Flugel

Glad you're okay and enjoying life. Dutch busted Nicks' balls but it didn't happen quite like you described. He never said anything bad about Nicks' mom believe it or not. He said something like "Jesus Christ Nickers you just shared a picture of your mom and told everyone you want to do her. What the Hell is wrong with you?" Nicks and Dutch have the same kind of exchanges you and Rich used to back in the day. Not for nothing, after Nicks posted that picture of his mom - she grounded his ass. She said something along the line of "ever since you posted that picture I can't keep your buddy Ghoolie away from here. I also had to change my phone number because that sick bastard had me on speed dial." Nicks tried to set her straight with "Oh Stop! Ghoolie grew up in the church and he was an Altar Boy forever mom." Before he could say another word she said "THAT AIN'T NO ALTAR BOY!" The NFL we once knew has become all about passing, scoring more points and protecting passers. We're probably only about a few years away from 2 hand touch on QBs or the league making it flag football on passers only. The OLD SCHOOL football I miss in the ended in the 90s. In order to be successful in this era - you need weather controlled stadiums. Let me ask you a question - when is the last time you went to watch a game in Cleveland late in the season? When is the last time, or perhaps the 1st time, the team in the Windy City (Chicago) ever had a passing game their fans have wanted to come out and watch in November, December or January? The climate there has perpetuated a bad passing game while the Lions made it to the playoffs... That's why you see people wanting domes in places today's players wouldn't otherwise want to play in. That said, more domes = more artificial turfs (that might lead to more injuries).

I know. Those guys have been a good nucleus for younger guys to learn from. It'll be interesting to see how our next few drafts go...

It would be awesome; but we better giddy-up and get after it. This is going to be Myles' 8th season already. Can you believe it?

We're gonna agree to disagree about how unhelpful rounds 6 and 7 CAN be for the Browns. Here's some starters drafted and undrafted on our 80s playoff teams that weren't picked before round 5, if at all: WR Reggie Langhorne 7th round Elizabeth City State 1986, Safety Thane Gash 7th round East Tennessee State 1988, Right Tackle Cody Risien Texas A&M 7th round, LT Paul Farren 12th round Boston University 1983, C Mike Babb 5th round Texas 1982, RB Earnest Byner 10th round East Carolina 1984, LT Tony T-Bone Jones Undrafted West Carolina 1988, LT Doug Dieken 6th round Illinois 1971, QB Brian Sipe 13th round San Diego State 1972 (The ONLY League MVP on the Browns I've had the pleasure of watching) Now, try to think of how many bad 1st round picks the Browns made during the same span. QB Mike Phipps 1970, WR Steve Holden 1973, OG Pete Adams 1973, Willis Adams 1979, LB Robert Stonewall Jackson 1977, LB Clifford Charlton 1988, LB Mike Junkin 1987. RB Charles White 1980 There's been some disappointing 1st round picks since the 90s: FB Touchdown-Free Tommy Vardell, LB Craig Powell, DE Courtney Brown, QB Tim Couch (Donovan McNabb went to the team with the worst record in 1998 and didn't need all the excuses), RB Trent Richardson, DE Bark Mingo, QB Johnny Manziel, QB Brandon Weedon, CB Justin Gilbert, WR Corey Coleman, RB William Green. Bottom line: There's a lot of good football players in this country. I'm guessing the Browns have enough money to hire a guy or 2 to research guys projecting from rounds 5 thru undrafted. Finding these kinds of guys in the past has benefitted this franchise; especially during my glory years as a fan in the 80s (meaning many were drafted in the 70s and 80s).

What's with all the negativity all of a sudden? Sure, you retired and now you have all this time on your hands and..... 😆 🍺 Just kidding!!!! I was just saying SOME teams are really good at the back end of the draft and Seattle in particular has a 3-4 year span where they weren't thinking ahead to Undrafted FAs - they were focused for finish the job on day 3 and made it happen. I

Understandable. However, some teams are really good in the last 2-3 rounds. Back when Seattle won a Super Bowl, they were drafting starters and situational subs for their secondary in rounds 5-7. Hard hitting Safety Kam Chancellor was a 5th round pick; Richard Sherman was a 5th round pick; Byron Maxwell was drafted in the 6th round; Malcolm Smith was drafted in the 7th round; Brandon Browner wasn't even drafted. That was a lot of the essential ingredients of their Legion of Boom. On the other hand, they did draft Earl Thomas in round 1. At 1 point, Maxwell, Chancellor and Sherman were all only 25 years old playing on their rookie contracts (at 5th-7th round values) while Earl Thomas was the youngest guy at 24 years old. That made for a very healthy salary cap for a while. They even found a very productive LBer K.J. Wright in round 4. On offense, Seattle landed undrafted Free Agent WR Doug Baldwin out of Stanford. He was a very productive starter that had an 8 year career inclusive of 2 Pro Bowls for Seattle. They also added Russell Wilson in round 3, which doesn't sound late - but up against the supply and demand it was. These were the QBs drafted ahead of Wilson: Andrew Luck, RG3, Ryan Tannehill, Brandon Weeden (round 1) and Brock Osweiler (round 2). Now, these were the QBs drafted after Russell Wilson - Nick Foles and Kirk Cousins. I think all those finds by Seattle above (from the scouting dept and FO) led to a very healthy salary and a strong nucleus of players that made life for HC Pete Carroll a lot of fun. That said, drafting like that also required great coaching to develop a lot of those guys on time and ahead of schedule. It probably wasn't easy; but I'm guessing rising to the challenge made it a lot of fun.

