Change to 4-3 is seemingly official.

[BrownieBornAndRaised]

I think Roth and Benard could both be nice DEs in the 4-3.

Roth has played it before at the NFL level and as many have said he fits that mold better than a OLB in a 3-4 cause he is a liability in coverage.

Benard, to me, could be deadly as a pass rusher as a DE. He might need to work on technique and polish his game a bit, but he could be a Dwight Freeny kind of DE. A little smaller but quick and can destroy the QB.

I wouldn't mind Drafting a DE if there is a dominate one on the board but I think those two could be serviceable.

[Flugel]

Originally Posted by kydawgfan

I agree with warrior/shep 100% as there was never a successful rebuild just a tear down with a pretty bad draft and some bad trades that left this team slightly better but older and more injury prone and more in need of a rebuild than before on the defense, it wasnt until heckert hit the scene that our defense actually started improving...
Mangini actually did nothing but point the team in the right direction, he never actually improved anything..

Without a front office in tact on the day he was hired with only 1 keeper from the previous draft and only 4 picks scheduled for EM's first draft - this wasn't a 1-2 year fix. It was a product of inheriting 10 bad drafts, too many bad free agents and hr score differentials we witnessed all throughout the 2nd half of 2008. Games were OVER 3 minutes after the coin toss in 2008 if we're be honest about where we were at.

Therefore, when this team got to 5-7 from beingin EVERY game until late in the 4th quarter - it could NOT handle losing 3 startings QBs on offense, the QB of the defense and more injury inlux on the right side of our line leaving us looking at St Clair again.

Mangini got kicked out of the batter's box on strike 2 when it looked like he already had strike one on him when he stepped into it.

If we kept an OPEN mind, we could have considered an offensive mind of Mike Martz. I'm sure Marshall Faulk, Kurt Warner AND Jay Cutler could shed some light on the differences he made in their careers. I wasn't fond of him playing keep away from Marshall Faulk in the SB vrs NE; BUT I wasn't looking at the defenses from above with the understand BB always tries to remove the strength.

Since Lerner did it backward with hiring the President before the HC - it would have been nice to see Mangini see what he could get out of 3 drafts with a REAL GM like Heckert bringing him guys similar to those he won with in NY.

When healthy, make no mistake, this team looked every bit the part of turning the corner. We ALL knew we needed more playmakers at WR and in the front 7 as well as 2 more DBs. We also need a RT. We're an example of going to the grocery store hungry.

I don't know HOW people thought Mangini was gonna reverse age and bad drafting before him with 4 draft picks scheduled. I don't think I ever received a response that made me comfortable throwing him to the unemployment line.

Right now, the most important thing is getting GOOD players; because injuries never stop changing the preseason projected starting lineup. Anytime someone says so what you got injuries so does Pittsburgh and Indy - they're not understanding the difference in what so many successive great drafts can do for a team, coachign career, etc. Why does Marv Levy SUCK in KC and go to 4 consecutive SBs in Buffalo? Bill Polian. Don't beleiev me? Look at life before and after Bill Polian for the following franchises: Indy, Carolina and Buffalo. Tony Dungy got FIRED in Tampa because he couldn't turn Trent Dilfer into something he wasn't. Nothing about that says BAD football coach. It just says he wasn't born to perform miracles. He goes over to Indy - has a wonderful lineup waiting with a much betetr QB and guess what? Happily ever after!

Don't worry about coaches, schemes and everythign else until we get the playmakers that can make that 1 or 2 big plays we've been losing by. There was only blowout this year and much of that was because news of the inevitable was leaked.

[YtownBacker]

Originally Posted by BrownieBorAndRaised

I think Roth and Benard could both be nice DEs in the 4-3.

Roth has played it before at the NFL level and as many have said he fits that mold better than a OLB in a 3-4 cause he is a liability in coverage.

Benard, to me, could be deadly as a pass rusher as a DE. He might need to work on technique and polish his game a bit, but he could be a Dwight Freeny kind of DE. A little smaller but quick and can destroy the QB.

I wouldn't mind Drafting a DE if there is a dominate one on the board but I think those two could be serviceable.

Roth would be a super DE in the 4-3 but he's a FA and wants to move on. Bernard is, maybe a pass rush specialist, at best. He doesn't have the ass to be a 2 gap DE that Jauron likes. Coleman is a servicable DT and we have Rubin who will be solid as a 2 gap DT. We forget about Mosley, who also is servicable as a DT with Schaefering and Robinson and there are some other spare parts but NO one who will resemble a Suh on the inside (and forget Rogers @ 5.5million and out of shape). We can't have anything at De and we don't have a MLB unless you project the team will sign DQJ as a UFA counting on a guy who hasn't played in 2 years. Also, we don't really have a FS. We played last year with two SSs. To be really effective in a 4-3 defense you got to have DEs that can put pressure on a QB. A MLB that can stuff the run and a FS that can play center field. We have two "in the box" type SSs.

Beside looking for a impact player for the offense and a project OL, we don't have enough draft picks to fill half our holes on defense.

