It's a Sunday and none of my teams are playing so let's talk other sports and teams that might be interesting to fans of the Indians.
Ohio State Football
OK, great season with a National Championship Game appearance and a decisive victory over Clemson in the semifinals. Everybody is pumped up for the 2021 season this fall...except for me. I don't know if anyone else sees the problems or if they don't, for some reason, want to talk about the problems looming. In no particular order, here is what I see:
- Chris Olave staying: On the surface this looks really good, right? It will be the Olave/Wilson show again, helping to break in the new quarterback with two excellent, veteran targets. We have a bunch of talented young receivers waiting their turn: Williams, Fleming, Smith-Njigba, Gee Scott Jr.. Now you add to that the incoming freshmen, Egbuka, Ballard, Harrison Jr., Then you throw in the very open and lubricated NCAA Transfer Portal and you have a recipe for disaster. We have already lost Mookie Cooper. I see Olave's return and the new QBs will combine to cause a lot of disgruntled receivers who will enter the portal. So don't be surprised if you see Scott and maybe even Fleming leave. Those would be big losses NOT in depth but, rather, in those recruiting classes. This isn't the NFL. If we have an excess we can't just trade them for areas of need. We lose those players and get nothing back. The bottom line here is you have to keep the line moving in order to keep everyone happy and Olave is stalling the line. This is not as good a thing as people are thinking it is. as Olave returning will cost us 4- and maybe 5-star talents. You don't have to have a long memory to remember Joe Burrow and even the exodus of quarterback prospects when we brought in Justin Fields.
- Our freshman quarterbacks getting essentially zero game time: With 2020-1 being as truncated as it was and every game mattering as much as it did AND our defense constantly turning blowouts into close games in the second half AND having to show the alumni that we were trying until the bitter end in a national championship game that was lost midway through the 3rd quarter, well, all this meant no playing time for our touted incoming freshmen. This means that we essentially start the 2021 season with three 4- or 5-star quarterbacks as freshmen. Now, no one in their right mind would have ever recruited 3 stud freshmen into one recruiting class but this is, essentially, what we have. How many of us think that all of Miller, Stroud and McCord are going to be here in the summer of 2022? Again, competition brings the cream to the crop but it also costs us two things: (a) top recruits who enter the portal because we over-recruit a position and (2) our ability to recruit more than one quarterback per class.
Look, we will have problems at linebacker, defensive back and maybe running back this coming season, not to mention having to try to go to the national championship with a weak running game and a freshman quarterback. Looking to the 2021 season I can see one or two of the head-scratching blowout upset losses to mediocre Big Ten opponents that we have seen in the years under Urban Meyer. Add that lack of success to the likely exodus of star young players at skilled offensive positions because we over-recruited their positons and it is a recipe for no Big Ten championship and a drop off in recruiting in upcoming years both from lack of playoff berths and a bad rep in recruiting. Just sayin'
Cleveland Cavaliers
There are GMs who maintain the teams in tough environments (more on this later) and those who build their teams up no matter what is going on around them. The Cavs have built a good team based on bad records and high draft choices, not missing recently on their selections. They kept Love around at a bloated price just for this moment, when the kids would start to mature. They brought in Drummond for the same reason. And it is all working out. And they added more young talent in Allen and a role player in Prince. They had a plan and even when that plan got derailed, they just kept moving forward on a different train track. The results are obvious now. Will they make the playoffs this year? Maybe. But the bottom line is if they make the playoffs it won't be based on smoke and mirrors. We all see the future for the Cavs and except for incredibly bad luck, it isn't going away anytime soon. Veterans and young studs. This team came together not by accident or luck, it came together based on hard work and a real plan that made sense. We should all be proud of our Cavs team and their management. They have done this city proud, maybe better than any Cavs team has done in 20 years or so. Yeah, the James years were great but they were the James years. This is the Cleveland Cavs, not the LeBron James plus 11 Cavs of the past, successful, years.
Cleveland Browns
Another example of having a plan. The talent was there, the management just created the environment for it to be successful. As a recent article said, they tried to fix what they could, not trying to fix everything at once. And it worked. I wondered out loud years ago when the Browns returned to Cleveland why they didn't draft, trade for and pick up in the expansion draft, linemen to protect Tim Couch. That team should have been all about the offense but they tried, too soon, to build a complete team and, probably, a defense-dominated team. The current management team gambled that they had their QB of the future and that they should do whatever they could to give him the tools he needed to be successful. And they did. And he and the team were successful. The Browns did what the expansion Browns should have done but failed to. And they did it well and put themselves in position to do it again next year and, better than that, created a buzz around them that could entice free agents, especially on defense, to come here this off-season. Well done guys. Keep up the good work.
Ohio State Buckeyes Basketball
Truth be told, I don't think this is that good of a team. I just think they are well-coached and that they buy into Hotlzman's system. There are no real studs on this team but it works. That is the type of team and coach who stands the test of time. While they are just as likely to lose to a bad matchup in the first or second round of the NCAAs as they are to making an unexpected deep run in the tourney, they are getting the most out of their guys night in and night out. This is what you want to see out of a coach and Holtzman is delivering, constantly.
Cleveland State Basketball
As an alum I can't tell you how tickled I am. I mean, really, since Horizon play starter this year they have had one bad loss, Saturday night. Gates has taken cast-offs, undersized players and role players and turned them into a winning team. Again, taken what you are given in the environment that you are given it in and producing a product MUCH better than what you should have is how coaches get recognized. If I am CSU I sign this guy to a long-term, ironclad deal. When I saw them vs OSU I knew there was something there, especially for a team in a lower level league like the Horizon. They continue to show it night in and night out. The only thing that will stop this team is if their egos get big and they lose sight of what got them here. Otherwise, Coach Gates will be leading CSU out of the dark ages.
Cleveland Indians
Part of the reason for doing this post was to show the Indians how it is done. When you have 3 players from the same draft class as your top 3 starting pitchers that is not about a plan, that is about luck fueled by great player development. When you talk about trading some of your star players away and not getting a return to replace the players you traded, in talent or position, that is what mediocre management does. Francona has done a great job with whatever team he has been given but he has extracted a price from those players and from his health. There is no reserve here. There are no Lindors or Klubers in the farm system that I can see. Your best prospect is a platoon player and you have 13 top prospect young middle infielders in the majors or the minors. And you have a management team that traded Yandy Diaz for Jake Bauers. None of that inspires me to believe that this management team can turn those 13 middle infielders into outfielders and firstbasemen who are as talented as who we wold have to give up to get them. I won't say what the Indians have accomplished has been luck but it is starting to look like this management team is not doing what we all see is needed to keep this team afloat. We all know what that path is. These guys just need to start seeing it and acting on it instead of doing trades where the teams we trade to get an "A" for that trade and we get a "C" for that trade.
I am an Indians fan first and foremost. I just don't want to see them fall behind because management couldn't keep the flow of good players coming.
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