The Browns have fired Hue Jackson, source says

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam and GM John Dorsey met with coach Hue Jackson Monday morning and fired him, a league source told cleveland.com.

He leaves with a 3-36-1 record in two and a half seasons, including 0-20 on the road.

His firing came a day after the Cavs fired Tyronn Lue.

The Browns have not yet announced who the interim coach is. 

Jackson was fired a day after the Browns lost 33-18 to the Steelers, their third straight loss and the fourth in the last five games.

He was the sixth straight Browns coach to be fired after a loss to the Steelers in the second meeting of that season. The others were Romeo Crennel, Eric Mangini Pat Shurmur, Rob Chudzinski, and Mike Pettine.

 According to a source, Jackson was told by ownership that the team had quit on him and that he wasn’t doing a good job of leading. They told him that his offense and defense had regressed.

Jackson dismisses a report Haley could be fired

Jackson had a 2-5-1 record this season, including a 1-2-1 mark in overtime games.

Jackson was fired after a power struggle over the offense with coordinator Todd Haley. 

A report by NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport surfaced before the Steelers game that Haley might be fired over the dysfunction that had been occurring on offense.

Jackson planned to meet with ownership on Monday in hopes of taking back the offense, which has struggled all season, and possibly getting the Haslams to agree to firing Haley.

Instead, it was Jackson who was let go.

The Haslams brought Jackson back this season after his 1-31 record the first two years. They believed he deserved a chance to coach a better roster of players, which features 31 new players this season.

But they determined that the team wasn’t trending in the right direction, a league source said.

The Browns will begin searching soon for their next head coach, and could even look to the college ranks for a coach like Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, Baker Mayfield’s former coach.

Dorsey will also rely on longstanding relationships with coaches he’s worked with in Green Bay and Kansas City in compiling his list.

Despite four overtime games this season, ownernship felt the Browns were getting worse instead of better. They also believed that Baker Mayfield wasn’t being developed the way he needed to be.

The writing was on the wall last week that Jackson could be the one to lose the power struggled with Haley when Mayfield backed Haley, saying “we don’t need to reinvent the wheel” and “we don’t need to change much.”

Ownership and Dorsey also didn’t like some of the culture issues they were seeing on the team, including Myles Garrett criticizing the defensive gameplan after the loss to the Steelers and the officiating the week before that.