If a Comprehensive and Authoritative 2012 Cleveland Browns Season Preview is going to be concise, it might as well start with an excerpt from an interview that Eric Mangini gave to the New York Times’ Greg Bishop last November just before his Browns shocked the world by dismantling the eventual AFC East Champion New England Patriots, who didn’t lose another game for the rest of the regular season.
Q. Do you take pride in what the Jets accomplished last season, after you left?
A. Sometimes, I feel like Pete Best. He was a big part of putting that band together, but he never enjoyed Beatlemania. He was just Pete Best, the other Beatle. And yeah, I did take pride in it. Like I take pride in seeing Dustin Keller be as successful as he is. Or Revis. Or David Harris. It’s exciting, the things that Leon’s doing in Seattle. I couldn’t be happier for Leon. He’s a great guy. Right on down the line. The strides that Nick Mangold made. The strides that D’Brickashaw Ferguson has made. That’s great stuff. They’re going to be good players for a long time.
Q. Rex Ryan gets a contract extension. Mike Tannenbaum gets a contract extension. Is it human nature to say, why me?
A. Well, you look at it that way, and you also look at it as being thankful that Randy (Lerner) recognized the good things that I did to get another opportunity so quickly. I was unemployed for six days, or eight days. And that was nice. And the difficult thing was, I had kind of seen the movie before. And now, to go through all the stuff again, you have to knock the house down, you have to dig the basement, lay the foundation. There was going to be setbacks. There was going to be labor problems. There was going to be subcontractors that didn’t come to work. But that’s just the way it was.
It’s called culture, and by definition it doesn’t change overnight. Of course, there’s every reason to believe the 2012 Browns will benefit greatly from Mangini’s work here. But there’s also this from the same interview:
Q. Popular sentiment seems to be you will be fired after this season. Are you worried about that?
A. I’ve never felt that Mike (Holmgren) put some sort of clock on, or that he’s doing anything to separate himself, or disengage, or any of that stuff. If anything, I think he’s trying to help each week, which is consistent with what he said he’d do.
So, one last time, as much as I love the Cleveland Browns (or what they’re supposed to be, or used to be, or whatever), I’m not going to pretend that it’s as easy or as much fun to get behind an organization led by a guy who took advantage of a disgusting leadership vacuum and a set of impossibly absurd circumstances to hang a guy out the way Holmgren did to Mangini last season, only to bring his “nephew” in to harvest the fruits of Mangini’s labor. Secondarily, or maybe it’s the same thing, but I really like the idea of a presumption of job security for anybody who’s making obvious progress at what’s proven for more than a decade-plus to be a historically difficult job. So as much as I want the Browns to win, the leadership of this latest version has made it harder for me to care if they don’t. Energy is limited, I have enough things to worry about, there are a billion different ways to be a fan, and everyone should be able to understand this, so whatever. And none of it really matters if the Browns finally just win.
I don’t buy that it’s any trickier to install a West Coast Offense than it is to work at whatever Daboll had to try to do with DA/Quinn/Delhomme/Seneca/Third Round Rookie Poise Machine, and it can’t possibly be a big deal to switch from Mangini’s high-ceiling schemes to the Think Less Play Faster Defense. The roster and the locker room are in better shape than at any point since at least 2007, and for better or worse, the quarterback position is as stable as it’s been since Tim Couch, so if you think you’ve got the right coaches and the right schemes and the right QB in place, just throw, catch, run, block, tackle, win.
Take advantage of a weak schedule, give us at least one playoff game, and worrying in the off-season about giving Colt McCoy too much money and everything else about a 2008 redux will be a bridge we’ll be glad to jump off when we get to it.
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We’ll be back this weekend with some football picks, and remember, it’s not too late to join what’s already by far the biggest and best Cheddar Bay Reality Football competition yet. Also, a programming note that’s only semi-related to the content of this post, which is that we’re going back to a more irregular posting schedule, which is how it was in the old days here, which was fine, and will be fine, and just means that we might not get a post up every weekday like we’ve been lately. Please just trust us that the posts we do get up here will be better than ever, that we’ll all be better off because of this, variety is the spice of life, etc., and of course the comments at days old posts stay plenty live here as it is which of course will only be more so now (you guys really are the best, but you know that). Alright, football, Browns, weekend, hope everyone has a decent one.
