Eric Mangini said he should have used the wildcat formation (and Josh Cribbs) more often. To paraphrase a rude remark, "No fooling, Sherlock."
Joshua Cribbs got some love from the fans on Sunday after his TD catch and run against the Chiefs. But Cribbs received precious little affection from the Browns' game plan, with only six touches. What happened to the wildcat, asks Bill Livingston.BEREA, Ohio -- The only Browns player who can win a game from anywhere at anytime is Joshua Cribbs, a kick returner. Josh sees more "pooches," high, short kickoffs and punts designed to minimize returns, than your average kennel.
Cribbs is also easily the team's best pass receiver. He caught a 65-yard touchdown pass Sunday.
Yet the team's game-breaker touched the ball six times in all in the Browns' second straight loss to a bad team. Tampa Bay one week, Kansas City the next. Tweedlebum and bummer.
Cribbs had one punt return for five yards and one kickoff return for 19. Quarterback Seneca Wallace threw for him five times. Three were complete. The second-quarter bomb reminded you that the Browns' quarterbacks can make big plays for their own team with their arms and not just for the opposition.
Other than Cribbs, Wallace connected with second-year wideouts Brian Robiskie and Mohamed Massaquoi twice in nine passes to them. In baseball, such a .222 average in the batter's box is a flirtation with the players' definition of incompetence, the Mendoza Line.
On the Browns, it is what happens when character defects led to the exile of the only receivers who could get open, Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards. Neither played on anything approaching the plane of glory they projected for themselves, but they did have to be respected, at least by the other team, albeit strictly in an on-field sense.
After a Browns offseason which seemed to have all sorts of preparations for Josh Cribbs and the wildcat, two inoffensive efforts by the offense would suggest the team might want to revive those plans.Striking with something less than all their fury, the Browns used the wildcat formation against the Chiefs just once. The wildcat is a scheme in which the ball is snapped directly to a running back. It attempts to bring single wing blocking and power to the point of attack.
It seems hard to believe at first that a team with such impoverishment in playmakers would ignore the chance to be creative with the few they do have.
Some NFL coaches feel the defenses have caught up to wildcat. But with athletes on the field at the same time who are the caliber of Cribbs, a former quarterback at Kent State, and Wallace, a veteran quarterback who can make plays with his legs, the Browns have at least the chance to create uncertainty on the defense. The formation is supposed to be a way of seizing the initiative, a surprise move, quick in tempo.
The Browns have turned it into a repetitive exercise in risk aversion. When the ball is snapped to Cribbs, he either runs (most of the time) or throws a pass to a receiver running a fly pattern because that is what they trust him to read. The other team knows this and stacks the box. Cribbs gained one yard on his lone rush.
The thought seems not to occur of a double-pass or of putting one of them in motion for the full-speed-ahead sweep Miami has used to good effect with Ricky Williams.
Coach Eric Mangini admitted Monday the team needs to get the ball to Cribbs more often and that the wildcat should have been used more. He said he came to that conclusion Monday morning.
Last year, Mangini almost never admitted mistakes. This is a step in the right direction, but only if he makes good his vow to fix the growing disrepair. In the 12th year of the fixer-upper in Berea, with the schedule toughening up quickly and fans beginning to wonder if there will be a new coach after the bye week, it should not take 24 hours to realize Cribbs needs the ball more.
"I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat on to the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale," Winston Churchill once said, referring to the stalled Allied landings at Anzio in World War II.
Works for the Browns' offense, too.