Over the course of a few years, the entire personality of the Cleveland Browns has changed. Sometimes change is a bad thing, but in the case of these Cleveland Browns, something desperately needed to change. If it's change you want, then it's change you will get. The Cleveland Browns have seen the most dramatic changes in the last year, and today I am going to focus on the team that never learned how to walk, let alone run since returning to the NFL in 1999 and how they are different now.
There were a whole lot of player failures since the Browns returned in 1999. Players were a huge part of the problem, but ultimately, players don't put themselves in situations as much as the coaches and GM's bring them together and hope that they work out. They are drafted, and signed, and then sometimes you want them to stay and they won't, or you want them to leave, but you can't make them. It's like a couple of kids with lego's trying to build a structure. One kid has the vision and builds a perfect structure. The other has a god-awful looking monstrosity. And that same dumb kid might even try to defend his structure by calling it "creative."
The Browns have been the little dumb kid since coming back in 1999. Tim Couch was the number one pick in the inaugural draft for the new Cleveland Browns and that, unfortunately, set the tone. Just to name a few picks who would have been better in hindsight, how about Champ Bailey, Edgerrin James, Donovan McNabb, Jevon Kearse, Daunte Culpepper, to name a few. And the newest incarnation of the Cleveland Browns wasn't very good to the fans either. After making them pay huge money to buy seats in the new stadium via PSL's, they did almost nothing to embrace the old, beloved teams of the past including Bernie Kosar, and the teams from the 80's, as well as real classic players like Jim Brown.
Those first Browns executives might as well have just slapped Cleveland in the face collectively, and I haven't even gotten to the Butch Davis debacle yet. But now, after years of continued mediocrity, things are finally starting to look and feel different when it comes to Cleveland Browns football.
The Browns don't have Butch Davis or the draft-day failures of Courtney Brown, Gerard Warren and Tim Couch. Part of snapping out of the horrible reality that has been the Cleveland Browns, is admitting failures even if those failures weren't your own. The lack of cohesiveness of the players on the field falls on the shoulders of the front office. Out goes Butch Davis and company and in comes Savage and Crennel, two people with track records, not just hype in their names.
(Aside: I will admit that I was excited by the hiring of Butch Davis initially. He was the kind of hiring that nobody was really complaining about. It was the wrong move in hindsight, but certainly a reasonable gamble when it originally occurred.)
The first thing that Savage and Crennel did was give the Browns' roster a makeover. The Browns had a mish-mash of different things happening on their roster. They had tons of money wrapped up in the defensive line. Tons of talent was overflowing in the linebacking corps with Ben Taylor, Andra Davis and Chaun Thompson. So, Crennel instituted his 3-4 defense, which focuses on the linebackers. He got rid of the huge salaries on the defensive line, and they moved on. They save cap money, and more importantly use the talent that they have available to its maximum.
The Browns also had nothing happening at quarterback. Tim Couch was already gone when they arrived. Kelly Holcomb never worked out as a starter and was a free agent, eventually signing with Buffalo where he is a backup to JP Losman. Thankfully, nobody has mentioned the name Spurgeon Wynn in quite some time. So the Browns draft former Akron Zip Charlie Frye in the hopes that he can be the future. In the meantime, they bring in a real pro's pro, in Trent Dilfer, who can play a pretty good game as long as you don't ask him to do too much.
The running back situation was another, where everyone was screaming about potential with Green and Suggs, but despite a couple flashes of adequacy, there was never any success. So, the Browns get Ruben Droughns who proved to be explosive with a good offensive line in Denver. What was missing in that equation in Cleveland? The offensive line. So they go get Joe Andruzzi to help shore up the O-line.
There have been other moves that make up the laundry list of wholesale changes that have occurred with the Browns in the last year, and those are important, but the main point is that the attitude is finally different. The sense of entitlement from high draft picks has been erased, and replaced with a sense of players needing to prove themselves to the coaches and not the other way around. The sense that these are the new Browns and don't have any connection to the old Browns is gone, as we are finally getting access to Bernie Kosar, Reggie Langhorne, Bob Golic, Jim Brown and all the other players who have made us the Cleveland Browns fans we are today.
So while, it won't really be good enough until they have a winning record and make the playoffs on a consistent basis, I can't help just feel better all the way around. This whole thing looks different, smells different, and just feels different. So far, I trust this new regime of Savage and Crennel to make positive steps in building a team instead of just a collection of players. I have confidence that Crennel won't let the locker room turn into the mess of ego's, rivalries, and selfish players that it has been in the past.
Here's hoping that a year from now the Browns continue to look like the smart kid instead of the dumb one.
