The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Browns

Running smooth

The Good - Carnell Williams looked good today. His opportunities were limited with some very suspect blocking by the O-line today. The O-line is supposed to be a strength of this team that is littered with high draft picks. When the holes were there for Caddy to run through, he showed great burst, good speed and was decisive with his running. He ran tough putting his head and shoulders into each approaching tackler and picked up nice chunks of yards. His stat line looks small through no fault of his own.

The Bad - This one isn't necessarily about this game, but it certainly had an effect. Raheem Morris' decision to limit the starters playing time in the pre season was definitely a reason for today's sloppy and somewhat indecisive looking play by the team. This team is following through with it's plan to rebuild through the draft and go young, therefore the experience level on this team is at an all time low. These young players need every snap of experience they can get, and I feel limiting their preparation time this pre season was very detrimental. They looked very rusty and started off the game extremely sluggish.
I really don't know what the strategy could have been to go for it on 4th and 1 from the 2 yard line at the end of the game? Sure a Cleveland Browns TD could still have won the game for them, but it would have forced them to have to go for the TD and drive the length of the field with very little time left on the clock. Phil Dawson is an excellent Kicker who has very good distance, and gave the Browns and easy opprotunity to take that game into OT.

The Ugly - First let me say I am ecstatic about today's win. I couldn't be much happier, but the game today left something to be desired. There was a lot of ugly out there today, hence  they won ugly. The blocking was not very good, passing or rushing. The defensive pass rush was non-existent. I am not expecting miracles from our two young DT's as I know even Sapp took three seasons to break out. However, I thought there would be much more pressure even if it didn't end up in the form of sacks. Some plays it seemed like Delhomme had all day to pass. He was able to step up at will and move around to bide extra time. The tackling by the secondary was ugly, and the angles taken by the Safeties cost them big plays a couple times. Lastly, it's obvious Josh's thumb is not close to 100% healthy. His passes were weak, off their mark and fluttered like ducks. He was effective on some passes and extremely ineffective on others. He missed a wide open Mike Williams for a sure TD late in the game to take the lead, and then came right back and threw a beautiful pass hitting Spurlock in stride for the go ahead score. We didn't know what type of pass was coming until it left Josh's hand. The biggest problem facing the coaching staff is whether to just let the thumb heal or let this drag out? I'd be willing to give Johnson a shot under Center against the Panthers if Freeman comes out in game 2 looking shaky. Lastly, I wasn't thrilled with the play calling. I'm not going to bash Olsen by any means, but I was left scratching my head a few times. Caddy's first couple runs between the tackles netted great results. After getting shut down on a few sweeps and runs outside I thought Greg would go back to calling run plays between the tackles. He kept with it for longer than I thought and we were getting run down for no gains. I think those quick strike passes to the WR behind the line of scrimmage were extremely risky with Freeman's current thumb situation.

Go Buccs!!!
ABuccsFan/JJC