The Cleveland Browns 2009 Retrospective--Installment #2

Note: The Cleveland Browns 2009 season was one for the ages. It could be summed up in as little as one word “oy” or 100 million. I’ve opted for somewhere between the two. It may be that all of you, or most anyway, are so tired of this past season that you’d rather have your toe nails pulled than read another word about it. Believe me, I understand. But for those brave few willing to go along on one final journey with me, just know that I appreciate your courage and have tried to make it worth your while.


Part III. This is the Part Where Mangini and Kokinis Lower the Bar and Blame the Past

The interesting thing about Mangini is that whenever he really wanted to get some kind of information out there, he was usually able to find a way. In a story he or someone inside the organization essentially tipped to the Plain Dealer, Mangini let it be known that he felt the franchise was being handicapped by the former regime because of roster bonuses due several players, including Joe Jurevicius, Kevn Shaffer, Derek Anderson, Stallworth, Joe Thomas, Corey Williams, Shaun Rogers and Jamal Lewis.

In truth, these roster bonuses were simply the by-product of trying to fit high-priced players into a salary cap by signing them to long-term contracts. The Browns were well under the salary cap anyway and the structuring of these contracts was one of the reasons why. Moreover, these bonuses served as convenient mile posts for making future decisions about certain players. They kept the Browns from being locked up in salary cap hell in the future.

Using them as an excuse was a nice narrative for Mangini to try to get out there, but it just wasn’t accurate. Paying players like Thomas and Rogers was a no-brainer. Anderson was a little more iffy as was Lewis. Jurevicius was only owed $250,000. But the biggest question mark of all was Stallworth, who was owed $4.75 million. He was signed by Savage in the same way that Andre Rison was signed by Bill Belichick years earlier. It worked out about the same way.

Ultimately, Mangini paid him the money. It was a decision he and the rest of the Browns’ organization would come to regret.

After getting word that the Browns were going to pay him the roster bonus, Stallworth spent the evening in Miami Beach celebrating. Among those celebrating with him was Braylon Edwards, the franchise’s proverbial bad penny. After a night of drinking, Stallworth got into his car, drove for a bit and then plowed into Mario Reyes, who was looking to catch a bus to return home to his family after working the third shift. Reyes was dead at the scene.

After paying the Reyes family a healthy, but undisclosed amount of that bonus money, Stallworth worked out a very sweet deal with the local prosecutors. He served a brief prison sentence and is in the midst of a lengthy probation. He’s also on indefinite suspension from the NFL.

For a coach that likes to draw lines as bright at Mangini does, particularly about player conduct, he dithered on what to do with Stallworth, because of the money. It was a sad testament. Mangini could have made a bold statement and cut Stallworth immediately. It would have accelerated his salary and bonus for cap purposes but that was a highly manageable and transient concern. Instead, Mangini let the league handle it. Penny wise, as always, and pound foolish, as always.

As March was coming to a close, it was the first time that Mangini and his hand puppet Kokinis made it first known that they were leaning toward keeping both Anderson and Quinn and conducting an open competition for the job once training camp opened.

The fact that they wouldn’t pick a starter from among those two was hardly surprising. Anderson was coming off an awful 2008 after a brilliant 2007 and Quinn had looked good in limited time before getting hurt. Still, at the time, many thought that Mangini was just being coy, not wanting to tip his hand in case anyone else in the league was paying attention. They weren’t.

Meanwhile, the Plan Dealer’s Bud Shaw was pleading with the Browns to move heaven and earth to sign Jay Cutler, an Anderson clone with a slightly better record, at the expense of Quinn. Cutler ultimately was traded by Denver to Chicago where he went on to huge stretches of ineptitude followed by fleeting moments of mediocrity.

With Mangini holed up in the background somewhere plotting his revenge on the NFL via the upcoming draft, the NFL and the ESPN found a completely worthless way of burning two hours of programming via their 2009 Schedule show. Yes, it took them two hours to reveal each team’s upcoming schedule and provide the kind of meaningless analysis you’ve come to expect from the World Wide Leader.

The NFL, with more primetime games to fill than deserving primetime teams, gave the Browns two national appearances, down from the 5 the previous season. One was a late season Monday nighter against the Ravens. The other, an even later season Thursday nighter against the Steelers.

Now in another one of those foreshadowing moments that I have from time to time, after looking at the Browns’ 2009 schedules I said about the final game against Jacksonville in Cleveland “I hope you’re enjoying that perk at a half-filled stadium freezing under a blanket while a steady 20 MPH wind, gusting to 45 MPH, whips across your cheeks like a worn razor blade.” I think the only thing I got wrong was the wind speed. On Sunday it looked to be about a steady 25 MPH.

Part IV. This is the Part Where Mangini Turns Into Monty Hall

As the draft was approaching, the rumors the Browns were floating around the league had them trading Braylon Edwards to the Giants for Domenick Hixon and some draft choices. Indeed, Mangini did try to make that trade but the Giants balked. As it ultimately turned out, Mangini wasn’t kidding about trying to move Edwards. In a season full of so many missteps, this wasn’t one of them. The only one who didn’t think so was ESPN’s Colin Cowherd, who spent a few shows spinning it all good in Edwards’ direction. I’d say he’d probably wish he had those shows back, but with Cowherd it’s always hard to tell.

When draft day finally approached in late April, the Browns spent the day moving up, down and sideways in the first round before trading down late into the first round and finally settling on California center Alex Mack. To make that happen, Mangini had to trade with his former club, the Jets, who used the Browns’ pick to draft quarterback Mark Sanchez out of USC.

The choice of Mack was at once a stretch and an insight into Mangini’s thinking. It was similar to his move in New York when he drafted Ohio State’s Nick Mangold.

Building a team from the lines on out is always a good choice. But the rest of Mangini’s draft was, well, just plain weird. All the wheeling and dealing got him a boatload of extra draft picks which Mangini used in the most random of fashion. The second round tells the story. In it he drafted two receivers—Ohio State’s Brian Robiskie and Georgia’s Mohamed Massaquoi—and then really reached in taking defensive lineman David Veikune from Hawaii. Sure, these were areas of need, but no one thought these were the players we needed.

Maybe the draft is best explained by reference to the veteran free agents Mangini brought with him from the Jets, players like Kenyon Coleman and Abram Elam. Mangini took some grief for bringing in those players but it did make some sense. As converts to the Mangini way they would be counted on to spread the gospel to a locker room full of skeptics. But those players looked to also be gap fillers that would allow Mangini to focus elsewhere in the draft, or something like that.

The lack of cohesion to the draft choices made it difficult to grade it. Even now, Mangini’s first draft is at best a mixed bag. None of his drafted players were major contributors although Mack started and played all season at center and got much better in the process. As for Robiski, Massaquoi and Veikune, the jury looks to be out for awhile.

With the draft completed and mini-camps beckoning, one story emerged that continued throughout the season: the plight of Josh Cribbs’ contract. In May, Cribbs hired a new agent who took a look at the contract that Cribbs signed two seasons ago and essentially said it was “outrageous, salacious and preposterous.” He then went about pleading his case.

The problem that Cribbs’ agent, J.R. Rickert, found was that the new regime wasn’t too excited about honoring the commitments that the previous regime had made. Crennel had named Quinn the 2009 starter, for example, only to see Mangini declare it open season on picking the new quarterback. Now Rickert was finding a similar stonewall when trying to enforce a commitment that Savage, with Lerner’s blessing, made to re-do Cribbs’ contract.

Mangini, again with an eye on the budget, felt that giving big money to a special team’s player, even one as valuable as Cribbs, might not be the best investment. He wanted to see more out of Cribbs, including whether he could be a regular on offense. He laid a carrot in front of Cribbs in May and left it dangling throughout the entire season, often telling the media that he thought a new contract would get done soon. Soon still hasn’t arrived.

While Cribbs and his agent were making the most noise about renegotiating a contract, with Cribbs at times seemingly threatening to sit out, one that flew under the radar screen was Phil Dawson. Dawson refused to report to any of Mangini’s pre-camps in a bit of a silent protest about his contract situation. Dawson eventually reported to preseason training camp without a new contract in hand. He didn’t help his case by getting hurt.

As for the rest of off-season Camp Mangini, it was going along swimmingly, at least from Mangini’s mad scientist perspective. He was irritating the bejeezus out of the players by having having them run laps for making mistakes, like false starts. He also was irritating the bejeezus out of the local media for playing hide the sausage on even the smallest bits of information. Finally, he was irritating the bejeezus out of both Anderson and Quinn as the so-called open competition commenced.

And if all that wasn’t enough, Mangini committed still another public relations blunder of his own by “volunteering” his rookies for a 10-hour bus ride to Connecticut to work at his football camp. Meanwhile, Mangini, trying to build team camaraderie, flew to Connecticut instead.

After word broke out about the camp, thanks to a whole bunch of agents who had gotten an earful from their disgruntled clients, Mangini rode the bus home. But the specter of the bus trip caused an inquiry by the league and the Players Association, one of three they were forced to make of Mangini this past season.

If only the Browns hadn’t fired their entire public relations staff all of this might have gone down much more smoothly. As it was, though, the Browns had bigger problems. They were having trouble selling loges and went into business with the Indians who likewise were having the same problem, offering a so-called “Touchdown Package” that would allow fans, for the price of $15,000, to watch the Tribe play St. Louis and Detroit and the Browns play Pittsburgh, all from a luxury box, refreshments extra.

As the dawn of Mangini’s first real training camp beckoned, word came down that the Browns were being sued by one of their own, Joe Jurevicius, who had missed the entire 2008 season because of a staph infection contracted after relatively routine arthroscopic surgery following the 2007 season.

Jurevicius claimed in his lawsuit that the Browns did not properly maintain, disinfect or clean their therapy devices making it likely that he would suffer a staph infection.

Staph infections have been a particularly thorny issue with the Browns as a number of players have suffered from them over the years. While I understood the concerns and frustration of players like Jurevicius, I always doubted his claims. Yet, isn’t it interesting that following the filing of the complaint and with all the Browns’ injuries this season there hasn’t been a staph infection?

