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Browns: What is Worth Having Must be Earned

By steverodgers

Coach Eric Mangini

Browns fans have been through the fire during the expansion era and during this season. It seems they are finally on the other side– except they aren’t. The men and women of the Flats, wait upon Mike Holmgren’s decision to retain or let go of Eric Mangini. What at once looked like a season of ruin for Mangini now looks like one of the better rebuilding jobs done in recent memory. Not some magical overnight blessing from the football gods that sends the team into the playoffs only to be brought down to earth the next year. No, it was a methodical, brick-by-brick construction job that can only be appreciated by stepping back after the season was finished to see the straight lines, quality workmanship, and effort.

Mangini, like no other coach I can remember, put his head down and stuck to his plan, even while the reporters (Clayton, the Plain Dealer hacks) sharpened their knives, gleefully stabbing Mangini at every turn, their contempt barely contained in their writing.  Browns fans understandably impatient, watching at times a football team looking like one of the worst ever and reacting to incorrect reporting and poor analysis, called for his head.  Veteran players used to the soft, mincy ways of Romeo Crennell dug their heels in the sand, complained loudly to their agents, who complained loudly to the media, creating a firestorm of bad energy. Randy Lerner, the entirely incompetent owner, without courage, without patience, wanting to prove how much he cares for the Browns fans (although strangely absent from the last two home games) goes out to hire a “credible football leader” in Mike Holmgren, who has the tedious nickname of “Big Show” to be the “CZAR” of football operations.  The national and local media celebrate this move.

The Czar (AP Photo)

The hiring of Holmgren may have been a smart move (although there is something wildly mediocre about Holmgren that I can’t put my finger on) in the beginning of the season, or even at the end when the dust had settled and the lockers cleared. It was not a good move, however, done in the midst of a seemingly disastrous season– it was a panic move. It has now created a stomach-turning decision for Holmgren and for the Cleveland faithful, a decision that deep in the fog of a 1-11 season seemed easy. Keep Mangini or let him go. Times have changed.

Mangini and the Browns reeled off 4 straight wins to end the season.  Hard-nosed, disciplined style wins, ramming the ball down teams’ throats, taking Big Jen into the dirt like a doughy man-piñata, and absolutely dismantling a Jaguars team that should have been desperate to get to the playoffs. It was for Browns fans like a fog was lifted. Mangini didn’t seem like the hapless, power-hungry imbecile as portrayed in the local and national media. Suddenly he seemed like a man with a plan, with vision, and even more he seemed to have the courage, the patience, to build a winner in the model of Cleveland itself, a hard-working city that has tired of being a doormat and now will not be outworked, or outsmarted, ready to scrap and scrape, tired of being bullied, ready to finally get off the ground and punch someone straight in the mouth. It felt good.

The Browns came together under Mangini for a 4-game win streak to end the season (Photo: Matt Sullivan/Getty Images)

Mangini, since the hiring of Holmgren, took on a different persona as well. Who could not admire the humble, plain-talking way he handled the increasing pressure and scrutiny. He preached the gospel of one-week-at-a-time, and not getting distracted, and then proved its success by somehow managing to get his team prepared every week while his future was in doubt. His players responded. I have watched almost all of his press conferences since the hiring of Holmgren, and it once again showed me how biased the media can be. Mangini comes across as polite, he answers each question patiently, describes different aspects of football, and takes the time to publicly honor players that have done well– even the practice players– and uses the word “WE” in both successes and failures. This is the guy that angered the media? It’s perplexing.

