Browns win, and my middle school team does too.

The offense stunk, except for two late pass plays to Antonio Bryant, but that was enough to carry the Browns past the Bears, 20-10. Okay, so I said the Browns would win by nine and they actually won by 10. If you went with me, you still made money.

A Browns' win is always good news, but the better news as far as I'm concerned is that the 7th and 8th grade team for which I'm an assistant coach won for only the second time this season, 16-6. Last year's team won the league championship, but this year's team has been plagued by injuries, lack of self confidence and all of the other things that go into making a team play poorly (including some bad coaching by yours truly). Yesterday, they finally managed to chuck all the excuses aside and beat a darn good team. My guys drove 65 yards the first time they touched the ball, and chewed up all but 35 seconds of the first quarter doing it. As an offensive line coach, it's hard to imagine a better start to a game than that. They followed it up with another touchdown late in the second quarter, after another long drive. We almost let the other team back into the game in the third quarter, when we fumbled the ball deep in our own territory and they scored two plays later. But, we blocked their extra point (as in many other youth leagues, kicked extra points count for two points in our league), and our defense shut them down the rest of the afternoon.