One of the more refreshing aspects of the Browns’ training camp was simply the fact that every player was under contract before it started in earnest. Cribbs wasn’t happy not having his contract renegotiated and neither was Dawson. But both were in camp as was every draft choice. For a team in desperate need of anything positive, this would be it for awhile.

In the early days of camp, Mangini made his presence felt in the form of summarily dismissing defensive lineman Shaun Smith. Smith, as most remember, got into a locker room fight with Quinn the previous season with Quinn ending up with a fat lip. Smith always had his own agenda anyway and served as the perfect foil for the point Mangini was trying to drive home. It helped that Smith also wasn’t very good. Smith spent the next several months on the sidelines before landing, briefly, with the Detroit Lions. The Cincinnati Bengals picked him up, cut him a few days later, and then signed him once more when more injuries hit. As a point of reference, the week after Smith was signed again the Bengals lost their last game of the season to the Jets, 37-0. As another point of reference, the Bengals lost in the playoff re-match the following week.

The 2009 Cleveland Browns Retrospective--Intallment #1

Note: The Cleveland Browns 2009 season was one for the ages. It could be summed up in as little as one word “oy” or 100 million. I’ve opted for somewhere between the two. It may be that all of you, or most anyway, are so tired of this past season that you’d rather have your toe nails pulled than read another word about it. Believe me, I understand. But for those brave few willing to go along on one final journey with me, just know that I appreciate your courage and have tried to make it worth your while.


Part I. This is the Part Where the Browns Franchise Finds Itself Walking Alone, in the Middle of a Storm, on a Road to Nowhere, Again.

There are probably a million or more ways to look at the Cleveland Browns’ 2009 season and probably even more conclusions that could be drawn. But one thing that is undeniable. It’s been a long, strange trip indeed.

I promised to write a book about the season, and that might come in time. But I thought the best thing to do first was to try and make some sense of what we all just experienced. I wanted to follow the journey, really, that new club president Mike Holmgren had to take to get himself up to speed before deciding whether or not to keep head coach Eric Mangini.

In more ways than not, the 2009 season was worse than the 2008 season, although it’s a pretty close call. The Browns entered the 2008 with lofty expectations from the national media and ended up crashing and burning on the heels of 4 years of abject mismanagement on and off the field.

That was a season that had Braylon Edwards as its poster child. A Pro Bowler in 2007, Edwards developed the swagger and entitlement mentality reminiscent of most of today’s professional athletes. But Edwards never did develop the professionalism he actually needed to sustain his one good season. Instead he was lackadaisical in approach and it showed on the field in the form of one dropped pass after another. It was the story of the entire team, actually.

Edwards’ failures fairly summed up the end of the road for Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage, but I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. The story of the 2009 season actually starts with Crennel and Savage still in charge, sort of.

A lot about placing the 2009 season in context depends on when you think last season ended. For me, it was December 28, 2008. That was when the Browns played their last game of the Phil Savage/Romeo Crennel era and it ended, exquisitely, with a 31-0 pasting at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team’s most hated rival.

In that game the Browns set the NFL’s record for longest streak without scoring an offensive touchdown and also had the dubious distinction of being the first Browns’ team to be shut out in consecutive games.

In my recap of that game I noted that by hitting what looked like rock bottom (and it was, but for that year only) in that manner they did, the Browns guaranteed that their fans would be dealt a steady diet of Kevin Harland and Rich Gannon as announcers for 2009. It’s exactly what they got, with the occasional Randy Cross thrown in for good measure.

The loss to the Steelers and the dispirited way that season ended raised the most obvious question, where do the Browns go from here? The worry then, fully justified soon thereafter, was that owner Randy Lerner hadn’t managed to get anything right yet and was now putting himself of overseeing the next makeover. Would it end well? How could it?

As it turned out, Savage’s fate was already sealed before the kickoff of that woeful Pittsburgh game. Lerner had fired him prior to the game but didn’t bother to tell anyone until after, apparently not sensing the irony in claiming that Savage’s termination was due, in part, to poor communication skills.

The mistake Lerner had made in Savage was a common one for Lerner. When hiring based on established track records was called for, Lerner instead opted for hope. Lerner figured Savage could fit comfortably into the general manager’s job simply because he had sat at the feet of Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore. What Lerner never realized was that Savage was more comfortable with stats than people. Newsome probably is still laughing at that miscalculation and thanking God during every waking moment that he left for Baltimore when Modell did.

Savage left a legacy of some decent draft choices (virtually every key contributor for the Browns this season, for example, was brought in by Savage) and a bevy of botched ones as well. Ultimately, it was Savage’s inability to be a steady, calming influence and face of the organization that was his undoing. He had embarrassed Lerner and the Browns in nearly consecutive weeks with his handling of the news of Kellen Winslow’s staph infection and compounded the problem first by issuing a perfunctory apology and then by sending a profane email in response to one written by a disgruntled Browns fan fed up with what he had been seeing on the field. Again, his apology was perfunctory, as if he’d done nothing wrong in the first place.

As for Crennel, the shoe dropped on him after the final game. In typical Lerner fashion it was through a written statement and again without any appreciation for irony in that he claimed he fired Savage a day earlier, in part, due to his lack of leadership skills.

Crennel was a very decent man. Approachable and serious minded, Crennel treated the players like men and found himself being rewarded in the same way parents are rewarded for trusting that their 17-year old won’t break into the liquor cabinet while they’re away for the weekend. His teams lacked discipline of almost every sort and his tenure can be summed up in perhaps the two words that described the team’s most common penalty, “false start.”

Lerner’s first thought in trying to replace Crennel was a good one, Bill Cowher. But Cowher told Lerner before that fateful Pittsburgh game that he didn’t plan to coach in 2009 and stuck to his word. Lerner found himself thus at a crossroads. Having failed by hiring a lifelong assistant like Crennel, Lerner could either find someone who had head coaching experience or someone who had head coaching ability. Naturally, he opted for the former when he needed to opt for the latter.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, too. Certainly Lerner’s first task surely would be to find a general manager before tackling the issue of who might be the Browns’ next head coach. That’s the right order, isn’t it?

As it turned out, it wasn’t the right order at all. Shortly after the 2008 season ended, the New York Jets apparently did Lerner the biggest favor of all and fired Eric Mangini as its head coach. Mangini was given the nickname of Mangenius when he took a 4-12 Jets team and turned it into a 10-6 playoff team in his first season.

But that nickname quickly faded when the Jets reverted back to form the following season at 4-12 and then, in Mangini’s last season, started 8-3 and then lost its last 5 games to miss the playoffs. It was time, general manager Mike Tannebaum said, to move where all teams eventually need to move to, destination new direction. That’s pretty damning stuff, actually, just 3 years into the direction they were on with Mangini.

For Lerner, Mangini had the two attributes he most coveted: a connection with Bill Belichick and head coaching experience. That was the sum total of the due diligence he performed. But that may not have been even Lerner’s biggest mistake. That would be reserved for letting Mangini pick his new boss, which he did in the form of George Kokinis, the former Baltimore Ravens pro personnel director.

On the surface it sounded like Kokinis was Savage redux, right down to the resume. But that wasn’t exactly true. As a pro personnel director, Kokinis’ focus was on current players in the league, not college players. In other words, he wouldn’t be much help in the draft.

Putting aside the problem with letting the subordinate hire his own boss, Kokinis was an odd selection because the Browns’ biggest trouble area was the draft. What we didn’t know at the time was that Mangini hired Kokinis specifically because he lacked that skill. It let Mangini wander free around the draft. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, too. I’ve got to stop doing that.

Mangini’s official hiring came on January 9, 2009 and marked the first time, probably, that any NFL team had elevated its former ball boy to head coach. Lerner, of course, didn’t announce the decision personally. That task fell to Mike Kennan, the club’s president, a title Kennan would relinquish once Holmgren was hired.

The courtship of Mangini was quick, particularly so considering that no other team looking for a head coach at the time had even given Mangini a second thought. At his introductory press conference Mangini said all the right and usual things. But the proof, as I noted then, would be in whether he does the right things. Call it foreshadowing. But even greater foreshadowing came in the form of a question posed by the Jets fan who ran the FireEricMangini.com website: who in their right mind would replace one ex-Patriot flop with another ex-Patriot flop? Destiny, thy name is Lerner.

Part II. This is the Part Where Mangini Settles In and Others Suddenly Become Unsettled

After the hiring of Mangini and Kokinis, the rest of January was relatively quiet, unless you happened to work in the Browns’ front office. Blaming the economy, Lerner approved the layoff of 15 employees, including the public relations staff. Meanwhile, there were a host of castoffs able to ride out the economy in slightly better fashion in the form of Lerner castoffs still owed millions, castoffs like Carmen Policy, Butch Davis, Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel.

Maybe these 15 layoffs were part of a tanking economy. But to say that they weren’t in part the result of a makeover being overseen by Mangini would be wrong.

At the time Lerner was having staffers clean out their desks, he was allowing Mangini to have the Berea complex physically overhauled at a considerable cost. Of all the changes that occurred, the one that caused the most controversy, though, was his painting over a mural of Browns’ legends. Some saw it as Mangini purposely trying to break with the past. Others saw it as Mangini wanting to let everyone know who was calling the shots. They were both right.

Meanwhile, Mangini was keeping many of Crennel’s assistants dangling, insisting that they be held to the letter of their contracts while preventing them from interviewing elsewhere. Part of that was because he hadn’t yet finalized his own staff. Part of it, maybe the bigger part of it, was the simple fact that it was saving the Browns money. Per league rules, if the Browns fired the coaches before their contracts were completed and the coaches found other employment elsewhere at a lower salary, the Browns would be on the hook for the difference. A coach that resigns, however, has no such luck.

At the very least, it set a tone. In retrospect, it was the beginning of a number of blunders Mangini would make that made him one of the most unpopular hires in Browns’ history, at least for the first 3 months of the regular season, anyway.

As February dawned, Mangini gave his first full press conference. It was a virtuoso performance as he talked often and said nothing. He mentioned the mural and how that was all one big misunderstanding and said a few nice things about D’Qwell Jackson and Josh Cribbs, but not much else. Actually it was unclear why Mangini had the press conference in the first place, unless it was to set the ground rules with the media for what was to come. It did and Mangini never got the media back on his side for the rest of the season.

