As I’ve said on brownsdailydose.com any number of times already, nobody has as good of a grasp on the Browns – the real inside scoop — than Jim Donovan, their longtime radio play-by-play announcer.
If want to know what’s going on with this team, listen to Donovan.
As such, then, I called him two days before training camp began in late July to get his opinions on a variety of topics concerning the Browns. He made a lot of interesting comments, but there was one thing that has stuck with me more than anything else in the three months since.
“For this thing to work, they’re all going to have play nice with one another out in Berea, and they haven’t always been able to do that,” he said.
Donovan was referring, of course, to the constant discord over the years between the people on the expansion-era Browns making the personnel decisions, and the head coaches.
Chris Palmer and Dwight Clark didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Eric Mangini and George Kokinis really didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Mike Pettine and Ray “Wipe the Sweat Off My Head With a Big, White Towel During a Press Conference” Farmer really didn’t see eye-to-eye, either.
And now we’re finding out what we suspected all along – what Donovan astutely cautioned me about way back when – that the current head coach and the chief personnel guy, Hue Jackson and Sashi Brown, respectively, also don’t get along.
Join the crowd, guys. The room is pretty full. Hope you can find seats. If not, then you’re just going to have to stand. Sorry about that.
Not again!
Geeeeessssssshhhhh!
I like Jackson – a lot. I think he’s the right coach for this team. But I’m going to throw him under the bus right along with Brown – Sashi, not Jim — for being unable to get along well enough to do what’s right for the team. Instead, we have huge egos and stubbornness getting in the way. It’s why the Browns are stuck in the mud now, and have been for nearly 20 years.
You don’t hear this kind of stuff from the top franchises in the NFL, but you constantly hear it from the Browns.
That should tell you everything you need to know.
It should make Browns owner Jimmy Haslam livid.
It should make the fans livid.
It should make me livid.
In every case, I know that it does.
The relationship between a head coach and the chief personnel guy has to be a professional marriage. They can fight it out behind closed doors all they want, but at some point, they have to agree to disagree and be able to come to some kind of common ground so as to make a decision that benefits the team.
That’s what they’re being paid – millions and millions of dollars, in fact – to do. That they can’t do it and/or just refuse to do it for whatever reason, is a violation of their contracts and their responsibility to Haslam, the team, the fans and the community.
I hope Haslam doesn’t fire Jackson because I think it’s Brown who is the real culprit in this, but if he fired both of them, I really couldn’t argue with that.
