The real question, now becomes does Hoyer have the tools to become a starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns? The fans have to be thinking Lombardi has lost his mind. The Lakewood, Ohio native was UN-drafted in 2009. He signed with the Patriots and never really materialized. When you have a Tom Brady as your starting quarterback it is easy to understand why.

Hoyer is a local hero who played his High School football at St. Ignatius, he then went on to play his college ball at Michigan State. Hoyer has only started 1 game in his 4 year NFL career. That game was week 17 for the Arizona Cardinals.

During his time in the NFL, Hoyer completed 57 passes of the 96 he attempted. He has a career quarterback rating of 72.2 Hoyer hasn’t had much playing time in the NFL and it is hard to understand what it is about Hoyer that Lombardi fell in love with.

What does Lombardi see in this guy that no other NFL team has seen. Hoyer was waived by 2 teams during the 2012 season. How many times has a guy who was cut by 3 teams in one year came back into the NFL and lead a team to success?

It is something that dreams might be made of, but it is something that doesn’t happen in the NFL. People have to be wondering if Mike Lombardi hit his head on something last week. It is the kind of move that Browns fans were worried about the moment the team named Lombardi the team’s G.M.

Who knows, maybe Lombardi is a genius and nobody knows about it yet. I’ve learned to never say never,especially when it comes to sports. But this is a reach, even for a guy like Michael Lombardi….

The Indians won another one run game over the Seattle Mariners yesterday. That makes 2 games they won in the late innings and 2 games they were able to pull off to take over first place in the A.L. Central.

The Indians started Zach McAllister, he continues to throw well and he pitched for 7-1/3 innings giving up only 2 earned runs on 6 hits. Chris Perez came in to close it down in the 9th but wasn’t able to hold the Mariners. He gave up 2 home runs and the Tribe had to pull out some more of their late inning magic to pull out their 24th win.

Mark Reynolds was able to pull out an infield hit that knocked the Mariners short stop on his butt trying to filed the ball. His throw was bad coming to the plate and Jason Kipnis was able to score to take the game away from the Mariners in the 9th.

This Indians team is playing some pretty good baseball. They have won 3 in a row and 7 of their last 10. After 41 games I think it is fair to say, this Cleveland Indians team is pretty darn good. If they stay healthy and the starting pitching rotation continues to perform the way they have, this team could see post season play.

Campbell brings 7 years of experience to the Browns. Something they haven’t had in years at the quarterback position.  Campbell is bigger, faster and smarter when to comes to NFL football than Weeden.

Jason Campbell wants a chance to prove he can get it done,this far in the mini camps and Browns practices he is doing just that. If the Browns had to pick a guy to start now, they would have to pick Campbell.

He is not going to sit back and settle for a back up role. If the Browns are seriously going to put the best guy at quarterback into the starting position, they have to go with Campbell based on the performances they have seen this far.

It is understandable why Campbell can out shine Weeden. He has a long history of understanding different offensive schemes in the NFL. He understands how to read a defense and he understands what the quarterbacks role is in the NFL.

The Cleveland Browns have to turn things around this season. The team is young and they need to go out and play competitive football. If Campbell give the team a better chance to do this, they have to go with him.

Reports have Campbell showing a very strong arm and completing passes all over the field in practice with good accuracy. Something else we haven’t seen out of Weeden this far. The team needs to produce more than 5 wins this year. The fans deserve it.

Steve Doerschuk  from the Canton Repository has been covering Browns football for a while, had this to say about the Browns practice session. “It was a glimpse of why Campbell might really be in the hunt to take the job from Weeden.”

Jimenez struck out 9 batters in the 5 innings he pitched.. He only allowed 2 earned runs and one of them was a home run. Each time Ubaldo Jimenez starts a game it looks like his confidence is growing. He looks calmer out on the mound these days. There is something to be said for the guys growing confidence level. If he can continue to improve this season, the Indians will be in great shape.

Then the Tribe saw the return of the best set-up man in all major league baseball. This time he wasn’t setting up Chris Perez. Pestano was sent into the game in the 10th inning after Perez did his job of keeping the Tribe in a tie game with the Mariners.

Vinnie just came off the 15 day disabled list, because of a sore throwing elbow. He did a fantastic job in the 10th inning. It looked like he hadn’t missed a day. He did what he had to do to give the Indians the chance to pull off a walk off win then Jason Kipnis did the rest.

IN the 10th inning Kipnis hit a 3 run shot to right field giving the Cleveland Indians a walk off win and handing Vinnie Pestano his first win on the season after returning from the D.L. The Indians are now 23-17 on the season and still tied for first place in the American League central.

Hoyer was cut earlier this week by the Arizona Cardinals. The Browns wasted little time rushing out to grab him. Weeden was already set to compete with Jason Campbell for the Browns starting job. A job that new head coach Rob Chudzinski refused to name Weeden for.

The team has to be less than satisfied with Weeden as their starting quarterback, he should have never been drafted in the first round of the 2012 draft. Then people’s expectations wouldn’t have been so high.

Weeden was one of the worse rookie quarterbacks taken in the 2012 draft. 3 of the quarterbacks taken in the draft last season took their teams into the play offs. Weeden and the Browns only won 5 games. In a game against Pittsburgh that was loaded with turnovers, Weeden could only lead his Browns to 20 points.

Brandon Weeden was one of the worse quarterbacks in the red zone in the history of the NFL, he had no touch pass to find the corner of the end-zone and the Browns suffered because of it. It will be interesting to see what the Browns do with Weeden once camp officially starts.

When Al Learner first brought the Browns back to Cleveland in 1999, one of the things he said was the stadium will always be called the Cleveland Browns stadium. Learner could care less about a few million dollars a year coming in from some naming rights deal. He was about tradition of Cleveland Browns stadium.