Kokinis wasn’t much better. A few weeks after the Mangini press conference came Kokinis to publicly declare that he and Mangini were on the same page without ever giving anyone a clue what page that actually was. As it turned out, they didn’t know themselves.

But one thing was clear from the Kokinis press conference. Mangini had placed him on a short leash. Kokinis wouldn’t discuss, for example, whether the Browns planned on placing the franchise tag on safety Sean Jones, about their only free agent worth trying to keep. Likewise, he wouldn’t discuss his thinking on Derek Anderson other than to say “you really have to fit Derek within the whole structure of the whole football team.” It’s still one of my favorite quotes ever because it precisely captures the guise of saying something while actually saying nothing at all. But to Kokinis’ credit, it was exactly what Mangini wanted him to say.

Someone who was far less shy in talking substantively was Scott Pioli, the new general manager in Kansas City. Talking freely at the combine in Indianapolis, Pioli went on to praise in almost over-the-top fashion Detroit’s hiring of Jim Schwartz as head coach. It wasn’t just that this was praise at the exclusion of Cleveland’s near simultaneous hiring of Mangini so much as it was insight on why Pioli wouldn’t take the general manager’s job in Cleveland.

Pioli and Mangini are like oil and water at this point owing mostly to Mangin’s role in the whole Spygate affair while Pioli was in New England. But more to the point, speculation is that Pioli wanted Lerner to consider hiring Schwartz in Cleveland as part of the package of bringing Pioli in but Lerner instead was fixated on Mangini. It was the deal killer of all deal killers.

As for Mangini and Kokinis at the combine, they were their usual insightful selves. The Browns were either interested in a running back or maybe it was a defensive end. They were going to keep Anderson or maybe trade him. They’d consider moving Josh Cribbs to safety or maybe running back. What the two didn’t realize is that the only ones interested in the Browns’ plans were their fans. The rest of the league and billions worldwide could have cared less.

Already getting off on the wrong foot with the fans, the media and the holdovers from the front office, Mangini decided to go for the grand slam by taking on the players. In the most highly publicized snub since Don Knotts wasn’t nominated as best actor for his role in The Incredible Mr. Limpett, Mangini ignored the hulking Shaun Rogers at a charity function in late February, claiming he just didn’t see him.

Mangini’s explanation wasn’t believable because the two almost literally bumped shoulders in their bids to ignore each other. Rogers claimed he felt disrespected but what was really going on behind the scenes was that Rogers (and other players) had gotten a letter from Mangini a few days earlier that they would be required to report for the team’s upcoming workouts in mid-March at their playing weight.

Rogers, who struggles with weight issues and never met a Boston crème pie he could resist, felt disrespected because he always answered the bell during the season.

To some, Rogers was just acting out his nickname of Big Baby. As it turned out, it was just another misstep by Mangini; a failure to understand the pulse of his new team.

Meanwhile, in an effort to reclaim some of the draft picks lost by the previous regime, Mangini (or was it Kokinis?) traded Kellen Winslow, Jr. to Tampa Bay for a second round pick in the coming draft and a fifth round pick in 2010. Ultimately, it was a trade of mutual convenience. Winslow wanted his contract renegotiated and Mangini wanted draft picks. Tampa Bay was the willing dupe.

In some sense, Winslow was missed. Mostly, though, he wasn’t. Winslow wasn’t happy with the Browns for a number of reasons and wanted a fresh start elsewhere. Whatever skills Winslow still has, they aren’t ever going to be what his college potential promised due mostly to injuries. A team rebuilding didn’t need someone like Winslow. Of course either did Tampa Bay but they went on to re-do his contract anyway, making him about $20 million richer. Meanwhile, somewhere Josh Cribbs steamed.

When the NFL’s mid-winter meetings hit in early March, the Browns were mostly bystanders. That was a good thing. It was a refreshing assessment that signing a high-priced free agent wasn’t what this team needed. There were just too many holes and not enough cap space to go around. It was something that Savage never really understood as he went about throwing money at the likes of Donte Stallworth the season before.

Healing the Wounds

Time heals all wounds as much as it wounds all heals. Case in point is Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini.

A year ago he was the full-of-himself new sheriff in town quickly and nosily putting his imprint on the Browns. It mattered little that there was a general manager, hand picked by Mangini at that, in his path. He had a direct line to owner Randy Lerner which was pretty heady stuff for someone who had just been fired for, among other things, being a full-of-himself pain in the butt in New York.

Indeed, Mangini’s presence in Cleveland then was of such overwhelming force that Tom Heckert, Jr., then the Philadelphia Eagles general manager, withdrew his name from consideration for the same position in Cleveland. Heckert wanted to hire his own head coach more than he wanted Mangini thrust upon him.

Fast forward those 12 months and all the miles in between and now Mangini finds himself chastened by the turn of events he set in motion and Heckert finds himself as the Browns’ new general manager even though he didn’t get a chance to hire his own head coach and even though he had Mangini thrust upon him. And everyone seems perfectly happy with all of it.

What’s changed? Everything. The version of the Browns today is by far, by leaps and bound far, by country miles far, by night and day far, by farther than far, the most professional version since probably the Marty Schottenheimer days.

There is an owner in place that has no interest in meddling in anything, content is he to simply write checks and occasionally watch the team from the tunnel. There is a president in place that is as credible of a football mind as exists in professional football today. There is a general manager in place that actually has a proven track record of success as a general manager. There is a general counsel in place to oversee the legal issues that this team tends to get embroiled in too often that is a respected legal mind on the fast track to league-insider status. Then there is Mangini.

I’m not sold on Mangini. But I am sold on Holmgren and trust his judgment. If after interviewing Mangini formally and informally for the last few weeks he’s convinced that Mangini can be an asset to this franchise, then the decision deserves every bit as much of the benefit of the doubt as does Holmgren’s hiring of Heckert.

Holmgren’s decision to keep Mangini and how that decision interplays with the hiring of Heckert seemed to stem from a number of factors. Holmgren’s convinced, for example, that Mangini is a team player. That’s probably the most debatable point. Mangini has developed a track record of discarding members of his teams in very dramatic ways when it suits his self-interest.

Holmgren also seemed impressed in the way Mangini’s team recovered from an incredibly bad start to finish strong. It’s not worth arguing this point, either, but let’s just say there’s plenty of valid counterpoints to the whole “we’re on the right track because we beat 4 straight non-playoff teams” kind of thinking.

Ultimately, though, it seems that the decision to keep Mangini was professional courtesy. It just seems to rub Holmgren the wrong way to dump a head coach, any head coach, after one season. Holmgren seems to have taken a look at the landscape, concluded that it would have been difficult for anyone to have had success in such a dysfunctional environment and absolved Mangini of his role in creating that dysfunction.

Having grown up schooled in the Belichick way, Mangini really didn’t know any other way of operating. The Jets were not a Belichick-inspired organization and that, as much as anything, is what made it difficult for Mangini to survive there. Having been hired immediately in Cleveland gave Mangini no sense that there were even problems in his approach.

It’s not even so much that Mangini’s vaunted process failed him so much as it is that he was ill-equipped to oversee it. If this past season has proven anything it’s that Mangini works best when he can concentrate on coaching. Putting himself in charge of everything created the disaster that ultimately led to Holmgren’s hiring.

Holmgren obviously sensed the same thing and said as much in his press conference. Heckert is now in charge on the roster and Mangini is in charge of getting that roster to play winning football. Technically, that’s what the structure looked like a year ago, too. But with Holmgren and not Lerner ensuring that the boys play nice together, it’s far less likely for the general manager to get cut off at the knees. That’s a far different scenario than was presented to candidates like Heckert a year ago and is why, ultimately, Heckert is in Cleveland today.

Browns fans should be excited about not only having Heckert aboard but about the changes that have taken place in the organization that have allowed it to attract a candidate like Heckert in the first place. Whereas Phil Savage and George Kokinis supposedly were being groomed for a general manager’s job while in Baltimore, neither had been in that slot before.

Moreover, neither of them had any specific public accomplishments while in Baltimore that would give fans confidence that they were the correct hires. It’s likely true that within the Ravens organization each had played significant roles in helping Ozzie Newsome establish the roster, but ultimately it was Newsome that set the course.

In Philadelphia, Heckert didn’t have final say on the roster but he did run the Eagles’ draft and in doing so he’s been much more successful than the Browns have been in that same period of time. That as much as anything will determine whether this team is a success because it has as much as anything been responsible for its failures.

In a way, though, this whole process seems to have been more cathartic to Mangini than anyone could have anticipated. With plenty of time to absorb the concept that the paradigm he created had dramatically shifted Mangini from all accounts seems to have shifted with it.

Mangini now enters 2011 in a far different way than he did 2010. Sure, he’s still head coach, still gets to wear the brown and orange and he kept his parking spot at the Berea location. But no one inside or outside of Berea sees him as the final word on anything anymore.

Relieved of that burden, Mangini may actually turn into a credible head coach. At least that’s what Holmgren and Heckert and banking on. If that turns out to be the case 12 months from now, then the organization will be far better off as well.

Amateur Hour

Let’s put aside for the moment Cleveland Browns’ president Mike Holgrem’s decision to retain head coach Eric Mangini or even Holmgren’s pursuit of his general manager to focus on Josh Cribbs. Despite all the major goings on in Berea this week, it’s Cribbs and his contract dispute that has garnered most of the attention.

Here’s what I know about the Cribbs situation: J.R. Rickert is a lousy agent. All Rickert has done for the last several days is prove that he’s an amateur among professionals and the person caught in the middle is his earnest and gullible client.

Cribbs last signed a contract extension before the 2007 season. It was a six-year deal that gave him more than $1 million in guaranteed money. Then, of course, Cribbs went on to have a breakout season in 2007 and made the Pro Bowl. He had a very good 2008 and then, beginning last May, he began asking for a new contract.

When May turned into June and June eventually into December, Cribbs added another Pro Bowl selection to his resume but still found himself without that new contract.

The timing of Cribbs’ contract demand last May coincided with his hiring of Ricket. Agents in the NFL get new clients by convincing those prospective clients that their previous agents were hacks and that they deserve a new contract. It’s how Drew Rosenhaus got famous.

