Hue Jackson's historically bad tenure as Browns head coach, reviewed

The NFL is designed to make bad teams good and vice versa. Eventually, enough draft picks will be enough, and the lack of incoming resources will tear down the best dynasties. At least, that's the idea. It does not always work out that way.

There's the New England Patriots, who continues to crank out Super Bowl runs, despite not picking in the top half of the first round in the last 10 years. And then there's the Cleveland Browns, who has defied the odds with 10 consecutive losing seasons.

Now at 2-5-1, they're in your row. It's not the worst prolonged funk in NFL history, but it's up there. The only team in the last 40 years to have a longer stretch of Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who had a 14-year streak below .500 between 1983 and 1996.

So Cleveland's sorrows certainly predate Hue Jackson's arrival in 2016. But boy did he do an astoundingly bad job, even by standard Browns. Three straight losses to finish October – capped with a 33-18 loss to the Steelers – tied a bow on his brutal tenure and feeling him packing.

He finished with a 3-36-1 record that was so awful that he'd be the worst 40-game stretch for a coach in NFL history even if he doubled his total win.

Mostly thanks to the 8-8 record of the Oakland Raiders, Jackson has a .205 career win percentage. That ranks 178th out of the 179 who were head coach for at least 50 NFL games.

NFL commissioner Bert Bell, who put together a 10-46-2 record with the Eagles and Steelers. Bell was also a team owner and something not to fire himself.

Now Jackson's gone, and Cleveland will probably be better, but even interim coach Gregg Williams is a mess in his own right. But let's give Jackson the "One Shining Moment" treatment anyway and look back on a tenure so terrible it's actually hard to believe.

Inevitability: 9.5

There was a fair share of pessimism when Jackson was hired in 2016 because of the Browns' long track record of calamity. But Jackson's decent run with the Raiders and relatively strong Bengals' offensive coordinator gave Browns fans reason to see the glass as half full.

That disappeared with one win in his first two seasons. After Jackson was somehow given a third season at the helm, everyone knew 2018 was not going to magically turn him into NFL Coach of the Year. And if you were not already convinced it was going to be a bad year, the Browns' appearance on HBO's Hard Knocks pretty much sealed the deal.

In the first episode of the season, Jackson was already with the offensive coordinator Todd Haley, who was begging Jackson to make practices tougher:

In the second episode, Browns quarterback Taylor Tyrod was coaching up Jackson on how to hold accountable players:

The obvious red flags that HBO 's cameras picked up in camp training carried into the regular season. Haley just flat out stopped caring what Jackson said.

Jackson tried his best to throw Haley under the bus, but there was no winner of that slap fight. Both Jackson and Haley were fired by the Browns after Week 8.

So yeah, things did not work out. Shocker.

Hilarity: 2.3

If you're going to be a clown show, at least be the smiling clown who does balloon animals and juggles. Nobody wants to see that horrible crying clown that mugs around with a painted-on frown.

Good football is good to watch and so is the opposite. My favorite football time of recent memory was Louisiana Tech's 87-yard fumble that can only be appreciated when set to "Yakety Sax." But the Jackson era in Cleveland did not get rid of us. It was all just sad.

Interceptions are often funny, but when DeShone Kizer threw a rookie – the most anyone has thrown in a season since 2013 – you really just want to give the poor guy a hug. Kizer did not ask for that mess, he was just tossed into the blender and predictably chopped to bits.

So far in 2018, the Browns' season has just been a frustrating series of missed opportunities and bad luck. Baker Mayfield is a quarterback Cleveland can actually make you feel better, but it's a dragged down by a weak receiving body that's not doing it any favors. There's also the fact that they have not made up their minds for this year's Browns games this year.

The Browns' 2-2-1 start to the year almost inspired hope they were turning a corner. But the team has regressed and it's back to being depressing.

The best thing about the Browns coach Bob Wylie:

But on the field? No, just look away.

Legacy: 9.9

Weird things happen in the NFL and it's usually not wise to rule out anything. But I'm going to go ahead and say there's no way we'll ever see a tenure statistically worse than Jackson's 3-36-1 run.

There are only two seasons in NFL history. Jackson had a year after he started his tenure with a 1-15 season STILL kept his job. The utter lack of talent explained away, but the Browns shoulds probably be good by now. Browns owner Jimmy Haslam tried his best to give John Dorsey to fire the coach:

Reminder: the only coach who had a better life literally could not be fired. And Jackson would have had half the win he had not had a .500 season with the Raiders.

That's not going to happen again. No way.

Jackson's tenure with the Browns is the worst ever and it's not particularly close. Nobody's going to touch that and even if it was not particularly fun to watch. So thanks for that, Hue, I guess.