Football Night in America: New England vs. Cleveland

No, you can't see your family first, QB.
Stadium's THAT way

Tonight's game is a tale of two teams about to go in separate directions. New England is letting Steve Grogan keep a seat warm for eventual first draft pick in Drew Bledsoe, while Cleveland is still reeling from back-to-back losses in the AFC Championship and falling down fast. In the moment, however, both teams are at about as evenly stinky as Kevin Mack's jock and aren't fooling anyone into thinking they have a shot, even this early in the season. Even so, they must play on, and now that the Browns have their QB back, who apparently has healing abilities better than Wolverine, Mike Pagel will have more chances to try out some new headsets on the sidelines.




Quarter One
The Browns are the winners of the toss in this contest, and will start at the 39 yard line after a cute kick-off by Jason Staurovsky. Can they keep the streak alive of coin-toss winners in featured games? For the first time, I honestly have no idea. But even though Eric Metcalf takes three straight pitches for a total of only seven yards, I still think the probability of beating New England is present.

Come on ride the train, choo-choo ride!

It's New England's turn, and they take the punt for a touchback. During Steve Grogan's first appearance, he is promptly sacked for the first of most likely many times by Chris Pike. On his second appearance, he connects with George Adams for the first of most likely one time for a gain of 23. Grogan follows up his MVP-like pass with an even more MVP-like lob to a leaping Irving Fryar, who pulls down a pass and runs until he passes out for a 46 yard gain. Two plays later and it's 3rd and 6, and who else but George Adams runs around the top of the Cleveland defense for a 13-yard gain. On the next play, however, Chris Pike gets intimate with Grogan again for a loss of 5, and after the George Adams-led rushing attack fails in the next to plays, Jason Staurovsky is out to tack on the first three points of the game.

New England leads 3-0

Cleveland starts their next promising drive at the 30, and it gets decisively less promising when Ed Reynolds sacks QB Browns for a loss of 3. Already, the chants of 'PAGEL! PAGEL!' are incredibly audible from the Cleveland crowd. Browns decides to show off how fickle fandom can be when he dumps it off to Ozzie Newsome who sheds a few defenders and runs for a total gain of 50 yards as the quarter ends.

Quarter Two
Browns' next pass falls hopelessly incomplete. The Pagel chants immediately start up again, and so Browns uses that force to channel his inner Bernie Kosar and runs for a gain of 21 yards to the New England two-yard line. When he pitches it to Metcalf for a 2-yd touchdown run, the Cleveland fans collectively take the world record for most eggs on the most faces.

Cleveland leads 7-3

If you can spot the ball, you get a complimentary
"I <3 Lurching" t-shirt

New England gets good field position at their own 40 yard line, but it's even better for Cleveland when they force an Adams fumble during a blitz, and Mike Johnson scoops it up to run all the way back for a sweet Browns defensive TD.

Cleveland leads 14-3

Due to the NFL's attempts at being 'fair', the Patriots get another chance to score and start at their own 34-yard line. They soon face a 3rd and 9 situation after Adams takes two pitches for a half yard each, and Grogan uses his veteran-led brain to throw it to his best receiver, Irving Fryar, for another 50 yard gain. Chris Pike becomes enraged by this turn of events, and feeds some turf to Grogan on the next play. After a pass block, it's 3rd and 19. The Patriots' third-down success so far leads one to believe they're only one play from getting back in the game, but when that one play is an incompletion to Fryar, Staurovsky is on to kick a meaningless 43-yarder.

Cleveland leads 14-6

With 44 seconds left, a shockingly productive 36-yard connection to Ozzie Newsome gets the Browns into Greg Kauric position with time winding down. He nails a 43-yarder through the uprights to get the three points back heading into halftime.

Cleveland leads 17-6

Halftime - Browns 14, Patriots 6

Quarter Three
Sammy Martin, perhaps the bravest man on the Patriots roster, takes the kick out from the end zone and attempts to score. His attempt comes up just 87 yards short. During the inevitable 3rd and 9 situation, Grogan decides to skip the whole time-consuming punt process and lobs a ball over the head of Hart Lee Dykes right into the hands of highly-excitable strong safety Felix Wright, who immediately jumps out of bounds.

