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Home > Blogs > Dawging the Browns > Archives > 2009 > November > 02 > Entry
Another GM crashes and burns
The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer first reported early Monday evening that first-year GM George Kokinis had been fired and, in fact, escorted from team headquarters.
At about midnight, the team got around to confirming the reports, although the part about Kokinis being ushered from the building was denied.
So in record time, another front-office figure crashes and burns, joining the likes of Dwight Clark, Pete Garcia and Phil Savage since the Browns returned in 1999.
Team owner Randy Lerner has only himself to blame, of course. He hired Eric Mangini as head coach, thinking it was a coup, then had Mangini pick the general manager, who turned out to be his buddy.
It was a curious management model from the start, the coach essentially picking the GM.
In the end, Kokinis wasn’t here long enough for anyone to determine his worth as a personnel man. Lerner apparently was irked that Kokinis stayed in the background and that he rarely said anything for public consumption. This should hardly come as a surprise, however. When you hire an overbearing coach like Mangini, you can’t imagine his hand-picked personnel lackey thinking he belonged anywhere near the spotlight.
So Mangini’s power is being systematically stripped. The woman who was his “assistant” was recently told to vacate the premises and now Kokinis is sent packing. Meanwhile, the shadow of Bernie Kosar looms as the process of carving out some role for the iconic — and bankrupt — former quarterback apparently moves forward.
There’s even some speculation that Ernie Accorsi, who built the Browns into the team that went to three AFC Championship Games in the late 1980s, might emerge from retirement to keep the chair warm until Kosar is up to speed.
What you have is an organization in constant flux, an organization as dysfunctional as any in the NFL, including the Raiders (whose owner at least knows football even if he’s a bit out of touch with reality).
It all goes back to Lerner. Given a chance to hire a strong personality to run the personnel side, he instead opted to hire the coach, who picked his bobo. Lerner should have known this was a dubious model. Why? Because it didn’t work with Butch Davis, who arrived with the similarly inexperienced Garcia in tow.
At least Lerner appears to be on the case. We know he’s in town, anyway, because he has agreed to meet Tuesday with those two buffoons who are threatening to organize a protest at the Monday night game against the Ravens.
One of those guys, by the way, used to dress up as a container of French Fries during the brief heyday of quarterback Charlie Frye. Wonder if he’ll show up in costume today for the meeting with Lerner. That really would be appropriate given the clown act currently in progress.
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Comments
By Dennis Lustig
November 2, 2009 10:17 PM | Link to this
Now’s your chance, Sean. Call Lerner and tell you want to be the new GM. You can’t do any worse than those being fired. And it sure as hell would be better than working for a dying newspaper in a dying city.
By System Gry W Ruletke
February 18, 2010 3:58 PM | Link to this
Great idea, but will this work over the long run?