In Rickert’s case, all he had to do was focus Cribbs on his contract and how the Browns were literally stealing money from him for paying him as if he was still an undrafted free agent instead of the Pro Bowl player he’s become.

Once Cribbs signed with Rickert, the pressure on the Browns began. Taking a page from his Sports Agent 101 handbook, Rickert has worked the public relations angle in the same way that that striking school teachers work the parents by claiming it’s all about the “best interests of the students.”

Although the Browns have mostly yawned at Rickert’s histrionics, he has managed to shape public opinion. Right now, most Browns fans have concluded that Cribbs is underpaid with no basis to come to that conclusion except emotional.

Cribbs is clearly the Browns’ best player on about 10 different levels. He worked his way up from undrafted free agent out of Kent State to possibly the league’s most valuable kick returner and special teams player. He never gives less than full effort. He’s excellent in the community. In short, he’s pretty much been everything anyone can ask of a professional athlete in any sport. In terms of this team, he’s been the one consistent source of pride for a franchise far more use to embarrassing itself.

Objectively, Cribbs is underpaid relative to his peers but not necessarily as much as Rickert would like the public to think. But even if Cribbs was grossly underpaid relative to his peers, that’s only part of the equation anyway.

The fact remains that Cribbs, without a gun to his head, signed that six-year contract in order to secure a million dollar payoff upfront. Maybe it wasn’t the best business decision of his life, but it wasn’t his worst and in any case his current contract is a burden he brought on voluntarily. For anyone to summarily conclude that the Browns aren’t being fair is itself unfair.

There also is the issue of setting a precedent by renegotiating so early into a new contract. From a business standpoint, even before the ink is dry on Cribbs’ new contract, the line will start forming outside of its new general manager’s office of players who likewise want a better deal.

But there also is another side to the whole matter and that’s the side where it appears that owner Randy Lerner and former general manager Phil Savage both promised Cribbs a new contract and then didn’t follow through. A delay in that regard could be excused once Savage was fired after last season, but Lerner has remained and it was his moral if not legal duty to make sure that his new head coach Eric Mangini took care of fulfilling Lerner’s commitments quickly.

From almost the minute Mangini got this assignment he put it down pretty low on his priority list. Mangini always felt that if Cribbs was due more money it would be because his value to the team would be greater than just on special teams. A major reason why the Browns kept pushing Cribbs into the mix as a wide receiver was an effort to expand his role and justify a bigger contract.

Cribbs has shown himself to be merely average, at best, as a NFL receiver. That’s not a sin, just a fact. He’s far more valuable in the wildcat formation where he can better utilize his running skills and still remain as a threat to throw the ball. But the wildcat formation is and always will be a change of pace. No team in the NFL can survive on a steady diet of that kind of formation.

Thus where Cribbs finds himself still is one of the most valuable special teams players in the league and a decent but not overwhelming threat on offense. What, ultimately, is all that worth?

Enter Rickert. The truth is that even Rickert can’t figure it out. In one conversation he’ll equate Cribbs to Devin Hester and in the next conversation say he’s not seeking Hester-like money. Rickert will then pull out supposedly comparable salaries in the $3 million/year range but then say that he’s not looking for that kind of money, either. All we really know is that he thinks an $800,000 a year salary increase is an insult.

The person to feel sorry for in all of this is Cribbs and not because he’s suffering financially. Cribbs is sincere to a fault. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, both good and bad. When the Browns didn’t respond to Rickert’s latest ludicrous threat to get back to him by 5 p.m. last Wednesday or else he’d go public, it was Cribbs that had to deal with the backlash.

Cribbs supposedly has cleaned out his locker and, at the moment, doesn’t believe he’ll ever be back with the Browns. It’s the line Rickert laid in front of him but Cribbs, true to his nature, delivered it truthfully and in heartbreaking fashion. Cribbs may believe it at the moment but that doesn’t mean there’s a shred of truth to it.

Negotiation on any deal, be it for a player in the NFL or for a TV at the local Best Buy, is about leverage. The more you have, the easier it is to strike a better deal. Rickert knows he has absolutely no leverage at the moment. He has a client with 3 years remaining on a contract and absolutely no way to extricate him from it at the moment.

Rickert can demand until his face turns red that the Browns trade Cribbs but the Browns are under no obligation to honor that request. Cribbs can threaten to sit out but if he does, whenever he returns he’ll still have 3 years remaining on his contract.

Rickert said recently that Jay Cutler finagled his way out of Denver by demanding a trade and thus the same thing can happen here. But comparing Cutler and Cribbs is laughable. Cutler wasn’t particularly well-liked in Denver and no one really shed a tear when he left. It also helped that Denver had a whole new management team that made parting with an underachiever like Cutler even easier.

In Cleveland, Cribbs is anything but a persona non grata. He’s wildly popular with his fans and the entire team. Holmgren may have no connection with Cribbs but he’s smart enough to know and appreciate Cribbs’ value.

What will really happen is that once things settle a bit in Berea, Cribbs will get his contract extended, which is pretty much the same thing as renegotiated but it gives the Browns cover with other players and their agents.

The extension will push the contract out a few more years at least and will include a huge, guaranteed signing bonus and perhaps some roster bonuses in the next 3 years to raise Cribbs’ take home pay in those years without changing his salary. And when it gets all done everyone will be all smiles with each side announcing how thrilled they are that Cribbs will be with the Browns for the remainder of his career.

Rickert, of course, will then use the Cribbs situation to lure another player into his stable and this same scenario will play out somewhere else without anyone the wiser that this whole thing would have gotten done in pretty much the same way even if Cribbs had never hired Rickert in the first place.

The Great Escape

If this were Hollywood, it could easily pass as a remake for The Great Escape. Just know, though that is sports, particularly football in Cleveland, thus significant hand wringing was probably involved.

To the surprise of some, apparently, new Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren today decided that Eric Mangini could co-exist in the new organization that Holmgren is building. Exactly how Holmgren came to that conclusion may not be known but whether it proves to be the right assessment will play out in the weeks and months to come.

After a miserable 1-11 start that had nearly everyone calling for Mangini’s head, the Browns improbably won their final four games, leading many to conclude that the Browns really were headed in the right direction.

That late season win streak shouldn’t be overvalued or under appreciated. It gave Browns’ fans some needed good news but it didn’t automatically erase the three months of hell that preceded it, either. Ultimately, it was just another data point in a season filled with thousands of them.

But as data points go, it was enough to convince Holmgren, along with whatever else Mangini had to say in his defense, that Mangini could lead this team each and every Sunday and do it in a manner that reflected the vision of his boss.

For Mangini, this is a transformation of near historical proportions.

From the looks of things, Mangini appeared to be done within 24 hours after he orchestrated the ouster of former general manager George Kokinis. Of all the mistakes Mangini made in his short time in Cleveland thus far, this was by far the worst. That power grab had two significant impacts on Mangini’s future in Cleveland, neither of them good.

First, irrespective of how it was done the fact that it was done made the Browns a bigger joke on the national stage than they already were. And that’s going some. Browns fans have gotten used to a high degree of dysfunction when it comes to this franchise so they probably didn’t appreciate the impact that the Kokinis firing really had on the franchise and Lerner from a national perspective. But it was substantial.

The Browns to that point already looked like a franchise that couldn’t tell its ass from an apple. Mangini seemed to be at war with the media, the league, the players and the union and was being called the worst hire ever nationally. Lerner looked like a buffoon. It was a situation that Lerner could no longer tolerate. It forced him to conclude, in words that Mangini should have realized were a dig at him, that the Browns needed a serious, credible leader. Obviously, to Lerner at least, that person wasn’t Mangini.

Second, it solidified in the mind of established league players, folks like Holmgren for example, that Mangini doesn’t play well with others. It’s almost irrelevant whether or not it’s actually true. Perception became reality.

Remember, Mangini had just been fired in New York. He had a frosty relation with Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum who declared, just three years into Mangini’s tenure, that the organization needed a new direction. Mangini, too, had laid waste to his relationship with Bill Belichick, setting it ablaze in spectacular fashion. Whether or not Mangini was technically correct about Belichick’s misconduct, Mangini looked like a rat and to many, that’s a far worse crime.

All of this is context to both the schism that developed between Mangini and Kokinis, who was handpicked by Mangini to be the general manager in the first place, and the decision facing Holmgren regarding Mangini’s future.

The fact that Holmgren was hired may have been the first clear sign that Mangini’s future looked to be elsewhere, but there were others as well. Pointedly, in Holmgren’s first conversation with the media he didn’t give Mangini any sort of vote of confidence. That confirmed that Lerner put no shackles on Holmgren from the outset.

Then, in that same call, Holmgren pointedly said that the biggest mistake he made in his professional career came in Seattle when he didn’t put his own people in place from the outset. He didn’t criticize those he inherited, but he was clear that their way of operating didn’t match his and the organization suffered as a result.

When Holmgren arrived in Cleveland on Tuesday, he told the media that he gave Mangini some issues to think about before the two would get together the next day. It’s pretty safe to assume that he pressed Mangini to honestly assess whether he could operate in a structure significantly different than he was operating under before Holmgren arrived. Holmgren didn’t want to just know whether Mangini could accept two new layers of management. He wanted to know whether Mangini could fully embrace the kinds of changes operationally that Holmgren intends to implement, changes that in many instances were probably at odds with Mangini’s philosophies.

It would have been easy, very easy, for Holmgren to cast Mangini adrift on a ship called “Creative Differences.” It happens all the time. That wouldn’t have meant that Holmgren believed Mangini was a lousy coach, just a coach that did things too differently. Yet, improbably Mangini managed to escape the shrapnel of all of these grenades to coach another day in Cleveland.

My sense is that some of the other stuff, such as the divide that developed between Mangini and some of the players, didn’t move Holmgren’s needle that much. Holmgren is a coach at heart and in that role he knows full well the wisdom in what Casey Stengel once said about what it takes to be a successful manager: keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.

Holmgren, as thoughtful of a person as exists in the game, put Mangini through his paces and came to the conclusion that keeping him was the right move. It’s unlikely that this is merely an interim step, either. If Holmgren had any doubts that Mangini was the right person for the long haul, he would have gone in a separate direction.

