TV20 Sports Report

By: Christian Patterson

The Cleveland Browns start this season on a new slate.  With a new owner who has stepped in and cleared house to bring in a whole new coaching staff, the Browns look like an entirely different organization.  But looks can be deceiving.

As we look back onto a great pre-season effort in which the Browns went 3 and 1 and their only loss coming from the hands of second year quarterback Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts.  The only thing about that is it was pre-season and as we all know the pre-season doesn’t count towards anything. 

As a Clevelander I’ve witnessed this story time and time again.  Even when the Browns do alright in the pre-season it hasn’t translated over to the regular season.  After going eight strait years losing their season openers, fans really had hope this year that this new regime would put an end to this losing streak and the Browns would finally win a season opener.

The Browns offensive line is known to be one of their biggest strengths but during this season opener against the Miami Dolphins it was actually one of their biggest weaknesses.  Although Weeden threw 3 interceptions and almost tied his record from last year of 4, you can’t put all the blame for those interceptions on him.  Weeden was under constant pressure from the Dolphins defense and he hit the ground a handful of times during the game.  In total Weeden was hit 16 times and 6 of those were quarterback sacks. 

If the Browns don’t want to start the season off with back to back losses they will have to make some major adjustments going into week 2 of the NFL season as they take on the reining Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens.  Even after losing some key players from their defense this summer, the Ravens are still a force to be reckoned with on the defensive side of the ball. 

Only time will tell if this is the same old story Cleveland fans have been reading for the past decade.