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

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.

While the specifics are unknown, many voices at the league level have given one negative quote after another about how incompetent Mangini supposedly is.

The fact the league fined Mangini for covering up Favre’s injury, while Bill Parcells and the Miami Dolphins got off scott free even after it was revealed they covered up Chad Pennington’s injury, speaks volumes about how Mangini is viewed in the upper echelons of the NFL.

Once Mangini was hired in Cleveland, all of Lerner's top GM candidates, namely Scott Pioli and Rich McKay, abruptly pulled out of consideration, citing Mangini as a deal-breaker.

So don’t speculate about Mangini’s future in the NFL if he’s fired from this job because he won’t have one. He’ll be lucky to get an NCAA job at this point. He’s made far too many enemies for no good reason that I can think of.

Mangini prides himself on following many of the teachings of Bill Parcells and Bill Belichik, and to his credit, his planning is sound. That being said, his execution of the plan has been nothing short of terrible.

Something got lost in translation.

The Browns were a bad team in January when Mangini took over. They’re even worse now.

While tearing apart to rebuild was expected, what wasn’t expected was just how much further the team has regressed. As a fan, it isn’t the losing that upsets and frustrates me this year, it’s how they’re losing.

The Browns aren’t just losing games by a play here or a play there. They are getting their collective butts handed to them, and then getting beaten down some more, while getting jumped from behind by the other team’s friends from the other side of town.

It’s U-G-L-Y.

That’s why the team is being accused of quitting, Mangini is in the hot seat, and some fans are organizing protests.

If Mangini fields a team on Monday night that is once again eviscerated, he’ll have no more excuses. His sacrificial lamb, George Kokinis, is now gone. It’s all on Mangini now.

But I don't want to see that. Not one bit. I want to see the Browns rise from the ashes and shock the world.

Not only am I hoping for a Browns win, I’m hoping to see Mangini make some good coaching moves, and get a nice Gatorade shower in the fourth quarter.

And while the stats may not lie, neither does a victory in the NFL, and a low QB rating won’t matter one bit if the Browns add one more to the “W” column on Monday.