P.M. Cleveland Browns Links: Tampa Bay fans (both of them) won't see the game ... luckily for them

Browns-Bucs game will be on the tube here, but probably not in Tampa Bay.

Cleveland, Ohio -- The Browns have been anything but good since returning to the NFL as an expansion team in 1999. Ticket sales in midseason and beyond have been dicey. But not selling out a home opener? What kind of football team is that bad?

Uh, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?

Right, tbo.com is quoting the Bucs saying they EXPECT Sunday's game with the Browns to be blacked out because it won't sell out 72 hours before kickoff, as required by NFL rules.

That's clearly a good news-bad news situation. The bad news is that Browns fans in the Tampa Bay area aren't going to get a chance to watch the game live. Given that it seems half of Cleveland lives in God's Waiting Room during the winter, that's tough. Fortunately, it's still warm up here, so it's unlikely that many snowbirds have taken wing for the move and thus will be able to watch the game at 1 p.m. Sunday on WOIO Channel 19.

The good news? Well, honestly, NOT being able to watch a Tampa Bay team could challenge the Tampa Bay team of the John McKay era for ineptitude.

We're having thumb fun
Browns fans are going into Sunday's game with a great deal of cautious optimism. Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace have been better than good thus far in the preseason (although admittedly, it IS the preseason). They're coming into the game healthy and confident.

Not so Josh Freeman, the Bucs' starting quarterback. He's nursing a fractured right thumb. That just happens to be his throwing hand. Former Browns center Jeff Faine, who now snaps for Tampa Bay, talked to Rick Stroud, Stephen Holder and Joe Smith, the triumvirate responsible for the St. Petersburg Times' Bucs Beat blog, about the injury.

"I’m not gonna lie," he said. "We’re pretty concerned about it. It’s something we haven’t worked at too much. We’ll see how it goes today. Today is a great test. We’ll see how it feels for him and I think we’ll knowing moving forward."

And what if it presents a problem?

"If he can’t get (the snaps) then I think we’ll go in a different direction," Faine said. "I’m not overly concerned . . . I’ll wait until we cross that bridge. If it’s something he can’t do, we have capable guys who can get the job done. I’m not concerned with that at all.

"He’s throwing the ball extremely well. I was surprised in the pregame in Houston and in our walkthrough out here (this morning). He was throwing it around just like normal. He was throwing the ball extremely well. I think we’ll be able to tell more today through this practice as far as how comfortable he’s going to feel with the exchange and the handoffs."

But don't try telling Freeman he won't be under center.

Asked what, if anything, would keep him from playing, Freeman said,
"Not my thumb. It would have to be something outside of that.

..."It won't be bad, but obviously, it's playing football," he said.
"I'm going to get tackled, I'm going to hit the ground, probably run
into a few people. It depends on how (the thumb) gets hit. I have no
idea what it's going to be like."

Painful, Josh. Painful. No bones about it.

One more thing
John Clayton, "The Professor" on ESPN, has put together his rankings of NFL quarterbacks for this season. Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Drew Brees head the class, as they should. Freeman comes in at a measly 29 out of 32.

Freeman is a big, athletic quarterback who is being paired with a
promising, young receiving corps. The small fracture on the tip of his
right thumb is a slight setback, but Freeman is the perfect quarterback
for the Bucs to build around.

Chance of being elite: 35 percent.

Ranked ahead of Freeman, though? Matt Leinhart, who's just signed to become the third quarterback on the Houston Texans and ... drum roll, please ... ex-Browns QB Derek Anderson.

Now for the really bad news: Clayton has Delhomme at No. 33.

Interceptions in the playoff loss to Arizona in 2008 led to a
downward spiral for a quarterback who won a lot of games for John Fox
and the Panthers. At 35, Delhomme has no chance of being a starter
anywhere else if he doesn't cut it in Cleveland.

 Chance of being elite: 0 percent.

Ow!

From The Plain Dealer
Montario Hardesty's season-ending knee injury has given running back Jerome Harrison the chance for which he's waited a lifetime ... and he told Plain Dealer beat writer Mary Kay Cabot he intends to take advantage of the opportunity.

"I'm going to go out and run hard and I'm going to give this city
everything I've got every time I'm out there," he said. "I'm going to
try my hardest to turn this program around and do whatever I can to do
it."

Cabot, in her Browns Insider report, said that nose tackle Shaun Rogers practiced for the first time this season on Monday, and coach Eric Mangini expects to see the big guy in the lineup Sunday.

Terry Pluto columnizes on the Browns' need to develop stars from the draft, but acknowledges that with the turnover in the front office and coaching staff since the team was reborn, that's been tough to do.