Mangini and the NYT (Nov.10)

[OconRecon]

Cleveland Browns A.M. Links: Q&A with Mangini

Published: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 8:55 AM Updated: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 8:55 AM
Starting Blocks, The Plain Dealer



Cleveland Browns coach Eric Mangini recently spent time with New York Times reporter Greg Bishop who talked to Mangini about his first season with the Browns, his time with the New York Jets, and life just as a coach.

Mangini was asked how difficult was it to deal with not being very popular in Cleveland last season when he had a slow start.

"People want things to be better, but they don’t necessarily want to go through the hardships to make it better. And it’s never going to be comfortable. And it’s new. And people don’t understand the why. And as much as you try to explain the why, it’s hard to really understand it until you’ve gone through it. So you go through this rocky period of change to create progress. But you’ve got to be able to weather all the turbulence, all the stuff that goes with it, and you’ve got to be consistent, and you’ve got to be, you’ve got to believe in something and be able to deal with the difficulties of getting to that point.
“And it was no different from the first year in New York. It was tough. Because there was a lot of push-back. Why are you doing this? Why is this so important? Because all the little things are important. Because little things eventually become big things, and big things are a lot harder to take care of than all the little things that came up beforehand."
Mangini also talked about his first time here in Cleveland years ago when he was a ballboy. He said the experience was fundamental in shaping his decisions on players.

[hiwaygal]

Originally Posted by OconRecon

Mangini was asked how difficult was it to deal with not being very popular in Cleveland last season when he had a slow start.

Ummm...didn't he have it much worse in NY?

In other words, why is Cleveland always painted in a negative light?

[OconRecon]

I think any losing team beats on their coach. Now that we are where we are, I have to say it is pretty impressive how Manigni held it together. There was a recent article where he talked about how low he was this past January. His weight was at an all time high and he had just hung on to his job by a thread. He hunkered down, worked harder, lost the weight, and did everything he could to make the situation better.

More than anyone else, he has always believed in his system, and asked us to be patient. Pretty solid stuff.

[golfer704u]

That quote from Mangini is exactly why I've felt he was right for this team. He made those hard changes that don't imediately translate into wins. And now we are starting to see the fruits of those changes.

you have to develop an indentity and culture before you start worrying about specific game plans, and players. We are now at the point where we can start developing these other things, and I believe if given next year mangini will have this team vying for a division title.

[Greythan]

A few of us have been supportive of Mangini for some time because we bought in and (at least for me) after listening to the guy it was hard to see him as anything other than earnest and intelligent.

He's got some road left to travel this year, but if it goes well (i.e., we'll win some and lose some, but the team continues to grow/play hard) I hope he's back next year.

[TheBestPlayersPlay]

From Frowns:

Eric Mangini, Braylon Edwards and the New York Jets against the Cleveland Browns

Whatever happens on the field this Sunday when the New York Jets visit Cleveland, the matchup gives Browns fans a rare opportunity to celebrate something that, as becomes clearer every week, remarkably broke our way. We're talking, of course, about the circumstances by which Eric Mangini became head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

After Mangini had been fired by the Jets after three-year tenure in which he became the youngest head coach in the NFL at 35, led the Jets to a 10-6 record and playoffs in his first year, and was canned for a 9-7 season in his third, folks were incredibly quick to forget why Mangini was hired by the Jets in the first place. As Dan Shaughnessy succinctly put it this week in the Boston Globe:

Mangini was part of all the Patriots’ Super Bowl wins. ... He was the one [Bill] Belichick loved the most.

