Many happy returns

Did I mention yet that Joshua Cribbs is my favorite Browns player? Do I even have to explain why?

Well, if the excitement and charisma he brings to the game aren't enough for you, here's some strong statistical proof of JC's value: considering punt and kickoff returns, he added 622 yards above the league average last season. That's the best season for any return specialist since 1970, and perhaps all time.

That's according to the Pro-Football-Reference blog, which ranked each team's return prowess for each season since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. The 2007 Browns came out second overall, trailing only the 2003 Chiefs, featuring Dante Hall. Pretty good, when you consider that's out of 1,093 team-seasons.

Not likely he's surfing the internet tonight, but it's worth wishing Josh a happy 25th birthday anyway.

The phantom '40s

The official site's Steve King, whose pieces on Browns history are generally pretty decent, strikes a Browns-versus-the-NFL note in reporting on the league's rebuff of Senator Sherrod Brown's request to have AAFC statistics recognized by the NFL.

Funny, though, he never mentions the records kept by the team itself. Yes, it's true. The Cleveland Browns themselves all but ignore their first four years of greatness.

The team's own version of its franchise records, as kept on the official site and its own media guide, pay absolutely no heed to anything that happened from 1946 through 1949. Attendance, yes. Touchdowns, interceptions, and all that hard-fought yardage? Nada.

Most wins in a season? The perfect 1948 team won 15, but the team itself bestows the record on its 1986 edition, which won 13.

Individually, who played the most games for the Browns? Was it Lou Groza (52 AAFC plus 216 NFL) or Clay Matthews (232)? Why must one visit an independent site to compare?

In one place (pdf) they seem almost apologetic about the issue, when Hall of Famer Dante Lavelli ranks just 10th in career receiving yards because his first four seasons are excluded. If an explanatory asterisk is deserved there, it should, for consistency's sake, be peppered liberally throughout the team's record book for all the feats omitted.

No wonder Mac Speedie never made the Hall himself, despite a more accomplished career than his contemporaries who were inducted.

If the Browns themselves can't see fit to reflect the full reality of their own heritage, it seems silly for their employees to bemoan the continuing snub at the hands of "the corporate offices of the NFL."

If the organization is truly serious about honoring the full breadth of its own history, the next media guide will include all the AAFC statistics, with or without asterisks.

Cranking out rankings

Here's a look at how the Browns ranked in various categories among the 32 teams during the just-completed regular season. Stats get tiresome after a while, so I've focused mostly on the key areas and those where the Browns were near the top or bottom of the league. Within each section, rankings are shown best to worst. A few noteworthy and/or surprising findings are in bold.

Offense:

• pass plays of 20+ yards: 53 (tied for 3rd)
• sacks allowed: 19 (tied for 3rd fewest)
• yards per play: 5.6 (6th)
• yards per rush: 4.3 (6th)
• yards per game: 351.3 (8th)
• points: 402, 25.1 per game (8th)
• fumbles lost: 9 (tied for 8th fewest)
• first downs per game: 19.7 (10th)
• rushing yards per game: 118.4 (10th)
• third-down conversion rate: 42.2% (11th)
• passer rating: 80.7 (17th)
• pass plays of 40+ yards: 6 (tied for 7th fewest)
• interceptions: 20 (tied for 6th most)
• completion percentage: 56.0 (30th)

Defense:

• pass plays of 40+ yards allowed: 3 (1st fewest)
• longest pass play allowed: 42 yards (1st shortest)
• passes defensed: 103 (tied for 4th)
• rushing TDs allowed: 8 (6th fewest)
• longest rush allowed: 37 (7th shortest)
• third-down conversion rate: 37% (8th lowest)
• fourth-down conversion rate: 44% (9th lowest)
• opponent passer rating: 83.4 (tied for 17th lowest)
• sacks: 28 (tied for 6th fewest)
• rush yards allowed per game: 129.5 (6th most)
• pass plays of 20+ yards allowed: 50 (5th most)
• rush plays of 20+ yards allowed: 14 (tied for 4th most)
• forced fumbles: 12 (tied for 4th fewest)
• passing TDs allowed: 29 (tied for 3rd most)
• yards per game allowed: 359.6 (3rd most)
• fourth-down conversions allowed: 11 (tied for 2nd most)
• first downs allowed per game: 20.9 (2nd most)
• defensive TDs: 1 (tied for 1st fewest)

Special teams:

• kickoff return average: 27.0 (1st)
• kickoff returns of 40+ yards: 7 (1st)
• punt return average: 13.5 (3rd)
• TDs via returns: 3 (tied for 3rd)
• average kickoff return allowed: 20.9 yards (tied for 6th fewest)
• net punting average: 35.8 (27th)
• percent of kickoffs for touchbacks: 5.9 (30th)
• field goal attempts blocked: 2 (tied for 1st)

Penalties:

• by opponents: 80 (4th fewest)
• yards by opponents: 581 (3rd fewest)
• against: 114 (3rd most)
• yards against: 868 (5th most)

Flag football findings

Last Sunday's Browns/Jets game was either the cleanest game all season or the one with the most laid-back officiating. In either case, it was encouraging that the Browns bucked recent trends and had their fewest penalties of the season, with just four flags for 29 yards against them. Still, it was the 12th of 13 games in which the Browns were penalized more or essentially the same as their opponents.

