The Search For A Scapegoat...

I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent, because it just feels right. This blog entry is going to be a bit more candid, non football related... I'll make it work though. I just need to get some things off my chest.

Locally, a 19 year old girl was kidnapped. It was a pretty big deal. She was found dead, (keep in mind, I live in a small-ish town area, mabe 20-40 thousand in the county I live in. 10-15 thousand in the town I live in.) and a lot of people are pretty upset about it naturally. My co-worker was friends with the girl. There was posters everywhere. It took the police 5 weeks to find the body.

They're (the people) now out for blood, what was a missing person to start has evolved into a homicide. They've arrested someone but I don't know if he's been found guilty or not. I don't have all the details. Living in a small town, you get the rumor mill a lot faster than you get the news. Neither are that reliable IMO.

They want someone to blame it on. I mean, I'm an outsider, I haven't lived here my whole life like most of the people that live here. I empathize for the people but there's a point where sense gets thrown out the window and they want "justice" they want "solace" they want the "family to find peace" and I understand that. Its not how I feel though. I kind of feel like people are jumping the gun here for many reasons and who knows how it will end.

There's a bigger point here, at least a football related one. When I think of the people it reminds me of this place a little bit and what I can equate it to is our offense.

Even though it lacks sympathy, I feel kind of like our offense has been kidnapped, it's been missing for 9 weeks now. It's getting to the point where we are riled up, we want to blame something, anything and judgement goes out the window pretty quickly. I've been guilty of this myself after many games, especially the last one.

Shurmur's seen it, Holmgren's seen it, I'm sure Heckert's seen it and I hope Lerner's seen it. I can't imagine anyone is happy with the team that's playing on the field right now, at least on the offensive side of the ball.

So who do we blame, because clearly someone needs to wear it on their shoulders.

Do we blame Colt? I say no.

He's been playing safe football which is really the best he can do right now. Inconsistant O-line in front of him. Injuries that have beat up our WR corps and our HB's have left most of the responsibility to Colt and the passing game to move the ball, especially in recent weeks though Ogbonnaya played well last week I thought. 4.7 yards per carry, 90 yards on 19 carries. Decent against a weak run D.

Do we blame Shurmur? I say no. Though, I really, really, want to say yes. Many of us agree: He was given too much responsibility too fast, lack of OTA's/Typical Pre-Season/Young Team/New System, etc, etc, etc... however.

How do you excuse inconsistently questionable play calling week-after-week-after-week? How do you excuse gaffes like the "drawn in the dirt" Cribbs TD and the Alex Smith handoff. Incidences where both times Shurmur more or less just ged it off with a "meh" with the rest of the team.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Where's the football FIRE? I mean... the fans, we have it. We know what we want, but I just don't get the feeling it's reciprocating on the other side, and we may be getting ahead of ourselves in chastising one party over the other but I don't see much fire from Shurmur, little... spurts here or there lately though so maybe he's waking up. The teams lacked intesity as well and that's much more worrisome to me.

I think Shurmur's figuring things out, this is obviously the first head coaching job he's ever had. It's like Greg Little switching from HB to WR and jumping to the NFL after one year of play. That's literally the learning curve I'm imagining for Shurmur. He's got to learn how to manage an NFL team, he's running the team's offense as well as trying to gameplan. He's learning how to handle the media, especially in Cleveland where the media can be pretty interesting at times to say the least.

We're starting to see glimpses more and more that the offense is starting to mesh. I really would love this week to be the week where it comes together, we score some points. We all know that the team CAN score points too, that's the funny thing but the injuries on offense have done their toll, IMO. We're playing the best we can with the scraps but it's clearly not cutting it.