HUE LACKED A REAL SENSE OF URGENCY
By STEVE KING
Look, I like Hue Jackson. I like him a lot.
All of you who visit brownsailydose.com regularly know that.
Nonetheless, I am puzzled – and disappointed – by the former Browns head coach’s comments a couple days ago that he knew he would be able to eventually fix the team’s struggling offense.
What?
Are you kidding me?
Hue was brought in with the reputation of being an offensive guru, expert, quarterback whisperer and the like. He was supposed to be the guy to get the Browns offense, which has sputtered for almost all of the two-decade expansion era, finally untracked.
He didn’t do it in his first two seasons, during which he also served as his own offensive coordinator, and he didn’t do in the first half of this season, during which he was overseeing the offense as it was being coordinated by Todd Haley.
All that time and no real progress with the offense. Couple that with no real progress — actually a regression – in terms of winning.
No offense. No winning. No fun.
Jackson’s Browns didn’t win and they weren’t entertaining. Even with all the close games this year, they were much more frustrating than they were a must-see.
So, then, just when were Hue’s Browns going to get better offensively? When were they going to be worth watching? And, most importantly, when were they going to start winning consistently?
Did he think he had forever to get all this done? Is he not aware that there are no long-term rebuilding plans in the NFL anymore. NFL stands, of course, for “not for long.” As such, then, by year three of a coach’s tenure, there has to be some markedly improvement. Does 2-5-1, with a three-game losing streak, sound like marked improvement to you?
Hue said any number of times that the focus would be on winning this year? Was that just verbal diarrhea?
Judging from the results, I think so.
No, rather, I know so.
Then this:
Former Browns head coach Hue Jackson is losing more respect – with me, anyway, and I’m guessing a lot of other people as well – with each passing day.
He just won’t shut up about his being fired on Monday,
It’s self-serving, It’s disrespectful. It’s hurtful. It’s unnecessary.
It’s just wrong.
Jackson apparently doesn’t care at all about the Browns, especially his former players and coaches. Perhaps he never did, certainly, at least, not as much as he proclaimed he did.
For if he did, he would keep his big mouth shut. He would take the millions of dollars the Browns will pay him through the remainder of his contract and just go away.
Instead, he keeps yapping and yapping and yapping to this reporter and that, to this media outlet and that one, about what happened to him in Cleveland and all the seemingly good things he could have done if the Browns had just let him stay in his job.
And keep losing games.
And keep having lousy offensive performances.
And keep turning in non-entertaining performances.
All while under the guise of directing the Browns’ rebuild.
What rebuild, for goodness sake? He won three games in three years. Jimmy Haslam could have hired a guy off the street and gotten three wins in three years.
But the point of the matter is that all this verbal diarrhea that Hue is spewing – all Hue all the time, as it were – is proving to be a gigantic distraction to the Browns as they try to move on, regroup and get ready to host the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday at FirstEnergy Stadium.
As a coach – albeit a former coach – Hue knows all about distractions and how they hurt a football team in its focus and game preparation. Yet he is making himself the story and being that distraction – that annoyance, that noisy, squeaky thing in the corner making that awful, numbing sound.
Please, Hue Jackson, just quit talking. No one cares anymore about what you have to say.
It is all old news.
