Our Cleveland Browns put themselves right back into the AFC North Division championship hunt with a scintillating 12-9 win in OT over the Baltimore Ravens. It was the Browns first victory on a Sunday since 2015.
Move over Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys, Baker Mayfield and his Browns are now America’s Team.
I kid you not. When I was in Denver the previous Sunday following the Rockies 14-0 win over the Nationals in Game 162, my son took me to a sports bar right next to the historic Union Station in the heart of downtown Denver. Since we’d been drinking we of course were ubering the rest of the day. All you young Brownamaniacs…do not drink and drive. It’s not worth it.
The Broncos weren’t playing when we got to the bar, but that bar was full of Cleveland fans wearing Mayfield jerseys and T-shirts which said- ‘We Love Our Cleveland Browns’.
I was wearing my OU football hoodie and those Cleveland fans took notice and treated me like royalty after I told them I was Baker’s uncle there from Texas to watch the Rockies. I told them I had Baker’s cell number just to lead them on and pretended to text him several times during the game.
What a frenzied feel it was in that bar even after the Browns got hosed by the replay official on a fourth down mark and eventually lost to the Raiders in overtime.
So—when Jim Rome and other national scribes now refer to the Browns as America’s Team….don’t laugh. These young Browns have captured the hearts of America much like the Thunder did in those early days with Durant, Westbrook, and Harden. I now have a ‘We Love Our Cleveland Browns’ T-shirt and look to add a Dog Pound fuzzy hat before next weekend’s game against the San Diego Chargers in Cleveland while the entire nation watches to see if ‘our’ Browns can climb to 3-2-1 for the season.
My son called me last night from Denver and told me Mike Stoops was fired on Sunday after the OU defense was absolutely abysmal against a Texas offense which could only score 10 points the previous week against a feeble Kansas State team. Ten points.
I shrugged and asked, “So…who’s taking over the defense?”
He says,”Bob Diaco.”
I say,” What has Bob Diaco ever done with any defense at a Power 5 level?”
My son didn’t know. So I researched Bob Diaco a bit and discovered he was at Nebraska last season and was fired by Scott Frost when Frost was hired to rebuild a moribund Nebraska Cornhusker football program. He also coordinated defenses for Brian Kelly at both Cincy and Notre Dame. Like Bob Stoops, he played his college football at Iowa.
Not exactly a resume which leads me to believe OU’s defense will rise from being the 96th ranked defense in the country when they play against quality opposition.
But I guess at the end of the day Lincoln Riley had no choice in that the Sooner defense was so putrid on Saturday inside the Cotton Bowl he maybe figured he could make Sarah Palin or Mary Fallin his defensive coordinator and it might be an upgrade. OU was that bad on Saturday from a physicality and tackling standpoint. Any freshman high school coach in America would have been embarrassed with that performance.
The good news for Bob Diaco or Ruffin McNeil or both is that OU only has to face one more quality offense this season when they travel to play West Virginia in Morgantown. Texas Tech is always a challenge, but Kyler Murray and Co. should hang close to 70 points on both Texas Tech and O State this season. TCU at Forth Worth in two weeks could be the toughest challenge otherwise.
The new goal for OU is to get into the Big 12 Championship Game and maybe play itself into a top six bowl game. OU is not going to the national football playoff and neither is any other Big 12 team.
Maybe playing Texas in the Big 12 Championship Game would be fun.
Maybe OU would have a chance if they learn how to tackle in the next two months. Maybe the new coordinator could tell them to get more physical and maybe hit someone in the mouth. Football isn’t a contact sport, it’s a collision sport like hockey. Dancing is a contact activity…if you know what I mean.
This is why Bob Stoops should never have brought his brother back. The appearance of nepotism is not what you need at the highest level of DI coaching. You need teaching and motivation.
I wonder what’s going through Brent Venables’ mind this morning. His wife is probably smiling in a knowing manner if you know what I mean.
So….Bob Diaco and Ruffin McNeil will now coach the OU defense.
You know who Ruffin McNeil is, right?
He was the assistant coach at Texas Tech who replaced Mike Leach’s D coordinator the day after O State torched the Red Raiders in Stillwater in that historic game in which after the game Mike Gundy shared with the world the thought he was forty and a man.
“I’m forty, I’m a man…come after me!” Who does this Midwest City dude think he is….Frank Sinatra or something?
While Gundy was doing that in his presser this was what Mike Leach was doing in his presser.
Mike Leach fired his D coordinator the next day.
You think Lincoln Riley was thinking of this at all when he fired Mike Stoops yesterday?
Maybe what Riley should do is hire the K State D coordinator who held Texas to 10 points the previous week
That was nuanced sarcasm….kind of.
Sigh. Mike Gundy was given a $625,000 dollar raise last off season after losing the three games on his schedule which were against quality teams. Tell me what is wrong in America currently…seriously.
It is what it is. That being, like last year OU has a scintillating offense but has a defense which quite frankly can’t tackle anyone at the line of scrimmage or in space down the field.
