Mike Holmgren sent a small shock wave through the Cleveland football community by keeping heavily criticised coach Eric Mangini on board for next season. What I found more shocking was that Mangini wasn't asked to gut his current staff of assistants.
While I was certain that Holmgren was going to bring in his own hand picked coaching staff, keeping Mangini does give Holmgren some extra leverage going forward from here. Having Mangini in charge next year ensures that Holmgren has a fall guy to take the blame if the Browns implode next season. If the Browns continue to show development, as they did during the tail end of the season, Holmgren looks smart for keeping Mangini.
By not hiring a new coach Holmgren has in a way given himself a year of immunity. More importantly Holmgren has bought some time to add talent to the roster over the next year or two. This would give a coach Holmgren may choose to hire later a better chance at success. Some have thought that Holmgren himself might get the itch and return to the sidelines. Why not make the roster improvements beforehand. After all any coach would be handcuffed by the lack of overall talent on this Browns roster.
On the other hand Holmgren is a coach first and an executive second. Maybe he genuinely felt that it was unfair to evaluate Mangini on just one season. Either senario seems to provide Holmgren a little cushion. I do know one thing for sure, the pressure will be on Holmgren to pick the right guy if he does decide to dump Mangini at some point. Stability is what this organization has lacked for the last decade. If Holmgren fires a hand picked coach after just a couple of seasons what we will have is just more of the same old Browns. And after all no one wants to see more of the same old Browns, except maybe the Steelers, Bengals, and Ravens.
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I think it was a good decision to keep him. Holmgren is a professional and fair guy an he knows what its like to coach bad teams. And you cant turn a team around in one year especially the browns, arguably the worst roster in the league. I like what he did with the guys that he had toward thw end of the year.
ReplyDeleteHopefully Holgren's decision to keep Mangini was based on- Mangini fitting into Holgren's philosophies, and not as a scape goat for next year. One thing that did not get much news, was that Manigini's success, and biggest crusade was to change the team's "personality". By this I mean, players that are acceptable both on and off the field, with their behaviour, and respect towards their community. Maybe that is something that Holgren understood, and for that Mangnini has kept his job?
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