Why Browns Fans Want Crennel To Stay

Has firing the coach helped the Browns in the past or has it made things worse? Is it possible the lack of organizational stability is the true underlying poison to this franchise? Do you think if the Browns had a coach like Bill Belichick, they would win the Super Bowl? ...Wait a minute... Didn't they try that?

In a lot of ways the Pittsburgh Steelers are the polar opposites of the Browns: The Steelers win. The Browns lose. The Steelers had two coaches between 1969 and 2006. The Browns had 13.

Chris Palmer had two years to coach the Browns. His first year was the 1999 expansion team. His second was one of the most injury plagued seasons on record. Then he was fired. Was that smart? What would have happened to Pittsburgh had they treated Chuck Noll the same way?

Noll's first year resulted in a 1-13 record; including losing its last 13 games of the season. Fans may have thought he had allowed his players to quit. His second year the team was 5-9, which still made Noll a loser, but the Steelers did not fire him. They kept him for the next twenty years and he went on to win more Super Bowls than any coach in NFL history.

During the Cowher regime some Pittsburgh fans began to get a bit antsy because of his failure to win the big one, but again patience paid off. Perhaps Steelers ownership had seen the value in maintaining organizational stability.

There's so much chatter about Bill Cowher coming to Cleveland because he was a winner in Pittsburgh. How much of his success was due to inheriting a solid culture of excellence from Chuck Noll? How much of his success was due to ownership standing behind him and being patient? I fear that if the Browns continue to expect a great coach to have an immediate effect, history will continue to repeat itself.

Oh, and speak'n of history, the only time in Browns history they kept a coach longer than seven years, he won three NFL championships. Paul Brown.

Lessons learned or lessons ignored? Browns fans should want Crennel to stay.