Rogers, Browns head to Detroit

11.21.2009

DETROIT -- Shaun Rogers maintains that this is just another game.

Which is a little like saying Rogers is just another nose tackle.

Rogers and the Browns face his old team, the Lions, Sunday at Ford Field. And with the play of the Browns' defense being one of the biggest positives in a trying season, the spotlight is on the Browns' monstrous nose tackle to spark a unit that will try to fluster rookie QB Matthew Stafford and lead the way as the Browns look for their first win in five weeks.

Lions coach Jim Schwartz, in his first year with the team, never coached Rogers. But Schwartz said he believes Rogers is one of the best in the business at his position and said people within the Lions' organization have praise for Rogers as a player and a person.

"Of course they said that," Rogers joked this week. "I'm a wonderful person."

He's a wonderful player, too. Rogers made two Pro Bowls in his time with the Lions but the team didn't have much success. He made the Pro Bowl in a 4-12 season with the Browns last year, his first with the team. He said the losing has been difficult, but he tries to stay positive and do what he can - block kicks, squash ball carriers, etc. - to get things turned around.

"It's always tough to lose," Rogers said. "If you lose at Tidily-winks it's tough if you're a true competitor. It's just something you have to live with. You have to look yourself in the mirror and try to see if you've done what you needed to do and put a positive spin on it from that direction."

Stafford, the top overall pick in this year's draft and the youngest starting quarterback in the NFL since Drew Bledsoe in 1993, is getting better and more comfortable each week. He said this week he's preparing to see an "an extremely complex" Browns defense sparked by Big No. 92 in the middle.

"He can take over a game," Stafford said of Rogers. "He's one of the few guys in the league that plays on the interior of the D-line that can do that. He's really athletic."

Schwartz sees Stafford getting better every week and sees his team's key young studs getting back to health. Stafford, second-year runner Kevin Smith and superfreak wide receiver Calvin Johnson all battled injury earlier in the season. Now that they're healthy, Schwartz is expecting better results both for the rest of the season and in the years ahead.

"We're very confident we have a young quarterback who's going to lead us into the future and is going to be very, very successful in this league," he said.

The Browns will be looking to spark the offense with Brady Quinn making his second straight start and rookie receiver Mohamed Massaquoi - Stafford's close friend and top target at the University of Georgia - looking to make plays against a banged-up Lions secondary.

The Browns list Joshua Cribbs as questionable after he suffered a neck injury on the final play of last week's loss, but Cribbs said Friday he's hopeful he'll be cleared to play.

This is the Browns' first regular season visit to Ford Field. The Browns defeated the Lions at home in 2001 and dropped a home game to the Lions in 2005, a game in which the Browns' lone touchdown came on the first career kick return by Cribbs, a rookie at the time.