It wasn't supposed to be like this
anymore.
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Do you trust these men? |
Eighteen months ago Cleveland
Browns' owner Randy Lerner sold the town's most beloved sports franchise to Tennessee businessman
Jimmy Haslam. The move was long overdue, as the team's losing ways and shabby sideshow
of a front office had made it a national punchline.
The odds of such a confluence of incompetence striking again seems astronomical, although it does align quite well with the defeatist "Only in
But it's hard to blame the
pessimists after the Browns' new front office deep-sixed
its very first head coaching hire less than one calendar year after
employing him. It has nothing to do with any particular love for Rob
Chudzinski, a prototypical "unproven coordinator guy" the Browns
settled on after candidates like Chip Kelly landed elsewhere. What rankles is
the seeming continuance of disorder and chaos in Berea ; the sense that the Browns are still a
rudderless ship despite the top-down alterations.
Amid all the anger and skepticism
over the team's sorry state, some find it admirable that Haslam and president
Joe Banner are owning up to the "mistake"
of the Chudzinski hire, choosing to jettison him now rather than waste another
year with him in tow. Perhaps, but that gives me little comfort considering how
quickly turmoil has descended on this organization under Haslam's brief
stewardship. Why should anyone trust these guys to get the next coaching hire right?
It beggars belief that, early in
this new regime's history at least, almost nothing has changed with how this
franchise operates. Haslam said at today's presser that he was
"galled" by fans thinking this is the "same old Browns."
Strong words, but Haslam done little so far to make us believe that the culture
of losing he's inherited is going to drastically improve anytime soon.