NFL Betting News – Pat Shurmur Takes On Colt McCoy and Cleveland Browns

Pat Shurmur is hardly what you’d refer to as a household name, yet the newest head coach for the Cleveland Browns is about to become a very well known signal caller in football betting circles.

Formerly the offensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams and quarterback coach for the Philadelphia Eagles, Shurmur is about to take on a blustering team that bewilderingly became a staple for the public in NFL betting circles.

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For whatever reason, people want to like the Cleveland Browns but let’s face facts. They haven’t been to the playoffs since 2002, and in the past ten years they’ve only posted two winning records (they went 10-6 in 2007 and 9-7 in 2002). Last year, despite going 5-11 SU and ATS the public wagered heavily on the hapless Browns because – for once – they seemed scrappy.

That’s what happens when you beat the defending Super Bowl Champion Saints, and the seemingly impending Super Bowl XLV favored New England Patriots. It’s also what happens when you accidentally inherit a bulldozing running back in Peyton Hillis, who endeared us for us as a white running back who snow plowed defenders out of his way.

Shurmur isn’t without some solid credentials. He was the quarterbacks coach in Philadelphia from 1999-2008, tutoring Donavan McNabb. For the past two seasons, he’s been the offensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams and allowed Sam Bradford to become the leading candidate for Rookie of the Year while pushing the Rams to the precipice of the NFL playoffs in Week 17.

This is good news for Browns fans, which is something the media rarely writes. What NFL betting nut jobs want to know is if Shurmur can have the same affect on Colt McCoy that he did on Bradford and McNabb. For all intents and purposes, he most certainly can.

However, he needs much better offensive weapons to do so.

The Browns endeared the betting public with massive upsets this year, and a barn burner against the Jets (which they lost). People seemed so engaged by the Browns in NFL betting that they didn’t catch on to the fact that they finished the season 1-4 SU and ATS while averaging just 10.4 points per game.

Relief on offense could come as early as the 2011 NFL Draft, where the Browns will pick sixth overall behind the Arizona Cardinals and in front of the San Francisco 49ers. Most teams are in desperate need of defensive players, or quarterbacks and the Browns are perhaps the one team in the top-10 that actually needs to overreach for a receiver.

The player on their radar is undoubtedly A.J. Green, who is a breakout star for Georgia and highly touted as the only receiver worth taking in the top-10. Shurmur can not stray away from the ticket that brought him to the dance, which is his offensive game planning and savvy play calling.

But he needs weapons. It’s almost unthinkable that Ben Watson was the team’s leading receiver with 68 catches and 763 yards. Part of that had to do with the fact that Mohamed Massauoi couldn’t get open, and Chansi Stuckey hardly saw the field. In short, the receiving corps in Cleveland is hardly reliable.

It’s hard to give sole credit to Shurmur for McNabb’s success or Bradford’s breakout performance in 2010. It’s even harder to imagine him having the same effect on Colt McCoy, who battled injuries and seemed frozen in big game moments last year. The defense of the Browns is obviously just as much of a work in progress.

The problem is that I don’t think the beating that people took while unwittingly riding the Browns’ NFL betting bandwagon has deterred them. As I wrote earlier, there’s a lot to like about the Browns. It’s just that they’re not profitable enough in the NFL betting market on a weekly basis.

Shurmar’s name has never been mentioned as one of the premier offensive coordinators in the league, but now he gets the grand stage of trying to lead another crap infested team out of the doldrums of NFL betting hell. Like it or not, his name will be very well known by the end of 2011…and that could just as well be for the better as well as the worst.

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