… the man that he can blame is Randy Lerner.
If you read my post on Michael Lombardi’s article about Bob LaMonte, you know that Randy “Lost In Space” Lerner gave up a lot to get Mike Holmgren to come to Cleveland - not only total control but also $10M per year for 5 years.
Of course, the media has been all over what a difficult decision Holmgren - who we desperately need a nickname for - is now faced with, due to Eric “Alpha Dog” Mangini leading the Browns to 4 straight wins at the end of the season and an improved record from last year. Elsewhere other new coaches who stepped into similar situations (Jim Schwartz in Detroit, Steve Spagnola in St. Louis, Raheem Morris in Tampa Bay, and Todd Haley in Kansas City) all went home after week 17 with worse records than Mangini.
Plus, the Rams and Bucs actually won less games than they did last year. Detroit and Kansas City did, however, improve - from 0 wins to 2 in the case of Detroit and from 2 wins to 4 in the case of KC.
It’s my point of view that Mangini deserves credit - the empirical evidence shows that some progress is being (although we should probably try and adjust the record for strength of schedule before we become totally convinced of that). But there’s no question the organization has a direction now … it still doesn’t have a quarterback, but it has a plan moving forward, which is better than what it had after week 17 of the ‘08-‘09 season.
All of this would normally suggest hope for the future - but instead, because Randy Lerner decided in the middle of the season that he needed to hire a “strong, credible leader” i.e. President of Football Ops A.K.A. the person he should have hired last year at this time, uncertainty rules the day.
By no means do I disagree with Lerner’s decision to hire someone for this position, I just believe that his timing is, well, lost in space somewhere. I’m sure he was rushed into making a decision by this imaginary “second team” that was also interested in giving Holmgren $50M and total control of the organization (meanwhile not a single reporter has ever identified this other franchise) … but really, beginning the Holmgren hiring process when he did was totally illogical — unless Lerner had already decided he’d had enough of Alpha Dog no matter what happened over the course of the rest of the season.
If that’s true, then it has to create even less faith in Lost in Space’s decision making prowess than a reasonable person already had. After all, this is the guy that became so infatuated with the just-fired Alpha Dog that he handed him the keys to the kingdom and let him pick his own GM. For Lost in Space to completely change his mind less than a year later - and before an entire season of work could be evaluated - illustrates that he is either lacking commitment, incredibly bored, or totally influenced by outside perception, since fans and media were killing Mangini at the time all of this began.
So long as Holmgren knows what he’s doing - and there’s at least a little bit of evidence to suggest that he might - the Browns organization should feel comfortable that the proper structure is about to be in place. The problem is that Lerner inexplicably wasted an entire year and a ton of money to create that structure. And the man we call Alpha Dog is probably going down in the process.
