News, opinions, and some site chatter on a bright, sunny Father's Day here in
Northern Ohio....
WORKOUT WARRIORS: Some good news comes from Hal Lebovitz this morning,
whose Sunday morning column remains a treat but, unfortunately, steadfastly
unavailable via the Internet.
Hal reports that a number of Browns vets have remained in Berea past the end of
Quarterback School to continue their conditioning. Among the players, according
to Hal, are: Ben Taylor, Earl Little, Anthony Henry, Orpheus Roye, Gerard Warren
(!), Kelvin Garmon, Jeff Faine, Ryan Tucker, James Jackson, Terrelle Smith,
Chaun Thompson, Enoch Demar, Aaron Shea, and Melvin Fowler.
William Green and Courtney Brown continue their rehabbing and, according to
Hal, haven't missed a session yet.
CARMEN EYEING THE NINERS? The latest from the west coast has the York
family considering a sale of the San Francisco 49ers and ex-Browns President
Carmen Policy mentioned as making a run at the team or, potentially, a Los
Angeles franchise. Every time I read one of these stories, I'm reminded that
Lane Adkins was writing about this
a year before Policy left
the Browns.
KEEP AN EYE ON...: Last year, there was some chatter about how the
Browns struggled to stop the run in pre-season games when special teams demon
Mason Unck was at middle linebacker. When the Browns get into this year's
exhibition slate, one of the things I'll be watching is whether the team does
better against the run with Mason gets to play in the middle. During last
weekend's World Bowl, Unck's Frankfurt Galaxy struggled to contain Berlin's
running attack, allowing over 200 yards on the ground. I'd love to see Unck win
a spot with the club, but need to see the run stuffed first.
THANKS TO... The Canton Repository's Steve Doerschuck for mentioning our
front page poll on the Browns likely 2004 MVP
in his Browns column
today. Look for the results and selected comments from this poll on the Vox
Populi page in the upcoming Bernie's Insiders Magazine.
SAFETY SCARINESS: After last year's multiple 200-yard running games
against the Browns, concern about the safety position is second only to concern
about left tackle among dawgs in
the forums. The recent
acquisition of WR LaTarence Dunbar had many of us pondering his experience at
free safety while in college. When the Browns sent out a press release on Dunbar
on Friday, though, it talked about him mostly as a returner, and called him a
wide receiver. Based on the press release, if Dunbar is going to make the team,
it will be as a return guy. Recent experiments with Lee Suggs returning
kick-offs shows the Browns are still playing around with how to make kick-off
returns as nerve-wracking for opponents as Dennis Northcutt returning punts.
UNIFORM NUMBERS: It appears that the Browns have assigned uniform
numbers to players who have returned from NFL Europe, as well as some recent
signees. We've captured all of these that we could dig up and have updated our
active
roster page with the new numbers.
RAWER AND FEEDIER. OR WHATEVER: The.Raw.Feed is one of Bernie's
Insiders site features that I'm proudest of, but it's one of the hardest to
explain. Basically, TRF is a bunch of web robots which are continually surfing
the Internet looking for Browns news. When they snag it, they make it available
immediately via our Most
Recent Articles page, as well as making articles surf-able via the
Feed Browser pages.
Over the last week, we've added feeds for NFL.com, Yahoo! Sports, and Pro
Sports Daily to the mix. We've also fixed feeds for the Dayton Daily News,
Elyria Chronicle, and a couple of others who tweaked their sites recently in
ways that effected our robots. More feeds are on the way, including some
national sites that I've recently figured out how to track, like ESPN and
Sportsline. Generally speaking, T.R.F gives you something new to click
every time you visit BerniesInsiders.com.
If you enjoy this sort of freakishly obsessive tracking of Browns news,
please
subscribe and support this sort of weirdness. Every subscriber we get helps
us deliver more info-goodness for Browns fans. For those of you reading Bernie's
Insiders articles via Yahoo, the link to click is:
https://secure.theinsiders.com/store/view.aspx?s=149&p=6
Thanks, as always, to all of our subscribers and everyone who has helped
spread the word about Bernie's Insiders!
Have a great Father's Day, and I'll catch you
on the forums!
- AB