Cleveland's football circus

By TOM WITHERS
AP Sports Writer

BEREA, Ohio(AP) — Just hours after Cleveland’s fired general
manager walked down the front steps in disgrace carrying his
belongings in travel bags, two disgruntled fans climbed the same
steps inside the team’s headquarters for a meeting with the
team’s camera-shy owner.

One of them wore a plastic dog bone hat. He used to go to games
dressed as a french fry.

Welcome to the bizarre world of the Browns. Once a flagship NFL
franchise, now seen as a farce. The Oakland Raiders of the
Midwest.

Halfway through coach Eric Mangini’s first season, the Browns
(1-7) are tumbling at an alarming rate. They reached the bye
week in such disrepair – their offense is ranked 31st, their
defense 32nd – it may take years from them to get fixed.

Inept. Overmatched. Laughable. Embarrassing.

All of those words have been used to describe this team,
starting quarterback Derek Anderson, Mangini and owner Randy
Lerner.

On the field, the Browns are terrible. Off it, they are in
turmoil.

This week, Lerner fired GM George Kokinis, a dismissal that
followed the resignation of Erin O’Brien, Mangini’s personal
assistant in New York who worked as a team operations director
in Cleveland. Also, former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar has
been brought in as a consultant and the team is searching for an
experienced executive, “an overarching person” as someone in the
organization put it, to run its football department and oversee
a new GM.

The Browns seemingly need an intervention. They need help, and
the season is only half over.

“We’re just going with the flow,” Pro Bowl tackle Joe Thomas
said.

Fired after last season by the New York Jets, Mangini came to
Cleveland with a plan to restore the Browns, bring them back to
respectability, make them winners again. He brought in 10 former
Jets, overhauled the roster with 25 new players – so far. He
traded offensive stars and headaches Kellen Winslow and Braylon
Edwards, benched quarterback Brady Quinn for Anderson just 10
quarters into the season, and may make a switch again.

Nothing has worked.

“It takes time,” Mangini said earlier this week.

He may be running out of it.

Although Lerner offered his support to Mangini this week, saying
he could not envision any scenario in which he would make a
coaching change in 2010, if the next eight games go as poorly as
the first eight, he may have little choice but to replace his
coach.

Mangini may have reasons to be nervous.

Lerner’s firing of Kokinis seemed to strip the coach of power.
Kokinis was Mangini’s hand-picked choice, hired away from
Baltimore and reuniting two friends who worked together in the
1990s in Cleveland as underlings to then-coach Bill Belichick.

But from the start, the Kokinis-Mangini management marriage
seemed destined for a divorce. The two were rarely seen together
and when Kokinis addressed the media before April’s draft,
Mangini sat a few feet away on the dais shooting his GM a
watch-what-you-say glare.

Kokinis’ stunning and strange ouster came less than 24 hours
after Lerner said he wanted to bring in a “strong, credible
leader” to oversee the club’s football operations. That would
mean filling an executive void the Browns have not addressed
since their expansion return in 1999.

Lerner, who has yet to address the media on the firing, had
hoped Kokinis would evolve into that person. But did Mangini
give his friend the freedom to grow?

Kokinis was all but invisible during his nine months on the job.
When the club traded Edwards to the Jets last month, it was
Mangini who explained the rational to the media. Kokinis was
never heard from, a strong sign he had already lost whatever
authority and stature he had been given.

Now, Lerner is looking for his third GM in less than a year -
Phil Savage was fired in December – and Mangini believes he will
have input into the next hiring.

“Randy and I talk a lot,” Mangini said, “so I’m sure we’ll be
very engaged in that (decision).”

Ernie Accorsi, Cleveland’s GM from 1985-92 and a close friend of
Lerner’s, has been mentioned as a possibility to serve as a vice
president of football operations, a role similar to Bill
Parcells’ job with the Miami Dolphins. The problem for the
Browns is that candidates of Parcells’ caliber are few, and
trying to hire one in the middle of a season is difficult.

As for a GM, that may have to wait until after the season.
Anyway, Mangini believes the Browns are equipped to function
without one until January.

“I do feel good about all the things that we have in place, in
terms of the pro department, the college department, the
structures, the systems there,” he said.

One thing Mangini may not have considered is it could be tough
for Lerner to persuade any football mastermind to come to
Cleveland with the current coaching system in place.

Mangini has yet to show he can successfully build a team. He
mismanaged the quarterback position, damaging Quinn’s confidence
with the early hook and diminishing any trade value for the
former Notre Dame star or for Anderson.

Beyond that, Mangini’s tenure in Cleveland has included him
being fined $25,000 by the NFL for lying about Brett Favre’s
injury last year in New York; players filing grievances against
Mangini for fines; a locker room fight following a rookie being
doused with water; an investigation into rookie James Davis’
shoulder injury suffered in one of the coach’s post-practice
“opportunity periods;” and running back Jamal Lewis announcing
this season will be his last.

And one victory.

The seven losses in eight games are lowlighted by an offense
that has scored fewer touchdowns (5) than New Orleans’ defense
(6).

Some fed-up Browns fans plan to display their disgust by staying
out their seats for the opening kickoff of the Nov. 16 game
against Baltimore. They’re hoping to show Lerner, the league and
a Monday night TV audience that they won’t take anymore.

Lerner reached out to the two organizers of the protest and met
with them in his office this week for two hours. “Dawg Pound
Mike” Randall said Cleveland’s owner since 2002 was receptive to
some of his ideas. He even joked to Lerner that he should hire
him to help fix the Browns.

Somebody needs to fix them.

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