On this score, there will be no second guessing of Holmgren. His track record in the league has earned him the benefit of the doubt. Like many others, Holmgren probably figured that with Mangini it wasn’t the coaching so much as the other things that always clouded everyone’s judgment of him. With those duties now dispersed elsewhere in the organization, Mangini is now free to establish himself as a credible head coach.

And if Mangini is that credible head coach, he can do it with a West Coast offense of a 4-3 defense or all the hundreds of other little things that will be different from this point forward.

If Mangini thought he already was putting in long hours inside the Berea complex, he’ll probably look back and realize that was mostly a picnic. For Mangini, as much as for Holmgren, the real work is about to begin.

With Apologies to Lewis Black...

There was a show on Comedy Central called Root of All Evil. It was hosted by Lewis Black and the premise was to put various aspects of pop culture on trial. Black would name a topic, such as Dick Cheney, and then have two celebrities make the argument pro and con as to whether Cheney was the root of all evil. Black would then pronounce a verdict.

It never came up on the show, but as good a topic as any would be Eric Mangini. Through 12 weeks, the Browns were 1-11, the team was in disarray and it was hard to fine anyone who wasn’t convinced that Mangini was the root of all that evil.

But 1 month later, following a loss to the San Diego Chargers, the Browns caught fire, winning 4 straight including a victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers. They’ve played inspired ball and it’s turned a lot of heads.

With Mike Holmgren, the Browns new club president, arriving in town this week to determine Mangini’s fate, it’s probably time to really get to the bottom of whether or not Mangini is indeed the Root of All Evil.

I don’t have ready access to any celebrities with enough knowledge on the Browns to cogently make the point/counterpoint. But picture, in this corner, Drew Carey as if he were making the argument for keeping Mangini. In the other corner then is Martin Mull presenting the case for a one-and-done for Mangini. Presiding, of course, is Holmgren.

“We’re here today to decide, once and for all, whether Eric Mangini is the root of all evil. Mr. Carey, you have the floor.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.

“Actually, this is a far easier case to make than getting through those two episodes of Gary Unmarried that Mr. Mull guest starred in last year. I’ll summarize it in 3 simple words: We Beat Pittsburgh. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, when was the last time we could make that claim? Ok, so it was only 6 years ago, but wasn’t that, like 8 coaches ago or something like that?

“The Steelers were the reigning Super Bowl champs for goodness sakes. We outplayed them on national television. Spanked them good, too. Even if the Browns hadn’t won another game all season, this one victory against Pittsburgh makes Mangini a rousing success in my book.”

Mr. Mull, do you have a reply?

“Drew, I think your glasses are squeezing your brain to hard. Either that or the barber is digging a little too deep into your scalp with the clippers. Sure the Browns beat the Steelers and sure it’s been 6 long years since that occurred, but guess what? In 2003 the Steelers didn’t make the playoffs then, either. Want to go back even further? How about the Browns’ only other victory against the Steelers since returning in 1999. That was in 2000 and it was at Pittsburgh and you know who the coach was? It was Chris Palmer. And you know what else? The Steelers didn’t make the playoffs that season either. I don’t remember anyone in the town going ga-ga over that win or screaming that we had to keep Palmer. He was fired at the end of the season. C’mon Drew, you’re going to have to make a better case than that.”

“Look, Marty, I get it. You’re bitter. You haven’t had steady work since, when, the Roseanne show went off the air? When was that 1997? But hey, I loved you in those two episodes of Two and a Half Men. Don’t let that bitterness cloud your judgment, though. Mangini is a fine coach. He’s just getting rolling.

“Look, if you want to discredit the Pittsburgh win, fine. But you can’t ignore the 4-game winning streak at the end of the season. It proves that the players really were buying into his system. Sure it took awhile to get moving, but once it did the team was a juggernaut. With the way Jerome Harrison and Josh Cribbs have been running, there wasn’t a team in the NFL that would want to play the Browns at the moment.

“Jacksonville came into Cleveland with a potential playoff spot on the line. All the Browns did was rise up and kick them in the teeth. That showed me and everyone else that Mangini has turned a corner with these players and with this town. He’s a keeper.”

“A keeper, you say? Do you really think that someone who hosts The Price is Right for a living ought to be doling out the career advice? When I want your advice, I’ll confine it to how much a box of Betty Crocker spicy cake mix should cost.

“Here’s what I do know. The players are rallying all right, but it’s for themselves, not their coach. Did you hear Derek Anderson’s press conference? Did you hear what Corey Williams had to say? Nearly identical things, that’s what. They said that they were really just playing for each other. That the players remaining pulled together after they had reached rock bottom at 1-11.

“Here’s what else I know. The Browns had 5 victories this past season and not a single one of them was against a playoff-bound team. Maybe you were involved in putting together the final showcase when it happened and weren’t paying attention, but did you see what the Browns did look like when they played against playoff-bound teams? They weren’t competitive. Their last loss was against the San Diego Chargers and it wasn’t nearly as close as the final score would indicate. When the game was on the line, the Browns were down by three touchdowns. Only boredom on the part of the Chargers kept it close at the end.

“In fact, when you look even closer, the Browns really didn’t have the most difficult schedule in the league. They played only 5 playoff-bound teams and lost to them all. They also got their heads handed to them against Denver and Chicago. A 4-game win streak is nice, but the truth of the matter is that this team wasn’t even competitive when it mattered most.

“And the running game? Please. Wasn’t it Mangini that kept pushing Jamal Lewis out there game after game when it was clear in the preseason that he had lost at least a step? And what about Harrison? Everyone knew he was a good back going into the season, everyone that is but Mangini. He deactivated him for two games, and that was after he ran for over 100 yards in the first Cincinnati game.”

“Mr Carey, you look like you’re about to jump out of your skin.”

“Actually, Mr. President, I wish I had jumped out of this skin about 150 pounds ago, but that’s another subject for another day. What my esteemed, aging, balding and barely employed colleague fails to appreciate is that until Mangini came along, Harrison was just a change of pace back going nowhere. Mangini had to deactivate him for those two games to show him that no player was above the team concept, just like Brian Robiskie. Sometimes you have to take a step backward to move two steps forward. Let’s face it, my good friend here, Mr. Mull, did Sabrina the Teenage Witch. That’s the equivalent of being deactivated in my view. Yet he used that low point to go on to even greater glory, if you call playing Gene Parmesan in Arrested Development greater glory.”

“For the record, Mr. Carey, I’m proud of my work on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but your point is noted. I understand humility. But treating professional football players as if they are a group of juniors and seniors from Berea High School is ridiculous. If we wanted a high school coach running the Browns, there’s plenty of good ones available, like Chuck Kyle over at St. Ignatius. This is the pros.”

“I hardly think Mangini qualifies as a high school coach. Would a high school coach drain the pool of bottom dwellers like Kellen Winslow, Jr. or Braylon Edwards? He’s the one who cut Shaun Smith. Romeo Crennel didn’t have the guts to do any of that. It takes a set of brass ones to take on guys who are making more money than you are. But Mangini did it and he’s not afraid to make the tough decisions, even if they make him unpopular.”

“Well, who more than you would know about being unpopular? I’ve seen your yearbook. Weren’t you voted most likely to be given a wedgie? Fine, you want to give Mangini credit for dumping Smith, Winslow and Edwards, great. But who’d we get in return, Jason Trusnik, Chansi Stuckey and a bunch of draft choices? Nice players, I guess, but if Mangini had been more patient he could have gotten them for free when they were cut by the Jets anyway.

“Which brings me to my main point: this guy needs to be kept as far away as possible from player acquisition. He blew 3 second round picks in 2009 alone. He brought in a bunch of washed up Jets to fill out the roster, everyone of which will probably be gone next year. In fact, the only players that made any meaningful contribution this year were acquired by Phil Savage.”

“Are you saying you want to go back to Phil Savage? That’s like saying it’s time to bring Fernwood 2 Nite back on the air. Alex Mack played every down this season and you could see his improvement week to week. It’s no coincidence that as the line solidified so, too, did the running game. Mohamed Massaquoi is going to be a big time receiver. He showed plenty this season. And let’s not forget about Matt Roth and Evan Moore, two players Mangini picked up off the scrap heat. Besides, by the time Mangini was hired last year he hardly had enough time to prepare for the draft. Why do you think he made all the deals he did in order to get 11 picks this year. He’ll be ready, I guarantee you that. This guy knows what he’s doing.”

“Let’s see, he’s been a head coach now for 4 consecutive years, three of which were losing seasons. That sounds more like the ratings for the Drew Carey show than it does a successful resume for a head coach.”

Then Holmgren stepped to the podium.

“Ok, gents. Time’s up. This is starting to get personal. You both present compelling cases. It’s true that this franchise was at one of its lowest point ever just two months ago. But it’s also true that it is riding high at the moment. Mangini made a lot of ridiculous moves early in the season many of which he now admits were mistakes. But on the other hand he fired one of his best friends and has a habit of alienating those close to him. The team’s improved in certain areas, like avoiding penalties, but they are still at the bottom of the league in every meaningful statistic on both offense and defense. They’ve also won only 1 more game than all of last season. It’s a close call.

“Mangini, the root of all evil? I’ll render my final verdict in a few days. Stay tuned.”

A Corner Turned?

It was a game played in conditions that offered more reasons to stay in the locker room than on the field. The Jacksonville Jaguars, with only a remote of chance at the playoffs, supposedly had the most incentive to win. But it was the Cleveland Browns once again playing like it was their season was on the line and with that walked away with an easier than it sounds 23-17 win, their fourth straight and the first time in 23 years they finished a season with four straight wins.
The Jaguars scored on the game's last play with the game well out of reach to keep the score close.

With the win the Browns ended the season on the highest of notes and made the strongest case yet for why its embattled and beleaguered head coach, Eric Mangini, should find himself still with the organization once new president Mike Holmgren assumes his role in earnest next week.

It was a game in which the Browns, on both sides of the ball and on special teams, played with a spirit and intensity that hardly matched the near death march funk they had been in for most of the rest of the season.

Whether all of that is evidence that Mangini's vaunted "process" is finally taking root or that the players know there's a whole new set of eyes to impress is something that Holmgren gets the honor of figuring out. But for Browns fans, so used to perfunctory performances for far too long, the last month has been the most pleasant of surprises. Expect chants of "Super Bowl" "Super Bowl" when training camp opens next summer. Browns fans are nothing if not optimistic.

