Please allow me to apologize to my fellow dawgs about what they're saying over a our corporate second-cousin, FoxSports.com, about your beloved Cleveland Browns.
Oddly, they don't ask me to review articles churned out by the site's columnists. If they did, they would have known before the fact that two were published today that I just can't agree with, at all.
The first is the off-season "Power Rankings" which nullifies all the Browns off-season progress by putting the team at the very bottom.
Curse your confounded optimism, Browns fans... we're the worst team in the NFL. According to Peter Schrager, at least. Better sell off those season tickets.
Granted, the Browns added Joe Thomas, Eric Steinbach, Brady Quinn, Jamal Lewis, Robaire Smith, Antwan Peek, Eric Wright, Shaun Smith and Seth McKinney, and are welcoming back Ryan Tucker.
This makes us an even worse team than we were last year, it seems.
The Browns draft is dimissed by saying that the three first-round quality players selected are "all still rookies".
Nice take. Actually visiting camp gives one the impression that Thomas and Wright, at the very least, will contribute this season. Yes, Virginia, rookies can contribute to football teams.
The early season schedule is rough, but I can't help but believe that this team is far from the worst in the league.
I've seen Browns teams that were horrible over the last eight years, but those teams were generally flailing to fill gaping holes at the very top of the depth chart. There's no equivalent to NT Jason Fisk, RG Kelvin Garmon, LB Ben Taylor or other players who have no business starting on an NFL team.
Even the team's two most questionable positions: QB and one CB spot, where Charlie Frye and Daven Holly are the current starters, will probably be filled by other players at the start of the season, or soon after.
The 2007 Browns will feature more legitimate competition for starting jobs at more positions than at any time in the post-expansion era. The roster still has problems with depth at a number of positions, and injuries could result in another free-fall, but saying the Browns are the worst team in the NFL just doesn't hold water in 2007.
The second article which found me shaking my head was Jeff Gordon's take that Buffalo has suffered more than Cleveland fans over the last forty years.
Total nonsense. Buffalo doesn't even have a major league baseball or basketball team.
Nothing against the city, which I've visited many times, but a town that doesn't have franchises in two of the three largest sports isn't comparable to a town that has known pro sports frustration on all three sports since 1964.
Even the one sport the two towns have in common, NFL football, weighs in favor of the upstate NY town, which has at least managed to get teams to the Super Bowl. Here in Cleveland, we haven't had a rooting interest in the big game, ever, other than perhaps to see our rivals lose in an embarrassing a fashion as possible.
Sorry, FoxSports.com, I'm just not on your side today.