As much as I would like to come out in positive support of my brother’s post from yesterday, it’s a very hard thing for me to do.
I would immediately, for instance, ignore what the players said to the press about buying into Alpha Dog’s approach. Players almost never tell the truth to the media and very public industries like athletics and entertainment are hyper-sensitive about controlling the message.
The Browns suck right now, and there’s very little reason to feel positive about the organization at the moment. The 10-6 season from 2007 is, incredibly, more of a ghost than the Indians 2007 season and every failed Inadequinn third down conversion and D.A. pick-off is an executioner’s song whispering the name of Mark Sanchez over and over, all the way from New Jersey, while Alpha Dog beats his chest and screams back, “Brett Ratliff, Brett Ratliff” (but more on all that in a bit).
Having said that, I don’t want to simply be negative or go on a tirade about how the players quit on Alpha Dog like this columnist from CBSsports.com or make extreme proclamations like this one, from the supposedly clinical Football Outsiders, that Mangini is the worst hire in the past 10 years of the NFL (no one can be the worst of anything after three games); I’d prefer to look at the situation rationally and project an outlook for moving forward. Yes, we want to be positive here when we can be - but rational thinking is the greater calling card. It’ll help us all contain our emotions.
So let’s start with what Mike Lombardi did here when he questioned Alpha Dog’s ability to evaluate talent.
Here’s the exact pull quote:
7. I mean no disrespect to the Ravens, but the Browns just flat-out stink. They are so bad, they might be back to their expansion level. And with all that talk about who would play quarterback, they still don’t have one. Instead of trading down in the draft, maybe they should have selected Mark Sanchez. Browns head coach Eric Mangini will have to prove he can effectively evaluate talent because right now, I don’t see any signs that he has that skill. It’s going to get worse in Cleveland, and the Les Steckel era from years ago might be back. Brown fans deserve better.
As I’ve said or implied before, Mangini set himself up for all of this criticism. He didn’t draft Sanchez. He traded down, got a bunch of Jets players and picked Alex Mack. He passed on Ray Maualaluga and then drafted Mohammed Massoquoai and Brian Robiskie. Then he held a prolonged QB competition, fined players for not paying for water bottles, made everybody run a lot of laps, alienated the media, finally declared Brady Quinn the starting QB, and paid a fine to the NFL for misrepresenting injuries on the injury report last year (thank you Brett Favre). When the team eventually started playing games, their margin of defeat increased every week. After 2.5 games Brady Quinn was no longer the starting quarterback, Mark Sanchez was the first rookie in NFL history to start and win his first three games, the Bengals defense is vastly improved, thanks in part to the play of Maualaluga and Brian Robiskie has been inactive for two of the past three games in an offense that has one TD (in garbage time) and is desperately in need of someone beside Braylon Edwards to be capable of making a big play.
That was a longer paragraph than I thought it would be.
There’s also George Kokinis, but I honestly haven’t heard his name since the season started, so I have no idea what he’s doing or has done.
My point is that when you make a bunch of controversial decisions, your team starts off 0-3, seems to be getting worse, and Tony Grossi is saying that people around the league are telling him that there’s no way the Alpha Dog arrangement can last the entire season, you know you’re in deep f’ing…well, dog crap.
Now, I think Mangini’s smart. But I also think he’s stubborn. And I also think Randy Lerner basically gave him a free pass to do whatever the hell he wanted about a day and a half after he got fired by a Jets organization that had spent three years with him. Lerner did this while ignoring the advice of people close to him, who were against going with Alpha Dog (according to Grossi).
But Lerner had his success with Aston Villa, which gave him confidence in his gut feeling. This article by Malcolm Gladwell about the psychology of overconfidence comes to mind, which reminds us that confidence is important, but it’s equally important to know which things you should be confident about.
Gut feelings, I might argue, are not one of those things.
In other words, I understand why no one has any faith in Alpha Dog right now…but at the same time I can at least offer a couple possible counterpoints, things we can watch or hope for that might suggest an immaculate turnaround from these three initial awful games.
The first point involves Bill Belichick. In his first season with the Patriots, he was 5-11. The team lost their first four games. The next year, Tom Brady was named the starter and the Pats won the Super Bowl.
Could Brett Ratliff be Alpha Dog’s Tom Brady?
The second point involves the New York Jets. At least part of the success Rex Ryan and Mark Sanchez are seeing there has to be a result of the team Mangini left them with. After all, 10 of the players on Ryan’s roster were drafted during Mangini’s tenure.
Of course, we don’t know how much input Mangini had in those picks. We also don’t know how much scheme and offensive/defensive coordinators have to do with the success of Ryan now, and the failure of Mangini, Rex’s brother Rob, and Brian Daboll here in Cleveland. It’s additionally difficult to analyze how a team’s schedule impacts their performance from year to year.
But something better happen in my hometown ASAP or we’re going to be spending a lot of time trying to understand why Mangini got rid of 12 starters from the 2007 10-6 season while we concoct drinking games and obsess over the Cavs.
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