What the Browns really proved with this and its previous 3 wins in this streak was something they actually had established early in the season-it doesn't really matter who is playing quarterback for this team. As the season closes, it's clear that running is what the Browns do best.

After attempting initially to put together a more balanced attack than in weeks past, the Browns abandoned it for good following a Derek Anderson interception early in the second quarter and simply ran over and through a Jacksonville team that looked like it was trying to get back to the locker room and into warm clothes as quickly as possible.

Once again the burden fell mostly on Jerome Harrison, a back who's been on the roster all season but was only recently discovered by this coaching staff. Harrison had 33 carries for 127 yards, his third straight week with more than 100 yards and his fourth 100+ yard game of the season. Harrison also had 1 touchdown, a nifty 6-yard run off left tackle in the 3rd quarter on 4th down that effectively sealed the win.

Josh Cribbs, meanwhile, was his usual brilliant self and had his own touchdown, a 14-yarder out of the wildcat formation in the second quarter. He added 47 yards rushing to go along with 58 yards on kick and punt returns. Anderson, asked to do little more than hand off effectively and throw sparingly was 7-11 for 86 yards and 1 interception.

With the stadium half-full, the temperature in the teens and the wind whipping at upwards of 25 MPH, the field looked more suitable for skating than running. But it didn't seem to bother the Browns as they started off quickly again, taking a quick 3-0 lead on a 27-yard Phil Dawson field goal that was set up by, who else, Cribbs and his 31-yard return of the opening kick.

It gave the Browns good field position at their 46-yard line. After Anderson converted a first down on 4th and 1 from the Jacksonville 45-yard line, he helped get the Browns into position with a 29-yard completion to tight end Robert Royal. But the Browns could not get much further, settling instead for the Dawson field goal.

After a Reggie Hodges punt on the Browns' next possession gave the Jaguars the ball at the Cleveland 41-yard line, the Jaguars were able to tie it up on a Josh Scobee 47-yard field goal, a kick that had the trajectory of a block of ice and barely cleared the cross bar.

An exchange of punts followed and then the Browns looked to be on their way to regaining the lead but saw a good drive end prematurely when Anderson badly under threw Mohamed Massaquoi and saw it intercepted by Derek Cox at the Jaguars' 17-yard line.

But the Jags couldn't get a first down off the turnover. Jacksonville's Adam Podlesh's short punt gave the Browns the ball back at their own 43-yard line. At that point offensive coordinator Brian Daboll dispensed with any notion of a balanced attack and instead let Anderson do what he does best at this point in his career-hand the ball off to a running back. The Browns ran it 7 straight times and a little more than 3 minutes later found themselves in the end zone with a 10-3 lead and never looked back. Cribbs, following the lead block of fullback Lawrence Vickers, went the final 14 yards on a direct snap for the touchdown.

The Jaguars, showing they learned nothing from the Browns' drive, put the ball in quarterback David Garrard's hands and paid the price in the form of an interception by defensive back Eric Wright, who returned it 13 yards back to the Jacksonville 47-yard line.

After a Jerome Harrison run went nowhere, Cribbs took a handoff from Anderson on an end around and ran it 25 yards down to the Jacksonville 6 yard line just before the two-minute warning. An Anderson pass to tight end Evan Moore got the ball to the 1 but Anderson was then flagged for a false start taking it back to the 6-yard line. A statute of liberty play of sorts, with Anderson faking the throw and handing it off behind his back to Harrison got the ball to the 2-yard line but that made it 4th down and the Browns decided to take the points and a 13-3 lead thanks to a Dawson 21-yard field goal.

The Jaguars tried to get back into it early in the second half but their opening drive ended when a 43-yard field goal attempt by Scobee started down the middle but then was pushed right by the wind.

The Browns came right back at the Jaguars with a steady diet of Harrison, who ripped off runs of 14 and 16 yards as he closed in, once again, on another 100-yard game. But the best run of the game and one of the more entertaining runs of the season belonged to Chris Jennings. It was only 11 yards in total, but it covered about 50 more as Jennings went right, ran into a host of would-be tacklers, reversed field, almost got caught 2 or 3 times for huge losses before finally tiptoeing down the left sideline to the Jacksonville 15 yard line.

Harrison got another 5 yards and then Cribbs took it to the 6 on a direct handoff out of the backfield from Anderson. On 4th and short, after taking a time out to talk it over, the Browns opted to try and win the game right there by eschewing a short field goal. It worked as Harrison took the handoff and ran around left end for the touchdown. The Dawson extra point gave the Browns a 20-3 lead that, given the Jaguars' indifference, looked to be insurmountable.

After the Browns were forced to punt on their next possession, the Jaguars briefly caught fire, putting together their best drive of the day that closed the gap to 20-10 when Garrard found Zach Miller in the back of the end zone for a 6-yard touchdown. It was a drive that featured two fumbles by the Jaguars and a 31-yard run by Jones-Drew, who, despite 82 yards rushing, ran tentatively all day and looked as if he was wearing a parka under his jersey.

Whatever spark the drive gave the Jaguars was quickly snuffed out when the Browns put together a clock killing, impose-your-will drive on the legs of Harrison and some timely, crisp passing by Anderson that kept the chains moving for 13 plays and just over 8 minutes. It ended with a 33-yard Dawson field goal, giving the Browns a 23-10 lead and leaving the Jaguars with a little more than 2 minutes remaining and no time outs left.

A 15-yard touchdown pass from Garrard to Miller as time expired rounded out the scoring.

The way the Browns finished the season puts an interesting spin on the decisions facing Holmgren. A four game win streak in the NFL is something substantial. Two of the four victories were against league doormats. Another came against the Steelers in what surely is the signature win for this team. The final came against one of the league's more intriguing teams but a team that is not yet playoff-caliber. Still, in each of the games the Browns had as much or as little to play for as their opponents, depending on your perspective, and still gave the far better effort.

That doesn't erase, not by a long shot, all the mismanagement and missteps of earlier in the season. But if the win streak represents both an acknowledgement of and a break with those kinds of problems, then things really are looking up. And with Holmgren now aboard, this may be the first time in a long time when a Browns fans can actually say that they saw this team turn a corner and for once not head down another dark alley.

Power Struggles

If unscientific polls conducted by local television stations have any validity, then the Cleveland Browns’ hiring of Mike Holmgren as their next president is an overwhelmingly popular move in Cleveland. So much so, in fact, that it’s actually hard to find any detractors, even among those still supporting head coach Eric Mangini.

About the only criticism I’ve heard so far about Holmgren is that he’s not Bill Parcells. But even those critics are tacitly acknowledging that this team needed some real direction from the top.

Given this premise, which I accept mainly because it happens to be true, how is it then that anyone can really say the Browns under Mangini have made any meaningful progress this season?

Remember, Mangini wasn’t merely brought in to coach this team. Less than 12 months ago, he represented owner Randy Lerner’s latest franchise savior. Lerner, supposedly so blown away by his interview of Mangini, gave him the deed to the ranch and only the vaguest of directions to go do whatever he thought was best to remake the franchise.

Like a trophy wife shopping with her husband’s American Express platinum card on Rodeo Drive, Mangini was liberated. He performed extensive renovations on the complex itself. He hired his own boss. He put together his own coaching and front office staffs. He wheeled and dealed his way through the draft and had the freedom to bring in as many ex-Jets as he wanted. By the time training camp opened last July, there wasn’t anything about this franchise that didn’t have Mangini’s fingerprints on it in one way or the other.

Yet within that same 12 months, Lerner was no longer so smitten. He once again altered the course of this franchise significantly by publicly acknowledging his own failures and declaring himself in search of a brand new serious, credible leader.

When you consider Holmgren’s hiring in that context, you can only conclude that Lerner was likewise repudiating Mangini’s way, if not by word then certainly be deed. In some ways, it was far more damaging to Mangini’s reputation then if Lerner had simply dismissed him at that point.

That Lerner didn’t fire Mangini probably speaks to Lerner’s affection for Mangini, or maybe it speaks to Lerner’s own sense of guilt over a hiring he probably now regrets. Either way, a team doesn’t simply shift course in the middle of the season like that if it otherwise believes it is going in the right direction.

That’s why Holmgren, in his press conference a few days ago, was careful in letting the assembled media know that whether Mangini stays or go won’t be determined on the basis of a 3 or 4 game win streak at the end of a season that fell apart in week 1.

For Holmgrem and for Mangini, the issue really has little to do with offensive philosophies or whether the players are responding at the moment. What it will come down to is Mangini’s ability to accept a loss in a power struggle he didn’t even know he was having.

For Mangini, Holmgren’s hiring represents a significant demotion even before the season has officially eneded. Mangini was hired with no layers between him and owner Randy Lerner, which really meant that Mangini had the final say on anything and everything related to the football side of the business. Sure, George Kokinis ostensibly stood between Mangini and Lerner but that was only on paper. Once Mangini fired Kokinis, the path was cleared as surely as a plow clears a snow-covered city street.

With Holmgren on board, it’s a new layer. Given the fact that Holmgren plans on hiring a general manager, Mangini will find himself with two significant layers between him and Lerner. In restructuring terms, that’s dramatic, even more so because the layers won’t be minor speed bumps like Kokinis was for Mangini.

It’s really hard to say whether Mangini can operate in that structure. Having tasted what it’s like to have almost absolute power, it’s hard to go back. On top of that, operating in the structure requires swallowing a huge dose of pride. That’s never easy for anyone.

That’s why the real drama of these last few weeks isn’t the outcome of the perfunctory games still on the schedule but the outcome of Mangini’s deep dive into his own psyche. Come January 4th or so, everyone will know exactly how that turned out and how that turns out will ultimately dictate whether Mangini has any real future in the NFL.

If Mangini decides that it’s time to move on, he’ll probably have trouble finding work immediately in the NFL, certainly as a head coach. Don’t forget, Mangini has burned his fair share of bridges already in the league and the likelihood of some other owner taking a chance on Mangini that quickly after what will be perceived as two failures is miniscule. If Mangini does find work it will be as an assistant, which represents an even greater step back than the one Holmgren may be offering.

