MVN - Most Valuable Network

Browns vs. Patriots Tailgate Talk

This week the Browns are headed straight to the lion’s den of the unarguably the best team in football in the New England Patriots. By now we’ve all seen the path of destruction this team has left in its wake during the first four months of the season. With team stats listing the Patriots ranked in the top-5 in: rushing yards per game, passing yards per game, rushing yards allowed, and passing yards allowed it should really be no surprise to anyone thy are averaging 37 points-per-game (2nd to Dallas’ 37.8) and allowing only 12 per game. With three Super Bowl rings in this decade already, this could be head coach Bill Belichick’s best team yet.

Oh, and let’s not talk about that whole “cheating” thing from a few weeks back because Patriot fan isn’t having any of it…

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your weekly installment of “another reason Art Modell screwed this city over!”

With Belichick about a dozen years removed from the browns head coaching job this does make mine, as well as many others complaints seem about as refreshing as whining about Byner’s fumble or Lenny Wilkens assigning Craig Ehlo to Jordan in the 88′ playoffs. In other words, most outsiders will just assume we are a bunch of complainers who are living in the past. For the most part I agree with them. The feeling of desperation in not having won a title in over fourty years often makes sports towns focus on the negative than our psychiatrists prefer. Our bad.

If there is a silver lining in the firing of Belichick by Art Modell as the team was moving to Baltimore in 1995, it clearly is the fact that the Ravens have played victim to the Patriots in the playoffs over the years pretty much as bad as anybody. Hey, sometimes you just have to take them when you can get them.

On to the game.

Clearly, when the Browns brass had their road map drawn out in terms of sitting a certain rookie quarterback for at least the first handful of games this season, this is the biggest buzzsaw in that path. Playing the Patriots in New England while they are on this kind of a roll wouldn’t do any quarterback much good let alone a rookie. In other words this should be the game that makes the surprising Derek Anderson look like the guy we saw from the end of 2006. However, unless there is an injury, it shouldn’t rush the decision to bring forward Brady Quinn out sooner than expected.

Realistically, I just don’t see the Browns staying in this game very long and neither does Vegas judging by the 16.5 point spread. 16.5!?!? Seriously, is this a Big Ten game of the NFL? I can hardly remember a game in the first couple of years of the expansion era when the spread was this bad. How seriously can this spread be taken?

Prediction: Browns 13 - Patriots 36 If anything, that line is more of an indicator of the Patriots’ dominance this year and not a slight on the Browns obvious improvement this year.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 11:55 am and is filed under Columns, Browns News, Game Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.