THERE’S LOSING, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO LOOK STUPID DOING IT

By STEVE KING

Todd Haley was insubordinate in all kinds of ways. That’s why he is no longer the offensive coordinator of the Browns.

But his immediate boss, Browns head coach Hue Jackson, to whom he was being insubordinate, was also subordinate in his own right.

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How so? By fighting back. By acting like a little kid himself.

Say what you want about Browns owner Jimmy Haslam – and I’m sure you have, and will continue to do so – but he was paying, and still is paying, for that matter, those two guys an obscene amount of money. They are rich beyond their wildest dreams while most of the rest of us are trying to get by on chump change.

You would think they would be smart enough to behave themselves so as to keep their jobs as long as possible, and as such keep the cash flowing.

But no such luck. They’re both stupid – really, really stupid.

Moral of the story: Play nice with each other, boys – or else.

Now, this is obviously not the first time that the relationships of top Browns people with each other have been dysfunctional, and that’s putting it mildly. Haslam is taking a lot of heat for that, and said Monday that the fault was his.

Baloney!

The fault is that these guys – all these guys who have done this since he took over as owner – simply don’t respect the Browns, or working for them, because the organization has lost so much in the expansion era.

There’s no sure-fire way to keep that dysfunctionality from happening. The only thing an owner can do is exactly what Haslam did, fire all those involved and send a message to anybody and everybody that stuff like that – stuff that can poison an organization, and everybody in it, quicker than anything – simply won’t be tolerated anymore.

If there’s one good thing that has come out of this mess that is now bedeviling the Browns more than ever in the expansion era, it is that.

You can lose — and the Browns have certainly done that – but you don’t need to look goofy and disorganized doing it.

However, Jimmy Haslam – and also his wife and co-owner, Dee, for that matter – aren’t totally innocent in all this. There’s something very important that they must do going forward to make this work.

I’ll explain in my next post.

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