Mangini: A Counterclaim
Posted: November 30th, 2009 | Filed under: Cleveland, Other Sports | 43 Comments »
Pete from the Cleveland Frowns wrote a passionate defense of Browns coach Eric Mangini in the comments section, and I thought it was worth posting here. I don’t agree with everything Pete says — I think the awful way this team has played, the quarterback lunacy and the goofy things that have surrounded the Browns this year point to Mangini as a man in over his head.
However — that point of view has been repeated again and again in a thousand places. Pete puts together what seems to me a cogent response and an argument that Mangini is not being given a fair shot. I admire that argument a lot. Here you go — see what you think:
Joe, your Eric Mangini analysis is baffling.
To address your four point case against him:
“1. Lose nine times”
What more do you expect in a rebuilding year, from a team that was 4-12 last season? Nobody was expecting this team to make the playoffs. Mangini hasn’t even had a full year to know what he was working with here, but in the process has deliberately dumped high-talent low-character guys like Braylon Edwards and Kellen Winslow to clear cap space and stockpile draft picks. I’m not sure how relevant the record here is.
“2. Play some sort of weird role in both the hiring and quick firing of former Browns GM George Kokinis. We are told that Kokinis is/was one of his best friends.”
Some sort of weird role. Right. All speculation here on your part. Until the facts emerge, the safest assumption is that Kokinis wasn’t operating consistently with the vision of the organization.
“3. Turn the Browns quarterback mess into a full-fledged circus complete with a whole new kind of “Guess who is going to be quarterback” intrigue (Who will start this week? Check in next time, same Browns time, same Brown channel!).”
There’s no Johnny Unitas in this story, Joe. And there’s an excellent argument that Mangini handled the quarterback situation as perfectly as anyone could have been expected to. What nobody ever discusses here is the $11 million that Quinn stands to earn if he takes 70% of the snaps this season. There were a lot of people in town who thought Anderson should have been the guy. Not only has the Anderson/Quinn debate now been conclusively resolved, but at the small expense of sitting Quinn for five games, Mangini’s now put Quinn in a position where he’ll actually have to earn that $11m. $11m is real money, no?
“4. Water bottle/mural/Schwartz accusation”
The water bottle fine was for a repeat offender, reportedly Braylon Edwards, who was repeatedly embarrassing the team by not paying these expenses.
The Schwartz accusation can be easily interpreted as a coach sticking up for his players, many of whom expressed their frustration with the Lions’ tactic after the game.
The point is though that molehills always turn into mountains when it comes to Mangini, and it seems more media-manufactured than anything else.
It’s especially bad with Mangini having come out of New York where it looks more than anything else like he was made the fall guy in a shortsighted “win-now/please the media” approach that just kills NFL franchises, and to which franchises in New York are especially susceptible due to the large audience. The media of course is a willing accomplice, not only because it’s so easy to sell negativity, but because reporting on rebuilding projects is boring.
It’s sad that the Cleveland media has picked right up where New York left off. The Browns organization has been a historic mess since the franchise returned to the NFL, and now that we finally have a guy who understands that a winning culture needs to be instilled from the ground up (see Steelers, Pittsburgh), everybody wants to run him out of town simply because things have to get worse before they get better. So we hear about “water bottles” and “bus rides” and “ice fights.” It’s a tragedy.
Even worse when a voice as respected as yours piles on, but only to arrange the molehills in the same way. “Look, they’re losing, and water bottles.” It’s incredibly frustrating to read this from you.
If Mangini was so untalented, I doubt he’d have been promoted to coordinator by Belichick, and I doubt he’d have been able to have as much success with the Jets as he did (would have been in the playoffs two out of three years if not for Favre’s meltdown). Trained under Parcells and Belichick, young, and obviously hungry for success. But let’s run him out of town after one season in which he deliberately cut talent for cap space and draft picks?
Why are you playing a part in this, Joe? It just kills me.
Meanwhile, the Steelers proceed with their third coach in what, 200 years?