Then again, we didn't have much to build on if we stayed in a 3-4 either.

[damajuki]

Originally Posted by kydawgfan

I agree with warrior/shep 100% as there was never a successful rebuild just a tear down with a pretty bad draft and some bad trades that left this team slightly better but older and more injury prone and more in need of a rebuild than before on the defense, it wasnt until heckert hit the scene that our defense actually started improving...
Mangini actually did nothing but point the team in the right direction, he never actually improved anything...

I'll accept the Fangini role here for a second, in the interest of fairness and historical context. This isn't at you personally, KY, just pointing out how things get quickly distorted.

First, you can't "rebuild" and "tear down" at the same time so it's unfair to say "Mangini didn't build anything while tearing everything down". It's just not physically (or figuratively) possible to build anything without a foundation and it's pretty clear what Mangini was doing was tearing the team down to the foundation and starting over.

So let's separate the two into "tear down" and "rebuild" and by doing so, give Mangini significant credit for tearing things down quickly and efficiently. He had the guts and sense to do the dirty work the right way by cleaning house, getting some picks back (even though he wasted them, a legitimate criticism of his tenure), clearing cap space, etc. Someone had to be the hatchet man and Mangini accepted it and succeeded in cutting out the chaff.

And then there's the fact he only got two years to do ANYTHING, only one without the possibility of being fired for the performance of his obviously weak roster.

I ask you: how many of us were any good in our jobs after only two years? Now imagine being the one who has to start an organization and team over from scratch and THEN being judged by a brand new boss after your FIRST year?

So though there's plenty to criticize Mangini for, let's at least be fair and give him credit for doing what no one else since '99 was willing to do: express a clear vision of what it means to be a CLEVELAND BROWN, on the field and off. That's not a little thing and I personally appreciated how he went about it.

[JewDago]

Originally Posted by Crow

Mhmm, we could really suck ass next year. This may end badly given the short patience everyone has in Cleveland.

and we enter the andrew luck lottery, which i'm fine with. i'm not sold on mccoy, and this gives us a year to see whether he's really the guy, and, if he's not, we should be bad enough to be in position to pick up an actual franchise QB.

Originally Posted by Franchise

Fairley responding to where he'd like to ply his trade professionally. His response: "It doesn't matter as long as it's not cold."

fuck nick fairley, because he'll be a monster bust. take an immature asshole, which fairley most assuredly is, give him a bunch of people kissing his ass and millions of dollars, and there's absolutely no chance that he doesn't alienate every coach who tries to get him to play to his potential. he's rogers and haynesworth.

Originally Posted by Sez.EJ

A strong 4-3 can put immense pressure on a qb..stop the run and still cover without leaving your db's hanging in the breeze because you are blitzing... which got us in trouble multiple times this year.

in many ways, the switch bothers me far less than the ideology behind it. one-gap defenses are successful; two-gap defenses are not. if we go 4-3, it needs to be jim johnson, not tony dungy.

Originally Posted by Flugel

As I tried telling those willing to listen - when we get GOOD players - we'll play chess with more than pawns. We did for a little while this year and we beat NE, New Orleans and took NY to OT. But you can't lose 3 different QBs on offense and the QB of your defense and expect to be wonderful.

when we won those games, all i could think was, "we beat the giants on monday night in 2008." shitty teams get lucky sometimes. we were that shitty team.

Originally Posted by Tobalaz

The 4-3 is easier to evaluate front 7 talent for since about 99.99% of all colleges run it or a hybrid form of it. That leaves many guys "unfit" for a 3-4 and everyone else a speculation of "can he fit?" That's a big chunk right there, drafting 3-4 is making assumptions that guy X is going to fit need Y without film saying yes or no.

Switching to the 4-3 does not impact our secondary, which we just added to and improved this past draft.
The majority of the guys in the front 7 we have were geared to the 4-3 or have played both 4-3 and 3-4.

we can build a working 4-3 faster than the 3-4 we've been chasing for 6 years.

all solid points, and i agree with all of them. the only thing i have to add is that, with the preponderance of teams that run 3-4s now, there are more quality 4-3 players who don't fit about half the teams in the league, which makes it much easier to build a winner more quickly. moreover, we're no longer looking for rare athletes to fit a highly demanding scheme. the numbers game for the 4-3 is in our favor, though it's all a moot point if it's a two-gap scheme, which is what this really boils down to for me.

jim johnson? one-gap. success. spags in new york? one-gap. success. pittsburgh? one-gap. baltimore? one-gap. jets? one-gap.

a one-gap defense allows the defenders to move instead of think, to attack instead of wait, to make plays instead of waiting for plays to come to them. regardless of front, gap responsibility makes all the difference, and, while the 4-3 doesn't have the ceiling that the 3-4 does, it's easier to build a 4-3 than it is to build a 3-4.

but, again, we'll go two-gap, suck on defense, and win three games next year, putting us squarely in the running for the first overall pick, though someone else will be probably be worse, and we'll miss out on yet another franchise QB.

it's the ideology for me that has created a sense of inevitable failure, that we wait and react instead of taking things for ourselves, and it's that same ideology that has pervaded the entire organization since the browns were reborn. maybe holmgren can change it, but hiring jauron isn't a step in the right direction. it's more of the same, and i hate it.

