Quick thought on the Browns ...

Yes, that was an extremely satisfying win by the Browns over the Ravens yesterday. I was against McCown being reinserted as the starter after Manziel won his only start, but I will cheerfully admit I was wrong about that. He was phenomenal yesterday. He is now the only Browns quarterback in history with three consecutive 300-yard games, and yesterday he set a new club record for passing yards in a regular-season game. (Nobody seems to be mentioning that Bernie Kosar actually threw for 483 yards in that double-overtime win over the Jets in the 1986-87 playoffs. I wish I had a VHS tape of that game. And also a VHS.)

In any case, I haven't heard anybody mention this, but if the NFL hadn't introduced the two-point conversion as an option 21 years ago, the Ravens would probably have won yesterday. The Browns went one-for-two on two-pointers yesterday, so if they'd just kicked extra points, they'd still have finished with 30 points. The Ravens only attempted one two-point conversion, and failed. At the time, it certainly appeared to be the right play -- they were up five with 5:56 to play, and it made sense to try to make it a seven-point game instead of six. But the conversion failed. Had they just kicked an extra point and everything else had gone the way it did, the Ravens would have taken a 31-30 lead on that field goal with 25 seconds left.

And this, my friends, is why I love the two-point conversion so much.