Cleveland remains in the league's top three in terms of penalties and penalty yardage. To take a closer look at the situation, I've tallied every flag thrown at the Browns this year, including those declined or offset by opponents' fouls. Here's a bit of the raw data.

Browns penalties through 13 games ...

... by quarter

• 1st: 29
• 2nd: 34
• 3rd: 22
• 4th: 27
• OT: 1

...by unit

• defense: 40
• offense: 52
• special teams: 21 (KO return -- 8; KO -- 3; punt return -- 1; punt -- 9).

...by player

• Winslow -- 10
• Anderson -- 8
• Jones, Bodden -- 6
• Thomas, R. Smith -- 5
• Tucker, L. Williams -- 4
• Cribbs, Edwards, Pool, E. Wright, Peek, Steinbach, McKinney, Shaffer, Dinkins, Wimbley -- 3
• nine players -- 2
• eleven players -- 1
• Notable players with none: J. Wright, Vickers, Kelley, Roye.

...by type

• 24: false start (2006 total: 9)
• 16: encroachment/offsides (2006 total: 4)
• 13: personal foul (e.g. major face mask, roughing passer, unnecessary roughness)
• 9: illegal formation/shift
• 8: offensive holding/illegal block
• 8: defensive pass interference
• 7: defensive holding/illegal contact
• 6: holding/illegal block on kick/punt returns
• 6: delay of game
• 3: intentional grounding
• 3: offensive pass interference
• 3: ineligible man downfield
• 2: taunting/unsportsmanlike conduct

...by location

• away: 9.4 penalties per game
• home: 7.8 penalties per game

...by yardage

• 57.3 yards/game -- official assessments against Browns
• 38.7 yards/game -- official assessments against opponents
• 73.4 yards/game -- "impact" yards against Browns (considers outcomes nullified by penalties).
• 42.9 yards/game -- official assessments against Browns in 2006.
  

Some totals

Much has been made of the superlative stats many Browns skill players are putting up this year, and for good reason. But I haven't seen these cited:

• This is the first season since 2004 in which two Browns running backs have rushed for at least 200 yards.
  
• It's also now the first season with three RBs exceeding 100 yards on the ground since 2003, when four players did it.
• Jerome Harrison is third among all NFL running backs in yards per carry. He's first if you exclude those whose average is skewed by a carry of 40 or more yards.
• Lawrence Vickers' 40 yards rushing is the most by a Browns fullback in a single season since the team's return in 1999.
• Prior to this season, the last Brown running back to exceed four yards per carry was Lee Suggs in 2003. Lewis, Wright, and Harrison are all north of four now.
• The 2007 Browns are almost certain to have the highest receiving yard totals in new Browns history for their first, second, and third receivers. Braylon already has the best single-season total since 1999. Winslow already has the most receiving yards among the players who ranked second each year. Jurevicius is 64 yards away from matching Dennis Northcutt's 2002 total of 601 yards, most among #3 receivers.

Airing out the laundry

Before I delve into the details of each of the Browns' penalties this season, here's an overview of the official tallies, which do not include penalties that were declined or offset by opponents' fouls. Only once in 12 games were the Browns clearly the less-penalized team.

In sum, the Browns have been flagged 95 times for 716 yards, compared with 68 times for 494 yards for their opponents. For a parity-conscious league, that's quite a disparity. Cleveland ranks second in penalties and third in penalty yardage. Their opponents are flagged somewhat below the league average.

In fact, it's even more significant than the home/away differential. In these 12 games, the home team was assessed 71 penalties for 546 yards, compared with 92 and 664 for the visitors.

In the Jets, the Browns will confront their mirror image -- the second least penalized team, third least yardage -- and do so on the road, to boot.

As I discussed previously, fewer penalties, taken as a whole, don't correlate with winning. In fact, the data above show that the losing teams were significantly less penalized (72-509) than their conquerors (91-701). I wouldn't make too much of that, for several reasons, small sample size among them. Obviously, it's folly to infer that getting penalized contributes to winning.

There's much more at work here, and I'll dig into the gamebooks next to get at the root of the Browns' penalty problems this year. Because at this late date, very little can be done in terms of personnel. In December, it's the army you have. Their ability to execute well in the fourth quarter of the schedule will determine their destiny, and penalties are one lens for understanding this.

Seeing yellow

In the NFL, penalties don't correlate well with winning or losing. Why not?