If Mangini can swallow his pride and accept that what’s done is done, then he has a chance to resurrect his career and perhaps go on to greater triumphs. To do that, though, Mangini is going to have to be satisfied on essentially having to re-earn his place at the big table. He’ll have to accept that for the time being he’ll have input only into personnel decisions and have to accept a change in most of what he believes about getting a team ready for play.

If he can do all that and do it not just with a smile on his face but with a real sense of commitment, then he’ll work his way back up into having a more prominent role if not in Cleveland than elsewhere.

If I’m Mangini’s agent or adviser, I know which way I’m telling him to go. But Mangini isn’t necessarily one of life’s great listeners. I doubt, for example, that anyone close to him was telling him that ousting Kokinis as he did was a good idea.

Having won one power struggle, it’s easy to become emboldened for the next one you face. This time, though, he really doesn’t have any other viable options. Lerner already has spoken on who really is in charge and Mangini now knows it’s not him. For the time being and what looks to be the foreseeable future, emboldened or not this is one struggle Mangini would be best advised not to take on.

What Success Looks Like

If you were looking for just the right metaphor for the Cleveland Browns’ season and perhaps the Cleveland sports scene in general, you couldn’t do much better than Sunday’s victory against the Oakland Raiders.

With nothing on the line, which is usually the case when it comes to Cleveland sports, the Browns emerged as the same jumbled mess, albeit a jumbled mess with a 3-game winning streak when it probably matters least. It’s the usual shot of optimism that Cleveland fans get just about the time they’re convinced all is lost, like a great September by the Indians after a miserable April through August.

Focusing on these small wins is just the kind of thinking in this town that often predominates over the longer view. It keeps coaches and general managers in place longer than they deserve because Cleveland fans don’t have much of a reference point for what real success looks like.

Actually that isn’t true.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, with Dan Gilbert as owner and Danny Ferry as general manager, have put together an organization not just worth admiring but emulating. It helps that they have the world’s best player in LeBron James, but James could easily have gone the way of Kevin Garnett in Minnesota without a good, solid organization behind him to complement his many skills.

Yet fans rarely stop to contemplate the reasons for the Cavs success beyond just the superficial but are more than willing to fly-speck the Browns to find lasting optimism for the future in even the smallest accomplishments. That’s a mistake.

Here’s what we do know about the Cavs success and why, for whatever transient good feeling Sunday’s Brown win brings, the Browns are still light years away from a meaningful positive comparison.

It starts with the owner and flows through a strong general manager.

Both team owners are well-heeled but being well-heeled doesn’t automatically translate into success. There is a world of difference between Gilbert’s money and Lerner’s money even if it spends the same.

Gilbert’s wealth is self-made. He came from a relatively modest upbringing and on his own initiative founded his own company. He worked hard to build that company up from its own modest beginnings. In the process he found out what works and what doesn’t. Most lessons worth learning aren’t in books but in the failures and successes of everyday living and working. It’s served him well in building his next business, the Cavs.

Lerner’s wealth is inherited. That doesn’t make him a bad guy. In fact, Lerner’s a pretty regular guy considering the trappings of his life from birth to now. But he’s never had to work at either acquiring or keeping that wealth. His most significant accomplishment in business is actually selling the company his father built. In the process, he’s never had much of an opportunity to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Never having been anything more than a token figurehead in any business endeavor, he’s had precious little chance to learn the lessons worth learning.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that Lerner was so ill-equipped to own the Browns. Conceptually he may have understood that the only football knowledge he had was that gotten from the backs of the bubble gum cards he collected as a kid, but he had no idea how to actually put together a successful organization to overcome his weaknesses. He’d never done it before.

When Lerner finally decided he had enough of all the ill will this season had brought, it represented a healthy admission of his own past failures. Grabbing Mike Holmgren in the way that Gilbert grabbed Ferry demonstrated that Lerner was finally starting to grasp some of the most basic business concepts that make an organization, any organization, successful.

It’s a great first step. It’s not enough.

The next steps will be even harder. For Lerner that means appreciating his role as the organization’s North Star. For Holmgren, that means establishing some organizational bright lines.

Gilbert is an active owner but he’s not activist, except on the fringes. He sets an operational imperative that places customer service and excellence in execution at its forefront. When you enter the Q, those touches are everywhere.

Neither active nor activist, Lerner has failed to establish any particular operational imperatives for his franchise. Customer service and excellence in execution are mostly an afterthought. When you enter Cleveland Browns Stadium, Lerner’s failures on these front are everywhere.

For Holmgren, he doesn’t need to be the next Bill Parcells. It will do simply if he becomes the Browns’ version of Ferry.

Holmgren isn't likely to ever have the same luck or luxury in being able to build a team around the NFL's version of James. That kind of player rarely exists in any sport. But Holmgren will have a chance to apply the product of his collective experiences to building a team and an organization that reflect his vision in the way Gilbert and Ferry have.

That doesn't start with appointing a head coach with an outsized personality who believes that it's my way or the Long Island Expressway. It starts first with creating a set of principles then finding the pieces and parts.

Ferry inherited Mike Brown, but only technically. Gilbert hired Brown and Ferry came along just a few weeks later, although the timing was more than coincidental. Gilbert a successful businessman with an understanding of what was needed, developed a vision and found the pieces that fit. He wasn't an owner in search of a superstar coach with the next great idea, just an owner in search of those who would execute the course he set.

Say what you will about Brown's coaching, but he never makes himself the story. It's always about the team and its principles that Gilbert established and Ferry oversees. The Cavs aren't just a team with one goal but a team that to a person can recite how that goal will be achieved. Everyone is on exactly the same page.

Say what you will about Mangini's coaching, but if this season's proven anything it's that he's almost always the story. Everything revolves around Mangini in a way that isn't healthy. As a result, the players aren't always reading from the same book, let alone the same page.

For Holmgren and this organization to be successful, that has to end. No team can sustain that kind of self-created drama on a daily basis and be successful. If that means Mangini is sacrificed for the greater good, then so be it.

Lerner is never going to set the vision. He doesn't have that kind of experience. It falls upon Holmgren to have the same courage of his own convictions that Gilbert and Ferry have and be willing to start anew from that imperative rather than try to jerry-rig them into an existing organization that is not of his own creation.

Cleveland fans have seen it work once. It really can happen again.

To Destinations Unknown

In a game that served mostly as a series of reminders and what ifs, the Cleveland Browns beat a mistake-prone Oakland Raiders on Sunday, 23-9, to notch their third straight victory in a season ending sprint to destinations unknown.

The reminders came in the form of the two starting quarterbacks, Charlie Frye for the Oakland Raiders and Derek Anderson for the Cleveland Browns. The “what ifs” came in the form of what if the Browns had made better use of Jerome Harrison and Josh Cribbs all season and had benched right guard John St. Clair and defensive back Brandon McDonald earlier in the year.

The last time the Browns and their fans saw Frye, he was packing his bags after a little more than a quarter of play into the Browns’ opening season loss in 2007 to the Pittsburgh Steelers. As for the man that replaced Frye that season, Derek Anderson, the last time he was spotted it was on his back and reeling from one ineffective performance after another before being permanently benched several games ago in favor of Brady Quinn.

As it turned out, neither player ended up being the story of the game. Frye showed his game hasn’t changed much, some fire too much ice, while Anderson was mostly doing his level best to get out of the way of both Cribbs and Harrison while limiting his own mistakes. It mostly worked. But the real story of the game was the undisciplined mess that the Oakland Raiders still are after all these years, though without nearly enough good players to overcome that tendency.

The Raiders probably relished the trip to Cleveland over the holidays about as much as kids relish the end of Christmas vacation. But that still doesn’t excuse 13 penalties for 126 yards, many of which came at critical points of drives that forced field goals when touchdowns were needed, and 3 Frye interceptions, the first of which led to Cleveland’s first touchdown before the game was even 2 minutes old and the last of which snuffed out the Raiders’ last scoring attempt.

On Frye’s first pass of the game, he made an ill-conceived decision that landed in the hands of linebacker David Bowens, who returned it 15 yards to the Oakland 17-yard line. Two plays later, Harrison ran the remaining 17-yards untouched for the touchdown that helped give the Browns a 7-0 lead that they ended up never relinquishing.

But it was a Raiders meltdown of classic proportions just before the end of the first half that ultimately propelled the Raiders back to Oakland with the loss.

It started innocently enough for the Raiders. After the Browns were able to pin the Raiders back to their own 1-yard line thanks to handy teamwork by Josh Cribbs and Brandon McDonald on a Reggie Hodges punt, the Raiders were able to regain field position thanks to a booming Shane Lechler punt and two Browns penalties that put the ball on the Browns own 7-yard line.

Pinned back and heading further backward, the Raiders then emptied their frustration bucket all over themselves when a little discipline would likely have kept the score close.

First it was Richard Seymour igniting a scuffle with an unsportsmanlike penalty that was offset by a penalty on Rex Hadnot somewhere inside the pile. But Seymour, not content with having to share the spotlight with Hadnot, let referee Jeff Triplett know about it and was flagged for another unsportsmanlike penalty before the Browns were able to snap the ball. It took the ball to the Cleveland 40-yard line. That was followed a few plays later by another unsportsmanlike penalty, this time on cornerback Stanford Routt for a head butt that was deemed so flagrant that Routt was ejected.

That put the ball on the Oakland 27-yard line. Harrison, still showing great spring in his legs after last week’s record-breaking effort, ran 8 yards. That set up a 19-yard touchdown throw from Anderson to Mohammad Massaquoi. Phil Dawson added the extra point and it gave the Browns a 17-6 lead with just seconds remaining in the half.

The Browns defense couldn’t quite hold the Raiders in those waning seconds. After a few quick passes by Frye moved the ball to the Cleveland 43-yard line, Janikowski hit an amazing 61-yard field goal that closed the gap to 17-9. It didn’t end up giving the Raiders much of a lift and, ultimately, was just an interesting highlight in a highly imperfect game.

