WaitingForNextYear

Leave it to the Browns to be 20 times more exciting during their bye week than at any time on the field so far in this toilet-bowl season. The he said/he said/he said drama continues to unfold in the aftermath of Kokinis being shown the door. Except that, now according to Peter King, Randy Lerner says he never “fired” Kokinis. He’s just, errr, no longer active in the organization.

Lerner’s official statement is fairly ambiguous: “George is no longer active within our organization, but at this time has not been fired.” Lerner also apparently said he began to “have doubts” about Kokinis as early as training camp, but as has been par for the course refused to address any specifics across the board.

Translation of all of this? “We haven’t found a legal loophole that allows us to fire him ‘for cause’ so at this time he’s not ‘fired’ yet.”

The biggest wrinkle to all of this is that apparently Kokinis got bait-and-switched into taking the job to begin with. Don Banks cites a great many “league sources” who have nothing but ill words about Eric Mangini and his superseding of his own contractual authorities:

[Kokinis] thought he was getting the job of a lifetime working with one of his best friends, but it wasn’t that at all. It was working for Eric Mangini, not with him. Eric was in charge of everything, and George resented that. It wasn’t the job he thought he’d taken. It wasn’t the partnership as he thought it would be. And he would have never taken it if he thought it was going to go that way. Ultimately what happened was he started to question his own existence in the organization. He was very unhappy. He takes the job, and from day one it was like they both had recipes for chicken soup, but they ended up trying to combine the recipes and all they did was ruin the dish.

To hear Banks tell it, the biggest sticking point in hiring Kokinis from Baltimore was that his contract HAD to include final say over the 53-man roster in order for his hire to be considered a league promotion and not a lateral move, and the Ravens insisted on it before they would let Kokinis out of his contract. Apparently, it seems Eric Mangini viewed that clause as simply a means to the end of getting Kokinis here, and never really subscribed to the idea of letting Kokinis have much—if any—say in the final roster:

“Two weeks into it, George is sitting there saying, ‘Why am I here?’” said another league source. “George gets there and finds out he’s a glorified personnel director. He gets out-voted on every front, and he doesn’t really have the personality to fight that. He went along with it and hoped it worked out, but it didn’t.”

And apparently, it’s now cost him his job. It almost is enough to make you feel sorry for the guy, considering he was given none of the authority he thought he was receiving, and his “good friend” Eric Mangini basically pushed him out of the way. The money quotes:

“Mangini thought he needed [Kokinis], and wanted him there, but he thought George would be compliant once he got the job,” a league source said. “George is a huge believer in going young and building through the draft, and Eric is too, to a degree. But he’s influenced by Belichick and Bill Parcells, and you know how they are, they both want their guys. They want their old players who know the system and the culture they’re trying to build. Even at the expense of good young players. So they sign a bunch of old Jets that Mangini had in New York. And they trade Kellen Winslow, and stay away from [drafting] Mark Sanchez, and trade Braylon Edwards for a bunch of Jets cast-offs. Just Jets cast-offs. They just had a different way of doing things, and it caused issues.”

…

“As Eric started taking on more and more power, [Kokinis] kind of saw what was happening and really kind of withdrew,” a league source said. “George has a great work ethic, and he’d rather sit and watch tape in his office than anything else. He figured out where things were headed. The owner hired Eric Mangini. George was basically hired by Mangini. So if you’re in that front office, who are you going to side with? It’s not that tough to figure out. I think he’s known for about two months now what was coming.”

Issues? To say the least. Two months? Wow. I picture Kokinis coming into work much like another George we all know so well: remember the episode of Seinfeld where George wasn’t sure if he had gotten the job, so he just showed up, took “the Penske file” and holed up in his office for a week or so? That’s the picture I have in my head of our GM. Hooray!

So, nuts and bolts time: if you signed a contract saying you’d have final say over the 53-man roster, got there to find out you didn’t, and then got fired halfway through the year, you’d probably think you had some legal recourse against it, right? Not so fast! Peter King puts it in a different way:

Another league source said he has been told the Browns will contend that Kokinis never tried to assert that authority, despite repeated attempts from the organization higher-ups urging him to take a stronger role in team affairs. If that’s the case, then the team likely has documented his perceived failings.

And Banks cites yet another “league source” that says Lerner is definitely playing hardball:

According to sources, Lerner asked Kokinis to resign, and when Kokinis refused, made it clear to Kokinis the club would seek a dismissal “for cause,” citing a lack of performance of his duties as GM. That would allow the Browns to contend they have no obligation to pay the balance of the five-year contract (at about $1 million per year) it gave Kokinis in January.

“They’re going to look at his phone records and try to make some case that says he was trying to give away trade secrets to other teams or something,” a league source said. “But it’s not going to stick. It won’t work. They’re just trying to find something to prove a lack of performance.”

So, in the end, is Kokinis being “fired” (or, is just “no longer working with the organization”) for being a wuss who wouldn’t stand up to his friend? And possibly for “trading secrets”? My first reaction to that last point is: what secrets? What could he possibly tell other teams that would be ground-breaking? It’s not like other teams need help to pound the Browns into the turf each weekend.

At any rate, it sounds like a great experience all around. Could this lack of assertion on the part of Kokinis be one of the “doubts” that Lerner supposes to have had about him in training camp? Most importantly, what does this mean for the future of the front office? Lerner has given no indication of wanting to remove Mangini from the equation anytime soon: “I still believe in Eric, and we’re trying to give him the resources he needs to be successful. We all knew the situation we were in when Eric took over.”

King mentions the names of two men: Ernie Accorsi, and Mike Holmgren. We’ve talked about the former already, and the latter seems like an odd fit to me. Holmgren only had playoff success in Green Bay while working with Ron Wolf, and only had it in Seattle after being forced to give up the GM duties and returned to being solely a coach. Doesn’t sound like the ideal GM candidate to me. The only thing there is that Holmgren definitely has the personality experience to stand up to Mangini, and has the (coaching) resume to back up his words.

One thing is clear from reading all of this: whomever the next GM of the Cleveland Browns may be, it will be someone with some huevos to either put Mangini in his place, or clean his entire house out altogether. One of Banks’ “league sources”says it’s all moot for Mangini at this point:

“So this week they sacrificed George Kokinis,” a league source said. “They stuck his head on a stick, stuck it out the window and the fans cheered. For all of about 20 minutes. But then it’s, ‘Wait a minute. This isn’t really the guy who was responsible.’ This is Randy Lerner being under the spell of Eric Mangini. To a degree. [Mangini's] done at the end of the year. And a lot of it is deserved. He’s got no chance at this point. The fans are never going to accept the guy. It just wasn’t his turn [to go] yet.”

Whatever the decision, the ball is definitely in your court, Randy. Nice legs, by the way.

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Photo Credits: AP

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