Cleveland Sports Roundup: 10/17
Haslam’s $1 billion purchase of the franchise was unanimously approved by the 32 NFL teams Tuesday. Shortly after the vote, Haslam announced that Holmgren would be leaving, although the Super Bowl-winning coach will remain with the franchise until the end of the year to help in the transition. Former Eagles President Joe Banner will become the chief executive officer on Oct. 25 when the sale is concluded.
“Mike was brought in to be the president and I think in a lot of ways the de facto owner,” Haslam said at the NFL’s fall meeting, “and with us coming in and taking a more active role, Mike has decided to, effective at the end of the year, leave the Cleveland Browns …
I honestly didn’t think I would recommend that you add any of the Cleveland Browns’ wide receivers to your fantasy roster this year. There appeared to be a dearth of talent at the position and, you know, the whole Brandon Weeden thing factored in as well.
Alas, Josh Gordon has changed my mind.
The rookie has been fantastic in the past two weeks, with 35 combined fantasy points. In total, he’s logged five receptions for 181 yards and three touchdowns over those two games after managing just seven catches for 93 yards and no touchdowns in the first four games.
Now, I know you see the danger here. Any time a player has just 12 receptions and 26 targets in six games, he presents a risk to fantasy owners since all of his value is coming from touchdowns.
From bleacherreport.com
If you wanted to know how important Joe Haden is to the Browns, look at the four games that he missed because of his Adderall suspension. Then look at the two games he’s played this season — the home opener loss to Philadelphia and Sunday’s win over the Cincinnati Bengals.
In Haden’s two games, the Browns have seven interceptions compared to just three in the four games he missed.
This, obviously, still doesn’t change the fact that the Browns have allowed 163 points in five games.
But then again, so have the Bengals, who have lost back-to-back games to teams with rookie quarterbacks.
From morningjournal.com
Hitting coach Bruce Fields and third-base coach Steve Smith will not be back in 2013. This was Fields’ first full year in the position. He replaced Jon Nunnally, who was fired by former manager Manny Acta on June 19, 2011. Fields, 52, has already taken a job with another organization.
Smith, 60, was third-base and infield coach for the last three years. He told friends at the end of this season that he intended to take next season off to watch his son Garrett, an infielder, play his senior year at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
From www.cleveland.com
When the Cleveland Cavaliers played the Chicago Bulls in a preseason game this past weekend, Kyrie Irving finished the night with zero assists in 26 minutes of action. You know how many times he’s done that over the course of his short NBA career? Zero. Zero times.
But Irving isn’t going to be making a habit of such goose eggs. In fact, after winning Rookie of the Year last season, Irving is looking to come in and take his game to another level, and he uses two words to describe how he’s going to do that: patience and efficiency.
“I just want to come in everyday and try and make everybody better. You have to take the game that much more serious,” Irving said. “Going forward, especially going into my sophomore year, I just need to slow my game down and just be more efficient.”
From www.hoopsworld.com
If you watched any Cleveland basketball last season, you know that the center position, outside of Anderson Varejao who was limited to action in only 25 games, was a dumpster fire. A calamity of epic proportions. 1520 minutes were played by Samardo Samuels (not all at the center position), Semih Erden, and Ryan Hollins. The collective average of these players Player Efficiency Ratings (PER) was an atrocious 9.33. League average, of course, is 15. To give some perspective on just how many minutes we are talking about, Kyrie Irving was on the court for 1558 minutes last season. Roughly, for nearly every minute the Cavaliers were buoyed by Kyrie Irving’s presence, they were being pulled down by centers who really struggled.
From www.fearthesword.com