest skid in league history. Don’t look now, but the Lions are just seven losses away from tying Tampa Bay’s record of 26 in a row set during the 1976-77 seasons. But enough of this negativity. Maybe there’s something loveable about losers that we as fans haven’t discovered yet, although our Lions and Browns have certainly given us ample time to do so.
Coaches poll needs to go
If you haven’t browsed the weekly USA Today Coaches and/or Secretaries, Graduate Assistants, PR Flacks And Other Underlings College Football Poll, save your time. Florida State is ranked 25th after it crushed BYU 54-28 in Provo, Utah, on Sept. 19. Both teams are 2-1. And, by the way, BYU is ranked 20th. This continues to fortify the fallacy of the Coaches Poll, which provides one third of the counterparts to determine the BCS national title-game participants. Isn’t it any wonder the coaches voted to make their ballots secret?
They need to be totally eliminated from the BCS process, but whose going to vote for that? Certainly no one remotely connected with the 59 coaches who supposedly vote in the coaches poll. Their respective subordinates are already too busy covering for the old coach when it comes to voting for the top 25 Division 1-A college football teams, while making sure they don’t interfere with the old coaches’ personal agenda, which cancels out any chance for objectivity.
Quick hitters
Calling a timeout with just seconds remaining in an NFL game to freeze an opposing placekicker who might have a winning field goal on his toe is something that should be given the boot. Dallas coach Wade Phillips used the rule to its full extent against New York Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes last Sept. 20, with four seconds remaining and the clock stopped.
Tynes kicked what appeared to be the winning 37-yard field goal, but Phillips called timeout just before the ball was snapped, negating the field goal. Tynes was then forced to make good on his second attempt, which he did. Here’s the silliness of the whole episode. What if Tynes had missed before Phillips called time out and then made good on his mulligan? The timeout rule has to be altered to maintain that there can be no timeouts called in, say, the last five seconds of a particular game to freeze the opposing placekicker.
Congratulations to Sam Hornish Jr. of Defiance, who has recorded seven top-10 NASCAR Sprint Cup finishes this season with nine races remaining. That’s just two less than Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch.
Hot rumor is that Danica Patrick, the hottest female driver in the Indy Racing League (results not withstanding), will join Tony Stewart’s NASCAR Sprint Cup racing team, but first will be channeled through ARCA and the NASCAR Nationwide series before making her Sprint Cup debut.
Patrick’s only victory in the IRL came just one a year ago in Japan. Since then, she has led only three times for 27 laps, 24 of which came at Iowa Speedway three months ago when she finished ninth, a lap behind the leaders.
Yes, you heard right. ESPN’s Monday night NFL game color commentator Ron “Jaws” Jaworski said Miami quarterback Chad Pennington had, “Great eye discipline.” Does that mean he doesn’t wink, blink or bat an eyelid under pressure? If your eyes are undisciplined, how do you enforce accepted patterns of behavior?
