Dawgs By Nature
Fans of the Cleveland Browns have been through pretty much everything. From losing their team to losing every game of the season and everything in between, Browns fans have dealt with losing. In many ways, the team has tried pretty much everything to turn things around. Former scouts, former winners/legends, former lawyers, former football guys and, now, an Ivy Leaguer have run the front office since The Return in 1999.
Similar swings have happened at the head coaching spot as well.
What does Cleveland have to show for it? Four winning seasons in over 20 years, with a fifth one unlikely to arrive in 2025-26.
Week 4’s loss to the Detroit Lions was just another game, in many ways. The Browns lost because QB Joe Flacco threw interceptions, a couple of good passes were dropped, the offensive line wasn’t good and special teams was downright putrid.
We’ve already covered that Flacco should hold on to his job for at least one more week and, perhaps, more conversation will come about Bubba Ventrone’s special teams job and the banged-up offensive line. For now, as a lifelong Cleveland Browns fan (and now a media member for 15 years), I want to complain about dropped passes.
Let’s be honest, one of the biggest reasons that football is so interesting to so many people is how nuanced it is. While it is a blunt sport, there is almost nothing simple about it. The number of variables in each and every play outnumbers most other sports. There are 22 players, the officials, the field conditions, the weather and the crowd affecting most plays.
Generally speaking, passes that fall to the ground can be blamed (or credited) to three parties:
The reality is nuanced. Did the weather impact the throw, footing or catch? Did the refs allow the defender or offensive player to be more physical than generally allowed? How is the route supposed to be run against that defense? Did the pass catcher read the defense differently than the quarterback? Do the coaches want the ball thrown to a specific player on a certain play or is the QB supposed to go through his progressions? Did the quarterback throw it too hard, too low, too high or too wobbly? Did the pass catcher round off his route, run his route flat or slow down his route?
We could probably go on and on.
The reality is that each play has nuance to it. Rookie TE Harold Fannin Jr. dropped a beautifully feathered pass that came down perfectly “in the basket” while the defender was in tight coverage. Catching a pass like that is difficult for most players (We saw Jameson Williams struggle to locate a deep ball from Jared Goff on Sunday, similarly). Given the trajectory of the ball and the angle of Fannin’s body, the youngster would have only seen the pass for a very short amount of time before it went through...
