Chris Palmer, the first head coach of the Browns in the expansion era, will be on the opposite sideline on Sunday when his old team plays the Buffalo Bills at New Era Field.
In his second year with the Bills, he is officially listed as assistant head coach/offense, but with head coach Rex Ryan’s firing of Greg Roman as offensive coordinator, he is, in fact, sactually serving in that capacity.
Palmer is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in professional sports. It’s a tough business in which to be nice, but Palmer has always found a way to fit a benevolent personality into the workplace.
That’s why I was always confused by his demeanor with the Browns during his two seasons here in 1999 and 2000. He was always friendly with the media – at least most of them anyway, other than the one unnamed writer who worked very hard on cutting Palmer’s legs out from under him when things really went south in that second season – but he was different with the players.
Palmer was a Bill Parcells guy after having coached with him in New England and was greatly influenced by him. By conversations with Palmer, I could tell he did not really care for Parcells’ brutally abrupt manner. Nonetheless, when he took over in Cleveland, instead of being that communicator and teacher, much like current Browns head coach Hue Jackson, Palmer tried to be gruff – a hard guy — like Parcells.
It didn’t work. Not at all.
Whatever the profession, you have to be yourself, especially when you’re in a leadership capacity. When Palmer acted like someone he wasn’t, he cut his own legs out from under him.
It also didn’t help that when the Browns used the No. 1 overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft to select quarterback Tim Couch and as such proclaimed him the face of the franchise, and the man around whom they were going build their expansion franchise, Palmer stubbornly tried to fit him into the vertical passing game that he always favored. But, as evidenced by his career at Kentucky, Couch was a pitch-and-catch quarterback who liked to throw short passes while on the run.
Not surprisingly, it was a disaster. Again, whether you’re a coach or player, you’ve got to be who you are. You’ve got to play to your strengths.
But let’s be clear about the fact that Palmer got no help from the Browns’ director of football operations, Dwight Clark, whose skills as a talent evaluator were far less than those he possessed as a star wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. With his ignorance in that regard, Clark helped cut Palmer’s legs out from under him.
However, that was a long time ago – ancient history, as it were – and so I won’t be thinking about any of that on Sunday when the Browns play the Bills. Instead, I’ll remember Chris Palmer’s friendliness way back when, and whenever our paths have crossed since.
He might not have been a good NFL head coach, but he’s a good offensive football man, and, most importantly, a good man overall.
