THE DAILY BLOVIATION
Thursday of a road week is supposed to be boring. The coordinators talk, the injury report gets a little shorter (hopefully, somebody says the word “execution” nine times, and everybody goes home.
This Thursday, the Browns signed a tight end on Wednesday and cut him on Thursday, a defensive end held a press conference about how nobody stuck up for him, and the special teams coordinator went on record against a play from four days ago. None of it is the kind of news that changes a season. All of it is the kind of news that fills a Newswire.
So it’s a This and That Friday. Grab a coffee. I’m running out of ground pumpkin spice and am enjoying one of my last cups of the fall.
SHEDEUR, PROBABLY: Deshaun Watson missed his second straight practice in the concussion protocol, and Adam Schefter says Shedeur Sanders is “in line to start” Sunday in New Orleans. Mary Kay Cabot went with “it’s Shedeur Sanders vs. the Saints”. Nobody has officially ruled Watson out, so we wait for Friday’s report like it’s a jury verdict. Watson could still return. Meanwhile OC Travis Switzer told reporters that Sanders “let it rip” in his first day with the ones. That was Todd Monken’s phrase on Wednesday. I’m starting to think there’s a laminated card in Berea with “let it rip” printed on it, and everybody who walks up to a microphone this week has to read from it. Jared Verse, who sees Sanders every day from the scout-team side, said “you see him reading the defense a lot better.” I’ll take that over a coordinator quote any day.
CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: The less fun part of the Watson story is how he got there. He got his head hit by a relatively unknown Steeler knucklehead, who went on to mock Watson for missing the ensuing series. Watson passed his evaluations after the game and again Monday morning, started feeling a headache Monday night, and walked in Tuesday and reported it himself. “Credit to Deshaun,” Monken said. Whatever you think of the man as a quarterback, a player telling the medical staff something that will cost him a start is the system working the way it’s supposed to. Plenty of guys over the years have kept their mouths shut.
It wasn’t long ago that there were low murmurs that what we were learning about head injuries in football was a threat to the sport itself. From blue tents to new protocols to modified rules to helmets with padding on the outside, the NFL has tried to rally to prevent that from happening. As we continue to learn more about the hazards of cranial trauma that happens in the highest levels of the game; the more seriously we need to take it. Kudos to Deshaun Watson for doing something he surely didn’t want to do.
NOBODY SAW IT: Verse said he was “deeply” upset that nobody came to his defense after Steelers guard Mason McCormick swept his legs and dumped him on his head on a PAT. “These are my brothers and we’re not fighting for each other,” he said, per Scott Petrak. Problem is, Carson Schwesinger said he hadn’t seen the play, and Byron Storer said he didn’t see “the severity of it until after the game. And watching it on film, you’re like, ‘whoa.’” Petrak says the film backs them up. Hard to fight for a guy when you’re looking at the ball.
To his credit, Verse owned the other half: “I didn’t let them know beforehand I was going to talk the way I talked to the Steelers and the Steeler Nation or whatever they are.” Verse seems to get the rivalry but needs to learn to be judicious at the mic. Storer, for the record, said the play “should be penalized,” which it was.
STATS CAN BE RATHER CONFUSING: That’s Verse’s line, too, on his production. Unfortunately, these stats aren’t very confusing. No sacks through eight games. ESPN has him with six initial pressures, a 3.3% pressure rate that ranks 185th of 198, and a pass-rush win rate that ranks 57th of 58 edge rushers. He also said “I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t disappointed in myself,” which is the honest answer, and “We’re 5-3, that’s a good record for what we are supposed to be,” which is also true. Myles Garrett went to Los Angeles in that deal. Verse doesn’t have to be Myles. He does have to show up on the stat sheet before Thanksgiving, or the talking becomes the whole story.
SIGNED, THEN CUT: Rookie seventh-rounder Carsen Ryan was promoted from the practice squad on Wednesday and waived on Thursday. I immediately became intrigued because on Thursday morning I passed along a tight end name in Rumor Central from a reliable source, a guy the Browns wanted in free agency last spring. When Ryan got cut that afternoon, I wrote “Could be nothing.” I stand by that sentence completely. I’m the anti-Stephen A. Smith.
