Dear Ray:
You have just begun your four-game, or one-month, suspension handed down from the NFL for your involvement in Textgate last season. We hope you use the time wisely to think not about what you’ve done – that’s past, that’s history and there’s nothing you can do about it now – but rather to ponder who you are and what you need to do to change yourself, if that is at all possible.
Your boss, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, said you know what you did was wrong and are sorry for it.
I’m sorry, Ray, but I don’t buy that, not in the least bit. Actually, I think the only thing you’re sorry about is that you got caught.
And furthermore, I think if you hadn’t gotten caught, you’d still be doing it, and probably other things as well that you shouldn’t be doing.
A team is a family, and in that family, the head coach and general manager have to be like a husband and wife. They have to be joined at the hip and on the same page at all times.
You knew what you were doing was wrong in every way, shape or form. It was wrong from a contractual standpoint in that you don’t control who suits up on gameday and who plays, when, where and for how long. Those are head coach Mike Pettine’s calls. It’s in his contract. You control only the 53-man roster.
That you were trying to take his responsibilities as your own, without his approval or even knowledge, is akin to cutting Pettine’s legs out from under him. That is far worse than violating the stipulations of your contract. That’s violating Pettine’s trust and the trust of everybody in the organization.
With deceitful actions like that taking place at the highest levels of the organization, is it any wonder why the Browns struggle? They are dysfunctional, and you’re a big reason for that.

You are lucky Pettine didn’t blast you in the media. He could have, and should have, for you humiliated him in public. But he was, and still is, the bigger man, the better family member, the better teammate and the better person.
Because no one with the Browns now has any knowledge of the team’s history, you have no idea who Blanton Collier is. He was the head coach of the 1964 NFL champion Browns, and, more important that, he also forgot 10 times more football than everybody in your organization put together. Collier understood the essence of teamwork and as such, he always said, “It’s amazing what you can get done when no one cares who gets the credit for it.”
You don’t get that, Ray. The way you see your job with the Browns, it’s all about you, and only you, 24/7, 365. That’s why you refuse to take wide receivers at the top of the NFL Draft even though they are a valuable commodity with the way the game is played now with such an emphasis on offense, passing and scoring. That you ignore that is, once again, yet another example of you letting your FirstEnergy Stadium-sized ego get in the way of your judgment.
When a person tries to prove that he’s the smartest person in the room, he ends up proving just the opposite. You’ve done that, Ray, and it’s a bad combination – both in your personal life and professionally — to be ignorant, bullheaded, selfish and untrustworthy. No one wants to be around someone like that.
Really, you’re lucky you still have a job, not just from all of your blown draft picks – the first round in 2014 was a disaster — but because of how you trashed the organization and everybody in it.
And if you want to continue to keep your job, then you have to pledge to work with your fellow employees and not against them, not behind their backs and not under the cover of darkness. To do that, you have to change your mindset. Moreover, you have to change your soul. You have to change who you are.
That’s hard to do for adults, for they say an individual’s personality is established by the time he’s 5 years old.
And that may be even harder for you to do, Ray, for I’m afraid you haven’t learned your lesson, and don’t want to learn it — ever.
If that’s the case, then you’re doomed, the team and organization are doomed and the season is doomed.
Your family, your fellow employees and the loyal Browns fans who want so desperately to have a winner, deserve better than that. They really do
As for you, Ray, with the fact this month away from the team is killing you, eating at you, you are getting exactly what you deserve. Whether you will have earned the right to deserve more by the end of the month is totally up to you.
Sincerely,
Steve King