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I commented after Pete on the other thread, so I’ll post it here as well:
@Pete – I love your site. You are a good man, and thorough.
But, I have no idea why you so vehemently support Mangini like this. It’s true that the Browns have been a mess since their return, But, they weren’t a “historic mess” until Mangini arrived.
If a football “czar” or whatever they want to call it comes in and wants to keep Mangini on a coach then fine. Doubtful but fine. But we can’t let him near our 11 draft picks.
Mangini has been terrible. The truth is we are farther away than ever before.
And, Joe is on record as thinking Mangini was bad even before he was hired, so I don’t know if this counts as piling on.
As a frequent reader of both sites, I’m glad to finally have this hashed out here. Hooray.
This is a pretty good argument, but I still don’t think Mangini is much of a head coach. A d-coordinator under Belichick seems like a do-nothing job, and Mangini’s only contribution to the Jets seemed to be surprise onside kicks and boxing pep talks.
Now, I’m a Jet fan so I may be biased against the guy and I agree that he was made a fall guy for Favre’s terribleness, but he really never seemed like an improvement over Herm Edwards and we know that guy isn’t winning coach of the year any time soon. At least Herm seemed like a nice guy.
[...] today Joe finally acknowledged Pete’s argument and made a full post on it, praising him for his hard work, even if he disagrees. I’m happy [...]
I disagree with:
point 2: the facts will never come out since Mangini operates in a world of secrecy that’s a lot easier for fans to stomach when the team’s winning…. here it just makes him seem more arrogant.
point 3: Mangini himself said he wasn’t even aware of the Quinn bonus, so that’s a non-issue. (or was he lying then?)
point 4: the “would have made the playoffs if not for…” argument is lame. You either do or you don’t. He didn’t.
I can’t agree regarding the QB situation. They should have known what they had in Derek Anderson. There is enough tape on him and the Browns obviously knew they weren’t going to win much this year. In order not to pay Brady Quinn that bonus, they sacrificed 5 games of experience for a QB who had played 2 games in 2 years heading into this year. Sure, 11 million is a lot of money, but if Brady Quinn puts it all together one year in week 10 and the Browns miss out on the playoffs, then it is a bad deal. I think if you are an organization with as much money to play around with as the Browns and are not in dire cap shape, you act as if those extra 5 games are essential to Quinn’s development. If not, maybe it allows you to dump Quinn a bit sooner.
Good coordinators don’t necessarily make good head coaches. It’s a completely different skill set, so that is irrelevant.
The only way to judge a coach is wins. The NFL is a win now league and it comes with the territory, fair or not. Mangini was given an awful lot of hype in New York and quickly fizzled out. He doesn’t have much ground to stand on.
I have a tough one sorting out my opinion on this mess of a team. As a lifelong Browns fan, my initial reaction to a losing season is to lash out and demand changes. However, a calmer view of the team shows there was little talent. Then you add a few injuries (yes, I know all teams have injuries) and the lack of quality depth is further exposed. I liked last years draft strategy. Trading down for more picks makes sense when you are more than a couple players away from contending. When the two receivers selected in the second round didn’t light the world on fire, (particularly Robiskie) and players taken later did better, the draft was criticized. However, I would still stick to that strategy. Between the salary cap and other issues, I would always make a serious attempt to trade down from a very high pick. There are very few sure things in football. Too high a percentage of top five picks fail to be superstars to invest that portion of your total salary to one player.
Biggest things this team needs for next year are a top notch RB, depth on O-Line and depth, depth, depth on defense.
Wow, Joe, thanks. Really can’t thank you enough for the post here.
To reiterate the main point in response to your basis for disagreement: “[T]he awful way this team has played, the quarterback lunacy and the goofy things that have surrounded the Browns this year point to Mangini as a man in over his head.”
I’d say that these things point more to two other things than a man in over his head: 1) A man with a tremendously difficult task ahead of him in assembling a winning culture where there’s been nothing but rot on Randy Lerner’s watch, and 2) A man who’s had the media piling on him to an unprecedented degree from the moment he assumed the Herculean task.
