Dawg Pound Is Hungry For Success

The Cleveland Browns announced the hiring of former Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren as its new President.  Holmgren will be responsible for running all team operations, including personnel decisions.  The announcement followed weeks of speculation that Holmgren would assume the task of resurrecting the once proud franchise.

When Holmgren gets to his new desk, there will be three envelopes awaiting him from his predecessor George Kokinis and a note urging him to open the envelopes in order at the first hint of trouble.  Holmgren will learn quickly over the next two weeks just how bad of a situation he has fell into.  That realization will lead to the opening of that first envelope.

1.  Blame Your Predecessor

When in doubt, the easiest way to ease into a transition is to blame all those who came before you.  And there is a lot of blame to go around.  This is a franchise that has gone 57-117 since it re-entered the NFL in 1999 after Art Modell moved the original team to Baltimore.   The mistakes have been huge and the Lerner family thumbprints are all over everything.

It started with handing the the reigns to an unknown to launch the new franchise in Chris Palmer.  After that failed experiment, full control of the football operations was given to a college football coach in Butch Davis.  Then they decided they must have the coaching genius of Romeo Crennel and his Super Bowl rings.  Three straight coaches with no NFL head coaching experience, lets correct our ways and hire Eric Mangini.  Failure after failure after failure.  Simply put, a successful franchise must have a leader at the helm.

Then you place some blame on the scouting and personnel department.  Eleven first round draft picks and only one solid pick, Joe Thomas.   That is more than a decade of picks and only one has panned out.  Lets remind the public of some of the doozies:  Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, Gerard Warren, William Green, Kellen Winslow Jr, Braylon Edwards and Brady Quinn.  The Quinn hurt even more than the others given that Cleveland traded up to get him and gave away a 2nd round pick and a 1st rounder to Dallas in 2008.  Every one of these guys were busts.

Then lets get to the supporting groups, such as the training facility and the medical staff.  Over the course of four years, six players were infected with staph.  The only answer to all of this is that the facilities are filthy and team ownership is too cheap to keep things cleaned up.  The disgusting situation in the locker room has led former WR Joe Jurevicious to sue the team for shortening his career and putting his life at risk.

But blaming everyone else can be done for only so long.  Time to open up envelope number two.

2.  Reorganize

Basically, this team needs an overhaul from top to bottom.  There is no talent in this organization at all, including both the coach.ing staff, scouting and player personnel.  Holmgren needs to clean house and start fresh

His first step should be to hand Eric Mangini his termination letter on January 2nd shortly after the completion of their final game of the season.  There need not be ongoing speculation about Mangini nor any drawn out affair about his coaching future.  Mangini is not capable of head coaching duties in the NFL, let alone being a coordinator.  The Jets realized their error and the Browns need to cut this guy loose as soon as possible along with every member of his staff.  The Browns need a real coach with real NFL head coaching experience.  Jon Gruden appears to fit that bill excellently and knows how to work with Holmgren.

The next step is to send about 20-30 players  of the current roster packing.  Figure out who isn’t cutting it and give them their pink slips.  This locker room has been infected with a loser mentality.  The only way to fix that is to bring in fresh players and remove the stench.

Finally, Holmgren needs to get a draft plan prepared right away.  It is just four months away until the Browns can replenish.  The Browns need help at just about every position.  They need to figure out how to accumulate picks by getting rid of dead weight in trades.  And most importantly, they need to get it right.  There is no franchise QB in this draft, so go get a veteran in free agency and begin stocking elsewhere.  Nebraska Suh’s could be the guy.

But if history is a guide, Holmgren will botch his first pick.  When he arrived in Seattle, Holmgren made Lamar King of Saginaw Valley State his first choice.  For his career, King tallied 65 total tackles and 12 sacks over 5 years.  Most defensive end get those numbers in one season.  Holmgren was a much better coach than evaluator of talent in Seattle.  The Seahawks beat up on the weakest division in football and delivered slightly better than average results.

So, when you complete your first 4-12 season and its time to look for guidance, open the third envelope.

3.  Prepare Three Envelopes

Holmgren is not an NFL genius and gets much more credit than he deserves.  Green Bay’s success was due to Ron Wolf and Holmgren rode the coatails.  He had one special season in Seattle and a little luck helped get them to the Super Bowl only to be flattened by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was a better than average head coach, that’s it.

Regardless, no matter how hard Holmgren works.  No matter how talented an NFL guy people may think he is.  Even if he made a secret deal with Satan, Holmgren will not right this ship.  The problems with this franchise start at the top with the Lerner family.  Until Randy Lerner sells his stake out, the Cleveland Browns will continue to be the doormats of the NFL, or at a minimum the red-headed stepsister of the Detroit Lions.

It appears that Lerner is following the recipe in Miami with Bill Parcells.  Unfortunately, we don’t know how that experiment is going to fare in the long run.  The Cleveland Browns fans unforunately look like they will be paying the price for years to come as Lerner rolls the dice again.