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Steelers and Browns Thursday night


Dottleshead

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If Rudolph had used a racial slur, Garrett wouldn’t have waited a week before making mention of it. And Garrett’s team mates would have had his back, and Rudolph’s not so much. This screams of someone trying to save his ass and some hundred’s of thousand of dollars in lost salary. Manson should skip the “defamation” and “liable” lawsuits and go to pressuring for criminal assault charges. Wanna play, Garrett? We can play. 

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15 minutes ago, Dottie said:

Just one more day when we can actually start talking about the Steelers and Browns playing each other again as it happens a week from tomorrow.  I predict this thread is not dead.

It's better than @Square Wheels Eddie and the Cruisers thread by a mile!

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22 minutes ago, Dottie said:

So what are the Vegas odds that some bad shit goes down in that game?  Are they going to ensure they keep it clean?  Or are we going to see more fights?  Because if there's not fights -- there's no reason to watch.

I think they will call it extremely tight. It may not even resemble football.

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37 minutes ago, Dottie said:

So what are the Vegas odds that some bad shit goes down in that game?  Are they going to ensure they keep it clean?  Or are we going to see more fights?  Because if there's not fights -- there's no reason to watch.

It used to be a good rivalry before Modell screwed things over for Cleveland.  Really physical games, teams didn't like it other, etc.  I am fine with that coming back, and I hope Garrett charges out of the stands with a few helmets in each hand and starts cracking Steeler's skulls a bit, just to get that rivalry feeling cemented.  Last week was a good game and a fine start.

Is it just me, or does it seem stupid to have the same two teams play with such a short interval between games?

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3 hours ago, Dottie said:

So what are the Vegas odds that some bad shit goes down in that game?  Are they going to ensure they keep it clean?  Or are we going to see more fights?  Because if there's not fights -- there's no reason to watch.

I'm betting one team uses third stringers as goons. If they don't, then they are stupid... who cares about the third stringers.. let them take the ejection from the game and take someone out from the other team. 

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45 minutes ago, KrAzY said:

I'm betting one team uses third stringers as goons. If they don't, then they are stupid... who cares about the third stringers.. let them take the ejection from the game and take someone out from the other team. 

I bet the teams get warned beforehand by the NFL not to respond in kind if Rudolph starts more unwinnable fights.  

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You know, I think the Garrett helmet swing is not close to being a dirty play at all, there was nothing dirty about it until Rudolph went batshit, with Rudolph doing the dirty bits.

That said, I think the Albert Haynesworth or Adam Jones (pacman)/Cooper thing is WAY worse.  In fact, it isn't much of a cheap shot considering that stupid (MR) kept coming after Garrett and was looking at him the whole time.   It was just an over-escalated reaction to a lunatic repeatedly taking cheap shots at you.  I mean, c'mon, you are a chimp coming after a big silverback, what do you expect him to do, send you a hallmark greeting?

 

 

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3 hours ago, Randomguy said:

You know, I think the Garrett helmet swing is not close to being a dirty play at all, there was nothing dirty about it until Rudolph went batshit, with Rudolph doing the dirty bits.

That said, I think the Albert Haynesworth or Adam Jones (pacman)/Cooper thing is WAY worse.  In fact, it isn't much of a cheap shot considering that stupid (MR) kept coming after Garrett and was looking at him the whole time.   It was just an over-escalated reaction to a lunatic repeatedly taking cheap shots at you.  I mean, c'mon, you are a chimp coming after a big silverback, what do you expect him to do, send you a hallmark greeting?

 

 

It’s amazing that you’re so wrong, you’re right.

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4 hours ago, Dottie said:

I guess it didn’t go so well for him today, either.  I also hope he plays next Sunday, and hope it is the same kind of game. 

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Well, a lot of the excitement has been removed for this Sunday's game.  Rudolph got benched.  I wonder if there was any pressure coming down from the league to sit him this game?  Meh.  Probably not.  He was not playing well.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28179067/steelers-quarterback-devlin-hodges-anything-lose

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Joe ‘Turkey’ Jones understands the Browns vs. Steelers rivalry, and how he’s now connected to Myles Garrett

Updated 2:16 PM;Today 5:30 AM
Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Bradshaw was injured on the play, and Jones was penalized for unnecessary roughness.

Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Bradshaw was injured on the play, and Jones was penalized for unnecessary roughness. (George Heinz, The Plain Dealer)

 
 
 
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CLEVELAND, Ohio – When you’re Joe “Turkey” Jones, you don’t need to keep track of when the Browns and Steelers play. You just wait for your phone to start ringing.

Friends. Family. Former teammates. They’ll call. They always call.

“Always,” Jones said with a laugh. “It’s the play. Oh yeah.”

Jones retired from football four decades ago, then spent 30 years at American Airlines, and now, at age 71, enjoys his life as a grandfather in Florida. Through it all, the play has lived on as a symbol of the Browns-Steelers rivalry.

We’re talking, of course, about the fourth-quarter play in Week 5 of the 1976 season. Jones, a 6-foot-6, 250-pound Browns defensive end, corralled Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw with a bear hug, then picked him off the ground and sent him head-first into the turf at Municipal Stadium.

If you missed it back then, you’ve surely seen it since. It’s hard to escape when the broadcast of a Browns-Steelers game wants to lean into the rivalry angle. Fox showed it before the Browns and Steelers met in Cleveland two weeks ago.

Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game in Cleveland.

Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game in Cleveland.

And before that game was over, we had bookends of sorts for conflict between a Browns defensive end and the head of a Steelers quarterback. At one end, Turkey Jones and Terry Bradshaw. At the other end, Myles Garrett and Mason Rudolph.

The connection between 2019 and 1976 was easy to make.

“I understand how, with the rivalry, how it would all feed back to me,” Jones said. “That particular rivalry has been, and always will be, intense.”

Garrett figures to have a more accomplished career than Jones, a second-round draft pick out of Tennessee State who played seven seasons with the Browns between 1970 and 1980, an era before sacks were an official stat. Garrett, the No. 1 overall pick in 2017, already has a Pro Bowl under his belt and owns the second and fifth spots among the Browns’ single-season sack leaders.

But Garrett also owns a moment that is overshadowing the positives of his career. Jones knows a thing or two about that, not to mention what it’s like to be vilified in Pittsburgh.

There were mixed reactions from players when Jones and Bradshaw “got twisted up,” as Jones often describes it. The play resulted in a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty on Jones, who was later fined $3,000. (The Browns held on to win the game behind third-string quarterback Dave Mays.)

Plain Dealer reporter Chuck Heaton, in his front-page story the next day, described the penalty on the play as “a questionable call.” In the book “Legends by the Lake,” Jerry Sherk noted that “Joe didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He never cheap-shotted anybody. It was more that Joe did not know his own strength.”

Talking to reporters after the game, Steelers center Mike Webster didn’t have a problem with it. “I saw Turkey drop him on his head,” Webster said. “Turkey made a helluva play. I can’t fault the guy.”

Steelers running back Franco Harris, meanwhile, said it was “uncalled for.” Steelers linebacker Jack Lambert had the strongest words for Jones: “I hope somebody breaks his neck,” he said.

Bradshaw was carted off the field after the play. Jones went to see him after the game, but was confronted by Bradshaw’s wife.

“She had some choice words for me,” Jones recalled. “And she had these two big goons with her. But I spoke to Bradshaw when he was on the table. He said, ‘Hey man, I understand. It’s part of the game.’”

Bradshaw suffered a spinal contusion on the play. He has said he had no feeling in his body for two days after the hit. He was back playing with the Steelers three weeks later.

Terry Bradshaw, quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, center, is strapped to a stretcher, on the sidelines, after being hit by Joe Jones of the Cleveland Browns.

AP

Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw is strapped to a stretcher after being hit by Joe Jones of the Browns during the fourth quarter of a 1976 game in Cleveland. (AP Photo/G. Paul Burnett)

Just like he did after the game, Jones says today that he had no malice toward Bradshaw.

“Playing professional football is an honor,” Jones said. “There’s a line that you don’t cross as far as trying to hurt anybody. In professional football that’s a no-no. You don’t go out there trying to intentionally hurt anybody. The emotions are high and you just do your job.”

Jones has no doubt he would’ve faced a suspension for such a play in today’s NFL. “In a heartbeat,” he said. Rules aren’t the only things that have changed since 1976. Instantly available highlights and social media outrage, two things that helped Garrett’s incident becoming national news, weren’t yet part of life.

But there was still a backlash. Jones got plenty of strongly worded hate mail.

“I have a few letters left that I haven’t shared with the public, and I never will,” he said with a chuckle.

When the Browns traveled to Pittsburgh in 1977, more than a year after the incident, Jones didn’t stay in the same hotel with the rest of the Browns.

