I'm going to start this one off with an apology to Colt McCoy. I totally dissed him last week and have compared him to Brady Quinn twice in the brief history of this blog*. Yesterday, McCoy proved that he is much better than my expectations. His performance was by no means brilliant, but he definitely showed that he is much better than Brady Quinn.
I don't know yet if he is going to be a franchise QB, but he will be better in the NFL that I could have expected.
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Scoring Summary
1st Quarter
Cleveland FG: Phil Dawson 39 yards
2nd Quarter
Pittsburgh TD: Ben Roethlisberger passed to Mike Wallace for 29 yards
3rd Quarter
Pittsburgh TD: Ben Roethlisberger passed to Hines Ward for 8 yards
4th Quarter
Pittsburgh TD: Rashard Mendenhall rushed for 2 yards
Cleveland TD: Colt McCoy passed to Benjamin Watson for 12 yards
Pittsburgh TD: Ben Roethlisberger passed to Heath Miller for 14 yards
Important Player Stats
Colt McCoy: 23-33, 281 yards, 1 TD, 2 INTs
Benjamin Watson: 6 receptions, 88 yards, 1 TD
Evan Moore: 4 receptions, 84 yards
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To say I was impressed with Colt McCoy would be an overstatement. To say I was unimpressed by his performance would be an equal overstatement. He did some good things yesterday. He made some mistakes. He showed some signs of inexperience.
Most of the time he stood tall against the Pittsburgh pass rush. He took lots of hits. I mean they blitzed him virtually every play. He kept getting up and showed no signs of fear. There were sometimes that he tucked the ball and ran when the pocket held. Now to be fair to him, There were virtually no receiving threats left to him following the injuries to Cribbs and Massaquoi.
He'll get the start next week. Maybe we'll find out more about his NFL chops against another tough opponent.
The running game has been ineffective the past two weeks. That's a big problem for this team.
The defense has played well for the most part this season and yesterday they continued to play well for the most part. The problem has been lapses in the secondary**. Same thing happened yesterday.
Good punting performance by Reggie Hodges. He looks to be the next in a long line of good punters for the Browns since their return***.
Hopefully Cribbs and Massaquoi will be healthy enough next to play, so we can see McCoy with the closest thing the Browns have to playmakers around him.
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James Harrison
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I just wanted to say something about the hits Harrison gave to the Browns' two top receivers.
It's really annoying to me that T.J. Ward got so much shit for hit he gave Shipley, but Harrison is receiving kudos for his two helmet-to-helmet hits that knocked Cribbs and Massaquoi out with likely concussions. Ward's hit was not helmet-to-helmet and it was in an important situation were he needed to make sure the receiver didn't catch the ball. I'm not defending it as a clean hit, but it was a football incident. James Harrison was head hunting yesterday.
That's all I have to say about that.
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Projections
This is a new part to my Browns' Monday post. I'm calling it projections. The idea here is to project what the playoff teams will be given the current data.
With 6 of 17 precincts reporting
AFC North: Too Close to Call(Steelers/Baltimore)
AFC East: Too Close to Call(NYJ/N.E.)
AFC South: Too Close to Call(All 4 teams)
AFC West: Kansas City Chiefs
Wildcard : AFC North 2nd place and AFC East 2nd place
NFC North: Green Bay Packers(based on exit polling)
NFC East: Too Close to Call(Washington, Philadelphia, NYG)
NFC South: Too Close to Call(Atlanta, New Orleans)
NFC West: Too Close to Call(3 teams in a giant crap fest)
Wildcard: NFC East 2nd place and NFC South 2nd place
No Longer in the Race: San Francisco, Carolina, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo
On the Brink of Dropping Out: Dallas, San Diego, Denver, Oakland
Thanks for reading and please comment.
-Michael
*I know to some that may not seem like a huge insult, but trust me, if I compare a quarterback to Brady Quinn, that is a serious insult.
**By 'secondary,' I mean Eric Wright. I can has Joe Haden?
***Excluding Frost. That guy was a terrible punter. He's the Brady Quinn of punting
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