[ad_1]
Despite showing some promise this year, the Browns are falling back into old clothes and want to fire the wrong coach.
Perhaps the main narrative of this season in Cleveland Hue Jackson is the right guy to oversee the reconstruction of the Browns. There is nothing but tension between coaches, dating back to what we saw on Hard Knocks, and it seems everything is coming to a boil.
In typical Cleveland fashion, the wrong guy is probably going to lose his job. Mary Kay Cabot delivered the weird news on Sunday morning that the Browns are preparing for a roast offensive coordinator Todd Haley over an open fire, not Hue Jackson.
To be fair, Haley has never been a guy who has been upset to see his job, even if he is good at what he does. He was ousted in Kansas City despite making the playoffs with Matt Cassel as his quarterback; he was let go in Pittsburgh after a bad playoff loss despite the fact that he is a big reason Ben Roethlisberger has been able to have success. Now in Cleveland, Haley is tasked with molding Baker Mayfield out of clay and seems to be laying groundwork for his piece of resistance.
The common thread of stop-to-stop for Haley is that he's not easy to work with and can be an abrasive personality, but he's had success everywhere he's coached. Moreover, we've seen what the Browns look like when Hue Jackson is running the offense and what it looks like when Haley is there. An argument could be made that the nature of this season can be attributed to Jackson's pushback on Haley which explains the dysfunction between the two.
It's not hard to get back on track, but the progress has all been watched by the Cleveland Browns. No one wants to see bad football, and it has been more than enough to go around in Cleveland since the team returned from purgatory in 1999.
Since the turn of the century, the Browns have made the playoffs and have just made two seasons (they have been 10-6 in 2007 only to miss the playoffs, because Cleveland). In none of those years did the Browns show the type of promise they have right now, with a potential franchise and a quarterback. Cleveland is out of the darkness, but the franchise is usually unable to stay out of its own way. Jackson is unable to be a totalitarian who is hindering the teams from blossoming. Instead, we've seen a place where we could easily move in the right direction.
The results have supported this. It's been a cute story to see the Browns drag so many games to overtime (and even tie) but the fact of the matter is the team is losing games it should be winning. Too many times this year, we have a lot of things to do with it. Cleveland's offense is not so bad, but it's a good thing to get in touch with the score. We are not seeing fights on the sideline, but the push-and-pull can be felt through the playcalling decisions; Haley and Jackson are not suffering the same.
It's nothing new. Jackson, on his own last year, shuffled through quarterbacks, seemingly unable to settle and later ruining DeShone Kizer. There was no confidence and the only consistency was chaos – something not present this year when there's someone else in charge of the offense. There is no need for control in the front office and there is no need for a control center.
The idea of Haley-led Browns is fascinating enough to explore. Jackson is not the coach of the future and the Browns have the luxury of testing driving Haley as head coach before looking elsewhere this offseason for someone else. For the first time in a very long time, Cleveland is an attractive destination for those coaches looking to make a name for themselves.
[ad_2]
Source link