Anybody would look in over his head under such circumstances.
On the second point, Mangini’s Belichickian demeanor made him a perfect foil for the media and perfect scapegoat for the New York front office. Once he was hired in Cleveland, it got much worse because it allowed the New York and National media to pound on three easy memes at the same time: 1) anti-Mangini, 2) Cleveland-city-of-losers, and 3) look-how-pathetic-the-Browns-are.
It’s an irresistible combination, and it’s caused folks to spin all manner of “goofy” tales to keep it going. Again, I don’t know who wouldn’t look in over his head given the combination of the treatment and the task.
The way the quarterback situation is so universally assumed as having been botched by Mangini shows how out of control things were from the start. I’ve still never heard a coherent argument regarding how anyone could be so sure they’d have handled the situation $11 m better than Mangini did (laid out in full here: http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2009/11/bq-our-qb-of-course-our-coach-mans-just.html ).
The furor over Josh Cribbs being injured on the last play of MNF against the Ravens is another excellent example (http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2009/11/dogs-bark-birds-fly-lawyers-complain.html).
I’m in no way arguing that Mangini shouldn’t be accountable for his decisions, I just want him to have a fair chance to turn this awful mess around. If Lerner can resist giving into the angry mob, Mangini has a chance to write an excellent story here.
Again, can’t thank you enough for the post.
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Motherscratcher: First, very much appreciate the nice words, and the readership, so thanks. But the Browns on Lerner’s watch have in fact been historically incompetent, and I’m pretty sure that the reason it looks uglier now than before is that Mangini is effectively trying to do something about it.
We are farther away than ever before exactly because Mangini is taking structural steps to turn things around, i.e, ditching the team’s two most talented players, Braylon and K2 (both top ten draft picks) who also happened to be the most serious threats to the installation of a winning culture. Given that, the improvement shouldn’t be expected to come on the field first. These are hard things to do…hard decisions to make, but there’s a coherent story that explains why Mangini might have done them, it’s one that’s consistent with building a winning culture where one has never existed.
I don’t disagree that Mangini could use some help with the draft, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say he should be allowed nowhere near it. He helped to bring in a lot of Pro Bowl talent in New York. And I think you have to give the guy the benefit of the doubt on this year’s draft given that he’d just come on only a few months before, and hadn’t had a season or even a camp to spend with his team so that he could better understand the holes that needed to be filled. Uncertainty regarding Braylon had to play a big role here.
Will address the other comments here shortly.
Kevin: I hope you’ll take a look at the QB post that I link to in my first comment. I find it hard to believe that not starting those five games has done so much to damage Quinn’s development. He was still involved in the preparation for all of them, and certainly moreso than the average given Anderson’s tenuous hold on the position. There’s also the perception that many in the locker room had a lot more respect for Anderson than for Quinn. Derek’s five-game meltdown went a long way to address that. Anyway, I don’t think any team that wants to compete in this NFL can afford to waste $11M of cap space. I’ve never heard that Mangini said he wasn’t aware of the incentive, but I find that impossible to believe.
d-tro: I also find it impossible to believe that a d-coordinator position on any team is a do-nothing job, and especially on a team led by a guy who’s done as well with his resources as Belichick has. It seems like a stretch to believe that Belichick would fill a coordinator position with a chump.
TampaMike: I agree that the job is to win, but a franchise in the shape of these Browns will never be able to sustain a winner if it doesn’t endure some major reconstruction. As much as the “win-now” perception exists, one would think that to be successful, a billionaire owner could resist that perception, because the rewards of creating a lasting winner will be great, and immediate, especially here in Cleveland.
LargeBill: Eric Berry Eric Berry Eric Berry! He’d fill a gaping hole in the Browns secondary, and he’s supposed to be an excellent guy off the field as well. I’m trying my best to view the bizarre events at the end of the Lions game as part of a divine plan to ensure that he winds up in Cleveland.
There are counter-points to your counter-points, Pete. I’ll just pose questions (I’m at work and can’t spend too much time on this, tragically). Wasn’t the water bottle thief in question a rookie, not Braylon? By all accounts, Mangini’s play-calling ability was taken away by Belichick halfway through the season before his NY hire.
