Eric Mangini is certainly making an impression in Cleveland. The Browns coach has so far sent rookies on a 10-hour bus trip to work at a “voluntary” football camp, demanded $500,000 worth of changes to the coaching offices, and has even been accused of spreading “diva” rumors about Michael Crabtree (although that last item seems to have some truth to it).

And now the Mangenius is trying to instill the notion in his players’ heads to be fiscally responsible & always settle your debts. How far is the coach willing to go to teach this lesson? He apparently fined a player $1,701 over a $3 bottle of water.

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The NFL opening weekend continues on Saturday, and a whole lotta eyes will be on the shores of Lake Erie, where the Minnesota Vikings will pay a visit to the Cleveland Browns. Most folks will be watching to see how Brett Favre does with his new team now that the games actually count. But the Vikes also have another primetime player in the backfield in electric RB Adrian Peterson.

However, had things shaken up differently in the draft two years ago, Peterson could be running like mad for this Sunday’s opponent - Purple Jesus could have been Brown Jesus. And a former Cleveland personnel staffer says his team screwed up by not picking Peterson.

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Orlando Brown had an 11-year NFL career, but unfortunately he will always be known as the dude who almost lost his eye when a referee hit him in the face with a penalty flag. What are the odds? Well, now the former Cleveland Brown can be known for something else.

Brown was arrested on Friday after breaking into his ex-wife’s house and trashing the place, leaving among as a calling card a nice big dump in the basement. As we learned in the case of Najeh Davenport Poops In A Laundry Basket, the courts consider that criminal mischief. Read more…

After yesterday’s sentencing of Plaxico Burress to two years in prison, it seems like you couldn’t turn around without hearing another person wailing, “Donte Stallworth gets 26 days for killing a man and Plaxico gets two years for shooting himself? Where’s the justice! I thought this was America!”

Okay. Back the truck up here. Stallworth and Burress’ cases have f–k-all to do with each other outside of the fact that both are in the NFL and they got sentenced in the same year. So let’s dispense with the flimsy comparisons of a DUI and a gun charge. And let’s also make one thing clear: Plaxico didn’t get two years for shooting himself.

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As PRO FOOTBALL TALK mentioned today, the situation with Michael Crabtree’s holdout is steadily declining into “disaster” territory. Now, according to his agent Eugene Parker, Crabtree is planning to sit the entire season out, then join the 2010 NFL Draft (in prime time!) in search of a new team.

(This is Michael Crabtree catching a football during a football game. Just keeping it fresh in your mind, since you’re not going to be seeing it for a good, long while.)

Crabtree, the phenomenally productive and talented receiver out of Texas Tech (best known for driving a wooden stake through Texas’ season), was the 10th pick of the draft. Obviously, he thinks he should have gone higher - or should be paid as such, anyway. Never mind that the “big” money comes from the second contract, not the rookie contract.

But if there’s some chuckling you hear, it’s probably coming from Cleveland. Read more…

• Detroit Pistons rookie DaJuan Summers places a Twitter bet with porn star Valerie Luxe: Whoever gets 4,000 followers first wins either dinner & a massage, or a trip to the water park.

• Meanwhile, ESPN’s Mark Schlereth gets into a Twitter war with Chad Ochocinco.

• But neither guy would want to mess with J.R. Smith, especially if the Nuggets player is Tweeting like he’s a member of the Bloods.

• Roger Mayweather - Floyd Jr.’s uncle & trainer - is accused of attacking & trying to strangle a female boxer.

• Browns WR Braylon Edwards poses with a bunch of alcohol. So all those drops were due to the D.T.’s?

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This photo is OK if you’re Charlie Sheen, or you have a bet with Big Enos Burdette that you and the Bandit can get all of this to Atlanta in 28 hours. But if you’re wide receiver and perennial screwup Braylon Edwards, perhaps it isn’t the best PR move of the century to be posing on your Facebook page with this much hooch.

Not only did Edwards lead the league in drops last season, but he also failed his physical and injured himself in a pickup basketball game. And don’t forget the time he injured his foot when a teammate stepped on it because Edwards was running practice routes in his socks. But the bigger issue here, of course, is that Edwards was out drinking with Donte Stallworth on the fateful night of Stallworth’s DUI accident that claimed the life of a pedestrian. But welcome to my basement anyway! How do you like your martini? (Hick!) Read more…

Wherever your fan allegiances lie, it’s hard not to feel bad for Cleveland Browns fans. It’s bad enough that their city has been in decline for decades, but no fan base deserves to have their team yanked out of town, especially when said team ends up spurning you for Baltimore. Sure, Cleveland ended up getting the Browns back (sort of), but the last 10 years have been a near-constant kick to the nuts for fans of the brown & orange.

(Hall of Famer…by default?)

One constant that Browns fans have always been able to cling to throughout all the Tim Couches and Butch Davises has been the past. The Browns had an illustrious history up through the 1980s, and to the team’s credit, they created a team Hall of Fame to recognize the team’s glory days and distract fans from the crapfest on the field. Well, they had a team Hall of Fame, anyways: the team has decided to put the “Browns Legends” on hiatus for at least this year. Classy move, Cleveland.

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A taped interview with Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte Stallworth, plus other evidence, was released on Tuesday by the Miami Beach Police Dept., shining a little light on the events that occurred prior to the auto accident that killed 59-year-old Mario Reyes on March 14. Stallworth, who is serving a 30-day jail sentence (not exactly the “Shawshank Redemption”) after pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter in the case, said that he drank up to four shots of premium tequila while partying with friends at a Miami Beach club. But he did not feel drunk, he said, in the hours before he struck and killed the pedestrian with his car.

When asked how many shots of tequila he had at the hotel that night (March 14), Stallworth said in an interview recorded by police that he drank some tequila from teammate Braylon Edwards’ table and later bought some shots himself. How many? “Three, four at the most,” Stallworth said. “I wasn’t really counting.”

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You might recall last year, among the myriad problems befalling the Cleveland Browns that led to Romeo Crennel’s ouster, was the strange case of staph infections that ran through the team’s training facility. No, not everyone got it, but several did, including TE Kellen Winslow and WR Joe Jurevicius. Jurevicius had to sit out the entire season, as a matter of fact, as he received treatment in his knee for the dangerous infection.

(He sure seems happy. By the way, be very, very thankful we didn’t choose to run a result from a “staph infection” search. Seriously. Don’t even satisfy your curiosity on this one.)

Jurevicius ended up getting cut, presumably because having a staph infection ravage your knee is especially bad for the prospects of a mildly productive 34-year-old wide receiver, so as ESPN.COM reports, he’s taking the rather remarkable step of actually suing the team and the medical facility where he contracted the infection:  Read more…