k, what do spies do?

From ESPN‘s Adam Schefter today come two revelations about Peyton Hillis, one surprising, one not so much. It turns out the Cleveland Browns give Peyton about as much of a sh*t as he gives them, and at the end of last season Hillis was considering retiring to take a job with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Do what now?

The Browns have made the decision not to use their franchise tag on running back Peyton Hillis, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Throughout the past season, Hillis has wavered about whether he wants to continue playing football, and even considered joining the CIA, according to team sources.

It is unclear if he actually pursued a career with the CIA.

I’ve heard some strange contract negotiations in my day, but “I’m prob’ly gonna just monitor world issues for a living and prob’ly shoot some dudes” has got to be the worst, and Peyton Hillis doesn’t even have the intestinal fortitude to follow through with his dumb pipe dreams. So where does that leave us? With a giant depressed Barney Rubble who can’t (or won’t) play at the level expected of him who may or may not decide in the middle of next season to ditch practice and enroll in clown college?

“If we can work something out with Peyton we will,” [Browns general manager Tom] Heckert told ESPN.

“But whatever.”

From a May 11 interview with ESPN:

“Actually, I don’t even believe in curses. It’s really sad how many people believe in curses. This is football; everyone gets hurt. If you run the ball 40 times a game, you’re going to get banged around and get nicks and bruises here and there, but I don’t pay too much attention to that. I’ll let it take care of itself.”

Then came an eight-touchdown, 600-yard decline in productivity, a hamstring injury, an exchange of tough guy back-and-forth with his team over a contract and that time he bailed on a charity gig with the Cleveland Boys And Girls Club. This deadly combination of bad PR, commonplace injury, personal assholery and “living in Cleveland” can only mean one thing.

From a December 19 interview with Cleveland.com:

“No doubt about it, things haven’t worked to my favor this year. There’s a few things that happened that made me believe in curses. Ain’t no doubt about it.”

There you have it. There ain not any doubt about it. Peyton Hillis is cursed, and the only way the Browns can get back on track is if Mike Holmgren tricks John Madden into walking over a cleverly disguised pit and rips off his face to reveal Old Man Jenkins from the abandoned amusement park.

I think they should find the worst player in the NFL and put him on the Madden 13 box just to see if he spontaneously combusts. Any takers?

[h/t to Shutdown Corner]

We’ve already shared a gallery of depressing pictures from Thursday’s Browns/Steelers game and an even more depressing set about their fans, so it’s no surprise that game’s head-to-softer-head collision that concussed Browns quarterback Colt McCoy would lead somewhere depressing, no matter what side you’re on — the league has decided to celebrate James Harrison’s fifth illegal hit against a quarterback in the past three seasons by making him the first player suspended for helmet-to-helmet since the rule’s emphasis.

“We’re disappointed, we’re disappointed for James,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said Monday. “Because we know, quite frankly, how hard he’s worked to play within the rules. He’s worked extremely hard to adjust his game. Unfortunately, the incident did happen, it was a penalty, we have to be accountable for that. He has to be accountable for that.”

The suspension is effective immediately, but Harrison has requested an expedited hearing and they’ve set a date for his appeal. Oh, and in case you wonder how he feels about the whole thing:

I guess rolling on the floor would’ve been seen as insincere.

If you missed the hit, you can check out the video below.

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One of the NFL’s many official sponsors, Prilosec OTC has a new campaign called “A Better Way to Tailgate” to help fans avoid eating and drinking things that will give them heartburn, and that’s cool, because I suffer from heartburn a lot and I appreciate a billion dollar pharmaceutical company trying to knock the chili dog out of my fat mouth.

But to really hammer home their point, the makers of Prilosec have hired Larry the Cable Guy to travel to NFL games and interact with fans, because he is apparently also a frequent heartburn sufferer and he represents the average, blue collar NFL fan. Larry, whose real name is Dan Whitney, attended Thursday night’s game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns, as well as yesterday’s Baltimore Ravens-Indianapolis Colts game.

And I could get into some long rant about how much I can’t stand Larry or how I’d be irate if my team was letting him run around in a jersey or wave a Terrible Towel, but nobody can ever break down the mystique of Larry’s success better than the late Greg Giraldo.

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For all intents and purposes, Cleveland’s 14-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers wasn’t that big of a deal.

It was a defensive struggle. The Browns went into the game 4-8 against the 9-3 Steelers, so dropping a game on the road by only 11 points is pretty good. That’s sorta the running theme of being a Cleveland sports fan, you have to watch the Indians do well through June and finish the season clinging to second place in the worst division in baseball going “hey, this isn’t so bad!” Or the alternative, “CLEVELAND HAS WASTED THE LAST 20 YEARS OF MY LIFE, GO CLEVELAND.”

Because I’m not a Lead Football Analyst I can’t provide any insights you wouldn’t catch watching guys talk over a game, but what I can do is show you ten photos from the game and cut to the heart of the situation, bypassing photo service captions like “#18 makes a tackle on December 8, 2011″ with easier to handle captions like “look at this football team suck a f**king dick, you guys”.

So, enjoy that.

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You know, for some reason I thought Ndamukong Suh transmogrifying from the Bob’s Big Boy to humiliate the Cleveland Browns was going to be the best part of this video, but no, in the very next scene he uses a Spirit Bomb to attack Jay Cutler (which, while hilarious, doesn’t seem necessary … you had to break out the Spirit Bomb to defeat Jay Cutler?). And somewhere near the end, Suh gets put in a circus cage as punishment for killing Evan Dietrich-Smith, dismembering him and eating his bones, complete with Resident Evil 1 blood spray. A part of me wishes it’d actually gone down like that, just to see what the NFL would do.

I felt weird sharing the animated Taiwanese reports for the Jerry Sandusky thing, so I’m happy they’re back to making ridiculously-layered-with-reference mountains out of sports blurb molehills. I also love that they can animate someone being killed and eaten but can’t make the numbers on the football jerseys the right size.