Holmgren Speaks… to Seattle Radio Station

This should frighten all of the Browns fans out there to death; he wouldn’t even go on a Cleveland radio station and have an interview.

Want to know why? He doesn’t want to face the music; he wants to make millions of dollars off an equally aloof Lerner in England and just put crap on the field for us to watch, because we will.

He knows that he would get grilled to death here. Coward.

ugh. Tone deaf. If there’s nothing to say to Cleveland fans right now, what on earth is there to say to Seattle about the state of the team or his reaction to it. And calling his franchise “they.”

Either he didn’t realize we would read this in Cleveland because he doesn’t get the fans’ passion, or he just doesn’t see the problem talking as the face of the franchise to Seattle while remaining silent here. Either way, tone deaf.

I respect Holmgren, but I’m starting to wonder whether he thought through his role as chief of ops and face of an organization, or whether he’s kind of mailing it in at this stage, and views it as a retirement benefit package. Someone will scream “what’s the big deal.” The deal: connecting with, and not alienating, your rabid fanbase is NFL Exec 101 stuff. A competent non-toady assistant, maybe someone who’s been here a while, needed to tell him that. And he needs to get a feel for where he is.

I’m still mad about the first question.

Dear Seattle,

He can do this until he wins or we run him out of town. You are a nothing town who has never won anything when it comes to football.

Signed, Cleveland

P.S. We have included a copy of the 95 ALCS…game 6 was a good one.

@1 – Wow, really? REALLY? Taking that “Jump to Conclusions” mat out for a test spin, are we?

@6 – Couldn’t agree more, Craig. If we have no one to point an angry finger at we aren’t happy.

Maybe an obvious, stupid question from someone not living in Ohio – why doesn’t Holmgren do interviews with Cleveland media?

I think I’d be upset if I was a local Cleveland network. Maybe he doesn’t want to face dogged questioning, but somebody local has to be willing to serve up some softballs if he wants that.

@ stin4u and B-bo: You guys/girls are putting your collective heads in the sand of Edgewater Park.

Harv 21 said it, he is mailing it in and his use of “they” and reluctance to talk to the actual city his $#%$#ing team is in startles me. This is way more telling about his interest in the team and why he picked that goof-ball Shurmur to run it. He has become a hands off (unless you are cheering for your team at the game, then his former FBI-goons will be all kinds of ‘hands on’ you) leader, making statements about the Browns in a city 3 time zones away from us.

Why won’t he do an interview here? Because he doesn’t care anymore. And honestly, until they put something on the field worth caring about, why should we? If we keep subsidizing crappy teams they will just keep being crappy. If you are running a business and your sales are steady every year and your aloof manager is in England running a soccer club is signing checks without checking in on anything, why not just keep it as-is? Why work any harder? It’s a shame.

@13 – I’m pretty sure with all the time Holmgren spent in the NFL taking teams to the Super Bowl because you know, it was his job, he probably took at least some tiny bit of pride in what he did. To say that now he just doesn’t care is ridiculous.

He’s not speaking to Cleveland media because no matter what he says at this point, the ‘chicken littles’ (good call b-bo), will interpret it the wrong way. I can’t believe the reaction of some people around here. Nearly everyone agreed before the season this wasn’t a playoff team and now that were one game under .500 everyone in the Browns organization including Bob the janitor owes us an explanation.

C’mon people.

well, my position is more nuanced than that:

- agree this is a small thing. But worried it’s symptomatic of, at best, a guy who is not addressing his current job with the tenaciousness that he brought to his HC positions.

- there may be nothing he wants to say to us right now. Fine, judgement call, last thing we need is another Carmen Policy smarming at us in every available mic. But then don’t comment on coaches or players to others!

- not happy unless complaining? yep, truth in that. Took a class where they said that’s what blogs are for. I was just auditing and didn’t study for the final, so maybe got that wrong.

@Stin. Ty. Period!! Its nice to know that at least one person gets it.

@ NJ: Part if his job is to disallow signs, standing during the games, cheering too “loudly” during the games, etc. He enforces these rules by the use of incredibly elaborate camera systems that can track malfeasance (think I’m kidding? I’ve held a letter in my hand from his office to a friend of mine using this kind of language. This letter prohibited his buying tickets/going to a game for two years), swearing, standing, sitting, etc. He also literally has ex-FBI guys working for him as well that can track down these bad eggs and let ‘em have it.

i miss the cloud of negativity and the conspiracy theories that float around cleveland. thank you to WFNY for keeping it in my life.

hey guys, I heard Holmgren is mad that not enough people wear mustaches to games and that he is going to trade Rubin in the offseason for a 6th round pick if we don’t get a 50% mustache rate by the end of the year. women count too, they don’t get off the hook here

This is one of things that probably shouldn’t bother me as a fan…but it kind of does.

