If the Cleveland Browns Were a Woman

Bobby’s post on the Giants as a chick got me thinking about if the Cleveland Browns were a woman. Instantly, Rosie O’Donnell popped into my head. But I decided to delve a little deeper after their frisky performance on the road against Baltimore. So last night as I was thinking about how shitty an actor Freddie Prinze Jr is (sidenote: I do this every night), I made the perfect analogy for the Browns:

Laney Boggs from She’s All That.

For those of you unfamilar with her this is her premise in the movie according to IMDB, "On the rebound Zach takes a bet from his best friend that he can take up with mousey bespectacled Laney Boggs and get her voted prom queen instead. Great friend, impossible task. Though once Laney scraps her glasses, does her hair, and gets into decent rags, Zach finds himself taking rather a lot of notice of her."

At first glance it is easy to think the Browns suck, just like everyone wrote off Laney as an ugly artsy loser. But, the Browns really aren’t as bad as their 0-3 record might indicate. They’ve been competitive in every game and I have walked away from each game thinking that they blew it, not that the other team beat us. The statistics show through three games the Browns have played their opponents virtually even in total yardage (965 to 943) with the Browns holding the advantage in yards per play (5.4 to 5.1).

Just like Laney became a hottie with the proper coaching on what to wear and who to hang out with, the Browns are just a tad off and would probably have a few wins with better coaching and to a lesser extent better QB * play.

* Seneca Wallace is one of those quarterbacks who are worse than his statistics indicate. I was secretly excited about him coming into this season because he had a career QB rating in the 80s, high completion percentage, and 2 to 1 TD/INT ratio. He has done exactly that for the Browns, but I have no confidence in him. His befuddling deep ball on 3rd and 2 in the 4th quarter that he threw 20 yards out of bounds with no pressure is exactly what I mean. *

The Browns-Ravens game was a perfect example of how the Browns coaching killed them. The 8 penalties the Browns committed, including the brutal neutral zone infraction on 3rd and 5, which sealed the game for the Ravens. Leaving Eric Wright on an island all day against Anquan Boldin when we have other better (ahem, Sheldon Brown) corner options was bullheaded. Lastly, the Browns wasted a precious 2nd half timeout to save a delay of game penalty when they were on their own 1 yard line. The Browns saved a precious 18 inches while we still had 3rd and 29.

I feel like if the Browns had the proper coaching (cough, cough, Mike Holmgren) they might be 2-1 maybe even 3-0 at this point in the season. Just like Laney learned what it took to make herself noticed by guys, the Browns could learn how to win if they had the proper guidance.