Process This, Mr. Mangini: Cleveland Browns Fans Want Wins, Not Words

Eric Mangini probably deserves more time to make his program work in Cleveland, although I don't really know why.
 
It just seems odd—a knee-jerk reaction—to suggest that he be fired at the midpoint of his first season at the helm. But one local newspaper columnist already did. So the Mangini watch begins.
 
The coach has done nothing to excite Cleveland fans since his arrival. His press conferences are as exciting as listening to your high school biology teacher discuss the reproductive techniques of protozoa. His two facial expressions are grim and grimmer. He radiates the warmth of a January morning in Saskatoon.
 
If he wanted to emulate his mentor, Bill Belichick, he picked the wrong town. Clevelanders endured the worst of Ol' Stoneface himself and don't need a chip off of that concrete block.
 
So now, in the face of the 30-6 thrashing at Chicago, and following the demise of George Kokinis, his hand-picked GM (will somebody please explain, at long last, how a coach picked his general manager in the first place?), Mangini reverted to his tired explanation for why fans, the media, and even his players should remain patient while the Browns slip-slide through the raging waters of the 2009 schedule.
 
It's the process. We have to respect the process. 
 
"That doesn't mean we’re not looking to win every game," he said at a Nov. 3 press conference. "It doesn’t mean we're not looking to improve each week." Glad he cleared that up. 
 
"But I also believe in the things that we're doing and I understand it doesn't happen overnight," an AP report quoted the coach as saying. "There's not one formula in terms of specific ingredients, but there is a very specific approach that you have to take and I believe in that. It has been successful. It will be successful here."
 
He just won't say what it is.
 
Presumably, "the process" takes time. Presumably, it explains the losses, the ineptitude, the total lack of direction or passion displayed by his team thus far.
 
Baloney. Exhibit A: The 2008 Miami Dolphins.
 
That team went from a disastrous 1-15 record in 2007, to a stellar 11-5 record the following year. Head Coach Tony Sporano grabbed a quarterback that Mangini discarded in New York, Chad Pennington, and roared to an AFC East title.

Under Sporano and VP of Football Operations Bill Parcells, Pennington had a career year: Second in the league in passing, Comeback Player of the Year, team MVP, and a 67.4 percent completion mark, breaking a Dolphins team record held by some guy named Marino.
 
When it was over, Miami had matched the NFL record for a single-season turnaround, producing a 10-win differential over the previous year. How's that for a process, Mr. Mangini?
 
It's worth noting that Sporano was emulating a similar performance turned in a decade earlier by none other than Parcells himself. The Big Tuna's 1997 Jets finished 9-7, an eight-game improvement over their 1-15 record of 1996.
 
The Browns were 4-12 a year ago. Fans would have been happy with a slight improvement this year. Six wins would have been just fine. Seven or eight would have merited a parade.
 
Instead, the Browns are 1-7, and lucky to have that one win. Elder statesman Jamal Lewis, so disgusted by it all that he's retiring at season's end, says the team has no identity. Yet we're told to respect "the process."
 
Mr. Mangini, take us for loyal. Take us for passionate. Take us for enthusiastic. But don't take us for idiots.

Process? What process? The offense smells to high heaven. The defense is feeble. Only the special teams are passable, primarily because of Josh Cribbs.
 
We seem to remember a team being dismantled and rebuilt into a Super Bowl contender before. It was 20 years ago, when Jimmy Johnson rode into Dallas. His process? Trade a star, Herschel Walker, for a zillion draft picks and a bottle of Tums, and then draft very, very wisely.
 
There were no stars here for you to trade, unless we count Cribbs—and you guys have already shown you can't count where Josh is concerned. He continues to score a fourth of your touchdowns while awaiting a new contract.

So again, what's the process? Trading Kellen Winslow was a quick, decisive move. Waiting until Braylon Edwards behaved badly, yet again, wasn't. Starting the season with Brady Quinn at QB, and then yanking him after 10 quarters? Sticking with Derek Anderson, despite some of the worst performances under center since George Plimpton? Please, Coach, enlighten us.

But don't try to hoodwink us any longer.

You cut your teeth in the Cleveland Browns organization. Maybe when you were starting out as a ball boy back in '94, you thought we fans didn't know much. But now that you've grown up, you'd be surprised at how much we've learned in 15 years.

We know a process, and this is no process. It's just losing—in some of the worst ways imaginable. And it's tiresome.

Cut the rhetoric. Either roll up your sleeves and show us something, or roll your apple cart out of town. Because it's about to be upset.

Just like we already are.