At this point, firing Chudzinski looks like a doubly stupid move. If they fire this Pettine dude after a year they might have to have a fan contest to be the next coach.
There’s no way they fire Pettine next year exactly because of the ridiculous position it puts them in. No one wants to coach for them as it is - if they did that, they’d have to start scouring division 2 college coaches. Because of their fuckup this year, they’ve basically guaranteed that Pettine gets 3 years unless he wins less than 6 games over the first two years perhaps.
And yeah, when they were so quick to fire Chud, it seemed like they had an alternate solid plan of the guy they really wanted all lined up. Woops.
Unless Chudzinski was just a locker room cancer and all his players hated his guts (and who knows, maybe that IS the case!), it’s hard to see what the Browns were hoping to accomplish.
So, they got rid of one coach after just one year, and finally hired a guy they didn’t really want. As Sean Connery would put it, “Our situation has not improved.”
Just who’s supposed to be in chagre in the Browns’ front office, anyway?
And that was a *reporter *asking.
I really believe that in terms of on-field talent, Cleveland was one of the better openings. Yes, they have glaring weaknesses, but they also have a few very solid building blocks in place: Young or youngish stars at LT, WR, TE, and all three levels of the defense. If they have a couple more players on this very young team emerge, and they can get a merely competent QB, I can see that team turning around fast.
All of which makes me think the real problem is the dysfunctional front office.
It’s official. Desperation has hit. Bills DC Mike Pettine to Cleveland.
Pettine might be a perfectly cromulent HC, but the boilerplate “we’re thrilled with this selection, he brings a lot to the table, we’ll finally contend in the AFC North” stuff that Jimmy Haslam is putting out is pure comic gold after all the public fumbling of the process.
Well, one of those stars was suspended and then kicked off his college team for marijuana-related incidents and has already tested positive at least twice since entering the NFL. So you might as well plan as though he’s not there.
It gets better and better. Gary Kubiak has no interest in being the Browns’ OC.
He might not have been the greatest HC, but Kubes is widely considered to be at least one of the better offensive minds in the NFL. I guess he has little faith in that front office, too.
He’ll still see the Browns, though - Kubiak signed on as the Ravens offensive coordinator. Considering some of the other names floated in the search (WR coach Jim Hostler, Kyle Shanahan), Kubiak looks like a great choice. Hopefully he doesn’t suffer any more sideline collapses.
He brings Rick Dennison (his former OC in Houston) with him as a quarterback coach. Good news for Flacco, who does much better when he has a specialized QB coach (2008-2010, 2012 - average QB rating 87.6) than when he doesn’t (2011, 2013, QB rating 77.0).
I could see that going well. Part of the blame in Houston does go to Kubiak, but Schaub’s collapse had a lot to do with it, too, as did the poor play of the OL and injuries to the backs. Some of that’s on him, but a lot of it is on the players and the front office (the clock is already ticking on Rick Smith’s tenure in Houston).
With a good QB, a great RB, and at least reasonable receivers, Kubiak has a shot to do well. At the very least, I rate him above Caldwell as an OC.
Browns hire Kyle Shanahan.
Banner and Lombardi out in Cleveland. Stability is over-rated anyway…
Holy shit. That’s huge. Kind of a rough move a couple months before the draft, yet I hated both, so… yay. In a couple years, Haslam is either going to be looked at as a bold guy who bucked the default path the NFL tried to steer him in, or worse than Dan Snyder. We’ll find out.
Signs I spend too much time at the Dope:
Seeing Lombardi has been fired by the Browns and immediately thinking “well, at least SenorBeef will be happy”.
Shouldn’t they have done that before firing the coach (and hiring a new one)?
Maybe the very public clusterfuck of a coaching search was the last straw that told Haslam it was time to dump a couple of clowns out of the clown car.
If it took more than the public clusterfuck of firing a coach who overachieved after one season, Haslam is a moron. Of course, he almost certainly approved that decision, so…
You can’t reasonably say the coach overachieved during the season. I was on board with keeping chud, but he had 6 pro bowlers, second most of any team, to work with. The team blew all sorts of late game leads and then towards the end of the season the team started to give up. The idea that he had what should’ve been a 2 win team and turned it into a 4 win team or something like that is not accurate.
Banner was pretty much forced on the Browns from the NFL. It’s a good old boy network, and Banner had done something for the NFL contractually that had made them millions, so they basically forced Haslam to give him the FO job as part of buying the team. But Banner is a creepy little weirdo accountant who got it into his head he was a football guy. And I have no fucking idea about Lombardi. I don’t know how that happened.
Haslam is bold, at least, I’ll give him that. He decided that what he got in his first year isn’t what he wants his organization to look like, so he has the balls to dramatically change it.
In general, stability is overrated. People get the cause and effect wrong. They’ll see “see that winning team over there? They’ve had the same coach for 10 years! Stability wins!” when the actual cause is “See how that coach is good enough to keep consistently winning? That’s why he’s had a job for 10 years” - it’s bad to be stable towards people who can’t get the job done.
So I support this. Banner and Lombardi were a shitty front office. I’d rather have the old coaching staff back under a new front office, but whatever, clean slate.
You’re right. He turned a one win team into a 4 win team.
That’s quite frankly ridiculous. You think a team with 6 pro bowlers is a historically bad expansion team tier? The Browns were a good QB away from being a 10-12 team. That was, and has been, the big gaping hole in the team. The offensive line held together well enough, they have the second most talented young receiver running wild, the defensive line was excellent, the secondary turned out to be much better than expected. The 2013 Browns were very talented and undoubtedly underachieved, mostly due to quarterbacking.