For some unknown reason, which will probably end up costing him his job, Browns General Manager Ray Farmer thinks it’s beneath him to have a sense of urgency to find a way to get the struggling team to start winning and get things turned around.
Perhaps it would get him jump-started in that direction – and perhaps not, because he thinks he’s always the smartest guy in the room – if he knew that Bill Belichick once had a sense of urgency for him and his team, and he let everybody know such.
In fact, it launched both to greatness.
Belichick was just 37-45 for his five years (1991-95) with the Browns, with but one playoff appearance, in his first head coaching job. In addition to the losing, he left Cleveland with the reputation of having a negative personality that made him hard, if not almost impossible, to get along with.
Not winning is bad enough. Being irascible to boot simply made matters worse.
Hiring him, then, was viewed as being as being a public relations disaster both on and off the field.
But give New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft a lot of credit. Following the 1999 season, in which his Pete Carroll-coached team finished 8-8 and missed the playoffs, he saw in Belichick the same guy Art Modell saw when he hired him in Cleveland – that is, a determined, organized, detailed-oriented genius with a specific plan and a work ethic that made him truly special.
So Kraft, needing a coach after firing Carroll, hired Belichick.
Then disaster ensued.
The Patriots lost their first four games in that initial season of 2000, exhibiting the same offensively-challenged look that dogged Belichick in Cleveland as they scored 16, 19, 13 and three points.
The offense eventually got better – but not much — as the Pats went 5-7 the rest of the way to finish 5-11. Included in those final 12 games was a 19-11 loss at Cleveland to a Doug Pederson-quarterbacked Browns team that broke a seven-game losing on its way to a 3-13 finish. After handcuffing the New England offense, the Cleveland defense gave up 44, 48 and 35 points in successive weeks as the club lost its last five games.
So losing to the Browns was the lowest of lows.
The fans and media members in Boston, who weren’t exactly hopeful when Belichick was hired based on what had happened to him with the Browns, started to dog him even more.
The start of the 2001 season served only to feed that emotion. In three of the four games in going 1-3, the Pats struggled gain – mightily so – on offense, scoring 17, 10 and three points.
Adding even more fuel to the fire was the fact that after two games, both losses, Belichick did what he did in Cleveland in 1993 with Bernie Kosar and Todd Philcox in benching a popular, successful veteran quarterback in Drew Bledsoe, who started against the Browns in the playoff loss at Cleveland in 1994, and replacing him with a young, virtual unknown in Tom Brady. Brady, a sixth-round pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, had played in just one game as a rookie, going 1 of 3 passing for 6 yards.
Brady won his first start, interestingly enough over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, in lopsided fashion, then lost in lopsided fashion to the Miami Dolphins the following week.
With the San Diego Chargers, who were rolling along with a 3-1 record even though they were coming off a 20-16 loss to the Browns, coming to town, Belichick realized the need for a sense of urgency and laid it on the line to his team in a meeting.
“Guys, if we don’t get this thing turned around, we’re all going to get fired,” he said.
With Brady having a breakout game by throwing for 364 yards and two touchdowns, including one with just 36 seconds left in regulation to tie the score, the Pats rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to win 29-26 in overtime.
That huge, huge victory was the turning point in Belichick’s career, and the New England franchise. It launched what is now a decade and a half-long run of success.
The Pats won eight of their final 10 in 2001, including their last five (and a 27-16 decision over the Browns), to finish 11-5. They went on to win the Super Bowl, the first of three such titles in a four-year period.
They’ve made it to three other Super Bowls since then, winning one (last year over Carroll’s Seattle Seahawks) and are 8-0 this season looking almost unbeatable.
The Pats are one of the NFL’s dynasties, and Belichick is regarded as the greatest coach in the league and one of the greatest ever.
It doesn’t get much better than that.
All because of a sense of urgency.
If only Farmer, and head coach Mike Pettine as well, felt that same urgent need to start winning now.
The fact Pettine thinks playing Josh McCown, who is 2-15 in his last 17 starts, gives the Browns their best chance to win, makes him about as culpable for this laissez-faire attitude as the GM with whom he can’t get along.