The Browns have traded Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards, their two best offensive playmakers, and replaced them with nothing. They are so woefully inept in the passing game, it’s embarrassing.
On draft day, they held the 5th pick and traded down a couple times before drafting a center. A center! Rookie receivers this year have been pretty good, with Crabtree, Maclin, Harvin (especially him), Britt and Nicks all first rounders, all available to the Browns at some point, and all making a positive impact. Think the Browns couldn’t use a playmaker like that? Instead they chose a luxury position that only the best, most stacked team should choose from.
I don’t know how much Mangini has to do with all of this, but whoever decided to raid the offense of playmakers should be fired. If it was Kokinis, then so be it. But they’ve got two QBs who I think could make it in the NFL in the right situation, and surrounded them with UFL-level talent. Someone’s head should roll for that.
Many Royals posts and now Browns/Mangini dominates the blog. Will we be getting a lot of analysis of the New Jersey Nets in the coming months?
well, if you are able to keep mangini around at least you’ll be able to trade for more Jet players that almost made the playoffs 2 out of 3 years. Or at least the ones the Jets don’t deem worth a poo. lofty rebuilding goals.
and if mangini’s communication skills are so inept that his hand picked GM is out in under a year that’s a pretty poor sign for a head coach. Leaders need to communicate. His communication skills are also a large reason why the media kills him because he can’t articulate to them (or is afraid to divulge his “secrets”) what he’s trying to do.
I dont think he is a good coach and he may even justify being called the worst coach (though I doubt that) but it is way too early to do so IMO.
However talented he may or may not be, doesn’t it require just a wee bit of time to find out? As was noted, there will be room to sign FA and picks to make before next year – shouldn’t we see how that goes before he is run out of town on a rail because of fines? or murals?
Some player doesn’t pay his hotel bill despite being far wealthier than any other non football resident of that hotel and the guy who fines him for that is the one who gets hammered by the media. Really?
It’s not like the browns are going to suddenly be good if they get another coach RIGHT NOW so what exactly is the rush?
Now if next year goes equally badly and if there were draft choices made that are equally horrible, by all means get out the pitchforks and torches and storm the castle.
Every Kansas City Royals manager for the last 20 years hasn’t been given a fair shot either.
@spud, #13:
Browns (and other Cleveland related posts) have been a staple of this blog. It should be no surprise to see it since, you know, baseball’s in an off season and nothing exciting is happening on the hot stove yet.
Well put, Cardinal Mike, and especially on the water bottle. I heard that it was Braylon, but even if it was a rookie, Mangini said it was a repeat offender, which is easy enough to believe.
Chris: I don’t know when center became a luxury position in the NFL. The guy touches the ball on every play and directs traffic on the line. Mike Webster and Dermontti Dawson come most immediately to mind. It would be funny to hear someone ask Peyton Manning about the “luxury position” if Jeff Saturday were to go down to injury again. Anyway, at that point, Mangini had reason to believe that he could make it work with Braylon. Again, think a new coach should be given the benefit of the doubt when drafting a few months after joining the team.
Matt: I’d be interested to see a report on the demotion you allege, but even if it happened, the promotion to coordinator says a lot itself. And here’s a Washington Post piece that refers to Mangini as Belichick’s “longtime protege” which I think says a lot as well, along the same lines.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401206_pf.html
“If Mangini was so untalented, I doubt he’d have been promoted to coordinator by Belichick”
Really? Of the other Belichick coordinators to get head coaching jobs, only Josh McDaniel has had any success. Crennell was laughably bad, Weiss’ is 1-2 against Navy and the high point of his tenure is either making the Fiesta Bowl (with Ty’s players and getting killed) or a regular season loss to USC.
