Takes By The Lake podcast

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Ep. 100: The Cleveland Browns are being underestimated, with NFL insider Benjamin Allbright Oct 05, 2018

Show notes

Benjamin Allbright is an NFL analyst and radio host in Denver who has connections around the NFL and a full view of the league.

His NFL power rankings, based off his own mathematical formula, have the Cleveland Browns as the No. 10 team in the league through four games.

So Doug Lesmerises invited him back on Takes By The Lake.

They talked about those rankings in the interview, and of course it's early and a small sample size can easily skew rankings like this. Allbright said his rankings give a lot of credit to staying close in games, and in the three games they didn't win, the Browns have been really close.

But beyond a ranking, Allbright has been very impressed with the Browns defense, and he's been a strong believer in Baker Mayfield since the middle of last season.

He's a great guest and it was an interesting conversation. So enjoy this Takes By The Lake episode from cleveland.com.

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Ep. 99: How Baker Mayfield fits into the NFL's quarterback revolution Sep 28, 2018

Show notes

Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Philip Rivers, Eli Manning, Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers all entered the NFL between 2000 and 2005.

They've owned the league for more than a decade, winning games and piling up passing yards.

Soon, the league will belong to a new group of quarterbacks. And the Browns Baker Mayfield should be part of that group.

On this episode of Takes By The Lake from cleveland.com, Doug Lesmerises was joined by Kevin Cole, the director of data and analytics for rotogrinders.com, to discuss how to evaluate all these new quarterbacks.

We also got into the Browns defense and how it was built, but mostly, this was about Mayfield.

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Ep. 98: Cleveland Browns win on talent, not culture, and they're fun again Sep 21, 2018

Show notes

The Cleveland Browns are fun again, and that's a victory in itself.

One team wins the Super Bowl each year, which leaves 31 other fanbases in search of a joyous season that ends short of a championship. At some point, the Browns have to win a Super Bowl. But Thursday night's win over the New York Jets gave some indication that the season-long pursuit is going to provide a lot more reasons to scream, shout and smile.

On this episode of Takes By The Lake from cleveland.com, Doug Lesmerises is joined by a Browns fan just like you. His name is Tony Hall, and he's an assistant principal in the Washington, D.C., area. He's active on Twitter as The Cleveland Guy, and as a sports fan born and raised in Cleveland, he helped me do what everyone was doing after Thursday night.

Talking out this win.

So sit down and listen for the same topics you're discussing with your friends, as we touched on the play-making ability of the defense, whether Baker Mayfield can keep this going and what kind of threat rookie receiver Antonio Callaway could become.

I had one major questions for Tony - does this mean going 1-31 was worth it?

And I had a warning about a culture discussion I think may be looming around the Browns. Because they didn't win on culture. They won on better talent. Thanks for listening.

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Ep. 97: Was that Browns QB Tyrod Taylor's worst game, and will he get better? Sep 14, 2018

Show notes

Never before had Tyrod Taylor started an NFL game and completed fewer than half his passes.

So that 15 for 40 performance in the rain against Pittsburgh on Sunday, that wasn't him.

"I put that on the whole unit," offensive coordinator Todd Haley said Thursday. "That's kind of the point that I'm making that we need to speed this process of trust because to be a good or big-time passing offense, you better have trust in everyone."

So look for trust in week two. And look for what happens when there's no rain. In a dome against New Orleans, the Browns should get a much better idea of their 29-year-old veteran quarterback.

According to Pro Football Focus, there were 149 uncatchable passes thrown by all 32 NFL teams last week. That's an average of 4.6 per team.

By the PFF numbers, Taylor threw a league-high 14 uncatchable passes. But Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger threw 10. So what was happening in FirstEnergy Stadium made life difficult on both quarterbacks.

To break that down, Doug Lesmerises is joined by two guests on Takes By The Lake this week.

First is John Kosko of Pro Football Focus, who took us inside the numbers on Taylor, Desmond Harrison, Myles Garrett, Denzel Ward and the rest of the key Browns.

Then Doug was joined by previous TBTL guest Dan Whalen, the former All-American quarterback from Case Western Reserve who told us what he thought of Taylor's game, what it's like to throw in the rain and how he would balance Tayler and Baker Mayfield if he were in charge of the Browns.

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A special presentation: Let's Get a Dog - The Tale of Ty-Dog Taylor and Barker Mayfield Sep 12, 2018

Show notes

In a departure from our usual Takes By The Lake, we present an eight-minute children's story in the mode of the great Dr. Seuss.

A typical Takes By The Lake episode will be back on Friday.

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Ep. 96: Browns 2018 season preview extravaganza, from punching bag to promise Sep 06, 2018

Show notes

The Browns season is around the corner and you can't start it without listening to our humongous preview on Takes By The Lake.

