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Home > Blogs > Dawging the Browns > Archives > 2008 > December > 02
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Yes, it’s that Lance Moore
If you’re a fan of this team, there’s a whole lot more to be depressed about than a 4-8 record.
How about some of the personnel decisions over the years? And not just drafting Gerard Warren over LaDainian Tomlinson or Richard Seymour in 2001. Or William Green over Ed Reed the next year.
While those decisions likely deprived the team of two future Hall of Famers, and while GM Phil Savage has followed that up by whiffing on some picks of his own, it’s the less obvious missteps that are truly coming back to haunt this team.
Case in point: Lance Moore, wide receiver, New Orleans Saints. He’s their leading receiver, favorite target of prolific quarterback Drew Brees. The Browns had Moore in training camp a few years back but couldn’t find a way to keep him. Now he’s a latter-day Keenan McCardell, who until now had been the poster child for receivers who couldn’t make it in Cleveland but flourished elsewhere.
Sure, there’s no guarantee Moore would have blossomed with the Browns, but he’s every bit as “local” as Brady Quinn, being from Columbus and playing at Toledo. And what hurts most is that the Browns were the ones who gave him his first shot, bringing him in as an undrafted college free agent, and apparently didn’t realize what they had.
What they had, it turns out, was decidedly better than Frisman Jackson, an undrafted college free agent who took up space on the roster for a couple of years while doing very little.
Then there’s Jeff Faine. He’s the Notre Dame center drafted by Butch Davis in the first round in 2003 (ahead of guard Eric Steinbach, who the Browns later acquired in free agency). It was eventually determined that Faine was too small for the position at 6-foot-3, 291 pounds, which led to the signing of LeCharles Bentley in free agency.
Nothing against Bentley. He was perhaps the best center in the game at the time, and who could have envisioned him going down with a knee injury in training camp and never playing again. Just a terrible break.
But Faine, traded to New Orleans on draft day 2006, hasn’t exactly faded away. He’s starting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has been a Pro Bowl alternate and was recently lauded by the Pro Football Writers Association as a mid-season all-star. Too small? That’s as ridiculous now as it sounded then.
Then, of course, there’s Shaun O’Hara, another center deemed unworthy. He’s now the center for the Super Bowl-champion New York Giants, anchoring what is widely regarded as the NFL’s best offensive line. And he has a Super Bowl ring.
The lesson here, of course, is this: No matter who the coach is, nothing sinks an organization faster than personnel decisions that don’t work out, and the Browns have made plenty in all aspects of the player-procurement process in recent years.
