Cleveland Browns: Making Sense of the Week That Was

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Halfway through the 2009 campaign, the Browns already are wondering what their draft position will be for 2010.

That fact isn’t sad. What is sad is the very real possibility it won’t matter if the Browns have 23 picks and right of first refusal on all other team’s first round picks because the front office is busy playing twister rather than putting together a winning organization.

Owner Randy Lerner has been so focused on making sure he doesn’t have to spend more than five minutes a week on the team, all he’s done is ensure he’ll be spending every waking moment in or around the Berea facility for the foreseeable future.

Lerner has only been good at one thing since inheriting his father’s team—screwing it up.

Lerner never has been able to grasp the one fundamental constant of every winning football franchise—a stable front office working together to win a Super Bowl.

Having failed to learn the lessons of Czar Butch Davis and his missteps, Lerner almost immediately sent the team careening into the abyss by not sitting down and defining roles of each front office position.

The error was compounded by not enforcing what little structure was in place when it came to division of powers.

Lerner ousted team president John Collins when the power struggle began between Collins and former general manager Phil Savage. Savage immediately began navigating the team into the waters of rudderless losing because there was no oversight.

Vowing to “correct” the mistakes, Lerner instead hired a head coach before he hired a general manager, and promptly turned control of the team over to Eric Mangini, a man who has emerged as being somewhat of a control freak.

In the blame game, it’s important to know who to blame for what, and how much blame each person should take.

At the end of the day, Lerner deserves 78.967 percent of the blame while Mangini deserves 22.351 of the blame.

The rest of the blame falls on (former?) general manager George Kokinis for not having a spine.

I say former because all Lerner will say about Kokinis is that he is "no longer active in the organization" and denies Kokinis has been fired.

Mangini came into the Browns organization on Day One and completely cleaned house. He fired most of the public relations staff, because we all know what a public relations guru Mangini is, and brought in as many of “his” people as he could lure in.

Then Kokinis was hired, specifically for his past relationship with Mangini. Kokinis, no doubt, thought this would end up being a very successful marriage and the two of them, as coach and GM, would be hoisting several Lombardi trophies in the coming years.

But Mangini does not share power once taken. That is the lesson being learned in Cleveland right now.

Kokinis, if the reports of his demise are accurate, was marginalized on his first day on the job and completely ignored in the last few weeks leading up to his dismissal from the team facility.

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