Just as is the case in Cleveland, they are trying to change the culture of losing in Detroit.
But it is different in the two cities.
Browns General Manager Ray Farmer spews out a lot of double-talk about the situation with the team, making it hard to understand just what, exactly, he’s saying and what, exactly, he means. He doesn’t take any blame for the club’s struggles – nothing bad is ever his fault, in his estimation – and there is no sense of urgency in anything he does or says.
Winning games? Yeah, that’s something he eventually mentions – that is, if he talks long enough.
In a bottom-line, results-based business such as the NFL, why doesn’t winning dominant each and every conversation?
To say it is incredibly maddening, frustrating and hard to explain is understating the situation greatly.
In Detroit, owner and Akron native Martha Firestone Ford, as feisty, driven and no-nonsense of a 90-year-old as you’re ever going to see, fired General Martin Mayhew a season and a half after the Lions went 11-5 and made the playoffs as a wild card, then lost to the Dallas Cowboys in the first round on a horrific call by the officials.
Three years earlier, in 2011, the Lions finished 10-6 and also went to the postseason as a wild card, losing in the first round.
The Browns haven’t made the playoffs since 2002. They have had seven straight losing seasons and, with a 2-7 record as they get ready to play the Steelers in Pittsburgh on Sunday, are well on their way this year to making it eight. They were 7-9 last year, 4-12 in 2013, 5-11 in ’12 and 4-12 in ’11.
Yet there is much more of a sense of urgency in Detroit than there is in Cleveland. In fact, any sense of urgency in Detroit would be more than there is in Cleveland, where there is none.
Sheldon White, who was promoted to interim GM after Mayhew’s firing, said Ford’s message to him was, “ ‘I need to win, and I want to win now.’ ”
White said there’s just one way for him to have a chance to get the job permanently.
“We have to win,” he said. “Will I be a candidate for general manager? I can give you that the best way to be a candidate is to win games. Obviously, if we don’t, then I won’t be a candidate.
“But If I win these games and we find ways to get better and improve our roster, maybe I will be.”
When he was given the interim tag, White said he considered holding an organizational meeting, but decided instead to handle concerns individually.
“I did not want to sit down and talk that everything’s OK,” he said. “It’s not OK. We have to win.”
He added, “Mrs. Ford told me she’s hiring me as the interim general manager, but the reality of it is this isn’t a Supreme Court Justice appointment. The only person with a lifetime appointment in this building is our owner.
“And so the way I look at everybody is that we’re all interim general managers, we’re interim coaches, we’re interim players. Eventually it’ll be over, and we’ll be telling stories.”
But in Cleveland, Justice Farmer thinks he has a lifetime appointment. He thinks he has an unlimited amount of time to get things turned around.
And the only way things will get turned around with the Browns is if they win. Period. End of statement. It’s not more complicated than that.
Nothing else – absolutely, positively nothing else – matters, even in the slightest.
Maybe Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has had the same conversation with Farmer – and second-year head coach Mike Pettine – that Martha Ford had with Sheldon White, and with Lions second-year head coach Jim Caldwell. And if Haslam hasn’t had it, then he needs to do so.
Now. This moment. This second. This instant.
Why? Because there’s a game on Sunday in Pittsburgh. And the Browns need to win it, then win again in their next game, and in the game after that, and so on and so forth.
