The Browns are re-booting.
Again.
Hue Jackson is the club’s eighth full-time head coach of the expansion era. That this is the new Browns’ 18th season means that on the average, they have had a new coach every 2¼ years.
As such, they have become the Liz Taylor of pro football. She was married eight times.
That’s a numbing – and telling – statistic, especially for a team that had just one coach for its first 17 seasons, and two for its first 28, in Paul Brown and Blanton Collier.
Back then, nothing much changed with the Browns. They had great coaches, retained them and kept winning.
But in the expansion era, change has been the only constant. The Browns have had bad coaches, gotten rid of them quickly, then hired more bad coaches and kept losing.
Jackson knows all that history, and knows he doesn’t want to add his name to the list of people who have been part of the problem. Instead, he wants to be the guy to finally break this vicious cycle and get the Browns back on the right track for the first time in two decades.
Will he, though?
That remains to be seen.
Even the harshest critics of the Browns would have to admit that they have liked what they’ve seen thus far since Jackson arrived, but the real test, of course, will come when the regular season begins. That’s when tangible evidence from the games – not just with the wins and losses in this early going of the Jackson era, but also with the quality of the team’s play — will begin to surface as to whether or not he has a chance to be the coach for whom the Browns have been looking for a long, long time.
In a two-part series over the next two days, we’ll provide five reasons why Jackson will succeed (today) and also five reasons why he will fail (Monday).
First things first. Here is why he’ll make it in Cleveland:
1. LIKE QUARTERBACK, LIKE COACH – Just as the coach’s hand-picked quarterback, Robert Griffin III, is trying to resurrect his career after a horrible experience in Washington, Jackson is hoping to make a go of it with his own second chance after a forgettable – and short – first try with the Oakland Raiders. That’s a great motivator. Second opportunities are never guaranteed in any walk of life, sports or otherwise, so when you’re blessed enough to get one, you had better take full advantage of it. And Jackson will.
2. AND NOT JUST ANY OL’ OPPORTUNITY, EITHER – Football is bigger in Cleveland than it is almost anywhere in the NFL. Even with the years of losing, this is a football town, and a Browns town. From having been in Cincinnati – twice — and Baltimore, Jackson knows that full well. He knows that the coach who gets this thing right in Cleveland – and someone will, hopefully sooner rather than later – will become the toast of the town. He will be treated like royalty. Who wouldn’t want to have all that coming his way? Who wouldn’t want to begin leading a football resurgence in a place where the sport, and the team, are on the radar 24/7, 365? The Browns are a sleeping giant. To the coach who awakens them will go the spoils. Though Jackson would probably never talk about it on the record, you’ve got to believe that this is a driving force for him. It’s good when people have multiple factors pushing them to be their best.
3. HIS OPINIONS ARE OFFENSIVE – At all levels, particularly in the NFL, football has become an offensive game in which you don’t really stop your opponents, but rather you just outscore them. Jackson gets this. It’s a big part of his resume. It’s a refreshing change from people such as Mike Pettine, Eric Mangini and Romeo Crennel, whose combined understanding of offense could have been placed onto the head of a pin, with enough room left over to accommodate the state of Ohio — twice.
4. IT’S THE QUARTERBACK, STUPID – This is much like No. 3. Until they get the quarterback problem solved, the Browns are never, ever going to win consistently. It’s just that simple. It’s no more complicated than that. Jackson understands this, whereas most of his predecessors did not. And oh, by the way, having a master’s degree in quarterback is the biggest part of Jackson’s resume. So the odds are with him in that regard.
5. PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE – If it’s one thing that Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has figured out since officially taking over midway through the 2012 season, it is that running an NFL team is a whole heckuva lot harder than running a big chain of travel centers. As Haslam was trying to find his way in those first four seasons, he hired a lot of the wrong people, only to realize it shortly thereafter and then have to kick them out the door almost before they got settled, turning the entrance to Browns Headquarters in Berea into a revolving door. It wasn’t just a bad look. Rather, it was a horrible, disgusting one. Perhaps Haslam has finally gotten it right this time. He seems to have hired good people and he senses that, and as such he understands that what he must now do is leave them alone and let them do their jobs. The last thing he wants to do – the last thing he can afford to do – is quickly pull the plug again at the first sign of trouble and start over. That will give Jackson some extra time to work through the rough patches, and there will indeed be rough patches. The Browns need a lot more players to even have a chance to get to where they want to go. If Jackson gets fired, it will be because he deserved it – it will be because he had ample opportunity to implement his plan, but that it was simply wasn’t going to work. That’s all a coach can ask. It allows him to do his work without looking over his shoulder.