Mike…I understand that this is a job for you…and that deep down, you probably don’t care as much as we (the fans) do. But could you at least ACT like you care as much as we do? Perception is reality.

Our team has lost two in a row, the star RB is disgruntled, the star KR is running his mouth, the young QB is looking somewhat lost, the coach looks in over his head…and here you are doing interviews for Seattle radio.

This is probably much ado about nothing. But it sure comes across bad.

What could possibly be Mike Holmgren’s motivation(s) for not doing an interview here? Well, and I’m just spit-balling here:

1. Maybe this was a favor to the station/jocks back in Seattle. Maybe they asked, and he obliged, since we’re facing that team this week. Having spent so much time there, this doesn’t seem unreasonable.

2. Maybe no one here in Cleveland has bothered to ask the guy for a sit down. Maybe the fine, responsible, measured media members in the city of Cleveland were busy fanning flames or trying to read between the lines of a statement by Josh Cribbs or Peyton Hillis or Pat Schurmur or the head of janitorial services in Berea and never thought to ask the man to talk with them. Can you say for sure this isn’t the case? I know I can’t. Can you call this possibility unreasonable? Not if you’ve paid any attention at all to the media in Cleveland you can’t.

3. Maybe he saw this as an opportunity to do just what you and others here are calling for him to do: address the issues thus far. But instead of doing so with either a talk radio station known for stirring the pot in Cleveland or the new kid on the block in the town’s sports radio scene (a largely unknown-as-of-yet quantity), he trusted it to a setting where he felt more comfortable. Maybe this Seattle station even agreed to keep the questions softer and the pressure down to help him out. Surely Mike Holmgren realizes how radio waves work, and how the interwebs work (through a series of tubes, of course), and so he knew that the content of the interview would reach Clevelanders ears soon enough. He gets to make his points without the possibility of agitated callers assailing him or radio jocks looking to make a name for themselves by raking him over the coals in an effort to boost their status in town.

4. Maybe he’s a horrible person who sees his position in Cleveland as a paid retirement plan. He no longer gives a damn about his own reputation, and any competitive spirit that the man who spent his life in competition has been extinguished. He’s out to stick it to you, me, and the countless number of Browns fans across the world, because everyone hates Cleveland and we are just a bunch of simple-minded Midwesterners who don’t know better anyway.

Not to go all Col. Jessup on you, but the fact is this: I’m an educated man, oribiasi, but I’m afraid I can’t speak intelligently on the interview habits of Michael G. Holmgren. What I know is that I don’t consider the man without his faults. I believe he would have been better off not saying anything about Hillis’ contract at the start of the season, though I think that was done as a courtesy to fans, to let them know he understood their desire to keep Hillis around. It backfired something fierce, but that happens. Had Peyton and the team come to an agreement, we’d have stood up and cheered Holmgren for not behaving like the shadowy figure many accused Mangini of being, or the absentee, soccer-loving owner so many love to hate for various and sometimes baffling reasons. Ultimately I’m just speculating, as are you, as is every other person commenting here. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but there won’t be anyone ruling on who’s right or wrong anytime soon. Given that, I for one would prefer talking about the players and coaches, who are the ones most responsible for the results we see each week. At least we can see them do their jobs, and evaluate accordingly.

Also, to that point about Holmgren only interviewing 4 people for the HC gig: How many qualified applicants does anyone think there are out there for the position of NFL Head Coach, something only 32 people are doing at any given time? Now how many people (and this is by no means a shot at the profession) out there are qualified to be accountants? So am I at all surprised that a firm would end up interviewing more applicants for an accounting position than a team does for a HC position? Not one bit. In fact, a team bothering to interview dozens of potential coaches would strike me as one lacking direction and competence.

@24 – Thanks. That was a legit question, my cattiness aside. For some reason, I thought he was just overseeing football operations – basically managing H and Sh. But that actually sounds like a pretty intense job.

@Shamrock

I am hoping you forgot your sarcasm font with that last one.

Geesh. It wouldn’t be CLE sports if we weren’t bi***ing about something.

If we were 5-0, this guy could go on PIT radio and profess his love for the Rooneys and we wouldn’t bat an eye (read: LBJ and his NYY hat), but because we’re playing poorly this is news.

@35 – EXACTLY. More over, I bet if we had beaten Oakland or Tenn. this is a non issue. Give us one more win and the cry babies all over this town would probably still be sucking their thumbs.

I’m so sick of this. The guy wasn’t brought in to coach, he was brought in to make the right hires and the right decisions for the organization to get it moving in the right direction. Does that mean he would need to be here indefinitely? NO.