Nasdaq wrote:

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--- redright wrote:

sweetpauliepurebred wrote:I can't think of anything this team does well except possibly kicking field goals.  Please help me feel better.

I wasn't drinking the kool-aid of the Eric Mangini school of offensive wizardry, but we could at least run the ball.  

As horrible as the first 3 years of this reborn Browns were, we were 7-9 the third year.  We fired Chris Palmer and Dwight Clark along the way.

I want to believe.  

And there is no proof whatsoever that we wouldn't have been better off keeping Chris Palmer, staying the course with him as HC.


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Other than being respectable right away, a factor in the division, & a playoff team the next year.

Don't revise.

Had Al lived it would have been completely different. Playoffs in year 4 of expansion is nothing but excellent.

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you or woof postulated back in '07 on this board that the Clark/Palmer model may have succeeded. Or was it Oberle?

2-14 (1-7)
3-13 (2-8)

7-9 (5-5)

9-7 (3-3)

As bad as those first 4 years were, there was:
1) an upward trend.
2) A strong divisional record. (Even in '00 we played the Rats, Titans and Jags close in one game of the two-game series per team). And in '99, with nothing else, we still split with Pitt!

Al "got" it but died in '02. Like the '09 Bengals, we were one and done, but we overachieved. '09 Bengals-the D coordinator's wife died of Cancer and they played inspired defense--6-0 in the division, 10-6 overall.

Sometimes, teams just turn it on for one year due to one or two things like that.