To see the name coming down yesterday, make me wonder how much money Haslam really has. To sell the naming rights and end the tradition of calling the stadium something other than Cleveland Browns stadium is sad.

They should keep those letters close by. You never know what is going to happen in Cleveland. After all the tax payers paid for the stadium and the City of Cleveland made a major mistake letting team owners of the Browns sell the naming rights. They should not have put that in the contract. The tax payers should have been able to vote on this issue. After all it was the tax payers that paid for the stadium and the tax payers money bought the letters that spelled out Cleveland Browns Stadium.

Whether or not the fans admit it, seeing those letters coming off the stadium, makes me a little sad. It is the end of tradition in Cleveland. It is the end of the Cleveland Browns Stadium……

That was after Mark Reynolds got the scoring started for the Indians in the 3rd inning with a double to left that drove in Kipnis and Cabrera to make it 2-0 Cleveland. Reynolds has been a RBI machine since coming to the Indians. The team better sit down with this guy and work out a long-term deal that has Reynolds in Cleveland for the rest of his Major League career.

The Indians are only 39 games into the season, that is less than 25% in and Reynolds already has 11 home runs and 34 RBI’s. He has a .271 batting average and his OBP is .362 and he has a .581 SLG. Not to bad is it. Reynolds was a great signing for the Indians this past off-season.

Mike Aviles, Nick Swisher and Jason Kipnis all had home runs in the game. Aviles homered to left in the 4th, then Swisher homered to left in the 5th which drove in Kipnis. The Indians were on top and they weren’t done with the long ball yet.

Kipnis hit a 3 run shot in the 8th inning to make it 10-3 Indians. Both Kipnis and Swsher have 6 home runs on the season. The Indians got some pretty good pitching from Corey Kluber, he pitched 6 innings giving up 6 hits and 3 runs to the Phillies. It was the kind of day the Indians needed. Their offense was MIA over the past few games. It was great to see it return.

Mark Tate, the Georgia attorney who is heading the class action suit against Haslam and his company has confirmed he has hired some high profile help. Tate has retained the services of Louis Freeh’s firm, the Freeh Group. Freeh is not only the former director of the FBI, he is also a former federal judge.

Freeh and his Freeh Group, has agreed to work with the trucking companies who believe they were cheated in an alleged rebate scam. The Freeh Group has a large group of investigators and accountants who will help the trucking companies make their case.

You can bank on the fact the Freeh group will turn over every rock in the road to get to the facts of the case. Freeh has a long history of investigations that some have tried to cover up the facts in. Tate said, they are thrilled to have help fighting what he called C.E.O. Jimmy Haslam’s “billionaire’s antics.”

The Freeh group has refused to comment on their part in the investigation of the Pilot Flying J frauds. Some of you may remember Tate, he is the attorney that filed a restraining order against Haslam’s firm to try and stop him from contacting the trucking companies involved in the class action suit.

A judge in Knoxville denied Tate’s request for a temporary restraining order to keep Pilot Flying J from contacting customers. in our opinion, the first mistake Tate made was to file in Tennessee. Haslam’s brother is the Governor there. Not to say he had any part of the alleged frauds, but we are saying the Haslam family is very powerful in their home state of Tennessee. Tate should have filed the suit in the individual states that the alleged frauds took place in.

Tate claimed that Jimmy Haslam was contacting the companies, getting releases from them, and settling claims before companies knew about the full extent of the allegations. Tate also claimed that a full-page newspaper ad placed Sunday in support of the Haslam family was “engineered” by Jimmy Haslam. “He ran that ad as a warning, as he’s in the largest fight of his professional career,” Tate said.

Haslam is in the biggest fight of his life. His fight just got a lot bigger with the Freeh Group working against Haslam and his company. Things aren’t going to be easy for Jimmy Haslam III now. If the former director of the FBI has agreed to work against him, there has to be something more than meets the eye here. Haslam could try all the billionaire’s antics he wants. They aren’t going to fly against Freeh and his group of investigators.

Haslam has problems now. I wonder when the NFL is going to say enough is enough? Goodell has to be getting nervous now that the news of the Freeh Group is out.

Haslam in involved in a legal struggle to keep himself out of prison. He is being accused of defrauding hundreds of trucking companies out of refunds they had coming for making fuel purchases with his Pilot Flying J truck stop company.

Haslam has done a great job trying to make it look as though he knew little about the scam his sales team was running to fraud these trucking companies out of their rebates. The problem is, this has to be a huge distraction for the Cleveland Browns.

Should Jimmy Haslam III step down and let someone else run the team? Be sure to vote in our poll to let us know how you feel about Haslam III running the Cleveland Browns. Cast your vote and tell us if you think he is going to be a distraction to the team.

The last time the Indians played the Phillies, they put 20 runs on the board in the 2 game series. Last night they were lucky to put 2 runs on the board. Michael Bourn had 5 at bats and only had one hit. Jason Kipnis went 0 for 3, these are 2 guys the Tribe needs to produce some hits.

Mark Reynolds, the guy who has been the Indians home run and RBI machine went hit-less in the game also. The Indians offense has to find a way to be more consistent. Lately it has been all or nothing for Cleveland.

They faced some good pitching and were able to put a lot of runs on the board. So you can’t say it comes down to good pitching stopping good hitting. The Indians aren’t going to be able to stay in first place if they can’t figure out a way to produce some more offense.

The Indians starting pitching has done a good job this far into the season, but they aren’t good enough to only have one or two runs from the offense. The team needs run support. The Indians play the Phillies again today at noon. Hopefully they will be able to find the missing offense and put enough runs on the board to split the 2 game series.