“It wasn’t something I thought about, like, ‘Gosh, here we go, we’re going to Pittsburgh. I’ve got to have security guards and all that stuff,’” Jones said. “I didn’t ask any questions, I just followed what they told me to do. They put me up in a separate hotel with a bodyguard and security people. I understood, but I wasn’t mature enough to really, really understand (the gravity of it).”

Jones didn’t get the sense any of the Steelers were looking for payback. Looking back now, he thinks media and fan reaction was louder than that of the players.

How the Steelers react in Garrett’s next game against Pittsburgh will be a major storyline in 2020. Garrett has accused Rudolph of using a racial slur during the melee, which also included Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey throwing punches and kicking at Garrett.

Based on people he has talked with, Jones believes Garrett “is a great kid, but this is a learning situation for him. You take your punishment, then get on back to business.”

The helmet swing, though, is sure to join the Browns-Steelers rivalry video montage. The key for Garrett is to make sure it’s not his legacy.

One play in 1976 has remained Jones’ football legacy. And it seems like he has come to terms with that. He is often asked to sign photos of the play during autograph events. And, more than once, he’s been asked to sign the photo so a Cleveland fan can send it to a relative in Pittsburgh. “Just to mess with their relatives,” Jones said.

“It’s part of the legacy. Wherever I go it’s been great. I’m happy to sign the autographs and the picture of that particular play,” Jones said. “It’s something that a lot of people identify me with.

Jones said he has golfed in Super Bowl events with Harris. He crossed paths with Lambert at a football game after both were retired and got a playful shoulder bump from the former linebacker. Jones has also played golf with Bradshaw’s brother, Craig, who has talked of getting Jones together with Terry for an autograph session. It hasn’t happened yet.

In fact, Jones said he hasn’t talked with Bradshaw since he retired.

Jones said he and his wife were flown out to California years ago so Jones could participate in a Jimmy Kimmel skit. At the time, Kimmel made NFL predictions each week for Fox’s NFL pregame show, which features Bradshaw. Jones’ skit also included William “The Refrigerator” Perry, and was slated to appear on Thanksgiving.

Jones didn’t see Bradshaw at the shoot, but said he made an effort to get word to him.

“Just to say, ‘Hey, let’s get together.’ Just to sit and talk with him, and maybe have a barbecue and everything,” said Jones. “I’m still waiting."

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12 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

Joe ‘Turkey’ Jones understands the Browns vs. Steelers rivalry, and how he’s now connected to Myles Garrett

Updated 2:16 PM;Today 5:30 AM
Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Bradshaw was injured on the play, and Jones was penalized for unnecessary roughness.

Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Bradshaw was injured on the play, and Jones was penalized for unnecessary roughness. (George Heinz, The Plain Dealer)

 
 
 
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CLEVELAND, Ohio – When you’re Joe “Turkey” Jones, you don’t need to keep track of when the Browns and Steelers play. You just wait for your phone to start ringing.

Friends. Family. Former teammates. They’ll call. They always call.

“Always,” Jones said with a laugh. “It’s the play. Oh yeah.”

Jones retired from football four decades ago, then spent 30 years at American Airlines, and now, at age 71, enjoys his life as a grandfather in Florida. Through it all, the play has lived on as a symbol of the Browns-Steelers rivalry.

We’re talking, of course, about the fourth-quarter play in Week 5 of the 1976 season. Jones, a 6-foot-6, 250-pound Browns defensive end, corralled Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw with a bear hug, then picked him off the ground and sent him head-first into the turf at Municipal Stadium.

If you missed it back then, you’ve surely seen it since. It’s hard to escape when the broadcast of a Browns-Steelers game wants to lean into the rivalry angle. Fox showed it before the Browns and Steelers met in Cleveland two weeks ago.

Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game in Cleveland.

Browns defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones sacks Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw during a 1976 game in Cleveland.

And before that game was over, we had bookends of sorts for conflict between a Browns defensive end and the head of a Steelers quarterback. At one end, Turkey Jones and Terry Bradshaw. At the other end, Myles Garrett and Mason Rudolph.

The connection between 2019 and 1976 was easy to make.

“I understand how, with the rivalry, how it would all feed back to me,” Jones said. “That particular rivalry has been, and always will be, intense.”