We in MN are learning that coaches are all talk until the personel are in place to do what the coach wants. We have insisted on Brad Childress’s dismissal for 3 years, and then he got a QB that can play, and now we win. the funny thing is that everyone in MN has forgotten that it was Childress that drafted T-Slap (Tavarias Jackson) and it was Childress who employed the likes of Brad Johnson, Brooks Bollinger, and various others. He’s also the guy that ran Culpepper out of town, not a bad move, but he was still better than what we had. So no matter how bad a team is, it’s not all the coach’s fault, and no matter how good a team is it’s not all the coach’s performance.
Here’s a hit piece on Mangini from NFL job-hunter Mike Lombardi that’s the only source I can find for the notion that Belichick took over playcalling from Mangini. Though Lombardi only vaguely says that Belichick “took over the defense mid stream.” I wonder what his source is?
http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/DMN-Kokinis-never-had-a-chance.html
I also wonder why Lombardi wouldn’t mention that the The 2005 Patriots defense was decimated by the loss of key personnel…Bruschi, Ted Johnson, Ty Law, Roman Phifer, Keith Traylor, and most significantly Rodney Harrison for the season in week 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_England_Patriots_season
Again, the promotion itself speaks volumes.
Also, whatever happened, Mangini’s relationship with Kokinis has to be viewed in light of the way he was treated in New York. Nobody ever mentions that.
Not sure if I just missed it, but I didn’t see an answer to the mural argument. Did he destroy the mural and how is that defensible? Also, is that significant when evaluating him or does it change the context of some of his other decisions? Seems like that says, “Hey, the history doesn’t matter at all, lets forget Jim Brown ever played here.” which doesn’t exactly forge a winning culture…
If he’s so worried about the future, why does he feature jamal lewis? Really, his whole statement that he didn’t know about the Quinn bonus invalidates any statement he makes as dubious at best. He looks terrible from the outside (and didn’t look any better in New York).
Admittedly, I don’t exactly follow the Browns closely. But most of the argument for Mangini seems to be “Hey, he might not suck, give it time”. Which is hardly a ringing endorsement.
Trading away talented headcases occasionally works, but when a team stinks, it usually needs talent more than anything else. Giving up talent is normally not the best way to get better, and if you are inclined to give up talent, make sure you get something in return. What did the Winslow and Edwards deals net the Browns other than the addition by subtraction (seriously, I don’t know)? You need to trade those tangible assets for something else, not just sell them off at a cut rate.
Trading down is an okay strategy, but if you look at the best players in the NFL, a large majority of them were drafted in the first two rounds. Once you start stockpiling late round picks, all you are doing is amassing bodies and hoping one of them is an unpolished gem. Even then, you need to be able to polish that gem. The reason good organizations are able to find so many good players in the late rounds is not that they are better at drafting talent, it is that they are better at developing talent. Right now, Mangini has demonstrated no ability to do either.
As an outsider, he just looks like a guy throwing darts at a board. He doesn’t just change his quarterback without rhyme or reason, he does the same with his running back. Jerome Harrison has a good game and then he’s benched for the rest of the year. No one has a role, and if they do, it seemingly changes each week. Pittsburgh can use three or four backs because Tomlin has carved out a role for each of them, and when he benches a talented yet unfocused player (Mendenhall), he gets him back in the lineup a week later to see if the lesson took root.
Eric Berry is a nice idea. He must be of high character because he’s one of the few good players to make it through Tennessee without acquiring a criminal record. But one great college safety is not going to turn around the Browns. LaRon Landry didn’t suddenly make the Redskins good. There is some benefit to just bottoming out, but do you really expect Mangini to be able to build something after he’s completed the demolition job?
I follow the Browns religiously, and the following items are without dispute:
(1) The Browns have been not just bad, but *historically* bad. Their offense through the first 8 games was, by some measure, one of the 10 worst of all time. Even if we agree they don’t have all the pieces (but do have Thomas and Cribbs, both Pro Bowl talent), Mangini deserves blame for that.
(2) The 2009 draft class has had minimal impact. Mack and Massaquoi are the only starters, and it’s hard to say that they’ve significantly upgraded the team. LOTS of impact rookies were passed up while trading down from #5 (wouldn’t Cushing or Matthews or Lauriniatis look good at LB now?). Mangini (along with Kokinis) deserves some blame for that.