THE SHOPPING LIST: For what it’s worth, the trade-deadline reporting has gotten pretty consistent. Lane writes that the Browns continue to monitor EDGE, DB, TE and OL, and would prefer to pay with a day-three pick or a player already on the roster. Cabot and Albert Breer both name edge and tight end, per Pro Football Rumors. Tom Pelissero says Jerry Jeudy stays barring a “truly crazy offer.” The deadline is 4 p.m. Tuesday, two days after the Saints game.
THE BARNWELL CORNER: ESPN’s Bill Barnwell sorted the 18 teams at .500 or better and put the Browns in the “be realistic” pile. All five wins came by four points or fewer. His advice is that with nine picks in the first five rounds of the 2027 draft, any move Andrew Berry makes should be for a player who helps in 2027 and beyond. I agree with the conclusion, and so, I suspect, does Berry. No rentals, please. I love me some Khalil Mack, but he makes little sense in a year that’s mostly about development.
THE BULL: Harold Fannin Jr. landed on the injury report Thursday, limited with a groin, and Daniel Oyefusi points out that a groin injury is what ended his rookie season early. Keep an eye on that one Friday. Fred Greetham has the numbers on why it matters in today’s OBR piece: Fannin’s 154 yards at Pittsburgh are second only to Ozzie Newsome’s 191 in 1984 among Browns tight ends, and his 107 catches are the most for a Browns tight end through two seasons. He needs 31 more in nine games to pass Josh Gordon’s 137 for the franchise two-year mark. Monken’s description: “He’s a bull.” Sounds right.
THE TRAP DOOR: The run defense has given up 170.5 yards a game over the last two, and the Steelers ran a trap on third-and-13 for 51 yards, which is a sentence I’d rather not type again. The Saints average 3.5 yards a carry, third-worst in the league, so this is a good week to fix it. Denzel Ward admitted his tackling “hasn’t been the best,” and said his dislocated pinky, still in a small cast, is part of it. And after a rough day in Pittsburgh, Schwesinger called the problems “pretty simple fixes,” while DC Mike Rutenberg offered the best quote of the week about anybody: “He fixes problems before we fix the problems.”
WELCOME BACK, ROOKIE: On the other sideline, Saints receiver Jordyn Tyson, the No. 8 overall pick, is back at practice after missing everything since August with a hamstring and says he feels “more explosive than I ever have.” The 2-5 Saints haven’t said if he plays. Of course a first-round receiver is making his NFL debut against our secondary. That’s how this works.
A PERSONAL NOTE: A non-Browns item got my attention yesterday. News outlet Salon ceased publication Thursday after 31 years, saying “the business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly.” Salon launched in November 1995. This little operation started a few months later and is a lot less famous, and I read that sentence about three times. It rattled me.
We relaunched six weeks ago and, in the process, separated ourselves from a healthy number of subscribers who we have to win back here, as well as rebuild our own traffic numbers in a world where a lot of our old friends are still finding their way back. It was a “shoot for the moon” move to create a better product.
It’s a challenge staying in business in this market for three decades. I wasn’t a Salon reader and know little about their content other than that they were contemporaries, but it’s nerve-wracking to see them go. I won’t say the last three decades have been without financial struggle, but we’ve been fortunate to survive wave after wave of changes.
NFL football teams have a virtual monopoly. They rake in money hand over fist. Digital outlets come and go - there’s a recent wave of Browns sites that have popped up with the philosophy that they’re in business to recycle other people’s information as quickly as possible and rely on traffic. As if original content creators don’t have a big enough problem, here come a dozen sites ripping off their work and rephrasing it, adding no value along the way. Hence the oft-referenced “Crap Pile” that I sort through every day.
They will fail because AI will scrape their data, and social media networks have no interest in routing traffic to them anymore.
Independent sites stay alive because readers decide they’re worth paying for. That’s the whole model, and there isn’t another one.
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Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover went around the far side of the moon, watched Earth drop below the lunar horizon, lost radio contact with every other person alive, and came back with a pretty simple lesson. “The greatest reason to go to space, it isn’t to be a swashbuckler hero,” he said. “It’s to do something that only 651 people have been able to do: miss Earth and miss other Earthlings.” He calls the version you can get without a rocket the “sea level effect,” which mostly means paying attention to a leaf, the ocean, and the people around you. “Familiarity breeds indifference,” he said. Worth remembering the next time somebody is wrong on the internet. Like a webdork who feels compelled to yammer each morning.
WRAPPING UP
When not finding the stats rather confusing, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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