Another good point. Knock it off! There's no doubt he's talented. The thing that makes me somewhat reluctant was the fact that he showed up to training camp very out of shape and overweight. Some will say "so what - did you see him?" Yeah, I was impressed; but did he get anywhere close to the finish line? Now that there's a knee injury or possibly 2 in his football background - he might want to show up in shape. When Conklin went down in week 1, it would have been nice to have had Jones give us more than just 9 starts over the next 16 games. The quality of remaining depth after your 1st 2 right tackles go down decreases.

Very good points! I not only thought he had a very promising rookie year in 2020; but I remember posting it as it happened and leading up to his 2nd year. We even had a healthy Jack Conklin that year playing 15 of the 16 regular season games. Unfortunately, Wills had a sophomore slump compounded by a mid-season ankle sprain he milked the rest of the 2021 season. I think a lot of us cut him slack for it thinking we'd get the same guy back the next year that we saw as a rookie. Like you said, we never saw the same player again. This is what Google informed me: An average play in the NFL lasts just four seconds. In 2022 and 2023, I frequently complained about seeing Wills make his initial hit then quit when we ran the ball. It only takes about 1 of those 4 seconds to collide and quit. That happened too much for comfort with him in the running game In the passing game, he's very inconsistent starting with his pre-snap stance. When he occasionally gets into a good stance it sets him up for good leverage from pad height and good base below (making sure his feet aren't too close together causing over extension) - he does a nice job. Here's the thing, how is getting into a helpful stance a problem for anyone that puts in the work all year long? It isn't. You get out of it what you put into it (ie; Joe Thomas). If that's not enough, the Browns had 2 awesome OL Coaches: Bill Callahan and Scott Peters. Film can also give a player a lot of the inconvenient truth he needs to work at.

Thanks! The best Tackle in that draft was Iowa's Tristan Wirfs, who was drafted 13th overall by TB via trade with SF. He is now playing Left Tackle instead of Right Tackle. He made the Pro Bowl in 2021 and 2022 as a Right Tackle and in 2023 as a Left Tackle.

It'll be interesting to see how good Berry and his scouting dept do with their 1st round draft picks since the only ones we've seen are Jed Wills (2020) and Greg Newsome II (2021). If we polled everyone in here about who is the weakest link on the Offensive Line - I have a feeling it would be Jed Wills by a significant margin. While Greg Newsome isn't a bad player per say - Emerson pretty much took his spot on the outside as a rookie (after showcasing he could press WRs on the LOS). When Newsome returned from injury that season - he was frustrated that Emerson stayed outside while he became responsible for covering Slot Receivers that line up off the ball/LOS. Newsome is a good tackler and a smart player so I like having him in our secondary. I'm just saying the jury is still out about how good the current FO is at drafting players in the 1st round. Let's just say I'm noticing why Berry seems to be in his comfort zone signing a lot of FA veterans and/or trading for other veteran players. They're proven players so he doesn't have to deal with growing pains and length of time needed for consistent reliability/productivity. Let's just say I get the sense he trusts what he's paying for. Because of rookie salary cap restrictions - teams that consistently draft well from top to bottom tend to have healthier salary caps. BTW, every time they showed the Ravens Draft War-room - it sure looked like Ozzie Newsome was still running it for them. He was in there at the head of the table still writing his notes and crossing off selections. Unbelievable. Consequently, it still looks like a lot of very good players always seem to fall to them IMO...

It's been said: "It's a bird. It's a plane. It's.... just Esia's son."

That was an interesting article. It mentions the consideration/idea of using Jamal Adams exclusively as a LBer since that was the situational role he did best moving into the box as an extra LBer. However, it also talked about his inability to stay healthy. It makes sense because asking a 6-1 player only weighing 213 pounds to make a living playing LBer in the box is going to challenge the durability of a guy that has trouble staying healthy. All that said, he's really good against the run and it doesn't sound like he'll be expensive to sign. My guess is Schwartz would like this idea.

I don't care if they have to do cartwheels wearing fanny floss as long as they get him sliding or trying to avoid contact.

I thought about a fine too; but the only guy in the entire organization that makes more money than Watson is Jimmy Haslam. If you want to change/correct a bad habit on the field - I think we're better off empowering the coaching staff with its wealth of experience to handle it. The Browns hired Bill Musgrave as a Sr Offensive Assistant last year - he/Watson's position coach can provide safer alternatives when watching film with Watson and the offense. They don't necessarily have to start with benching Watson if he does it something like once in the 1st 2 games or so. If Watson starts blowing off the coaching points and initiates contact again - then you bench him for a series or a quarter or a half - all dependent on where they are with the situation. My guess is a competitive guy/QB would rather get fined than benched in a nationally televised game. Lucky for us, we're just fans so this isn't our responsibility.

Thanks MJP! A lot of Stefanski earning the NFL Coach of the Year honor stemmed from what he did without Watson (using 4 other QBs). For example, the Joe Flacco no other teams wanted in 2023 suddenly had other teams interested once he played for Stefanski. Having said that, in the last game we watched Watson play - he looked much more like the player we thought we traded for. The Rats didn't have a solution for him when he heated up and led us to a comeback win. Hopefully that was what we will be seeing on a more regular basis. I think we have a very talented team on both sides of the ball like 11 wins reminded us. It can probably go even better if we can keep at least 1 of our 2 very talented Right Tackles healthy. I hope this isn't just wishful thinking; but I think we'll have even better depth this year.