Browns owner Randy Lerner was roundly criticized for being so hasty to hire Belichick's former protege to replace Romeo Crennel after the 2008 season, the apparent assumption having been that if Mangini wasn't good enough for the Jets, that he wouldn't be good enough for anyone else. This assumption prevailed despite very good reasons to believe that Mangini had been unfairly and unwisely made a scapegoat for Brett Favre's late-season collapse in '08 that caused the Jets to miss the playoffs, and that a franchise in need of a head coach would be lucky to capitalize on the Jets' mistake. Nobody seemed to want to consider this obvious potential explanation for why the historically wishy-washy Browns owner acted so uncharacteristically decisively here.*

It all continues to look more than anything else to be a lesson on how easy it can be for the press to put personal interest above journalistic responsibility, and to what absurd ends a narrative can be carried away from there.** It started in New York, where the Jets' decision to replace the Coach was hardly questioned in local media. If you want to keep a highly-populated city excited about a football team (and buying your paper to read about that football team), the easiest thing to do probably is to just go along with the team in blaming the guy who's gone. It didn't help the young coach that he'd earned a reputation in New York for prioritizing coaching football over public relations, but that's no excuse for the Cleveland media to have picked up right where New York's left off. We're still waiting for someone to point us to a single member of the Cleveland press who pursued the angle that the Browns might have been lucky to land a head coach who got a bad rap in New York.

Thankfully, yet still no thanks at all to the local press, the scapegoat narrative continues to take on increasing credibility. There was this from Greg Bishop in the New York Times last week:

Favre was the kind of player Mangini wanted to avoid. He was a hired gun, a quick fix.

The Jets’ executives desperately wanted Favre. They assured Mangini that regardless of the outcome, his job was safe. So Mangini helped seal the trade, researching hunting in New Jersey, even giving his third son the middle name Brett.

Favre led the Jets to an 8-3 start but hurt his arm and tossed multiple interceptions as the team stumbled from contention. ... The night the regular season ended, Mangini watched television on his couch, preparing for exit interviews, compiling an off-season checklist. General Manager Mike Tannenbaum called at 11:40 p.m., charged with the unpleasant task of firing one of his best friends.

Now Mark Cannizaro connecting the dots in yesterday's New York Post:

Though he doesn't grouse about it, Mangini knows he was a scapegoat victim of a sudden change by Jets owner Woody Johnson and general manager Mike Tannenbaum, taken amid the fan unrest when the team went from 8-3 to missing the playoffs in 2008. . . .

Mangini hardly was the abject failure with the Jets that many fans perceive him to be, thanks in part to a reputation projected by the media he rarely endeared with great team access, information and witty sound bites.

Mangini moved the Jets forward, led them to the playoffs in his first season, suffered through a poor second season with multiple quarterback injuries and was fired after finishing 9-7 following that 8-3 start with Brett Favre.

He had a big part in building the foundation of the Jets team Rex Ryan will bring to Cleveland on Sunday.

"There are a lot of good people in that locker room and I'm happy they were successful last year, because I know there were a lot of decisions made that I was a part of that helped that happen," Mangini said.

That, however, wasn't enough for Johnson and Tannenbaum to warrant bringing him back for a fourth year in 2009.

"The plan was the plan and we were all together and everybody was in," Mangini said. "And at the end of the day the plan changed and someone had to pay. Maybe I was the only one that didn't anticipate it, but I didn't think [getting fired] was going to happen."

The thing here is that nobody really did "have to pay." The Jets could have accepted responsibility for the decision to ride or die with Favre and simply weathered a few months of fan unrest instead of feeding the angry mob with the corpse of a talented young football coach. The way this all went down gives plenty of reason to hope this group of Jets never wins a Super Bowl. It just can't be the way that a championship front office does business.

It also leaves us hopeful that the Browns pull another upset against the Jets this week. Along these lines, could it be metaphysically possible for Braylon Edwards to enjoy any success this Sunday?

We won't get into his recent comments here. It's clear enough that Braylon Edwards is critically ill, and it's not our business to pile on sick people in this column. But we are talking about Eric Mangini, the Jets, and the Browns here, and Terry Pluto got right to an important difference between the two in a column on Mangini's difficult decision to trade Braylon to the Jets last season:

"[When the Browns win] I feel the best for the guys collectively and the coaches collectively because they work hard," Mangini said. "It hurts when we lose. Playing in Cleveland means something. The city means something, being in front of our fans means something. ... You want to reward the fans for their loyalty. You want to be able to give those groups what they deserve. That's important."

