Late June is the time of year when just about any Browns-related story can get heavy play on the 'net, no matter how thin it happens to be.
Case in point would be the recent mini-buzz of interest in WR Matt Jones and a possible fit with the Cleveland Browns.
Any buzz about Jones and the Browns at this point is merely a combination of typical-but-acceptable mainstream journalism combining with fast-and-dirty headline ripping by fantasy sports services. Nothing more.
In this case, the Browns and Jones were linked by Rotoworld after they read one of those team report recaps on the Sporting News.
This all started because Jaguars beat writer Michael Wright noted - as a number of others have before and after him - that Matt Jones may be the odd man out in Jacksonville following the team's off-season WR acquisitions. Jones, despite having eye-popping measurables and an intriguing background as a signal-caller, still hasn't developed the ability to run precise routes.
The story here is less about a wide receiver who may or may not be of interest to the Browns, than it is about how rumors can get started on the internet with absolutely nothing behind them.
SQUARE PEG, MEET ROUND HOLE
I don't think Matt Jones would make sense for the Browns at this point.
Do the Browns need a big guy with impressive measurables, but who is unproven as a receiver and has never learned to run accurate routes?
Only if Wes Chandler thinks he can create something out of Jones as a long-term replacement for Joe Jurevicius, and do so fast enough to get value out him this year. It would be akin to the Browns trying to suddenly turn Tim Carter into a receiver rather than a track star last year. And we see how well that turned out. If the Browns could get him for practically nothing and Chandler wants to give it a shot, then anything could happen. The Dallas Cowboys may be thinking the same thing.
I'd be dubious, however. A quarterback like Derek Anderson who is known to throw the ball into coverage could probably use Jones' size and strength to rip the ball away from defenders, but a quarterback like Brady Quinn would probably be ill-served if Jones was in Cleveland, and continued to run poor routes.
One of the key differences in the Browns passing game between 2006 and 2007 was that Braylon Edwards started running better routes. He improvised less, and was where the quarterback expected him to be. That meant less interceptions and a breakout season for Edwards.
I'd be very worried about putting an interception prone-quarterback on the field with a receiver who might not be where he's supposed to be at the right time.
I would suspect that what the Browns need as we head toward training camp is a veteran presence who could match up well against linebackers. If they want a project to groom as a future number two receiver, they can add one next year, although Paul Hubbard and Travis Wilson probably already fit that particular bill.
To this extent, the recent story about Eric Parker makes a lot more sense to me as a summer acquisition for the Browns. Parker is a veteran, a good route runner, and could come right in and contribute right away on a team looking to make the playoffs in 2008.
Jones? Not so much. It's risky, and the Browns don't want to be taking a ton of risks in a year that they expect to go to the playoffs and make some noise.
The Parker rumor is also sourced to a member of the Chargers organization, although what we have there may be no better or different than a simple phone call being relayed to a press as a way to drum up interest. The rumor makes sense, however. and it's been sourced to the Chargers front office. The Browns and Jones rumor, however, has been sourced to exactly no one.
This is why we put the Eric Parker story on the front page, and haven't done anything with the Jones "story".
SO, WHY ARE WE HEARING ABOUT THIS?
Starting in the late 90s, fantasy services like KFFL, Rotowire, Rototimes and half million others discovered that they could make a business model out of surfing around the 'net, reading other people's work, snipping little bits of it that have to do with players and putting it all in a database.
This is not that different from what I did in the early days of this website back in 1999, although the focus was entirely on the Browns and on long-term hopes involving high volumes of free beer provided by grateful readers. The OBR started pushing into original content almost immediately, however, while fantasy services focused on providing fast updates, databases for their information, and partnerships to get exposure. For our part, we backed into a slightly more reliable non-beverage-oriented business model at Scout.com's prodding in 2001.
Over the years, these fantasy services discovered that fans would use them not only for tracking individual players, but as a way to keep up with the latest football news on the web. Since hard core fans like the ones who read the OBR are constantly looking for the latest news and rumors, these pages get a lot of traffic and repeat visits.
The constant refreshing of frequently-updated web pages means more page views, which means more ad views, which means money. I'm not sure if advertisers get their money's worth since the pages tend to be scanned rather than read, but that's another issue.
So, a variety of these services have sprung up. Some them "break" their own news by getting press releases from teams, but most simply sit on top of RSS feeds, search engines, and bookmark lists waiting for new stories to break, tearing information out of them, and then posting it. The better ones, like Rotoworld, are honest about where they get their information, and post links.
The nature of these sites are why I can often be found making snarky remarks on the OBR forums whenever someone titles a post "(Fantasy Service X) reporting (Thing)!!". These services don't report squat, they just swipe it from folks who do. They don't have reporters, they don't have credentials. They simply centralize news they find on the web as a convenience. We've had OBR stories snagged and relayed within 10-15 minutes of publishing.
Unfortunately, there two things about these services which cause problems, other than their getting credit for other people's work. The first is context, and the second is analysis.
Context: Some articles are a series of facts simply bullet lists of facts, which can be easily chopped up and paraphrased as factoids, but many aren't. Generally, the writer provides some background and analysis for the news he's relaying or the opinion he's providing. When 20-word snips are lifted out of that, context is often lost, and the snippet could be misleading. We've seen this constantly on the forums with these fantasy news services, where the person surfing-and-posting may have misunderstood the point or taken something out of context.
Analysis: Lifting items of sources by hand, especially during busy times of year, can be a time-consuming task. Some of these services rely on interns and other forms of cheap labor. What this means is that there is little time for analysis, and that those who might be doing the analysis aren't well-versed in the needs of a specific team. When some quick analysis is thrown into these factoids, the readers might be fooled into thinking that it came out of the source article. In many cases, like this one, it isn't.
So, what you get in this case, is some unnamed person surfing around the web, seeing the article on the Sporting News, remembering somewhere that the Browns might need receivers, and linking the two.
But there's no sourcing behind it, and the analysis isn't very strong.
It just goes to show that fans surfing the web need to be cautious and savvy readers. Always go to the source article - the guy who did the reporting - to see if there's anything "real" there.