Can Browns owner Jimmy Haslam fire Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown and keep head coach Hue Jackson?

 

OK, OK, I know, Haslam can do anything he wants. He’s the owner. The buck stops at his desk, which is, by the way, where he sits when he signs everyone in the organization’s paycheck.

 

But what I’m asking is this: Are Brown and Jackson a matched set, indelibly teathered to each other in that if you fire one, you have fired the other as well?

 

I don’t think they are. I know that in most cases, the head football guy and the head coach are indeed joined at the hip. It’s none or both when it comes to keeping them. They cover each other’s backs. I don’t think this is “most cases.” I think it is a separate case because of the newness of the analytics approach and the fact Brown is hardly a traditional football guy, whereas Jackson is – through and through.

 

Jackson had – and still has – Brown’s back, but the reverse is not true. Brown didn’t – and doesn’t – have Jackson’s back.

 

Jackson is a good coach and I don’t want to see the Browns lose him. Good coaches are too hard to come by. The Browns players rave about him. The players for the team he used to serve as an assistant coach, the Cincinnati Bengals, think the world and all of him, too,

 

I have yet to hear anyone – anyone at all – speak on Brown’s behalf in that way. As I’ve said before, I think he is egotistical and selfish. I think he is a cancer. The Browns can certainly – and easily — do without him, but I don’t want to see them do without Jackson.

 

If Haslam wants to keep both of them, then I would begrudgingly sign off on him doing that so as to keep Jackson. But I think the Browns can add a new chief football guy and mesh him with Jackson, who is a good guy and easy to get along with. I think they would be much better off in that regard.

 

But would Haslam would be willing to do that? Ah, that’s the big question now in the room at Browns Headquarters in Berea.