Week 11

Thanksgiving is the greatest holiday of the year.  No other holiday offers such awesome expectations.  Seriously on Thanksgiving you are expected to spend time with friends and family, eat and drink as much as possible, and watch football.  Nice try Christmas, you're not even close.  I love Thanksgiving.

And amazingly, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the Browns thanked their fans for sticking with them by defeating the hated Pittsburgh Steelers 20-14.  Yes, it took 8 Pittsburgh turnovers.  Yes it was against Charlie Batch.  I could care less.  A win against the Steelers is rare for these Browns, and I'll take them any way I can get them.  There's no better sight than seeing those dirtbag fans leaving our stadium with their heads down, the only use for those towels to wipe their tears.  A possible season wrecking loss by the Steelers, and a big win for the Browns, who needed one.

It looked like it was going to be the same old same old early.  Weeden had
a pass picked off on the Browns first series off a tip by that barbarian Brett Keisel and returned for a touchdown by Timmons, and Pittsburgh had a quick 7-0 lead.  Following a three and out the Browns punted to the Steelers and forced the first turnover of the day when Rubin stripped Mendenhall and Usama Young recovered.  The Browns turned that into a Phil Dawson field goal.  He's so damn good.  27 straight field goals, like Terry Pluto said we won't appreciate him until he's gone.

The teams traded punts until early in the second quarter when Juqua Parker forced another fumble which was recovered by Buster Skrine at the Steeler 10 yard line.  Weeden found Cameron for the touchdown on third down and the Browns took the lead 10-7.  It was Cameron's first touchdown, so congrats to him, and a big play seeing as how the Browns have had trouble scoring in the red zone.

 

The defense went soft at the end of the half and allowed the Steelers to score a touchdown on a Chris Rainey run following a Sheldon Brown pass interference in the end zone.  The Browns dominated the half but still trailed 14-13.

In the second half, the defense rose up and dominated.  They smacked the Steelers over and over in the mouth, and eventually they folded and the Browns were the one's left standing.  They turned a Sheldon Brown interception into a great 15 yard touchdown run by Richardson to take the lead for good, and then held on for the rest of the game for the win.  They forced every Steeler running back to fumble, and added another interception, by Joe Haden.  They out physicaled the Steelers.  And we haven't been able to say that in a long time.  I understand the circumstances but I don't care.  The Browns notched only their 5th win against the Steelers since they've been back.  And damn if it doesn't feel good.

We had only our second opportunity to see Phil Taylor and Ahtyba Rubin play at full strength, with last week being the first.  And guess what?  For the first time since 1989, the Browns held an opponent to under 65 rushing yards in consecutive weeks.  Well done defense.  I can't think of one defender who didn't play well.  On offense you'd like to see Weeden play with more consistency, you'd like to see Richardson hit the holes when they're there (he missed a couple), and you'd like to see less holding penalties, but I'm not going to nitpick after a win.  Browns win, 20-14.  A great win to cap a great weekend.  For guys like me, it doesn't get better than the Buckeyes beating Michigan and the Browns beating the Steelers in the same weekend.  It hasn't happened since 1962, so soak it in.  For the Browns, they've got the Raiders and Chiefs in their next 2 games.  Is a winning streak in the cards?  Let's hope so, but like Shurmur said, Richardson, Weeden, Schwartz, and the rest of the rookies are 1-0 against Pittsburgh, and that's something to enjoy, at least for a week.

On a side note, the officiating in the NFL is awful.  Replacement refs were really bad, but the real ones are pretty lousy as well.  The call in the early game on turkey day when Justin Forestt of the Texans was clearly down was horrible.  Yeah, Schwartz threw the challenge flag and he shouldn't have.  But that should not prevent the refs from getting the call right.  What a stupid rule, NFL. 

Here's a thought - even if Schwartz doesn't throw the flag, Gary Kubiak should have.  Teams should sacrifice 15 yards to ensure that those types of plays don't get reviewed.  Yeah I understand it's completely against what they're trying to do, but if Kubiak challenges saying he wanted to run more clock or whatever, and the play is automatically reviewed, the refs have to flag Kubiak and the play isn't reviewable anymore, just like they did to Detroit.  Kubiak would have been smart to throw the challenge flag himself and ensure the touchdown.  Just watch, some coach will be smart enough to do it before the season is over. 

Also, in the Browns game, Richardson clearly fumbled with just over 2 minutes left in the game.  Not. Good. Trent.  However, the Steelers were out of timeouts and couldn't challenge.  Finally a horrible call goes the Browns way, but geez these guys are bad.

The same play that happened in Dallas last week, where Miles Austin clearly made a catch and fumbled but the play was blown dead, happened again in Cincinnati when they were playing Oakland.  Oakland was down in the game, Bengals player catches the ball, tucks, has it knocked out.  Oakland recovers and returns the fumble for a score.  Buuuuttttt ref blew a whistle, meaning the play is not reviewable.  Total garbage.  Next play, a frustrated Oakland player throws Dalton to the ground, and a brawl ensues.  What a joke, the NFL should hold themselves to a higher standard.  Get it right.

And officials should have their calls graded and made publicly available by the league.  It would force them to be accountable for what they're calling, and would allow for an easy evaluation system that fans could be aware of.  I want to know how many pass interference calls the back judge that blew the Miles Austin fumble call in the Dallas game made.  Was it just one ref making all these calls or was it a few?  Everything players and coaches do is public and they're held accountable.  Why not the officials?  It'll never happen, but it should.

Random gifs

Yeah this pretty much sums up Michigan's day

Ouch

Yes.  Dance away Joe.  Dance away.

And just because.