Garrett figures to have a more accomplished career than Jones, a second-round draft pick out of Tennessee State who played seven seasons with the Browns between 1970 and 1980, an era before sacks were an official stat. Garrett, the No. 1 overall pick in 2017, already has a Pro Bowl under his belt and owns the second and fifth spots among the Browns’ single-season sack leaders.

But Garrett also owns a moment that is overshadowing the positives of his career. Jones knows a thing or two about that, not to mention what it’s like to be vilified in Pittsburgh.

There were mixed reactions from players when Jones and Bradshaw “got twisted up,” as Jones often describes it. The play resulted in a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty on Jones, who was later fined $3,000. (The Browns held on to win the game behind third-string quarterback Dave Mays.)

Plain Dealer reporter Chuck Heaton, in his front-page story the next day, described the penalty on the play as “a questionable call.” In the book “Legends by the Lake,” Jerry Sherk noted that “Joe didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He never cheap-shotted anybody. It was more that Joe did not know his own strength.”

Talking to reporters after the game, Steelers center Mike Webster didn’t have a problem with it. “I saw Turkey drop him on his head,” Webster said. “Turkey made a helluva play. I can’t fault the guy.”

Steelers running back Franco Harris, meanwhile, said it was “uncalled for.” Steelers linebacker Jack Lambert had the strongest words for Jones: “I hope somebody breaks his neck,” he said.

Bradshaw was carted off the field after the play. Jones went to see him after the game, but was confronted by Bradshaw’s wife.

“She had some choice words for me,” Jones recalled. “And she had these two big goons with her. But I spoke to Bradshaw when he was on the table. He said, ‘Hey man, I understand. It’s part of the game.’”

Bradshaw suffered a spinal contusion on the play. He has said he had no feeling in his body for two days after the hit. He was back playing with the Steelers three weeks later.

Terry Bradshaw, quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, center, is strapped to a stretcher, on the sidelines, after being hit by Joe Jones of the Cleveland Browns.

AP

Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw is strapped to a stretcher after being hit by Joe Jones of the Browns during the fourth quarter of a 1976 game in Cleveland. (AP Photo/G. Paul Burnett)

Just like he did after the game, Jones says today that he had no malice toward Bradshaw.

“Playing professional football is an honor,” Jones said. “There’s a line that you don’t cross as far as trying to hurt anybody. In professional football that’s a no-no. You don’t go out there trying to intentionally hurt anybody. The emotions are high and you just do your job.”

Jones has no doubt he would’ve faced a suspension for such a play in today’s NFL. “In a heartbeat,” he said. Rules aren’t the only things that have changed since 1976. Instantly available highlights and social media outrage, two things that helped Garrett’s incident becoming national news, weren’t yet part of life.

But there was still a backlash. Jones got plenty of strongly worded hate mail.

“I have a few letters left that I haven’t shared with the public, and I never will,” he said with a chuckle.

When the Browns traveled to Pittsburgh in 1977, more than a year after the incident, Jones didn’t stay in the same hotel with the rest of the Browns.

“It wasn’t something I thought about, like, ‘Gosh, here we go, we’re going to Pittsburgh. I’ve got to have security guards and all that stuff,’” Jones said. “I didn’t ask any questions, I just followed what they told me to do. They put me up in a separate hotel with a bodyguard and security people. I understood, but I wasn’t mature enough to really, really understand (the gravity of it).”

Jones didn’t get the sense any of the Steelers were looking for payback. Looking back now, he thinks media and fan reaction was louder than that of the players.

How the Steelers react in Garrett’s next game against Pittsburgh will be a major storyline in 2020. Garrett has accused Rudolph of using a racial slur during the melee, which also included Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey throwing punches and kicking at Garrett.

Based on people he has talked with, Jones believes Garrett “is a great kid, but this is a learning situation for him. You take your punishment, then get on back to business.”

The helmet swing, though, is sure to join the Browns-Steelers rivalry video montage. The key for Garrett is to make sure it’s not his legacy.

One play in 1976 has remained Jones’ football legacy. And it seems like he has come to terms with that. He is often asked to sign photos of the play during autograph events. And, more than once, he’s been asked to sign the photo so a Cleveland fan can send it to a relative in Pittsburgh. “Just to mess with their relatives,” Jones said.

“It’s part of the legacy. Wherever I go it’s been great. I’m happy to sign the autographs and the picture of that particular play,” Jones said. “It’s something that a lot of people identify me with.

