The head coach Browns Hue Jackson in mid-season 2018

The Browns announced Monday that they had returned head coach Hue Jackson to half his third season with the team. Jackson went just 3-36-1 to Cleveland.

The former vice president of football operations, Sashi Brown, was the first to leave. The Browns fired Brown at the end of the 2017 season, but retained Jackson for another year. But when the victories did not start, despite a significantly improved player list, Jackson was let go.

It was not just Jackson either. The team also separated from the offensive coordinator, Todd Haley.

Take over from the head coach in the meantime allegedly offensive assistant Al Saunders, former Chargers head coach.

Why was it a kind of surprise? When Brown was fired, team owner Jimmy Haslam said at the time that Jackson's job was safe.

"Hue Jackson will remain our coach and will be coming back for the 2018 season," Haslam said.

So it's a bit surprising that a team that is patient enough to win a two-season win would shut things down now. But in the grand scheme, patience was getting older and the new Browns general manager, John Dorsey, is the one who puts the guns on fire. It is he who convinced the owner Jimmy Haslam to send Jackson packing.

After Cleveland finished 0-16 in 2017, Haslam changed his mind, as he had done with Mike Pettine in 2015. Haslam said that the Browns would keep "absolutely" Pettine, but it's not the same. fired a week later after two seasons at the helm.

It was not quite the same rocker. Jackson's ouster was deserved by his historically mediocre status in Cleveland.

So wWhy did the Browns fire Jackson now? The easiest answer is the most obvious: he won only one game in two seasons with the Browns and could not get back on track in his third year.

The Browns' plan over the past two years has been to store chip selections and build them from scratch, which sometimes meant separating from veteran players and trading against the project. That would not make them win a lot of games in the present, but two historically bad years put Jackson on an unstable ground.

Then, the team invested a lot in the off-season and added talents such as Jarvis Landry on the offensive and several new starters in high school. That should have made Brown a competitor, but that was not the case.

Like all professional sports, the NFL is a results-oriented league. Jackson did not get any results.

The Browns looked good early in the year, opening the season with a tie and finally getting a win. But after a 2-2-1 start, Cleveland lost three times in a row and training was the main reason. The final defeat was a 33-18 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, which has already cost many coaches the Browns.

After the match, defensive lineman Myles Garrett criticized the team's game plan, which was different from the one that led to a 21-21 tie with the Steelers in the first week.

Jackson was hired on the basis of his reputation as a brilliant offensive mind and quarterback developer. He did not have a list of talented call-in candidates on his arrival. But he failed to make Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown, Cody Kessler, Kevin Hogan or DeShone Kizer a viable starter, and there was no reason to think he was doing wonders with the first choice of 2018, Baker Mayfield.

It's not entirely Jackson's fault either. The 2016 season was marked by injuries after injured the Browns' quarterbacks. Griffin only lasted one part before ending up injured on the shoulder in the reserve. McCown separated his shoulder, Cody Kessler had two concussions and the Browns even had to sign Charlie Whitehurst because Hogan had injured his ribs.

Injuries were not the problem in 2017. Kizer was generally healthy except for a migraine problem. But his tendency to engage in expensive turnarounds in the red zone has earned him a few trips to the bench. And it is possible that Jackson precipitated Kizer in the starting role. Most analysts felt that the second round was too brutal to be an immediate starter in the NFL.

The Browns have not managed to improve in a key area: scoring. They were the penultimate league in 2016 with 16.5 points per game. They average only 14.6 points per game in 2017, which puts them in last position in the league.

So far in 2018, with Mayfield at the helm, the Browns are at No. 24 in total attack and points scored. It was not enough.

What's next for the Browns? The Browns will probably have no chance to play in the playoffs, but there is still time to tie the victories together and inspire hope for the future with Saunders at the helm. The team is too talented to sit in the AFC North cellar.

New Executive Director John Dorsey will finally have a say in the new hiring, which will not be Saunders, but this will likely happen in a month. Dorsey, the former CEO of the Chiefs, has a reputation for evaluating talent. But for now, the Browns will have to settle for Saunders and their other coaches.