Doug Lesmerises is joined by four guests in a supersized episode to dig into the hopes, the talent, the past miseries and the promise of the 2018 Cleveland Browns.

First up is Clayton Braham, a fan who makes his own hype videos and explains what fans are hoping for, rooting for and worried about with the Browns.

Next is Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, one of the most plugged-in NFL writers in the country to explain the talent on the Browns roster, what the expectations should be for GM John Dorsey to eventually shape a playoff team and the talk around the rest of the league about what's happening in Cleveland.

Then comes Neil Paine, the author of a fascinating recent story on fivethirtyeight.com examining the numbers behind the Browns futility of the past two decades. If your heart has suffered with the Browns, let Neil explain to your head why it happened, and it will help you move on for the future.

We finish with Melissa Jacobs, formerly of ESPN and Sports Illustrated who now writes at her website thefootballgirl.com. Melissa grew particularly interested in the Browns through Hard Knocks, and from California she offers a national perspective on whether the rest of the NFL is rooting for the Browns, or just figuring they'll continue to be a joke. She knows the league and provides needed persperctive outside the Browns bubble.

This edition of TBTL is longer than unusual, but it's worth it. Enjoy these guests and let them get you ready for what should be an intriguing season of Browns football.

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Ep. 95: The Indians World Series chances now compared to the Indians of the '90s Aug 31, 2018

Show notes

The American League is stacked and the Cleveland Indians have as much of a chance to reach the World Series as any other AL team.

That's the opinion of Yahoo Sports national baseball writer Jeff Passan, a Solon High grad, who joined Takes By The Lake this week.

Jeff and Doug Lesmerises talked about his life growing up as the son of a Plain Dealer journalist, and how being a Cleveland sports fan shaped him. And then we dug in on the Indians.

We compared this Indians team to the Indians teams of the 1990s. We compared them to the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros, the three best teams in the American League. We talked about how long the Indians have to stay at this peak.

We also talked about Trevor Bauer in the bullpen in the postseason.

Few have a greater knowledge of the full baseball scene than Passan, who last year published a book called "The Arm," that went inside the most valuable commodity in baseball.

If you care about the Indians at all, this podcast is for you. Next week, we'll get back to the Browns with a full season preview.

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Ep. 94: Can Myles Garrett become one of the NFL's best players? Aug 25, 2018

Show notes

Myles Garrett held a house party in the Philadelphia Eagles backfield in the Browns third preseason game on Thursday night. So what might the No. 1 pick in the 2017 NFL Draft do for the Browns in his second season?

On this episode of Takes By The Lake, Doug Lesmerises is joined by Brendan Leister, an analyst for Pro Football Focus and an assistant high school coach in the Cleveland area who does a great job breaking down the Browns on Twitter.

We delved into everything about the Browns, with a strong focus on Garrett and on defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Beyond Garrett, there's clearly more talent on the defense this year, but will Williams use it correctly?

We also hit on a major point that Browns fans need to think about. How much does the run game really matter to the Browns success this season? You may be surprised by the answer.

So it's another great discussion with a really smart person who understands this Cleveland football team.

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Ep. 93: How the Browns are constructing a roster that can win Aug 17, 2018

Show notes

The final 53-man Cleveland Browns roster for the 2018 season will be vastly improved from the roster that began the 2017 season. But it won't end there.

On the latest episode of the Takes By The Lake podcast from cleveland.com, we looked big picture at the current and future roster construction of the Browns, before we get into the daily grind of a 16-game season less than a month from now.

Host Doug Lesmerises is joined by guest Zack Moore, a writer for OverTheCap.com and author of the recent book, "Caponomics: Building Super Bowl Champions."

The topic is where the Browns are, with the most cap space in the NFL at around $52 million. They have young talent that should encourage fans for next year. But they'll need to continue to build to become the playoff team that is the goal and needed result from this multi-year teardown.

They have the flexibility to keep adding.

Zack and DOug talked about where the Browns are spending money now, how they could use their cap space in the future and whether the current setup should give fans reasons to believe this is all going to work.

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Ep. 92: Preseason opener proves Browns good enough for little things to matter Aug 10, 2018

Show notes

The Browns beat the New York Giants in their preseason opener on Thursday night, so let the optimism flow.

In the latest episode of the Takes By The Lake sports podcast from cleveland.com, Doug Lesmerises is joined by fellow cleveland.com sportswriter Chris Fedor to talk about everything the Browns showed in their first time facing an opponent in 2018.

Tyrod Taylor and Baker Mayfield both played well, so what's the right thing to do with the quarterbacks? John Dorsey has made moves to help this team, as Thursday showed, so what's the confidence in him going forward? Hue Jackson is still around, and is there reseason to believe in him as the leader of a team that clearly has more talent?

But mostly, the talk centered on Baker Mayfield as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft made his debut.

Catch it all on the latest Takes By The Lake - as find out why people in Buffalo are mad at Doug.

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