Guys in pink do it better

QB Browns gets the drive going quickly with a 14 yard scamper, and Richard Harvey isn't too pleased as he drops Browns for an 11-yard loss quickly thereafter. Still harboring some unhealthy pent-up rage, Harvey steamrolls the Cleveland front and eats up Browns for another 9 yard loss. When he gets his third sack in a row on 3rd and 30, however, people are starting to wonder if Harvey has some lingering resentment issues about having to wear pink on national television. Needless to say, the Browns are out of field goal range and on 4th and 42 are forced to punt it back to the New England Harveys.

Fryar pulls in the punt and gets out to the New England 28 yard line. While Marvin Allen loses three yards on first down, George Adams promptly gets them back. Grogan decides he wants in on the fun and runs for 3 yards himself, and then belatedly learns that they actually needed ten for the first down.

Cleveland starts at their own 25 after a Reggie Langhorne return, and QB Browns decides to celebrate the fact that Richard Harvey is on the sidelines of this play by lobbing up an interception to Fred Marion. Luckily for Browns, the interception is a wash when Marion fumbles it, although the Patriots pick it back up and Grogan gets the field back at the Browns 42-yard line.

A 12-yard scamper by Grogan is the final nail in this forgettable third quarter of play.

Quarter Four

A Grogan interception right at the goal line promptly puts a deservingly quiet end to a promising drive that started in Cleveland territory.

Could this pick have been thwarted if Metcalf wasn't
dozing behind the line of scrimmage? We may never know.

Harvey gets his fourth sack of the game on first down, but while he's still celebrating and flexing his muscles for the waterboy on the sidelines, Kevin Mack takes a run up the middle for a gain of 33 yards into Patriots territory. Metcalf takes the next play over the top of the New England defense for another 10-yard gain, and just when it seems the Browns are preparing to put this one away, Browns kills the weird mixture of excitement and boredom by throwing the fourth-combined (third-official) pick of the game, and second consecutive by Fred Marion.

Against the pleas and sadly desperate begging of the New England defense, Grogan takes the field with 3:29 remaining in the game. He has to shake off a David Grayson sack for a 6-yard loss, but apparently couldn't shake his color-blindness when he threw it to a wide open Felix Wright to keep the Interception Bowl's blood pumping as if Mike Ditka's own bratwurst-fed heart was pumping it.

The next three plays include a Browns incompletion, a Garin Veris sack, and another incompletion. Although the lack of an interception is a success for Cleveland's offense, it's a disappointment in the hearts of all stat-heads.

The only thing in front of Irving is the pink X he wasn't
standing on

The Patriots get another dying star of a chance at their own 20 after a touchback, with 1:47 remaining. The star is all but extinguished and folding into a black hole when Irving Fryar can't grab a pass with a wide open field in front of him. Adams is strangely involved in picking up a 6 yard gain, and though it's a bold move by the offensive coordinator, it still must be recorded as the first positive yardage for New England this quarter. Mike Johnson, who hasn't been spotted since wearing an oxygen mask on the sideline, erases that positive yardage with a sack. On 4th and 10 from their own 20-yard line, the Grogan-led Patriots are forced to go for it. The drive comes to a mournful end when Adams lets the ball bounce off his future unretired number of 33.

The Browns are now in prime position to score the first points of the half and put a loud exclamation point on their flawed but still dominant performance over the Patriots on a national stage. Instead, with 31 seconds left, the ever-humble QB Browns hands off to Kevin Mack three straight times, despite the Patriots knack for blitzing on three straight plays. Time expires, and so does my patience for watching not just any game, but a freaking Tecmo game where a team doesn't even score one measly point in two quarters of play.

Any MAN player would have their playing rights revoked for a screen print like this

Final: Browns 17, Patriots 6


If your mouth froths at displays of defensive dominance, you may have actually been of the minority that enjoyed this water-boarding level of torture. The Patriots failed to score a touchdown, and Grogan led the team with an astonishingly bad 14 yards of rushing, all the while lobbing up three more interceptions than touchdowns. A returning QB Browns was less than sharp with two picks of his own (despite one being negated on a fumble) and matching Grogan with his completion percentage. The Cleveland defense accounted for nearly half of their overall points, while Richard Harvey accounted for nearly half of New England's positive yardage with 4 sacks. I don't know that I can promise you, my faithful readers, that I will avoid my curiosity and keep from stepping into another snake pit like this game, but if I do you have to understand that even I can't always predict the suckitude of some of Tecmo's bizarre COM-COM simulated games.