Displaced Cleveland Fan

This is the type of game you expect at the beginning of the year. New Mexico State was overmatched in every way.

The Buckeyes 559 yards of total offense (310 rushing, 249 passing) compared to a total of 62 yards from the Aggies. Ohio State’s defense held New Mexico State to just 2 first downs.

This game was really nothing more than a warmup for the final three games of the season. If the Buckeyes win their remaining games against Penn State, Iowa, and Michigan, they’ll win the Big Ten.
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OK, the season opener didn’t turn out how we would have liked. But it did turn out like we should have expected. The Cavs drop their first game to the Celtics 95-89.

Delonte West was inactive for the game. With as valuable as he is for the team, it really hurt having him out.

LeBron James had a good game (38 points, 8 assists, 4 rebounds, 4 blocks). But the Cavs’ big offseason addition, Shaquille O’Neal, scored just 10 points. At the end, the Celtics, led by Paul Pierce’s 23 points and 11 rebounds, hung on to spoil the season opener.
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The Cleveland Cavaliers open the regular season tonight against the Boston Celtics. This is the team’s 40th season and perhaps their best chance thus far to win a championship.
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Shortly before two former-Indian Cy Young award winners face off in the World Series, the Tribe has a new manager: former Washington Nationals skipper Manny Acta.

Honestly, who knows if this is a good hire or not. He does have experience managing a major league team. But his record as a manager is 158-252 (.385). Then again, he was coaching a terrible Nationals team.
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These are stories from around the league that I thought were worth noting. You can read my recap of the Browns week 7 game here.

The Texans jumped out to a 21-0 halftime lead Sunday against the 49ers. San Francisco pulled back into the game in the second half. But in the end, Houston prevailed with a 24-21 win. They are now 4-3 and in 2nd place in the AFC South.

Looking at their first seven games, two of their wins came against pathetic teams (Oakland & Tennessee) and two came against good teams (San Fran & surprisingly Cincinnati). Of their three losses, two of those games were only lost by one score. Only one had a lopsided final score (24-7 against the Jets in week 1). Not great. But not bad either.

Over their last nine games, they have three tough games (New England and Indianapolis twice) and three that look like they should be easy games (Buffalo, Tennessee, St. Louis). If they lose the tough games and win the easy games, that will make their record 7-6. Their other three games are against Jacksonville, Seattle, and Miami, which have a combined record of 7-11. Could Houston win 2 or 3 of those games. Perhaps. It will be interesting to see if they can continue or if they fizzle out at the end.

The big surprise to me, and many I believe, has been the play of quarterback Matt Schaub. This week against the 49ers he threw for 264 yards on 20 for 30 passing (66.7%) with 2 touchdowns and no interceptions. Through seven games he’s passing for 65.5% for almost 300 yards per game with 16 touchdowns and only 5 interceptions.
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The title of the recap over at ESPN says it all - Rodgers, Pack bully Browns in warm-up for Favre, Vikings.

That’s all the Browns are anymore. They are a warm-up. A game against the Browns for a 3-2 Green Bay team amounts to nothing more than an exhibition game, or a scrimmage in practice. The Browns are awful. Plain and simple.
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Maybe you noticed that I didn’t update following last week’s embarrassing loss to Purdue. That wasn’t just because they lost. It was a hectic weekend here, so I didn’t really feel motivated to post a reaction to the game.

What last week’s game did was end any shot the Buckeyes had to play for a national title. I know, it was a long shot. And with the way the offense has played the past few weeks, they didn’t deserve it. But they were at #7 going into last week’s match-up against the Boilermakers. This week, when the first BCS standings came out, Ohio State was at #19. No way they reach one of the top two spots.

But this team can still reach a BCS bowl. They still have games against Iowa (#6) and Penn State (#13). If they win these games, as well as their remaining games against New Mexico State and Michigan, they’ve got a shot. So all is not lost, especially if the offense plays as well as it did today.

So on to today’s game against Minnesota.
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