That’s kind of a critical shortcoming when you play on the defensive side of the football and like in the Georgia game when OU couldn’t get a stop when it needed one, they couldn’t get one in Saturday’s Red River Rivalry which was won by Texas on the last play of the game.
Should Mike Stoops be fired? Would that help or is it just that the culture of defense in the Big 12 is a past tense pipe dream?
I’m not sure. Mike Gundy fired Glenn Spencer as his defensive coordinator last season. If anything, O State is worse. Like OU they can’t tackle or stop anyone. They’re terrible as well. So, I mean, what I’m saying here is that Lincoln Riley could fire Stoops, but that doesn’t mean OU will be able to turn around their defensive woes.
I think it’s more a cultural deal of the high school football which is being played in both Texas and Oklahoma. All these high school programs play the spread and there is no emphasis on the physicality aspect of football. These are the two states which both OU and O State primarily recruit in to fill their rosters.
Why is it you think that when Brent Venables left OU he didn’t stay around in this region of the country to continue his coaching career? Because in the southeast region of the country they still play defense in high school.
And don’t tell me Texas is a great defense. They’re not. They were just torched for 45 points by an OU team which had two key turnovers or else OU would have scored 50 something points in this year’s version of the Red River Rivalry.
TCU’s Gary Patterson is alleged to be a defensive savant. Oh, really. Did you see the Horned Frogs play Ohio State and Texas?
See where I’m coming from?
No one in the Big 12 is very good defensively and that’s primarily why no Big 12 team since Vince Young’s 2005 Longhorn team has won a national championship. And based on Saturday’s results the Big 12 will not have a team in this year’s national championship football playoff.
Do you really think the committee would take West Virginia even if they went undefeated?
So while I love watching Kyler Murray and the OU offense it’s fairly evident the Sooners don’t possess a defense…. and at the end of the day if you want to ne mentioned with Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, and Ohio State you kind of need a defense.
With all my obsession of someday moving to Toronto–that has changed and moved much closer… as in Denver.
I could see myself becoming a Denverite in the last decade of my life or so. I really could. Don’t get me wrong, Toronto is amazing, but Denver is pretty amazing as well.
On my flight home the other night the mayor of Oklahoma City David Holt sat in front of me with his two young children. We talked a bit. He seems like a nice young man, but he didn’t strike me as mayoral per se. He didn’t strike me as a person with a searing vision of what Oklahoma City should be five years from now.
We talked a little bit about the Sam Anderson book. Like me, he enjoyed the book and like me, he learned some new things about the history of Oklahoma City.
I asked him how people in his sphere took the book. He smiled and said, “Some people don’t have a sense of humor.”
I told him I never knew about Operation Bongo until I read the book. He said the same.
As I left that flight– I thought about David Holt and the future of his two children in Oklahoma City as they grow up.
I wonder if the city and the state for that matter can in a sense… grow up.
I know this…I won’t be alive to witness it.
But anyway, the Rockies’ series with the Brewers starts tonight and that’s where my sports heart is at currently. The Thunder aren’t really there. But that will change as we get cooler and deeper into October. Even if we moved to Denver the Thunder would be my basketball team for this reason…I love the audacity Aubrey McClendon and Clay Bennett had about Oklahoma City even if all of it didn’t pan out. Passion is a great thing, it really is. It’s what drives us as humans. The notion these two dudes pulled this off still amazes me given what a culturally and politically regressed city OKC is in some regards.
The notion OKC still has an NBA team still amazes me given that a beer league minor league hockey team called the Blazers, Brad Lund, and Katrina are in a sense what made the Thunder possible to a degree.
Anderson didn’t write this because he didn’t live it firsthand. I lived it.
My son took me to the Colorado Rockies final game of the regular season this past Sunday for an early birthday present. It was a great day of major league baseball in Denver as the Rockies bludgeoned the Washington Nationals by a 14-0 count to tie the LA Dodgers for the regular season divisional title.
It was glorious. Charlie Blackmon hit for the cycle. Nolan Arenado hit two home runs. Kendall Story hit a rocket into the centerfield bleachers and David Dahl hit an opposite field homer down the left field line.
Rookie left hander pitcher Tyler Anderson pitched seven innings of shutout ball. And former 2007 Rockie hero Matt Holiday made a pinch hit appearance.
It was a great day of baseball even with the Rockies eventually losing on Monday to the Dodgers in LA by a 5-2 count.
Didn’t matter though as these Rockies are resilient and advanced into the divisional playoffs late last night with an epic thirteen inning 2-1 win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley.
Don’t discount this Rockie team. They along with the Milwaukee Brewers were the hottest teams in MLB coming down the stretch run of the season.
So it seems apropos they now meet in the playoffs with the winner most likely paying the LA Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
Colorado has one of the best players in all of baseball in Nolan Arenado. Period. Nice players around him and a pitching staff which could be dangerous in post season.
It should be a fun baseball post season in Denver.