The Browns looked better than good this week, and reached my prediction of three wins for the year.  They did it with solid fundamental football augmented by offensive imagination, and a sturdy defense that got the job done.  It's quite easily the best win in years, and now we sit at 3-5 in a legitimate position to improve on last year's win total, a feat that is not a small one with our schedule.

I think I've done this correctly, so click on the article's header to read more about what this might mean!

FIVE BIG THINGS

1) Chris' Sunday Dinner: A Heaping Pile of Crow - I hope to eat many more plates of this before the year comes to an end.  Daboll's offense was fundamentally sound, got the running game going, used the play action well, didn't go overboard with the trick plays, and put together the most complete offensive effort of the year, and maybe the last 3 years.  I feel like I should wash my mouth out with soap after saying this, but here i go: Brian Daboll, good game.  Now go prove me wrong again.

2) Slooooooooooooooooow Down There - I'm super jazzed about this one, but let's put a couple things in persepctive.  First, we came off a bye week as healthy as we've been all year.  Hillis rested up his little nicks, McCoy had 2 weeks to practice up, and from all accounts, the Patriots looked bad in practice this week.  So this doesn't cement us as playoff contenders, but it does cement us as an improving team that other teams aren't excited to see pop into town.  So while New England wasn't as good as they could be, and so we can't read "SUPER BOWL" into this win, all we could do is play the best game we could against the team the Patriots put out there, and we did that.  We haven't done this in the past.

3) That Quarterback Guy - Man, I'd like to see more.  Even for only 3 weeks, this is the most consistently competent quarterback play we've had since Jeff Garcia was in town.  2 weeks ago McCoy didn't really do anything special, and 3 weeks ago, he put up nice numbers in a lost cause.  But this week he looked good in a game where he needed to look pretty good to win.  Let's see what happens against the Jets.

4) Opportunistic Defense - It's kinda the key to what Rob Ryan does.  Every play run, there's a way to beat Rob's calls, and he'll get beat his fair share.  But Rob demands that you find it, and when you don't it opens up opportunities to create on defense, whether it be pressure, penetration, a sack, a turnover, a tackle for loss, whatever.  It's fun to watch.  It'll be a roller coaster sometimes, but those can be fun.

5) This week: The Bold and the Beautiful.  Next Week: As the World Turns - Because it's like a soap opera around here.  For a week we've been suffering through Godfather references with Mangini and Belichick, and now we'll get between the brothers Ryan as Rex effin Ryan and his New York effin Jets come to town.  We'll be facing an opportunistic defense just like ours that is very good against the pass.  So it'll be quite a test, as you'd imagine they'll probably stuff the box and give up some of that pass defense prowess against a Browns team that's happy to run the ball 3 out of every 5 plays.

This was the most complete all around game I've seen them play in years.   I'm generally not inclined to be super positive after a game, but I'm at a loss for stuff to bitch about.  Here's hoping that Mangini, Daboll, and Ryan keep my negative mouth shut for another week.