What went wrong with the Browns over the previous two seasons?
Plenty. The list is seemingly endless. Everybody knows that. In fact, all of you reading this can wax poetic on a number of those reasons, those problems.
But at the crux of nearly all of those issues was another issue. It is that the Browns’ top two football men didn’t communicate.
Actually, former head coach Mike Pettine and ex-General Manager Ray Farmer refused to communicate. They hated each other, and for either one of them to simply speak to the other was a sign of weakness, or giving in. And neither one of those prideful, ego-centered men were willing to do that. Instead, they worked all day, every day to undermine each other, causing the Browns to suffer greatly. This made the Browns the poster boys for a dysfunctional organization.
The relationship between a team’s head coach and its GM has to be like that of a marriage. That’s what it is, a professional marriage in which there is constant communication and give and take. The goal is not to enhance either one of the parties individually, especially at the expense of the other, but to enhance both of them together.
As Blanton Collier, the head coach of the 1964 NFL champion Browns, always liked to say, “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit.” And conversely, as in personified by the 2014 and ’15 Browns when Pettine and Farmer were “working” together, it’s amazing how little can be accomplished when all that anyone cares about is who gets the credit – or, as it were, blame.
Indeed, without communication, a team is finished. It is destined to lose, with everybody eventually getting fired, which is exactly what happened first to the Browns, and then to Farmer and Pettine. The two men should have been canned long before they were at the end of the season. It was painfully obvious long before that, that it wasn’t going to work with them. They should be forever grateful to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam that he didn’t pull the plug on them at that time.
All of that has brought us to this point, with an organization made up of head coach Hue Jackson, Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown, Chief Strategy Office (analytics) Paul DePodesta and Vice President of Player Personnel Andrew Berry. It is a multi-member marriage, and for it to work, everybody – everybody! — is going to have to get along.
BEREA, OH – JANUARY 21, 2016: Chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta of the Cleveland Browns answers questions during an introductory press conference on January 21, 2016 at the Cleveland Browns training facility in Berea, Ohio. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Paul DePodesta
The feeling here is that it will happen. Both Brown and Jackson, the top two decision-makers if you wanted to rank them as such, have talked about the importance of communication. Brown watched the lack of it destroy the Browns the last two seasons from his vantage point as the club’s legal counsel, so if he does nothing else in this new job, he’s going to make sure that everybody is on the same page, mentally, emotionally, physically and yes, verbally. He knows all too well – and so does Jackson, a veteran coach – that if that does not happen, then success will never, ever come.
I bring all this up because of something I read in the week going into the Super Bowl, and haven’t been able to get off my mind since. Yes, Carolina got manhandled in Super Bowl 50 in losing 24-10 to the Denver Broncos, but up until that point, the Panthers had been the top team in the league virtually all year. They finished the regular season with an NFL-best 15-1 record, then blew through the defending NFC champion Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals in the playoffs, upping that mark to 17-1. They were a juggernaut.
The Panthers’ top two football decision-makers, GM Dave Gettleman and head coach Ron Rivera, did not come to the team at the same time (Rivera was there first) and had no relationship previously. They were professional strangers, just kind of thrown together, as is the case with the men running the Browns.
Nonetheless, they worked hard to get to know each other, which led to mutual trust and respect, which, in turn, led to them working together to build a great team.
“For Ron and I, none of it was difficult, and I’m not just saying that,” Gettleman said in reference to his relationship with Rivera. “We haven’t had a cross word with each other yet.
“The biggest thing is it’s professional. We listen to each other. He says something, I’m listening. I say something, he’s listening. And we respect each other’s ability to do our individual jobs. It just works. We have a lot of the same philosophy. We just get along.”
Rivera added of Gettleman’s arrival in Charlotte, “I think the biggest thing, more than anything else, is that we communicated. We talked about things. We had open dialogue. Ron didn’t come in and blow things up. He came in and listened, and I think that was important. He talked, I talked. He listened, I listened. And we continue to do that.
“At the end of the day, when we make a decision, it’s not because it’s his decision or my decision. It’s because we’ve gathered the information and we walk away feeling good about our decisions.”
If only the members of this new Browns regime can follow the lead of Dave Gettleman and Ron Rivera.
