Browns Coach Eric Mangini: Good Guy Or Not, He Is Still Very Shady

Cleveland Browns Head Coach Eric Mangini has been in the negative spotlight for most of the 2009 NFL regular season. And despite a personal nature that is often portrayed favorably across national media outlets, the way Mangini deals with football matters in Cleveland are as shady and dark as the outlook for the Browns organization.

Mangini has tried to create some positive publicity the last several weeks, conducting exclusive interviews with SI.com and The NFL Today.

In both interviews Mangini appears to be a normal, down-to-Earth, stand up guy who is also a father and a husband.

Sadly, once he puts on a headset and his sideline attire, he transforms straight into Mr. Hyde.

Over the last several years, Mangini has been the centerpiece of a number of shady story lines around the league: ratting out his former mentor, lying to the NFL, and calling out other coaches.

While with the New York Jets, Mangini ratted out New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick when he was taping opposing teams signals from the sidelines.

Mangini and Belichick's relationship will never be the same—hopefully the world can someday recover.

In the same season Mangini lied about an injury to his starting quarterback, Brett Favre, and was eventually fined $250,000 for the incident.

Most recently, Mangini called out Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz, accusing him of instructing his players to fake injuries in order to stop the clock since the Lions were out of timeouts.

Mangini has since apologized and said he and Schwartz has squashed the issue.

These aren't even all of the questionable events surrounding Mangini.  There are other injury related issues that he has been investigated for (RB James Davis' season-ending injury during practice), stabbing a former friend in the back to secure his own job (the firing of general manager and friend George Kokinis a few weeks back), and he has made a number of deals with his former Jets bosses after he was fired last year (it is just too shady that he keeps doing trades with the brass of his former team).

Why play the good guy to the media when your actions are so deceptive?

Are you really the stand up guy you portray to reporters?

Past events say, heck no.

You are more like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, who will do anything in his power for control and personal gain.

Browns owner Randy Lerner better be looking at the questionable circumstances that have surrounded Mangini's tenure as an NFL head coach and ask himself is this the type of coach that he really hired back in the beginning of 2009.

It looks like Mangini is a master of disguise, though he needs to hone his skills—things are no longer undercover when the public continually hears about it.