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The Eric Mangini Project Revisited
Published: November 7, 2009
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There is nothing in life that I hate more than a hypocrite. As this crazy season keeps on spinning further and further out of control there appears to be many of them.
It’s confession time.
Not long after the Browns hired Eric Mangini I went against my gut feeling that hiring Mangini was huge mistake and penned a article by the name off “The Eric Mangini Project” opining why, after much deliberation, I felt Mangini might turn out to be a good coach.
I wish I can at least pretend that I was under the guise of “The Almighty Blogger”, that like so many of my fellow bloggers I thought I supposedly new better than the average dude rocking a Lee Suggs jersey.
Unfortunately, in my case it was sheer stupid Cleveland sports fan bias. I knew Mangini was a terrible coach after closely following his exploits with the Jets. He was unimaginative, egotistical and pathetic.
My warped Cleveland mind came up with some crap that he was “struggling to reconcile his aggressiveness with his fundamentalist approach to the game” to explain why he had previously been unsuccessful. I also “brilliantly” pointed out the similarities in character traits and career paths that Eric Mangini and Bill Belichik had.
My fellow bloggers have other rationalizations. Some operate under the presumption that the average dude rocking a Lee Suggs jersey is so stupid he is obviously terribly wrong on everything that has to do with Browns football. The more simple it seems to be the more complicated they have to make it.
Eric Mangini is the male mixture of Hillary Clinton and Roseanne?
“Nonsense”, they claim . “He is a misunderstood football genius/idiot savant who lacks social pleasantries”.
The Browns look three times as worse under Mangini than they did under Crennel? “Don’t be silly”, they’ll tell you. “Your out of your league. Don’t you know that since I know how to use Blogger or Wordpress that makes me a football guru?”
They plead for patience. “We need to give him at least two or three years to see if he can get the job done.”
This is true. There is no chance he will succeed if he is not given time. The problem is we cannot afford the time.
Here is a guy that no team had any interest in and that all previous signs point to his failing. His G.M. was a hoax, best spelled out in this mind boggling article written by Jack Bechta for NFP. Players can’t stand him, agents won’t let their players play for him and his assistant coaches are a joke.
(Brian Daboll is approaching Maurice Carthon stature. Well almost. I still remember seriously contemplating that Carthon used to confuse Vickers and Winslow, which would explain why he repeatedly tried to portray Vickers as our premier offensive weapon. But I digress.)
All the things he preaches we have become worse at. Can we really afford to give him more time if things don’t improve?
Just because a man who uses the term “football” in a extremely profane and obscene way and whose actions have inspired this song to be written about him decided that Mangini was the right guy doesn’t mean we should sacrifice common sense and beer-fueled football I.Q. on the altar of continuity and patience, especially when it seems the very same American football challenged man who thought it was a good idea in the first place might have already changed his mind!
One can only use “The Time Argument” if the only thing lacking is time . If after this year the Detroit media lambasted Lions head coach Jim Schwartz for his performance you can use “The Time Argument”. We would not be able to accurately judge him based on his teams performance this year, thus he merits more time to make his case so we can truly see what he is made of.
But lets say Jim Schwartz decided that from here on out the Lions should start punting on first down. Would you still say we should give him more time to see if this is a viable strategy to win football games?
Of course not.
Now we can make a strong case that Mangini has fallen into this category just based on his performance in Cleveland alone and therefore is no longer privy to “more time.” One can also argue (incorrectly) that Mangini has not fallen into this category.
It’s moot point.
Someone who you thought wasn’t qualified in the first place(to the point where the only two coaches I could say that I would not have rather had than Mangini were Art Shell and Herm Edwards. And yes, I left off RAC and Denny Green on purpose) and has done absolutely nothing to show you why your gut was wrong surely doesn’t deserve more time.
We made a mistake.
Now lets fix it.
Malcolm Mathers is the creator of http://www.brownsrant.com/
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Browns Fans Reign Supreme
Published: September 22, 2009
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There’s not much to hang our hats on in Browns Town these days, but I will say this; so far this season I was lucky enough to be at three games; both Browns games and the Oakland-San Diego thriller, and I am proud to say that our fans have yet to be matched.
It’s obvious that we are emotionally attached and it shows.
This is nothing new; last year ESPN ranked Browns fans third behind the hated Steelers and the Packers.
Another thing I noticed is that the fans mirror the organizations they root for.
In Cleveland you get the irrational hope and bottomless, hurtful disappointment; in Oakland you have pure delusion.
I wore my Browns jersey to the Raiders game just to get comments, and they did not let up all night.
A few were derisive, but most were of sincere pity.
Imagine fans of a team that has Al Davis as a owner, and that just made a trade that would have made Ted Stepien proud, truly feels bad for us.
They act as if they are a trust fund baby whose senile father is defecating all over their maserati; they’re just waiting for him to kick and then the glory of Raider Nation will inevitably be restored.
The Browns, they feel, are just, well, defecating all over their Chrysler Sebring.
Denver was little harder to read. My seat-mates were Orson Hodge II and some forty year old cougar who wore an Elway jersey that said XXXXL on it (no I don’t think that was a Super Bowl reference).
They seemed ambivalent to the Broncos and the game in general except when Big Elway had her fifth chili dog and then had beer come through her nose while she was trying to wash it down.
However, overall the fans where decent, think Progressive field in the middle of the season when the Tribe is eight games ou,t but just took three straight from the Yankees (just pretend it happened).
Bottom line, whether it’s masochism or fanaticism Browns fans put out. And I’m proud of that.
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