Cleveland Browns: Jimmy Haslam says this is Hue Jackson’s “first season”

After not having the best talent on the roster the past two seasons, the Cleveland Browns owner said that the 2018 season can be viewed as Hue Jackson’s first season.

To the surprise of many at the time, and still to this day, the Cleveland Browns decided to retain Hue Jackson at the end of last season after going 1-31 in his first two seasons with the team.

Many thought that owner Jimmy Haslam – who has been known to not be patient with his head coaches – would go in a different direction at head coach.

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With the hiring of John Dorsey as general manager in December, it would have made sense for Haslam to allow Dorsey to hand-pick the head coach that he wanted to lead the roster he put together.

But instead, Jackson remains the head coach. And after Dorsey put together a talented roster this off-season, there was expected to be pressure on Jackson to win games and to win games early the season.

But instead, Haslam says there is not that much pressure on Jackson. He said that Jackson’s third season as the Browns head coach could be viewed as Jackson’s first season as the team’s head coach – via Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com.

"“In some ways you could say because of the talent he’s had, particularly at quarterback, particularly last year, it could view it as his first year but we don’t look at that. I know everybody’s saying Hue has to win this many games or he has to win that many games. We don’t look at it [like that.]"

Haslam mentioned that the talent the Browns have this year is much different than in Jackson’s first two seasons. Most notably, having a much more stable quarterback situation.

Haslam also said that Jackson hiring Todd Haley as the offensive coordinator will allow the head coach to be able to focus on managing the entire team instead of just the offense.

It seems that Haslam has learned from the past that firing coaches after only a couple of seasons does more damage to the organization than help.

But there is a chance that he is hitching his wagon to the wrong head coach to stick with. Yes the roster was terrible the past two seasons, but Jackson made plenty of mistakes himself that hurt the chances of his team winning games.

Maybe Haslam was so disappointed in the roster that Sashi Brown put together that he feels Jackson did not have a chance to succeed in his first two seasons with the team.

What will be interesting to watch is if Dorsey decides that he wants to bring in his own head coach at the end of the season, despite Haslam’s confidence in Jackson.

Although it seems that Jackson has a vote of confidence from Haslam, it has happened before that Haslam tells the media one thing, and does the opposite later on in the season.