The Browns meanwhile were able to push their late first half score to a 20-9 lead with a 33-yard Dawson field goal to open the second half. The Raiders, unwilling to kick deep to Cribbs, instead put the ball in Harrison’s hands and all he did was return it 39 yards to the Oakland 43-yard line. The Browns then broke out their wildcat formation with Cribbs hitting on a 21-yard run that nearly went for a touchdown. But the Raiders defense then stiffened forcing the Browns to settle for the Dawson field goal.

The Raiders offense, however, was still a mess. It couldn’t answer the Browns’ field goal after another drive was snuffed out not so much by the Browns’ defense but another series of penalties including a holding call and an intentional grounding penalty on Frye.

The Browns, not exactly an artistic success themselves, had a chance to push the lead out even further but had a Harrison touchdown nullified on an illegal block by tight end Michael Gaines and then two plays later Harrison fumbled at the Oakland 5-yard line. Oakland linebacker Kirk Morrison recovered, but the Raiders couldn’t find a way to turn it into points of their own.

The Raiders seemed on the verge of getting back in the game as the fourth quarter began, with Frye moving the ball effectively through the air. But on 3rd and 9 from the Cleveland 24-yard line, Frye’s sideline pass was intercepted by McDonald at the 14-yard line. McDonald ran it back 39 yards to the Oakland 47 yard line. That led to a 34-yard Dawson field goal and a 23-9 lead. It was Dawson’s third field goal of the day, the other two covering 42 and 33 yards, respectively.

Then Raiders’ tried to make a game out of it late and may have but for, predictably, a series of mistakes.

Taking over with over 8 minutes remaining and the ball at his own 6-yard line, Frye hit a series of passes that quickly put the ball in Cleveland territory. On 2nd and 10 from the Cleveland 26 yard line, Browns’ defensive back Hank Poteat was then flagged for interference in the end zone on a pass that was intercepted by safety Abe Elam. It put the ball at the 2 yard line. Frye then threw four straight incompletions. Within those four passes though was an interception by Eric Wright that was overturned and an offensive pass interference penalty on Chaz Schilens on 4th down that gave the Browns the ball with a little over 4 minutes to play.

The Browns were not able to get a first down and were forced to punt as the Raiders burned all of their time outs. Hodges punt put the ball at the Oakland 46-yard line. Frye then moved the Raiders quickly into scoring position again but his third interception, this one to Wright, effectively ended the game.

Those final two Raiders drives were a theme as they brilliantly illustrated the Raiders squandering of good opportunities to not just close the gap but perhaps take the lead, only to see drives stymied by mistakes, usually penalties.

For example, the Raiders’ first points came courtesy of a Sebastian Janikowski 45-yard field goal in the first quarter but it could have, maybe should have been more. With Frye finding his rhythm after the early interception, he was able to put together a nice drive that got the ball down to the Cleveland 16-yard line. But a holding penalty on right tackle Cornell Green killed the drive.

On the Raiders’ next drive, which started from the 50-yard line, a false start penalty on 3rd and 3 on tackle Chris Morris made it 3rd and long and led to a Shane Lechler punt.

Then, after the Browns second straight series in the second quarter that finished further from the end zone than when it started forced a put from Hodges out of his end zone, his punt traveled only to the Cleveland 45-yard line and then a penalty on McDonald for running into the returner put the ball at the Cleveland 30-yard line. But the Raiders couldn’t turn it into anything more than a 34-yard Janikowski field goal and a 10-6 deficit after Frye was sacked by Mike Adams on 3rd and 3 from the Cleveland 10-yard line.

As it was last week, the Browns used the game to further solidify a running game that has been taking shape since Jamal Lewis went down for the season. The Browns were again wildly out of balance offensively, running it 45 times against just 17 pass attempts. Harrison once again led the way with 148 yards rushing on 39 carries. Anderson was just 8-17 with one touchdown and no interceptions.

It wasn’t exactly the audition Anderson probably envisioned for new president Mike Holmgren and probably did little to ensure he’ll be back next season. Though Anderson wasn’t asked to do much, he still showed amazingly bad touch on short passes. To his credit, though, he didn’t turn the ball over, though that was more a case of luck in the form of the Raiders defenders, naturally, twice dropping potential interceptions.

For the Browns, they now stand at 4-11 heading into next week’s game against Jacksonville. A victory gives them 5 wins, which would be the first visible sign of progress over last season. But there are still many questions facing Holmgren, not the least of which starts with the quarterback slot and pushes outward from there. Where this thing is headed now is anyone’s guess.

Still, in a season that has been mostly high drama and low execution, a 3-game winning streak has proven to be a nice respite. Sunday’s game, with mistakes flying everywhere, ran nearly 3 ½ hours and yet seemed half as long as most other Browns’ games this season.

Looking for Presents That Aren't There

When Cleveland Browns head coach looks under his Christmas tree this year, the present he’d like most but probably won’t see is the one from new club president Mike Holmgren with a card inside telling Mangini him that he’s being retained for the remainder of his contract.

If you want early insight into why Holmgren likely plans no such gift just look to Randy Lerner. Specifically, look to the reasoning behind why Lerner brought in Holmgren.

Without intending, I suspect, to be disrespectful to Mangini it is interesting that Lerner’s often repeated refrain has been that he needed to bring in a serious, credible leader for the franchise. It’s one of the few quotable things he’s said all season, actually.

Meanwhile, back in Berea, Mangini hearing those words probably texted his agent “WTF?” Undoubtedly Mangini had to feel like he was already the serious, credible sort to Lerner, particularly after he was able to oust former friend George Kokinis with Lerner’s blessing.

After enduring all sorts of slings and arrows from every corner, this one included, for letting a once proud franchise essentially become the Los Angeles Clippers of the NFL because of all his bungling, Lerner apparently had enough. He learned, albeit a few months too late, that Mangini wasn’t a serious, credible leader of a franchise and likely never was going to be that person.

Lerner courted Mangini last off season with the drunken confidence a 20-something courts a woman beyond his reach in a bar as the evening grows late. But in the clear and sober light of day he awoke to find that Mangini was not necessarily the next great thing. He was simply a coach that had just been fired.

But beyond just that stark portrayal, Lerner came to realize that Mangini arrived in Cleveland with plenty of baggage, some deservedly earned some not, and has spent most of his time since accumulating more. More importantly, though, he came to find that Mangini was something of an outcast in established NFL circles.

When it became clear that it was Mangini that ratted out his former mentor, Bill Belichick, for secretly taping opposing coaches signals during a game, it caused the league all sorts of headaches. Belichick clearly had violated the rules, irrespective of whether or not the rules make much sense. Not to digress too far on that issue, just let me put it this way: it’s not a violation of the U.S. Constitution if a police officer decides to tape your secret rendezvous at the local park and use it against you in court but it is a violation of NFL rules for opposing coaches to essentially do the same thing.

But further to the point, the league had to undertake an investigation and mete out punishment against Belichick, something it didn’t particularly relish not because it’s Belichick but because the NFL doesn’t ever want to look like it has any problems.

Whatever you might feel about Mangini’s decision to turn whistleblower, the outcome certainly cost him his spot on the playground. To other coaches, other owners, other players, Mangini was a guy you had to keep your eye on and not for the right reasons. Whatever credibility he might have been building in the NFL was lost over this incident, again fair or not.

Fast forward to his arrival in Cleveland. Fans were already skeptical of getting what they viewed as a retread and not a particularly successful retread at that. Then came all the other incidents, chronicled several times here and elsewhere, that gave fans far more reasons to be suspicious than welcoming. If you were a crisis communications consultant, you could use Mangini’s arrival and early tenure here as a case study on how not to establish credibility in a new situation.

The culmination of all these incidents, none of which individually were fatal but collectively were overwhelming, caused Lerner to realize that nationally and locally this franchise wasn’t being taken seriously. More to the point, it caused Lerner to realize that Mangini, sitting alone and overseeing all he could survey, was not going to be the person to change that perception. If this franchise becomes successful under Lerner everyone will look back to this particular insight of Lerner’s as the turning point.

Perhaps, though, the clearer sign or signs of Holmgren’s intentions regarding Mangini can be found in the total lack of restrictions Lerner placed on Holmgren in offering him the job. It was this absence of any strings that ultimately caused Holmgren to abandon Seattle and all the comforts it held for him personally for Cleveland.

The only reasonable conclusion to draw from this is that Lerner isn’t wedded to the Mangini way in the least. That isn’t to say he isn’t a fan of what Mangini’s been doing, but it is to say that he’s indifferent to whether or not Holmgren wants to blow it up and start over. That alone doesn’t bode well for Mangini on any level.

Think what you will about Mangini’s vaunted process but what’s undeniable is that it hasn’t yet been anything more than a working hypothesis. The field tests conducted over the last 4 seasons have yielded mixed results, at best. More importantly, Mangini’s theories on some of the most basic levels are far different than Holmgren’s and his have proven far more successful over a longer period of time.

Listening to Mangini in his press conferences lately, it almost sounds like he understands that dynamic pretty clearly. He may be confident of his own process and supportive of his own efforts and decisions during the year, but he surely isn’t delusional enough to think that Holmgren is simply going to work from the script Mangini drafted and then tweak things around the edges.

The reason Holmgren was able to parlay the sum total of all of his experiences into his current position is because he has been successful. It would be startling, to say the least, were Holmgren to suddenly abandon his collective beliefs in what makes a franchise successful just to accommodate a head coach whose been in his job for just one year.

Mangini and the fans may or may not be seeing some actual growth this season, it’s hard to tell. After all, this team still has one fewer wins than last season. But it’s not as if anything Mangini’s done has developed much of a root system. If there is going to be a reset, better now than two years down the road.

Then, of course, for Mangini the most uncomfortable sign of all at the moment is the deafening sound of silence from Holmgren or Lerner about any of these key issues. In this case, silence isn’t a friend to Mangini. Maybe next week, once Holmgren has spent his last Christmas for awhile in Seattle and hops Lerner’s plane to Cleveland, he’ll have more to say. But right now, Mangini is twisting in the wind, kind of like how he kept Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson twisting in the wind all preseason.

As the Holmgren era kicks off in earnest next week, Mangini’s fate will be decided sooner rather than later. But as he digs under his Christmas for the present that’s not going to be there, he can take comfort in if not learn something from the words of Greg Lake: The Christmas we get we deserve.