To Edwards, playing in Cleveland never meant anything beyond the disappointment of not being drafted by Miami. Regardless of how well Edwards may play for the Jets, keep in mind that it was not going to happen for him here.

The point isn't to get into what playing in Cleveland or anything else should mean or should have meant to Braylon. The point is that we have a football coach in Cleveland who quickly recognized what playing in Cleveland did mean to Braylon and had the balls to ship him out for it, even when he knew it would make things harder on himself in the short term.

Eric Mangini, Braylon Edwards: New York's loss, Cleveland's gain. Cleveland's loss, Cleveland's gain. No matter what happens on Sunday, the Jets' visit is a reason to celebrate that.

----------

*Lerner himself explained his decision to hire Mangini as follows (not surprisingly, he avoided criticizing the Jets organization):

"Some coaching experience was critical as well as a background that included mentors and programs that had won ... Further, it was clear that Eric understood the hunger and urgency that we feel in Cleveland especially since he had worked at the Browns at the beginning of his career.

"Finally, there is some reason to believe that young coaches can hit their stride following their initial NFL coaching experience. Based on that, we felt that Eric gave the Browns a strong chance of winning."

**It's bone-chilling to look back on what people wrote about Mangini last season.

Mike Lombardi on Mangini at the National Football Post, eight weeks into the 2009 NFL season:

"My fundamental question is: How did Mangini convince Lerner, based on his tapestry of work while at the New York Jets, that he was the right man for the job? Was it that cameo on “The Sopranos” that made him so alluring? Look, I’m all for the Sopranos, but I’d rather have Uncle Junior coaching the team than Mangini."

(Cleveland Frowns responds);

Matt Taibbi on Mangini at Rolling Stone, six weeks into the 2009 NFL season:

"I've always wondered what happened to Augustus Gloop, the fat little boy in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…a boy with fat bulging from every fold, with two greedy eyes peering out of his doughball of a head–(but he) somehow ended up as head coach of the Cleveland Browns. ... "[Mangini's tenure with the] Browns has been one of the truly thrilling sports disaster stories ever, a sort of Hurricane Andrew of football mismanagement, replete with horrific losses and incredible tales of pointless disciplinary tactics."

(Cleveland Frowns responds);

Joe Posnanski on Mangini in Sports Illustrated, three weeks into the 2009 NFL season:

I cannot stand what Eric Mangini has done to the Browns, the team of my childhood. I cannot stand the lack of respect he has shown for the team's history, the Mickey Mouse game he plays with quarterbacks, the amazing knack he has for getting his players to not play hard for him or the stupid fines he hands out like he's Principal Vernon from "The Breakfast Club." Don't mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns. ... I'm actually starting to believe that Mangini really was the worst head coach hire in 25 years.

(Cleveland Frowns responds; Major props to Joe for publishing this, of course);

Patrick McManamon on Mangini at Ohio.com, as Mangini's Browns closed the 2009 season on a four game winning streak, the longest since the franchise's return to the NFL in 1999 (Note: McManamon was following up here on his Week 7 proclamation that "Mangini's time is up" in Cleveland):

I'm not changing my opinion on the coach of the Browns. I think good things have happened the past few games, but I'm not convinced that the present approach is best in the long run. .. It just seems that a fresh start for everyone would be best. ... To state that these wins show that the players are playing for Eric Mangini or buying into what is happening more is just not justified.

(Cleveland Frowns responds);

That's just a small sample, and doesn't even get into Tony Grossi's nine-front mailbag/sandbag campaign that continues apace in 2010. Never forget.

***Happy Veteran's Day (Really, Never Forget).