After all the long, long, long pieces in our 70 for 70 best Browns of all-time series, which we hope you enjoyed, we thought we’d give you a little bit of a quicker read with something lighter and more fun and let you get on with your day.
Browns head coach Hue Jackson has gotten high marks since getting hired in January. Perhaps – or perhaps not – the opinion of him will change once the regular season arrives and the games begin. We’ll just have to wait and see.
But the people in Cleveland aren’t the only ones who seem to like Jackson, who previously was the offensive coordinator with Ohio’s other team, the AFC North rival Cincinnati Bengals.
I found that out recently when I met a woman from the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming. One thing led to another and I found out that she’s a huge Bengals fan. In addition, her husband is an even bigger fan, having had season tickets for, as she described it, “I don’t even know how many years, but it’s been a long time.”
But with him back home, she had the floor completely to herself to talk about the Bengals. She focused almost all of her attention on one man.
“We love Hue Jackson down there,” she said in a somewhat somber tone. “We just hated to see him go.”
Then she got a big smile on her face.
“Here, let me show you a photo on my phone,” she said, reaching into her back pocket. “It’s of me standing with Hue. It was taken a couple years ago at one of those Football 101 classes they have for women to understand the game. He was such a nice guy in explaining everything and answering questions. We’ll miss him.”
Not having Hue Jackson is bad for the Bengals, but good for the Browns, right?
Yeah, right.
“I just wish we could win a playoff game down there,” the lady said. ‘’I don’t know. Every year we get into the playoffs and then we lose.”
The Bengals have made the postseason in each of the last five seasons and have lost their first game every time. In addition, they dropped their first game the other two times before that when they qualified for the playoffs, in 2009 and ’05.
So they’re 0-7 in the playoffs in the last decade, all with Marvin Lewis as head coach.
The last Bengals victory in the playoffs came 26 years ago, way back in the 1990 season, when they captured the title in a very average AFC Central with a 9-7 record. They edged out on tie-breakers the Houston Oilers and Pittsburgh Steelers, who also finished 9-7. The Bengals then routed the Oilers 41-14 in the wild-card round before losing 20-10 to the Los Angeles Raiders in the divisional round.
In 1990, Jackson was in the first year of a two-season stint as the running backs coach and special teams coach at Cal State Fullerton.
Since 1990, the Browns have made the playoffs just twice and have a combined 1-2 record.
But I didn’t mention that to the woman.
It’s good to hear fans elsewhere in the division complain about their team.
