As the Stomach Turns

Adam Schein remains convinced that Joe Banner will fire everybody.  Schein is no fan of Tom Heckert.  He is unimpressed with his personnel moves, except for Richardson, Weeden, Cameron, Gordon, Taylor, Haden, Ward...well there are several more stipulations--but other than that, Adam says Heckert has done a terrible job.

He cites the w/l record.  I mean, any good personnel guy would have had this team contending for the Superbowl by year three.  No excuses like new coaches or no offseason with new offensive and defensive systems-it's all Heckert's fault!

Adam hears Clevelanders talk about how close they've come vs. elite teams and says "I don't even know what that means".  Yes, this is a difficult concept.  Adam, it means that they have the talent to match up with those teams, but not the experience to close out a game.  Adam--were you born and then started walking right away?  Didn't you crawl around til you were four or so?  DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

I mean, Heckert has mostly skipped the veteran free agent market.  If the Browns had had another vedderrunn wide reciever, they might even be 2-4 by now, and could have dumped some dead weight, like Josh Cooper or Norwood!  And how much better would Josh Gordon be if he was able to sit on the bench for his first season, and learn how to run correct routes and catch from the venerable Plaxico Burress or somebody?

Can't you just see Plaxico on the sidelines with Little and Gordon: "See you put this hand here, and this hand here, and the ball goes here--"?

Shein and Rich Gannon agree that Heckert is gone, because they heard somewhere that he and Banner "don't get along".  I don't know what happened, but it sounds really serious, like Heckert parking in Banner's parking space or something.  Or perhaps he disagreed with him once.

Yeah, you've got to be buds with everybody, or it can't work.  A guy can be the best at what he does, but if he's not your bud, you've got to fire him.  That's business 101.

Fortunately, per Heckert and Banner both, they like eachother fine.  That's why the title of this is "As the Stomach Turns".  The press is always looking for something to write a soap opera about, whether it's true or not.

And Gannon still can't mention Weeden without also mentioning his young recievers.  Just now he said he really likes Weeden.  This time he was actually able to NAME a couple of the recievers!  That's great progress for Rich!  He tossed in Schwartze, who he likes too.  Wow!

My guess is that in the real world Shurmer is on the hot seat, but Heckert is not.  It's not just the high round picks, but the undrafteds and low ones.  The Gordon move?  Like I said, if he has first-round talent, then he's worth next year's second, even if he doesn't play as a rookie.  As it is, look at what they got!

Cooper (2 critical 3rd down catches vs Bengals), Norwood (9 catches vs. the Giants): undrafted.  Roberts: undrafted.  Hughes and Winn--do they look like dumb picks now?

What round was Benjamin drafted in?  Seems like a pretty good deal!  Remember Hardesty?  Well yeah ok I thought that was dumb myself, but look at what he did to the Bengals!

Marecic?  Ok you got me there, but this season he got Smelley!  And anyway, NOBODY bats a thousand!  Ground control to Utopians: Heckert is as good as it gets.

Unlike many of you, I'm rooting for Shurmer.  His playcalling has now started chafing on me, too, but this youngest team is making steady progress, getting better each week.  I also like that along with trying to run people over, they go deep as often as they can.

They'd better beat the Colts.  I don't want to read or hear anything coming out of Cleveland (or from Schein) if they don't.

Gannon and Schein picked the Colts.  Skipping Schein's default pick, Gannon picks the team that he feels has more stability.  He cited the new ownership.  He also mentioned the Colts' defense, which was embarrassed last week-getting run over. I guess this means they will stop TRich and Hardesty cold?  Because they just made up their mind?  And that Weeden can't take advantage of a stacked box?

But I respect an ex-Superbowl MVP, even if he avoids Browns game-tapes whenever possible.  Unlike Adam, he at least thought about it for a few seconds.