TO BE A WINNER, YOU’VE GOT TO WIN THE CLOSE ONES

By STEVE KING

This isn’t real complicated, and it’s something that football fans at all levels have heard often.

That is, a team has to win games that are there to be won. And when they don’t, the effects are devastating. It can be a death knell for the team, its coach and its players.

Browns head coach Hue Jackson knows all about this adage. It’s why he is in deep, deep trouble when it comes to his job security.

The Browns this year have played four overtime games – four! – already this season in just seven weeks. They had a chance to win all of them, and in fact, on several occasions, a very good chance. But they’ve won just one of them. They’ve lost two and tied one.

They also suffered a three-point loss on a field goal in the closing minutes of regulation.

You can’t do that – you just can’t do that – and survive as a coach, especially when you entered the season with a 1-31 record when a good number of the defeats were close decisions the Browns simply let slip away.

At some point, you’ve got to start winning those winnable games, and that point had better not be too far into a coach’s time with that team.

You see, most of these NFL games are very close. They go down to the wire, or at least very nearly so.

It’s just the way the league execs want it. They don’t want parity in just wins and losses among its teams. They also want that parity to extend to how the wins and losses come about.

Routs are out. Nail-biters cut it.

The NFL likes it when everybody has a little – or, more preferably, a lot — of the stuff that was all through the 1980 Kardiac Kids Browns.

The good coaches find a way to win the vast majority of those close games. That’s why they’re good. The bad coaches don’t. That’s why they’re bad.

And therein lies the ugly, unpleasant truth of Hue Jackson’s time in Cleveland.

ANOTHER DAY OF HUE BEING HUE IS GREAT

Once again, the quotes of Browns head coach Hue Jackson and offensive coordinator Todd Haley made the day Thursday as the Browns continued to get ready for Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Heinz Field.

If Jackson ends up getting fired sooner rather than later, which certainly looks like it’s going to happen, or at least that it could happen, then I will definitely miss him and his words. Never in the history of the Browns has a head coach – or a coach at any level, really – been more forthcoming, open and honest with his thoughts and feelings on topics that matter. The fans deserve that kind of transparency, and they’ve really gotten it from Jackson.

Here’s Jackson’s response to being asked about rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield and his development and long-term potential, especially considering that the other teams in the AFC North all have longtime quarterbacks who played as rookies:

“I think that you think about it. Obviously, when we drafted him, whenever it was that he was going to play, our goal was that he is going to be our quarterback. He has to continue to progress and continue to get better. I am not trying to compare him to anybody. I do not think that would be fair. I think that he is going to blaze his own trail as we go. Hopefully, it will be somewhat like the guys in our division’s career have gone. Like you said, all of those guys played as rookies. They have been the quarterbacks of their teams for a long time. I think that was the vision when we drafted him.”

On if Jackson was worried that his comments about getting more involved in the struggling offense might be interpreted the wrong way by Haley:

“I do not think I was worried that he would take my comments the wrong way. I was worried that he would take what everybody was saying and writing and the way that everybody made it out to be the wrong way. You always have to handle those things very quickly and privately. We did, and we move on. Like I said, he has been great.”

And finally, Jackson on the public perception that the sky is falling with the Browns having lost two straight games to fall to 2-4-1:

“I think that (the public perception is) ‘the sky is falling’ here because we have been in so many games. You are so close. If you can win a couple of those, nobody would be feeling that way. We just have not. Does not matter what the reasons are. We just have not done it. There, they are a confident group. They have been down before where they have not started fast, and all of a sudden, they get on a run and away they go. We just have not done that yet. When we become that team that starts winning games consecutively, week in and week out – regardless of where it is, on the road, at home, wherever – then I think that the narrative will change. We will change it, but it is not going to change until then.”

In my next post, I’ll look at some cool things that Haley, who is also so open and honest, said Thursday.