Eric Mangini Faces the Biggest Coaching Test of His Career Monday Night

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For those who love statistics, the Browns Monday Night Football game will not be one for the ages.

Other than in an abstract sense, the stats will be meaningless, only the outcome will matter. This team is long past the point of moral victories. It needs a real win that doesn’t come off of a late game mistake.

Following the blowout loss to the Bears two weeks ago, head coach Eric Mangini promised to evaluate every position and every player during the bye week. On Monday, the collective football nation will see whether he was paying lip service to the fan base, or if he really backed up his words with action.

Like it or not, this game will act as a referendum on Mangini’s future in Cleveland. He can’t afford to get this game wrong for a myriad of reasons, the least being his job security.

There are those who take Mangini’s tutelage under Bill Belichik, note the similarities, and claim anyone who wants to get rid of him are crazy.

On the opposite side are the people who can’t understand what anyone sees in Mangini, and want him fired yesterday.

I’m taking the middle ground for now.

While I understand and accept the comparisons made between Belichik and Mangini, the reality is these are two completely different men in two completely different situations.

When it comes to on-field coaching and roster composition, Belichik was a first-time head coach who made a lot of mistakes and refused to correct them until after he was fired and had time to reflect on his actions.

That is, admittedly, simplifying the situation but the results speak for themselves.

Mangini had about five minutes to reflect on everything before owner Randy Lerner was giving him a multi-million dollar contract. That means Mangini doesn’t think he really did much of anything wrong.

Why would he?

Sure some things need to be tweaked, Mangini might be telling himself, but it’s also very evident he never really reflected on the exact reasons the Jets showed him the door after Brett Favre’s late season injury and collapse. The late season collapse of the Jets last year can't all be laid on Mangini's shoulders.

There has to be more to the story than that.

That's why anyone who says firing Mangini at this point would be tantamount to what happened in 1995 with Belichik is using flawed thinking, because it assumes the situation with Belichik in the early 1990s is the same as 2009.

They're not the same at all. Not even remotely.

If Mangini can’t turn this team around, and loses his job as a result, there will be no Eric Mangini in another town hoisting his third Super Bowl trophy, while Browns fans once again eat crow, because Mangini won’t get another head coaching job anytime in the near or not-so-near future.

Mangini has burned every bridge he ever built since taking his first head coaching job in New York. Belichik no longer speaks to him after Mangini tried filching some of Belichik’s coaching staff after a playoff game, and the subsequent Spygate incident.

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