I have heard that the “Spygate” scandal is what has made him such a target to reporters and the hacks at ESPN. Maybe they didn’t like being scooped. Maybe they knew all along and were embarrassed. Much like steroids in baseball and the Tiger Woods scandal, once again it shed light on the fact that sports reporting is not the same as political reporting. They are mouthpieces for the teams and sports. They, like the owners and players and coaches, want to keep it status quo. It’s a farce that pretends be something more than it is, or maybe it doesn’t, but over the years we have started to believe as fans that it’s real news and they have the fans’ interest at heart. As a Patriots fan, I have always thought what Mangini did during Spygate showed true courage. He knew it would not be popular to call out one of his brethren, much less the greatest coach of this generation, on something that sounds like it was done league wide. Not only that but he was calling out his former mentor.  He was correct as well: the NFL doesn’t fine coaches hundreds of thousands of dollars and take away draft picks for nothing. Mangini showed his true colors, not as some turncoat rat, but someone who is principled and willing to make the hard choices and live with the consequences. He stood up to a bully when no one else would. Ask yourself, are the people who do not appreciate what he did or vilify him, are they telling you more about themselves or Mangini?

We want to believe what we read– we as sports fans don’t want to take the time to drill down– and we come up with opinions that we think are our own, but they are not; they are formulated by endless commentary and stories that begin to erode our own ability to see what it right in front of us. We as fans are emotional, we are invested in our teams, our players, we want to be proud of them, we lose our analytical mind, and even though we watch sports alone we fall into mob mentality that robs of us perception. We become the worst kind of animal, the kind that think they are wolves when in reality they are just sheep, huddled together, eating whatever is fed to them.

Mangini seems to have earned the respect of the Browns players ... but it may have been too late (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

Mangini came to the Browns and did exactly what he said he was going to do. He took a team with no draft picks and no cap space, and by guile and smarts alone managed by the end of the season to net the Browns 11 picks next year and cap space to burn. He took two players considered to be the best talent on the team and traded them away for value. Edwards would have been a free agent at the end of the season. He would have left and the Browns would have had nothing. Instead they have two starters and picks, and Edwards has been exposed for what he was all along, a mid-tier talent, loud and immature, with hands of stone and heart that is squirreled away in a safe deposit box somewhere. Let him be the Jets’ problem. Winslow, a tight end with talent leaking out of his pours, but who is not able to block for a grind-it-out team that Mangini was building, is a selfish player who could not see past his own nose. Now he is the Bucs’ problem. All of these things were evident, obvious, but were represented poorly, as if he was chaining the Browns to mediocrity. Instead Mangini was cutting the Browns loose, giving them a future. Things that are good in life come with a price, hard work, dedication, selflessness; the same with football. Winslow and Edwards were not ready to do this for the Browns, for the fans, even for the money. They will forever be the poorer for it.

So Holmgren’s decision is fraught with difficulty. Brought in to be in charge, the obvious choice, the ego choice is to let go of Mangini and his coaching staff. Who could blame him if he wants to bring in his own coaches, his own staff? A cupboard that was bare and full of poison rattraps is now full of disciplined players, some talented, mostly journeymen that know the value of team football. A cupboard once bare of flexibility and possibility is now stocked with picks, cap room and hope. How easy would it be for him to come into that kitchen, sack the chef and take ownership, to take full credit for a team that seems poised to start winning, a team that after years of mismanagement looks to be actually what it has pretended to be all of these years, a NFL franchise a city can be proud of.

I hope that Holmgren makes the hard choice, a choice that is not about credit or about one person, a choice the requires him to set aside his own ego and agenda. A choice that will in the end take the spotlight away from him. It’s a choice that will not make him the savior of the Browns, because that person is already in place. It’s a choice that will reward a hard-working coach and not the poison pens of bitter reporters, a choice that will show us all if Holmgren can put aside personal glory and to do what is right, to be a man of principle, to keep Mangini and let him finish what he started.

There is something more to this than just football. It’s about the Browns and a coach that came into town with the stink of controversy around him, a coach that had fallen from grace, a coach that did exactly what he said he would do and to hell with the consequences.  It is a human story, a story of a coach and a team that has come through the fire with grace and courage, and restored a little hope to a town down on its luck, to a once-proud football team that had become a laughing stock and has shown us all once again that doing what’s right isn’t easy, that in the end the only way to go through life is to be humble, to work hard, and that nothing worth having is ever given, that it must be earned. That’s Browns football, that’s Cleveland, and that is Eric Mangini and I am thankful for all three.