BL Predicts: Week 3 vs Buffalo

This weeks match vs. Buffalo might be the hardest to predict all season, especially for a die hard Browns fan.   It is early in the season and still difficult to know if the Browns or Bills are truly competitive NFL teams.  This game will tell us a lot about what kind of season our Browns are going to have because the Bills on paper appear to be beatable, especially in our home stadium.   Are we going to have a shot at a competitive season with 7 or 8 wins or is this team yet another 3 to 5 win loser.

I hope I am wrong but the following factors lead me to conclude today will be another loss for our Cleveland Browns:

1.  Joe Haden's suspension has badly exposed the Browns secondary.   Ryan Fitzpatrick is not a top tier QB but he is capable enough to do damage against mediocre defenders.   Losing Haden really opens the Browns up to getting beat on a few key plays.

2.  Chan Gailey plays "Marty Schottenheimer football", in other words, he works the clock by running the ball and his teams are coached to not make mistakes.  The Bills will likely not have many turnovers and penalties.   In the regular season what that translates to is wins, especially against teams like the Browns who are loaded with young players and tend towards mistakes.

3.  Bills DE Mario Williams is a force in the pass rush and is bound to put more pressure on Brandon Weeden than the Bengals did.  Weeden had a good game against Cincinnati but his pass protection was quite good.  Nobody had a clean hard shot at Weeden last week, that might change this week leading to a turnover or lower completion rate.

4.  Browns rookies are going to face more pressure against Buffalo than they did against Cincinnati.  I believe the game will be decided on turnovers and penalities and having so many rookies will be a distinct disadvantage today for our Browns.

5.  Finally, I am convinced that our new owner, Jim Haslam is going to be a great owner but something most folks are not talking about is the fact that the entire management team has to be feeling like lame ducks.  Haslam himself is sending some signals that heads are going to roll and it would be naive to think that everyone in the Browns operation is not feeling this.  Folks are going to be distracted, and since they are human beings with families to feed, they are also going to be spending some of their time reaching into their networks to see what job opportunities might be out there.   Right now this might only dilute the teams concentration by a very small amount but football is a game of inches and every inch counts.   In a small way he is helping a self fulfilling prophecy in 2012 of losing football.

BL Predicts:

Buffalo Bills 20
Cleveland Browns 17

The Brown Log are 2-0 year to date on the prediction front.