Jones said he has golfed in Super Bowl events with Harris. He crossed paths with Lambert at a football game after both were retired and got a playful shoulder bump from the former linebacker. Jones has also played golf with Bradshaw’s brother, Craig, who has talked of getting Jones together with Terry for an autograph session. It hasn’t happened yet.

In fact, Jones said he hasn’t talked with Bradshaw since he retired.

Jones said he and his wife were flown out to California years ago so Jones could participate in a Jimmy Kimmel skit. At the time, Kimmel made NFL predictions each week for Fox’s NFL pregame show, which features Bradshaw. Jones’ skit also included William “The Refrigerator” Perry, and was slated to appear on Thanksgiving.

Jones didn’t see Bradshaw at the shoot, but said he made an effort to get word to him.

“Just to say, ‘Hey, let’s get together.’ Just to sit and talk with him, and maybe have a barbecue and everything,” said Jones. “I’m still waiting."

 

That's a lovely story.

Mudkipz

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The Browns have a lot of talent - even without Garrett, except for the O-line, which they've strangely done nothing to fix.  It also seems like they're trying to build the team around a model of what they want the team to be without considering how their player fit into that model.  Coaches like Belichick and John Harbaugh and Tomlin go with the flow and let their teams' styles evolve to fit the abilities of their current players.

When the Ravens top management met and agreed they draft Lamar Jackson, Harbaugh said, "OK, I'm fine with that and becoming a run-first team, but that means we need to draft big tight ends, have a strong, downhill runner to keep defenders guarding the middle, and beef up the offensive line. The Ravens even took a 280 lb tight end before they took Lamar Jackson: they were already adapting the team to maximize Jackson's strengths. It worked.

I don't see that thinking with the Browns, but I do see it with the Steelers, especially on defense.

Consequently, I think the Steelers will win this one though it's probably better for the Ravens if they lose: a Steelers loss and a Ravens win would put the Steelers and Browns 4 games behind the Ravens with 4 games left to play in the regular season including week 15 home against the Jets.

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30 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

... like they're trying to build the team around a model of what they want the team to be without considering how their player fit into that model.  Coaches like Belichick and John Harbaugh and Tomlin go with the flow and let their teams' styles evolve to fit the abilities of their current players.

Whether you like Pete Caroll or not, he excels at this. 

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52 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

The Browns have a lot of talent - even without Garrett, except for the O-line, which they've strangely done nothing to fix.  It also seems like they're trying to build the team around a model of what they want the team to be without considering how their player fit into that model.  Coaches like Belichick and John Harbaugh and Tomlin go with the flow and let their teams' styles evolve to fit the abilities of their current players.

When the Ravens top management met and agreed they draft Lamar Jackson, Harbaugh said, "OK, I'm fine with that and becoming a run-first team, but that means we need to draft big tight ends, have a strong, downhill runner to keep defenders guarding the middle, and beef up the offensive line. The Ravens even took a 280 lb tight end before they took Lamar Jackson: they were already adapting the team to maximize Jackson's strengths. It worked.

I don't see that thinking with the Browns, but I do see it with the Steelers, especially on defense.

Consequently, I think the Steelers will win this one though it's probably better for the Ravens if they lose: a Steelers loss and a Ravens win would put the Steelers and Browns 4 games behind the Ravens with 4 games left to play in the regular season including week 15 home against the Jets.

You are right about the offensive line, it is by far the weakest spot in the team. That said, I have been presuming that they didn’t want to overdraft someone for need when looking at other draft opportunities.  It was a defense kind of draft, plus they sent picks for Beckham instead.  They are getting there, a couple of need pieces and then fill in depth, they will be insufferable and hard to stop.  I would trade Beckham, it isn’t working.  I suppose he could catch fire, but we will see.  

I think as it stands, there is more talent on the Browns than the Steelers, but Steelers have more experience.  I think Kitchens is learning on the job (and it is starting to kick in but is a work in progress). Tomlin absolutely sucks at clock management, it will take a couple of years for the Steelers to restock with younger guys.  They should trade Rudolph, though, that guy is hot head dummy.  

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43 minutes ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Myles Garret likely has anger issues.

I don’t think he does, there isn’t any reason to think that.  Rudolph, on the other hand, very likely does.  He went off on Garrett with his only provocation being that he kept getting sacked and throwing interceptions.  Garrett had previously never been suspended or even accused of doing anything untoward, and has universally been considered a good guy by the league and in the places he has played. 

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