(3) He has created significant negative PR for the team. While you have semi-reasonable explanations for the litany of Mangini rips, the bottom line is that *he is responsible for his own image.* Blaming the media for making mountains out of molehills misunderstands his role. He’s responsible for managing the media, and he’s probably worse at that than the previous two combined. And if he’s going to continue to make the franchise looks unprofessional, then he needs to go.
Pete, I’d agree that much of the “Mangini hate” comes from people looking to discredit him, but one area I think he is absolutely culpable is the QB situation. He has made several head-scratching decisions that call both his decision making capability and level of awareness of the state of the franchise into question.
1. The decision to withhold the identity of the starter until right before the opening game. As you mentioned before, no one expected this team to make the playoffs, yet Mangini handled the decision as if the super bowl hung in the balance, where a couple extra days of advance knowledge would give the opposition the tools they needed to win. This is delusional, and valuable Quinn development time was wasted. He should have named his starter earlier, to give him more reps with the 1st team, as much development time as possible.
2. Pulling Quinn after three games. Again, this was/is not a playoff bound team, so playing a vet in an attempt at meaningless wins does nothing to advance the cause of the Browns winning a superbowl, so why do it? (He’s currently making the same mistake with Jamal Lewis – Why is he playing? He’s retiring at the end of the year! Why not use the time to evaluate the young RBs on the roster?)
Either this is a rebuilding year or it isn’t, yet Mangini seems to want it both ways. His seeming inability to decide on a course of action is hurting the team. I’m not calling for his head, but I have less confidence in his abilities now than I did at the beginning of the season.
Dan V (17) – I realize this, but Chiefs posts are also a staple and we haven’t seen many this year. I guess they’re too good now, having won three games.
Joe is the opposite of a frontrunner, probably because of growing up in Cleveland.
Pete, I read your article, but I have no idea where you have any evidence that Mangini is doing just what you say with Brady Quinn. How can you attribute that plan to Mangini when he comes out to say that he does not know about Quinn’s bonus? I look at it this way. The Browns are going nowhere. They have a QB who is below average. He has been in the league long enough where everyone knows what he is. You have a 3rd year QB with 2 starts under his belt coming into the year. You do not know what he can do. You play him regardless of his contract. You think those 5 games don’t matter, but I think the 11 million is not a big deal. If the owner is more concerned with saving 11 million than developing a franchise QB, then he should not be an owner. You mention cap space as a reason, yet the Browns are not in bad shape for the cap space, and those bonuses will be paid out over multiple years.
Obviously, much of our arguments come down to speculation on both sides, as Quinn may not need those 5 games. 5 games is a big deal for an NFL team. Maybe everything clicks for Quinn at the beginning of a year instead of week 7 or 10 because of those extra games. It could cost the Browns a playoff spot because they only get good QB play for a shorter part of the year. Maybe, it will allow them to identify whether Quinn is the future QB earlier, thus allowing them to dump him and draft a QB like Sam Bradford or Jimmy Clausen this year or a top qb in the next draft.
Qb is the position with the steepest learning curve. There is no reason to play games when so many washout.
Whether or not Mangini deserves another year is irrelevant and beside the point. The Browns entire organization lacks structure. Right now the structure is Mangini. That’s it.
The Browns need a head football guy to make the decisions ala Parcells in Miami. That guy needs to hire a GM, preferably with some experience. Those guys need to be able to decide how the organization is run, and that includes the head coach. Is that guy Mangini? I don’t know, it’s up to them.
But, you will never get credible football guys in those positions if one of the prerequisites for the position is that they must have Mangini as coach. That isn’t Mangini’s fault. It’s Lerners fault for hiring his head coach with virtually no organization in place. Then he basically lets Mangini hire his own boss, which turned out to be an embarrassing mess.
So now we are supposed to give Mangini another year because he’s somehow earned it? Or he deserves it for some reason?