[Crow]

and we enter the andrew luck lottery, which i'm fine with. i'm not sold on mccoy, and this gives us a year to see whether he's really the guy, and, if he's not, we should be bad enough to be in position to pick up an actual franchise QB.

We would have to lose nearly every game, in a league with the Bills/Lions/Panthers/Bengals, etc. it would be unlikely even if we did terrible. We go 4-12, 5-11, etc., terrible but not on the cusp of getting the no. 1 pick. If we suck Luck is no guarantee...

[Flugel]

Originally Posted by JewDago

and we enter the andrew luck lottery, which i'm fine with. i'm not sold on mccoy, and this gives us a year to see whether he's really the guy, and, if he's not, we should be bad enough to be in position to pick up an actual franchise QB.

jim johnson? one-gap. success. spags in new york? one-gap. success. pittsburgh? one-gap. baltimore? one-gap. jets? one-gap.

a one-gap defense allows the defenders to move instead of think,

So starting in 1991, Bud carson was fired in spite of the wonderful 1 gap schemes because our front office sucked. At the end of 2000, our WCO was offcially 5-27 because our front office sucked.

Butch Davis returned us to a 4-3 with 1 gap schemes and he will be introducing Jamal Lewis when he gets inducted into the Hall of Fame some day for the 500 yards those adorable schemes allowed Lewis in just 6 quarters of football.

Hampton, Keisel, Hoke, Hood and others do NOT play 2 gap upfront for Pittsburgh. They grab and do anything to keep bodies off off Harrison and Woodley. I doubt you can find me 1 interior linemen that has more sacks than Woodley or Harrison in the last 2-3 years there. Once in a while they slant gaps and scape LBers the other direction as a wrinkle; but it's tough to call that the rule.

So we're going back to the WCO with the following WR Corps: MoMass, Robo, Stuckey, Cribbs. Understanding Watson is our best Receiver - was Jerry Rice supposed to be the worst option in that original plan where most of the reead progressions began with him? I think we've had the SAME reasons that offense never made Stanford significant.

You students of the game out there that are old enough to remeber the best years of Harbaugh's career as a player came from his learning under Lindy Infante. If you watched any of the Stanford games the last 2 years, he LOVES the power back, smart QB, athletic TEs and good WRs.

Back to us, I got ECSTATIC the first time I listened to Carmen Policy tell us the WCO was the keys to our future. 5-27 football means those Xs and Os without the right Jimmys and Joes are a tease.

And then of course, there's Phil Savage learning RAC wants to use a 2 gap 3-4 while he is allegedly gonna build us up through the draft. Savage snagged the follwing dlinemen from 1 gap 4-3s: Robaire (TN), Rogers (Detroit), Shaun Smith (Cincy), Corey Williams (GB). In the process, he leads us off with Trent Dilfer at QB, puts Charlie Frye on deck and has Dumb Ass in the hole with adding Quinn. Meanwhile, our 2008 draft had no day and only 1 keeper. Our 2009 draft had 4 picks scheduled. The man with the lucky inheritance had NO front office.

2010 was NOTHING like 2008 except how many QBs we lost. There wasn't a competitive football game the entire 2nd half of the season. THIS year, we were in just about every game except the one against the AFC Champions. If you think it was exactly the same as blowouts every week - it's because you WANT to think that. That's progress. We lost games where our manpower told uus we were short - BIG plays from the WR corps in the passing game. And when Fujita left our lineup defensively - the frequency of winning decreased: convenient or not. BTW, that became the same week we moved 2nd string RT (Womack) to startign RG due to injury and that meant 3rd string RT St Clair returned to the lineup. That's a sign the Titanic hit the glacier when it thought it was on its way to a happier ending.

This team can ONLY improve if Heckert repeats his wonderful draft from 2010 a couple more times. Just out of curiosity, how many overpaid free agents are starting for Pittsburgh today? They're not kicking everyone's ass with trickery as their head coach said. They win in the front office. Unfortunately, that is where we've been losing. I can pretend otherwise but we've done the fire-rehire so many times since scapegoating Bud Carson that I've searched deeper than 1 guy. Most of the Head Coaches that went to Indy or Pittsburgh weren't really "gotta haves." Who would have fought over a former olineman like Chuck Noll back in the day? It would be like people trying to hire Russ Grimm or Art Shell to be their Head Coach today. Gotta have competance in the front office for a coach to work without handcuffs. RAC and Palmer never had a chance. Neither did Mangini considering this mess isn't a 1 year fix especially when injuries intervene with the progress of 5-7. I seriously think we progressed from the state of continuous blowouts in 08 to losing games by 1-2 big plays in 2010. The difference? We were watching 4th quarters of games much differently than no hope whatsoever.