Watch: Browns WR Terrelle Pryor makes acrobatic catch, his first of the season
January 3, 2016Report: Cleveland Browns fire General Manager Ray Farmer
January 3, 2016Does anyone want to talk about the game itself? The Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Football1 played on Sunday and it was kinda meaningful in many ways, but really, who cares? Pittsburgh had playoff implications and the Browns had draft implications, which is the way life has been for both teams for the better part of two decades now. It’s our Stairway to Heaven, except we can’t get the Browns to stop playing it in the guitar shop. I watched both the Browns and Tennessee today to see who would make the strongest case for the weakest season, and thus the best draft pick, but I didn’t care that much about the draft implications today. Austin Davis did his part allowing the Browns to lose, so whatever. So let’s talk about the stampeding elephants in the room that will be running from a FirstEnergy Stadium luxury box to the polished office space that Joe Banner re-built in Berea. For the purposes of this, we’re just going to assume that Mike Pettine and Ray Farmer2 are going to be fired. Let’s talk about the reality of how we got here. Oh, yeah, the Browns lost to the Steelers 28 to 12 in an embarrassing display of sloppiness and field goals. Moving along…
You can’t blame Mike Pettine alone for his fate. He’s made plenty of his own issues and his grudge list / doghouse is about as frustrating as any other part of his coaching tenure in Cleveland. Those alone didn’t sink him. The reports out of Berea about the lack of cohesion between all the varying departments in Berea helped him and he isn’t solely responsible. Kyle Shanahan might have always left, but the way he left touching off and illuminating a texting scandal that forever impacted Pettine’s time in Cleveland was something special. From having a one-and-done offense to cementing the tangible rift between personnel and coaching that was likely responsible for his handling of guys like Johnny Manziel, Justin Gilbert, and Dwayne Bowe. All that could have gone wrong seemed to go wrong, and everyone had a hand in creating an environment so polluted that BP and Exxon shudder at the mere thought.
The guilty have to include Alec Scheiner and Browns owner Jimmy Haslam. I’ve been a defender of Scheiner’s since he was hired, but even if you’re the President in charge of business, at some point you don’t get to carry such a lofty title like President and not stand accountable for some of the carnage around you. This is especially true when the rumors around town talk about your hunger for power equalling Akronites waiting for Galley Boys in their cars outside of Swenson’s.
Jimmy Haslam was supposed to bring some semblance of expertise at running a corporation that includes disparate departments. Jimmy Haslam emerged from the Pilot / Flying J scandals relatively unscathed – if much lighter in the pocket by $92 million – and failed to keep the people that report to him from collapsing into a bickering, butt-covering crew of loser-icious middle schoolers. So even if Jimmy Haslam and Alec Scheiner are left to talk about the steps forward without Mike Pettine and Ray Farmer, they don’t get to act like they didn’t help drag the wheel in different directions too.
Even Ray Farmer can’t be blamed in total for his own disastrous reign in Cleveland. He lived by consensus and is now dying by that hand as well. When Ray Farmer said he was going to keep doing what he was doing in his sweat-drenched press conference, I got what he meant. You keep scouting. You keep grinding away and you try and pick the best players possible while retaining and signing free agents. You can’t undo your biggest mistakes, but you can keep working your process and learning and maneuvering. That said, Ray Farmer can’t survive with how little has gone right for the Browns this year. He can’t survive unless Mike Pettine survives as well. Why? Who wants to come in and work under the texting GM that is responsible for the department that likely missed on three out of four first rounders in the last two seasons. If the coaching search was a disaster with Joe Banner at the helm, it might be better to assume you need a clean slate in order to entice the best of the available NFL head coaching candidates.
All that said, you can’t help but wonder if the Browns job is indeed an attractive one. As names like Adam Gase get bandied about, it sounds like the best guys are going to have their choice of jobs. As much as ever, it’s hard to assume the Browns meat grinder of a head coaching position is going to be attractive. Maybe the promise of having one of the top two picks in the NFL draft will help and maybe a clean slate in personnel will help too. There’s also the wild card possibility that the Browns have a rock star professional football person coming in the door to be the President of football operations and that will entice people, but absent that, it’s hard to believe the Browns will have any advantage in luring talent.
So strap in Browns fans. It’s already been a wild ride and we all have neck braces from the previous incidences of whiplash to the point that the personal injury law firms that sponsor the injury report should be overworked. Such is life as a Cleveland Browns fan. Things aren’t good, but with change there’s always a chance that things could get better. It’s hard to think things could get any worse. Seeing FirstEnergy Stadium once again become a home game for Pittsburgh Football is a regular occurrence and that’s about as low as things can ever get absent another team move.
As Pittsburgh found out they made the playoffs via another game and the black and yellow faithful chanted and cheered at a Browns “home game,” this wasn’t about anyone but Jimmy Haslam.
Soak in this Jimmy Haslam. I'm not doing it. This isn't about me or my fellow Browns fans. This is about you. Look at your stadium.
— WaitingForNextYear (@WFNYCLE) January 3, 2016
Your move Jimmy.
- I love how the Browns Friday Fumble talks about that team. [↩]
- Fire Roy Farmer! [↩]
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This past season in one photo:
http://theocddiaries.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Middle-Finger-Mushroom-Cloud.jpg
And so we begin again…and again…and again…and again…and again…