CLEVELAND, OH — Another disastrous Browns season, another head coach fired, and another general manager relived of his duties. Such is the reign of Cleveland Browns co-owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam.
24 hours after firing first-year head coach Freddie Kitchens after a underachieving 6-10 season that had Super Bowl-level expectations, the Browns and general manager John Dorsey mutually agreed to part ways due to a disagreement over a proposed organizational restructuring, according to media reports.
It’s bad enough that the Browns flopped worse than Shamu on a sunny beach, but in letting one of the league’s most respected football men in Dorsey walk over a restructuring that would have allowed the incoming new head coach to choose his own general manager is another example of the backwards-type of thinking and all-around incompetence of the Haslam ownership in the Rock and Roll Capital of the World.
According to well-respected Browns beater writer, Daryl Ruiter on Twitter, the Browns have fired five general managers, five head coaches, two team presidents and amassed a putrid record of 32-88-1, including finishing with the league’s second-ever winless season.
In what was billed as the season of turnaround, and star players appearing in commercials from Progressive Insurance to being on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the 2019-20 season is perhaps the most bitterest of sports grapefruit that would make even the most die-hard Dawg Pounder wince in pain.
While Dorsey deserves some blame for choosing to side with the now-ousted Kitchens, he helped stock Cleveland with the most talent it has had since the Kosar days in drafting QB Baker Mayfield, DB Denzel Ward and RB Nick Chubb, trading for WR’s Jarvis Landry, Odell Beckham Jr. and DE Oliver Vernon and signing DT Sheldon Richardson.
One can argue that Kitchens was in over his head in managing such a collection of proverbial misfits with big egos, but Dorsey was a huge Jim Thome level home-run type of hire by the Haslams.
In what is becoming clear to national fans, media and even some players are beginning to hint at is that the one constant in the Browns two-decade long tour de force of pigskin ineptitude is the former Tennessee Vols boosters in Jimmy and Dee Haslam, who don’t seem to have a proverbial clue in how to run an NFL team.
Carmen Sandiego could pop up in front of both of them and they wouldn’t know who she is. That is how clueless and utterly stupid the Haslams are at management.
No clue. No ideas. No direction.
Oh! And they are still paying former head coach Hue Jackson! Might as well add Kitchens to their ever growing expensive tab of former personnel that they are STILL paying.
All of this while still under FBI investigation.
If there is one omnipotent entity that has the ability in sports to exert influence, power and change the balance of things in the blink of an eye, it is the NFL.
They have the power to strip teams of draft picks, relocate teams at will and squash anything that they feel threatening to their shield.
Twenty years ago, they allowed He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named to move Browns 1.0 to the Charm City. And while Cleveland did get an expansion team back in 1999 it’s never been the same, let alone even remotely competitive.
If there was one time that the NFL could do Cleveland a proverbial solid, it needs to be now in forcing the Haslam’s to sell the team immediately to a competent and knowledgeable billionaire who knows how to run a NFL franchise.
Enough is enough, and I speak for all Browns fans when I say that this fan base is as loud, vocal and will flood the NFL’s cushy Manhattan headquarters with so many faxes, emails and fan protests overnight that they’ll need NYPD to keep the angry and utterly pissed Browns fans at bay.
Not that I’m proposing or suggesting such a thing, but never underestimate the power of social media and a galvanized grassroots level type of movement, such as the one Browns fans put together to get their team back.
Twenty years later, it may be time to get their beloved Dawgs back from a set of abusive and informed owners who have taken their loyal fans for granted for the last time.
If Adam Silver didn’t step in to fix the Knicks, there’s no way Goodell does it for the Browns. The Haslam’s need to figure it out without hand holding.