"The Sunday Five" is a loosely-titled piece where I talk about five NFL- or Browns-related topics related to this past week. In today's edition, we'll take a look at the hiring of Brad Childress again, what has been going on in Indianapolis, the Pro Bowl tonight, and more.
Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer spent a great deal of his Sunday column reviewing the hiring of Brad Childress as the Browns' offensive coordinator. Childress didn't have the greatest reputation in Minnesota, but Pluto explains why that shouldn't be a concern:
Start with the job -- offensive coordinator. It's not running the team, making trades, or dealing with off-the-field issues. It's purely coaching football, the offense.
As Pluto points out, in Childress' first four seasons as the Vikings' head coach, they ranked 23rd, 13th, 17th, and 5th. That's not bad for a guy who was juggling more than he could handle. The team's best ranking obviously came in Brett Favre's first year, but prior to that, there were a couple of good seasons without a stellar quarterback under center. Adrian Peterson helped matters, but Cleveland has a chance to add a big playmaker right off the bat in April too.
The local media had a major impact during the Browns' 2011-2012 season, often seeming as though they had an agenda to paint the team in a negative light. Everything came full circle this past week when the Plain Dealer's Tony Grossi was removed from the Browns Beat after a tweet he made regarding team owner Randy Lerner. I believe the reports that say the Browns organization had nothing to do with Grossi's removal. The Plain Dealer explained their reasoning well. We still don't know exactly what his new role will be, but he was re-assigned in the sports department. I try to hold a neutral opinion of the local media, because I'm not interested in burning bridges in the event that any future correspondences are necessary. That doesn't prevent you guys from speaking out, something the DBN members had no qualms about doing.
"Peyton Manning is done in Indianapolis." The media is saying the writing is on the wall, despite Jim Irsay and Manning having a statement released that their relationship is fine. Irsay has ripped apart the entire organization from top to bottom, and the only person that remains is Manning. Is his future in Indianapolis in doubt because Irsay wants to capitalize on the opportunity to re-build with Andrew Luck? I still find it hard to believe that Irsay would give away the best quarterback (in my opinion) of this era. We know that the whole reason for the Colts' success in recent memory has been because of Manning; everyone else was replaceable. I think that Irsay realized that after this past season. So, what does he do? He guts everyone and tries to put a structure in place, something that will be stable once Luck takes over for Manning in a couple of years.
The Pro Bowl is tonight on NBC. It will be a four-hour program from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST, and the only representative from the Browns will be left tackle Joe Thomas. We all know this will be an excruciatingly boring game, but some of us will still put ourselves through the misery of watching it because it's NFL-related. It's too bad we can't see center Alex Mack scoring a touchdown on a lateral to end the game like last year, unless Thomas tries to improvise this time around.
I've received quite a few people with interest in the social media positions to assist DBN. I will try to contact several people early this week to get them set up, so our presence on Twitter and Facebook should be expanded. If you're not following us on those services yet, feel free to add us today!