Let’s play a guessing game.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an NFL coach.
You’re returning to the same team you coached the prior season.
Judging by your team’s record, that last season was not successful. Ten losses will put any coach on the hot seat. You had more than that.
So you know that this season, your program must show colossal improvements, or else in all likelihood it’s time to book a moving company.
You’re confident this improvement can happen. You played a major personnel role last year. Part of your impact there was to get rid of the bad apples and bring in your own hand-picked replacements. Veterns who understand what you want. Young players who can be taught to play the game the right way from day one.
The stars look like they’re aligning. Almost everything is in place.
Then, in the off-season, your boss and the General Manager combine to pull a major power move on you.
They bring in a new starting quarterback. One who’s been to the Super Bowl. But not all that recently. Still a “name” guy, but one clearly on the twilight side of his career. A QB known to have a quick release and a big arm—but also one with an increasingly nasty reputation for poor decisions and interceptions. Both of which are near the top of your black list.
In particular, this quarterback had some issues in his final year at his last stop. He’s the type of guy who, it’s believed, might just need the infamous change of scenery to get him back on track. Or else he’s past the point of no return, and only the team who’s employed him for his entire career as a starter knows him well enough to realize it. That would make your team the patsy.
Nevertheless, the higher-ups pay big money to install this quarterback at the front of your system. They believe he’s got a veteran presence that will help guide the team to victory. Just as importantly, they think that he’s still got the talent to get it done.
In so many other areas of the team, you’ve gotten your way. But the most important position has been filled by someone who fits a profile that is, in many ways, the exact opposite of what you’d like.
Then, when that QB goes out and begins making exactly the types of mistakes you feared he would make, you get a sick feeling in your stomach. Because when the expectations for improvement aren’t fulfilled, you know that the guillotine isn’t hanging over your quarterback’s head so much as it’s hanging over your own. And unlike your new quarterback, you’re going to end up having to take a bullet for something that isn’t your fault.
OK, given this story, who are you?
If you guessed Eric Mangini, you’re correct.
Now, what team are you coaching?
If you guessed the 2010 Browns, you’re correct.
But if you guessed the 2008 New York Jets…you’re also correct.
Welcome to Eric Mangini’s deja vu experience.
Prior to both of the seasons mentioned above, an eerily similar drama played out. In New York, owner Woody Johnson and GM Mike Tannenbaum supposedly put Brett Favre in place against Mangini’s wishes. In Cleveland, Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert have essentially done the exact same thing with Jake Delhomme.
Admittedly, these two situations aren’t identical. Even if they didn’t meet the high bar set out for them, the Jets of 2008 were still much improved from their 2007 counterparts. They tacked on 5 more wins, going from 4-12 to 9-7. Yet there were hopes that with Brett Favre at the helm, they would at least make the playoffs, if not make a surprise run to a conference title game. Despite a strong start, they collapsed in the second half and missed out on the wild card. From there, Mangini was canned, and Favre was shipped out shortly thereafter.
None of us has any idea what the final record of the 2010 Browns will be, but no one licensed to live outside of an asylum believed they were capable of a +5 win improvement, let alone a playoff berth. Jake Delhomme, as I’ve mentioned earlier, is by almost all passing statistics a worse quarterback than Brett Favre. Unlike in New York where he had Chad Pennington at the helm, 2010 Browns Mangini didn’t have a previous starting QB that he loved and wanted to keep. He may not even have been against Delhomme in spirit. But one difference that’s indisputable: after wetting the bed against Tampa Bay to open the season, a strong start (and therefore, a late-season collapse) by this year’s Browns squad is by definition impossible.
Mangini knows he’s on the hot seat. Everyone in the city and the league knows it. But I doubt that any of those other people know it in their blood the way that Mangini does—not just because he’s the one who stands to lose or gain, but because only he would recognize just how many parallels are in action between those two situations. Because as our little guessing game proved, there are a lot of them, down to the fact that Mangini’s current Defensive Coordinator is a shave and a haircut away from essentially being the same guy who ultimately took his job in New York after the 2008 season.
In the winter of 2011, will Rob Ryan become the new Rex Ryan by usurping the head coaching gig Mangini just vacated? It seems unlikely to me. But as irrational as it may be, you can bet that every time Mangini looks at his defensive coordinator, his quarterback, or his GM, he gets a little jolt of deja vu. Only time will tell if this movie concludes the way the last one did. But Mangini can’t be thrilled about the plot so far.
-T
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