It’s been a rough week for owner Jimmy Haslam and the Cleveland Browns.
Now in the middle of Week 3 of their ongoing search for Kevin Stefanski’s replacement, they’ve hit a road block. Their candidate pool is dwindling, falling to five names as of Wednesday morning. Aside from internal candidate Jim Schwartz, all four of those names have strong connections to other teams.
Grant Udinski, for example, is in a great situation as Jacksonville’s offensive coordinator under head coach Liam Coen. He’s expected to interview for a second time for the Browns job on Friday, before meeting with the Buffalo Bills for their new opening. Udinski now has several options available to him, and while the Browns were the first team to interview him as prospective head coach, it’s hardly a guarantee they remain No. 1 on his list.
Todd Monken already completed his second interview with the Browns, but he has the New York Giants’ offensive coordinator job in his back pocket. Chargers DC Jesse Minter is in high demand from multiple teams, including the Raiders, Titans, Steelers and Ravens. Even Nate Scheelhaase has completed multiple interviews, though the Browns are his only in-person meeting currently on the schedule.
Browns fans were prepared for an exhaustive head coach search, but this race feels more wide open than it should be at this point. Schwartz’s future role remains a mystery, and the team will have to bring in at least one new candidate to gain compliance with the NFL’s Ronney Rule.
It all just screams of a poorly run operation that doesn’t have its act together, but that fits the Haslam-era Cleveland Brows to a T.
For Browns fans out there searching for a silver lining, it actually can get worse. Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula’s press conference following the firing of Sean McDermott hit a new level of dysfunction that only fans of the Browns (and maybe the Jets and Cowboys) can truly appreciate.
Terry Pegula just gave Browns fans a rare moment of perspective
Pegula wanted to set the record straight following his controversial decision to fire McDermott after Buffalo's recent playoff loss to the Denver Broncos.
It’s one thing for a franchise to move on from a coach who went 8-26 over a two-year stretch, like Stefanski did with the Browns. It’s another to move on from a coach whose team not only made the playoffs in seven consecutive seasons, but had won at least one playoff game in six straight years.
McDermott never got his team over the hump to the Super Bowl, though, and with an MVP quarterback like Josh Allen, that’s impossible to ignore. Pegula could have defended his decision in a number of ways, like pointing to Buffalo’s continued struggles on defense in big games, and the team's poor situational play throughout McDermott’s tenure.
Instead, he gave a meandering explanation that left fans feeling like he made a massive, franchise-altering decision on a whim. He talked at length about the scene in the locker room after the Broncos game, which included a despondent Allen. He also defended GM Brandon Beane at every turn, seeming to blame McDermott — and not Allen or the roster the GM assembled around him — for the team’s continued playoff failures.
“I want to take you in the locker room after that game. I looked around, the first thing I noticed was our quarterback, with his head down, crying,” Pegula said. “I looked at all the other players. I looked at their faces, and our coaches. I walked over to Josh, he didn’t even acknowledge I was there. First thing I said to him, I said, ‘That was a catch.’ We all know what I’m talking about. He didn’t acknowledge me. He just sat there sobbing. He was listless. He had given everything he had to try to win that game. And looking around, so did all the other players on the team. I saw the pain in Josh’s face at his presser, and I felt his pain. I know we can do better, and I know we will get better.
I want to express my confidence in the guy sitting next to me, Brandon Beane, and the job he has done in resurrecting this franchise. I’m not going to sit here and defend everything we have done as a franchise. … I’m aware there’s criticism out there about our franchise. Does anyone know what the numbers 5, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6 represent? I'm asking a question. No? That’s our seeding over the last seven years in the playoffs. … An organization doesn’t carry that kind of record without being a great organization, and without having great players. It’s impossible to have those kinds of results without having a good roster.”
There was more, including Pegula pinning the team’s decision to draft struggling wide receiver Keon Coleman on McDermott, and not his general manager, but you kind of get the jist. It was just an incredibly tone-deaf, hour-long press conference, devoid of any blame for himself or the people he’s appointed in charge.
Those are the kind of soundbites and quotes NFL fans expect out of the Browns — not the Buffalo Bills. So while Cleveland has definitely had it rough over the past 15 years, since Haslam purchased the team in 2012, sometimes it helps to take a spin around the league. It actually can get worse.