Mike Holmgren Hires Friend Gil Haskell: What Does This Really Mean for Browns?

Cleveland Browns president Mike Holmgren has announced that he is bringing in former assistant and friend Gil Haskell as a senior adviser to him personally.

One must assume that Holmgren needs another set of highly trained and trusted eyeballs on the situation in Cleveland since the team is undergoing a total evaluation by both Holmgren himself and new general manager Tom Heckert.

Haskell was with Holmgren when he was head coach of the Green Bay Packers and he was also the offensive coordinator and assistant head coach while with the Seattle Seahawks.

An intriguing thought has crossed this journalists' mind and that is "What if Holmgren is bringing Haskell on board to get familiar with the situation, just in case current head coach Eric Mangini fails in 2010, then both Holmgren and Haskell will grab headsets and completely take over the team as coaches for 2011?"

This is just an assumption, but it kind of makes sense, because Holmgren did keep all of Mangini's staff, assuming that if he does fail in 2010, then the blame will go solely on Mangini's shoulders since that was his hand-picked coaching staff.

So this all may sound a bit far-fetched and hypothetical, but honestly, looking ahead at the "what if?" scenario it looks like that is what might be happening on the coast of Lake Erie.

Another thought also crossed the brain and that is perhaps Haskell is just on board to be an extra set of eyeballs, as said earlier, or to help offensive coordinator Brian Daboll during the season.

Unless, Holmgren assumes Daboll will fail and have to get rid of him mid-season, then he has Haskell to fill in the void to run the offense.

So many questions and theories surround this recent hiring and it makes you think that Holmgren really may have a master plan in place in case the current plan with the current coaching staff under performs.

But who knows?

This could all just be this journalist over-thinking the situation and that's all.

At the very least, it is encouraging that Holmgren continues to bring in people to help the Browns get back to being a contender.