If you want someone like Holmgren, Cowher, Parcells, Gruden, Accorsi, etc involved in the Cleveland Browns then you MUST be willing to part with Mangini. Because those guys aren’t coming here with restrictions or tethered to an unlikable head coach.
If you are happy with the status quo; if you are happy with Mangini as VP, GM, and Head Coach, with virtually no input from anyone else, then by all means, give him another year.
But just remember, we have 11 draft picks this year and that is critical. Especially in a draft that will likely be very deep due to the uncertainty over the upcoming CBA. It is very important to the future of this organization to get this right.
If you think that Mangini acting alone as the VPGMHC is the right man for the job due to some notion that he has done something to deserve it, then God help all Cleveland fans.
There’s a line from the movie “Hook” with Robin Williams… “Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost.” What’s lost? “I’ve lost my marbles.”
Royals posts.
Long Browns posts.
Potentially NJ Nets posts.
Ooh, and can we maybe get all the hockey we can handle? Coz that’d be great.
@30 – So, you’re surprised that the writer from Cleveland and lives in KC writes about the Royals and the Browns sometimes. You also don’t like Hockey and the NJ Nets are bad so we’ll count those against him too, even though he hasn’t written a word about them yet.
So you come to this free blog and complain because Joe owes you..well..refresh my memory, Joe owes you what exactly?
Okay, first you defend Eric Mangini, which is understandable to an extent, since I will grant you the Browns would probably be terrible regardless of who the coach is right now. But now you’re going to defend their decision to draft a center in the first round? You must be Mangini himself.
Anyone who follows the draft knows you don’t draft centers in the first round. You draft premium positions like QBs, LTs, DEs and CBs in the first round, or if you have dearth of playmakers on offense you can go for a WR like the Browns should have done. There’s a reason centers only get drafted in the first round every couple of years, and it’s because it’s not a premium position; only a team with the loaded roster, which the Browns clearly are not, should be drafting centers in the first round. This is not to say Alex Mack won’t be a good player, but no way should the Browns have drafted him.
You mention Jeff Saturday. Was he a first round pick? Of course not, because you can find centers later. Kevin Mawae, Matt Birk and Olin Kreutz have been some of the best centers of the past decade, and neither was a first round pick. Matt Birk, in fact, is a converted tackle. You can find centers.
I think there is much more overwhelming proof that this guy is a bad coach than a good one. If Pete honestly believes that Eric Mangini is an asset to the Cleveland Browns, well…that makes me scratch my head in confusion.
However, I do agree with Mangini on one point, the fine over the water bottle. There is a larger point there, and that is, no matter how you phrase it, it is basically stealing to take something that has a price and not pay for it. So this player got charged a thousand bucks for taking a water, I bet he never does it again.
There’s a too much here to address in narrative form so I’ll have to use bullets:
*Drafting a Center:
There’s an excellent article by Pete Prisco of CBS on drafting centers in the first round. The title is “Cal’s Mack could change lack of centers’ first round love.” Here’s a good quote from it:
“If the two tackle spots and center are the three most valuable positions on the offensive line — which everyone insists they are — why is center so under-drafted?
The answer might be a simple one: Patience.
Or lack of it.
“Teams don’t want to wait two years to have their first-round pick play,” Atlanta Falcons offensive line coach Paul Boudreau said. “And with centers, it’s such a tough position that you sometimes have to wait.”
“With big dollars paid out to first-round picks, and coaches and general managers living on the edge in this era of instant gratification, it’s easy to see why there is so much reluctance to take a position that might take some time.”
Consistent with Mangini taking the long view. Something I respect.
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*Ditching Winslow and Edwards:
Specifically, Poseur’s comment: “Giving up talent is normally not the best way to get better, and if you are inclined to give up talent, make sure you get something in return. What did the Winslow and Edwards deals net the Browns other than the addition by subtraction (seriously, I don’t know)? You need to trade those tangible assets for something else, not just sell them off at a cut rate.”
