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Home > Blogs > Dawging the Browns > Archives > 2008 > December > 29
Monday, December 29, 2008
Please, no more rookie GMs, coaches
Four wasted years.
That’s what the Phil Savage/Romeo Crennel experiment essentially produced for the Cleveland Browns.
Monday morning, owner Randy Lerner would not even address the fans directly; he refused to allow cameras, or even tape recorders, in his press conference. Who is this guy, Howard Hughes?
So you won’t hear any sound bites from the man himself. Won’t be able to tune in on the Internet and listen to how the owner of your favorite football team plans to turn this mess around and make you want to buy tickets and merchandise again.
Of course, he probably has no idea how he plans to turn this mess around, which is the truly scary part. Fans, of course, deserve better than this guy’s approach and disdain.
As for Savage, he just made too many public mistakes to be taken seriously as the face of the franchise. And with Lerner in hiding most of the time, somebody had to be the face, and so it ended up being Crennel, which was fine, except for when it came time for Savage to be out front and Crennel was left to clean up after him.
Even Savage’s personnel evaluation, supposedly his strength and the reason he got the job in the first place, proved suspect. In Baltimore, he had been praised for spotting those second-day gems on draft day and turning them into productive Ravens. He failed to bring that vision to Cleveland, apparently.
As for Crennel, he was the nicest guy you’d want to meet, but when it came time to doing the job of a head coach on game day, he struggled. And I’m not sure way, considering he’s been around forever. It could be that he, like Savage, was in his role for the first time.
And this notion that somehow Crennel needs to stick around in another capacity, maybe as defensive coordinator, needs to be shouted down immediately. Put it this way. In the five seasons Crennel has had anything to do with this team (including 2000 when he was defensive coordinator), the Browns’ record is 27 wins, 53 losses.
So, at the very least, fans should demand of Lerner that he install a general manager and coach who have actually done this type of work in the past. That should not be too much to ask.
Enough of this on-the-job training already.
