Don’t Expect the Browns and Bears to Sort It Out

The quarterback never cracked a smile.

“We have a great chance to go out and get a lot of respect around the league,” he said. “When people see us against a great team, and if we win

Brace yourself. That was Cleveland quarterback Tim Couch talking this week about playing Chicago. Combined record of the Browns and Bears the last two seasons: 16-48.

Such is life in the topsy-turvy NFL, where the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens are barely respectable and the San Diego Chargers have whipped the kind of head-snapping U-turn that should get their license revoked.

“This team is believing it’s going to win, and that’s the key,” said Charger President Dean Spanos, whose team has gone from 1-15 last season to 5-2, half a game behind the Raiders in the AFC West. “Last year, the team believed we were going to lose, and we did. That’s a huge part of it.”

Although the season hasn’t even reached the halfway point, four teams--San Diego, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Chicago--have matched or surpassed their victory total of last season.

Some other teams are headed the opposite direction. Tennessee and the New York Giants, the losing teams in the last two Super Bowls, are sinking fast. The Giants have lost three in a row, most recently suffering an embarrassing defeat by Washington last Sunday. The Titans, who went 13-3 in 1999 and again in 2000, have already lost four games.

“That’s the NFL now,” said San Francisco Coach Steve Mariucci, whose 5-2 team finished 6-10 last season. “Don’t we say that every year now? It’s just crazy. It’s hard to pick winners from week to week, which means the margin for error is very small.”

At least two teams--Oakland and St. Louis--began the season with high expectations and, so far, are playing up to them. The Raiders are 5-1, the Rams 6-1. But Raider quarterback Rich Gannon is not about to count his team among the elite. Not yet.

“I think there are maybe two or three teams that are better than the rest,” he said. “And there’s probably two or three teams that aren’t very good right now. And there’s probably 25 or 26 teams that, like ourselves, are in the middle there somewhere and just trying to find a way to win on Sunday.”

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Six games into his NFL career and already Chicago receiver David Terrell is talking trash. When the Bears host Cleveland on Sunday, Terrell will be reunited with former Michigan teammate Aaron Shea, a Brown tight end.

“I guarantee you that Shea would trade to be a Bear right now,” Terrell said. “Who would want to be 4-2, coming to Chicago and going up against [linebacker Brian] Urlacher and Mike Brown and those guys and leaving 4-3? Who would want to do that?”

Told of the comment, Shea asked, “He’s not even starting, is he?”

Well, no, but ...

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Phil Simms has a problem with the naysayers in Philadelphia who think Eagle Coach Andy Reid should ask Donovan McNabb to evacuate the pocket, scramble around and make plays--any kinds of plays. Simms also quibbles with those who thinks McNabb isn’t a good fit for the West Coast offense.

“What offense does he exactly belong in?” asked Simms, a quarterback-turned-TV commentator. “Should we sprint him out more? Oh, yeah, history has shown us that sprint-out quarterbacks really rip up the NFL. That’s a great way to play.

“It’s hard enough getting people open without cutting down 50% of the field. People like [Raider cornerbacks] Eric Allen and Charles Woodson would go, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you.”’

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The Carolina Panthers will visit Miami’s Pro Player Stadium for the first time Sunday. The Dolphins don’t take kindly to newcomers. Miami is 18-0 when hosting a team for the first time, at either the Orange Bowl or Pro Player Stadium.

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Washington quarterback Tony Banks has taken up yoga, which has improved his flexibility and even his passing.

“[Yoga] was something I used to think was a little foo-foo,” he said. “I heard a lot of good things about it. I was short on a lot of my throws to the left [before]. I have not been guilty of that this year.”

Plus, he can bend himself into pretzel shapes. Defensive linemen used to do that for him.

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The scoreboard at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh is bracketed by two 35-foot Heinz ketchup bottles. Each time the Steelers venture into the red zone, the bottles tilt downward and animated ketchup gurgles out, filling the scoreboard’s video screen.

It’s a clever effect, although it has not met with total approval of everyone involved.

After all, the company has spent more than a century telling consumers how slowly its ketchup pours--yet this stuff flows like water.

Now who would relish that?