This is exactly what makes rebuilding so hard…that sometimes you really do have to get rid of guys like this, and there’s a good reason you can’t get more for them than the Browns did. There’s no question that each of them was going to leave when his contract was up, anyway, Braylon’s at the end of this season, so getting four draft picks and two potential starters doesn’t seem like such a bad haul anyway. Teams miss on high first rounders and are still able to recover. At least the Browns got something here.
Winslow was a more questionable call, but keep in mind that he actually sued the Browns franchise for millions in court in the offseason (wonder how that was resolved…never really hit the news). And there’s no question that Braylon had to go. The guy was an absolute cancer in the locker room, and its at least interesting that the Jets have won only one more game than the Browns since the trade.
The main point here is that it’s not Mangini’s fault that these guys happened to dominate the locker room when he got here. It’s not his fault that the state of the Cleveland Browns has been such a mess for ten years.
Mawae was also predominantly a left tackle in college. He converted to center his senior year. Just sayin’. The best center in the league was really a left tackle.
Oh, and Mawae is one of my all time favorite players.
Mangini punishes players by making them do contact drills without pads. That makes him a horrible leader/decision-maker and an absolutely despicable human being who really ought to be hit by a bus.
The team was going to be bad no matter what, but being a colossal d-bag has caused complete mayhem with that team. There’s lots of bad football teams out there, and they don’t all have players speaking out publicly about some of the brutal stuff the coach does.
Re: Drafting centers in the first round…I think the Jets are pretty happy with Nick Mangold.
I don’t have a problem with it. The offensive line is the foundation of a solid football team. It’s not like the Raiders taking Janikowski in the first round. Is the C they drafted working out so far? (I’m really asking, I have no idea who their C is).
When the Jets fired Mangini, I assumed he would get another head coaching job eventually. There were too many promising glimmers for him not to. But I also assumed that wouldn’t happen until he spent several years as a coordinator somewhere. He was only a coordinator for 1 year under Belichick, right? So I was shocked when he got hired immediately by the Browns.
Magini traded Edwards, Winslow and the #5 pick, in separate trades, for what amounts to a bunch of NFL players (all former Jets, I think) and a bunch of picks, including the #21 pick, a 2nd round pick and a few lower round picks. Basically, they dealt 3 high value items for a bunch of relatively lower value items. The results are yet to be seen, but I don’t disagree with the strategy. If the Browns were a few players away from competing, maybe a single high draft pick might be okay, and you might want to keep the troubled yet talented Winslow and Edwards. But considering the massive holes on offense and defense, they need more than just a #5 pick and two receivers. I think that’s where they were coming from. I wish the Lions did something like that as well. They did trade Roy Williams last year, but I wish they followed it up by trading the #1 pick and Calvin Johnson. The Lions have a terrible defense, a terrible offensive line and a terrible special teams unit. Why not try to gather a lot of pieces to start building those units up? What good is a flashy rookie QB and a top flight receiver on a team that can’t run or protect the QB and can’t stop the other team’s offense?
The Lions blew it by not taking Oher with their 2nd first round pick this year.
Pete makes a good case. However, you can’t ignore the fact that his ‘09 draft is a failure at this point, with the exception of Mack. Sitting two high second round picks for two consecutive games infers a lot. Losing a good prospect -Don Carey- to a management error further illustrates there’s a serious problem in the front office.
This team lacks leadership. In the front office. In the coaches room. Yes, the players eventually have to perform on the field but evidence (Steelers, Pats, Titans) proves that coaching in the real X factor.
Mangini’s game mgmt is horrible. In the 2nd Bengals game, his poor clock mgmt led to a Bengals FG late in the 1st half, when Browns could have run out the clock. Later in the same game, he punted on 4th & 3 from the Cincy 43 with 11 minutes left & trailing by 9. That was the 2nd & final time the Browns crossed midfield. Then, he punted with 4 minutes left, as if they were going to get 2 more possessions. CLUELESS.
[...] Minnesota: On Eric Mangini and Brad Childress During Monday’s Mangini discussion at Joe Posnanski’s blog, commenter Joe Madden shared the point of view of a fan of a top-three Super Bowl contender [...]