In theory, penalties reflect getting outplayed by an opponent or a lack of discipline or concentration. Those factors, plus the consequences of the penalties themselves, ought to track at least somewhat with a team's overall success rate.

Contrary to that, it's easy to think that in a highly rule-bound sport, many penalties are just unfortunate by-products of a factor more important to winning: aggressiveness.

Both statements above are consistent with the following research finding:

Teams with more offensive penalties generally lose more games, but there is no correlation between defensive penalties and losses. The penalty that correlates highest with losses is the False Start, and the penalty that teams will have called most consistently from year to year is the False Start

In addition, much like society at large, the league just has too many rules to enforce with any regularity. With so much fast-paced action on every play (and in between), the officials are left with a huge amount of discretion, which makes them prone to all manner of human errors -- attentional, attributional, and motivational.

The league office pays eagle-eyed attention to the decisions its officials make. That's out of necessity, of course, but it does introduce other factors affecting how games are called. These sometimes take the form of "points of emphasis," or de-emphasis too (e.g. fewer offensive holding calls).

One could speculate that officials, knowing they will be graded on things like the type, frequency, and balance of their penalty calls, may act to fulfill the league's expectations specifically without having a substantial impact on the game's outcome.

Alternately, a reasonable theory is that penalties -- regardless of their "engineering" -- aren't typically a significant enough aspect of the game to tilt scoreboards systematically. Flags follow such a wide assortment of actions that few generalizations apply.

That's why it's important to examine each individual call -- and its circumstances -- for the clues it yields (in isolation or collectively) about a player, a unit, a team, an opponent, and an officiating crew. Given the Browns' excessive level of penalties this season, I'll be presenting such an analysis (as I did in 2004, 2005, and 2006) in an upcoming post.

One yard to go

For those of us who remember when the Browns couldn't convert any short-yardage runs -- even resorting to a double-handoff reverse from the Pittsburgh goal line a few years back -- it sure seems like this team is vastly improved in this crucial area.

And even though the defense remains very sketchy, one of its redeeming features has been its recent ability to stuff short-yardage plays.

To get a better sense of this, I tallied every play this season for which there was one yard to go for a first down or touchdown, excluding punts and field goal tries. Here's what I found:

• Through ten games, the Browns offense has converted 26 of 40 (65%), while the defense has prevented the first down or TD 15 of 37 times (41%). So overall, the Browns are winning slightly when there's one yard to go.
• In these cases, the Browns run the ball 79% of the time, and they succeed slightly more often when they do (68% conversion rate rushing to 63% passing).
• Browns' opponents run the ball 75% of the time with a yard to go, and they too convert more often with runs (63%) than passes (56%).
• Here's how the Browns' ball carriers have fared: Vickers 7-for-9; Lewis 6-for-12; Anderson 4-for-4; Wright 3-for-4; Harrison 1-for-2.
• That fullback quick-hitter usually works, though it's never been called with goal to go. The big tailback, though, is just a 50-50 prospect to gain a needed yard.
• Anderson's first two runs were scoring bootlegs. The latest two, on Sunday, were the first QB sneaks we've seen from the Browns all year.
• The defense started the season very weak, allowing conversions over half the time in each of the first six games. Since Miami converted 8-for-8, though, the Browns have stopped yard-to-go plays 10 of 12 times over the past four games.
• The effort at Baltimore was near perfect: stops in both chances on defense, and a season-high six conversions in seven attempts by the offense. That follows an 0-for-2 offensive conversion rate at Pittsburgh, the only game in which the Browns have failed to convert at least twice from a yard out.
• Teams may be more disciplined these days when the play is in close quarters. Of the 77 instances recorded, there were only three penalties: a false start by the Browns (Steinbach), offensive holding (Gallery, OAK), and pass interference (Scott, BAL). The days of the hard count and the encroachment call may have gone the way of Astroturf, barefoot kickers, and Stickum.

Oddity in threes

The Browns have now played 878 games in their history. Only three of them (0.3%) have ended with the score 33-30. All went to overtime.

Two of them are the Browns' most recent wins. They are sandwiched around a loss at Pittsburgh.

The third one was a loss at Pittsburgh.

Like no other

With half the regular season in the books:

• Nobody has thrown more passes for 20-plus-yard gains than Derek Anderson (33).
• No wide receiver has more rushing yards than Joshua Cribbs (53).
• Cribbs also has 1,026 kickoff return yards, tops in the league. His average of 30.2 yards per return is 24 percent better than his previous two seasons.
• Among tight ends with at least 10 catches, Kellen Winslow has the most yards per reception (15.6) and the highest percentage of catches for first downs (76.2).
• Braylon Edwards' nine touchdowns are already as many as any Brown has scored in an entire season, by all means, since 1991, when Leroy Hoard and Kevin Mack each cracked double digits.
• No other team has managed a winning record with a turnover ratio as bad or worse than the Browns (-2) or with lower average time of possession (27:51).