Just When Everything Seemed Safe, More Instability Ahead for Cleveland Browns

After the Cleveland Browns conducted their most aggressive offseason of the Tom Heckert-Mike Holmgren regime, giving credence to the patience necessary of their five-year rebuilding plan, the team was thrown a very serious curveball: Owner Randy Lerner would be selling his controlling interest in the team to a group led by Jimmy Haslam III. 

This likely means that Holmgren and Heckert are very much on the hot seat, and they're not able to control the temperature.

The simple fact is that when teams change ownership, the new owner or owners want to install their own people to run the football program, and unless Heckert and Holmgren can sell themselves like they've likely never done before, they're in very real danger of losing their jobs in Cleveland.

Likely to replace Holmgren as team president is Joe Banner, part of Haslam's buyers group and former president of the Philadelphia Eagles. If this indeed comes to pass, then there's a chance that both Heckert and head coach Pat Shurmur could retain their jobs, considering both men worked with Banner in Philly.

But, even if that happens, it's likely that the whole Holmgren-engineered five-year plan is going to be tossed aside, and yet again, the Browns will have to start over from scratch.

Now, this isn't a wholesale starting over, of course—they won't be cleaning house when it comes to players, but the way those players are viewed, used and valued could easily shift. 

Though Holmgren has repeatedly asserted that he didn't want this sale to be a distraction to the team, there are ways in which the impending changes affect how he's approaching the upcoming season.

It certainly affects the futures of every player on the team, and that's a thought that they cannot stop from creeping into their minds no matter how much Holmgren and company want to limit the distractions.

But the bottom line is that this sale causes another shakeup to a Browns team that simply doesn't need any more significant change. If there is a wholesale turnover in the coaching and front office staffs, that means a loss of stability.

And for a team with so many young players in important starting positions, it could result in another quick step backward while they yet again try to gain their footing.

If quarterback Brandon Weeden struggles in his rookie year, will the (ostensibly) Banner-led decision-making team decide to go in a different direction? Will priorities change regarding which players are of the greatest value? What will become of Seneca Wallace without Holmgren there as his champion?

While the Browns were banking on being a changed team for the 2012 season, this sale of the team is likely not what they had in mind. And so, yet again, the Browns will end a year with a number of questions hanging over their heads—this time, regardless of their win-loss record.

Stability, it seems, will have to wait.

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