Well it's the first Tuesday after the regular season in the NFL, and that means that the Browns are on the search for their 8th head coach since 1999, and their 16th coach since 1968. The latest victim of Clevelanditis was poor Rob Chudzinski who only had one year to try to turnaround a team that has been a loser since 1968(first year of Super Bowl). They have been the worst franchise in the NFL since that point, 0 Super Bowl Appearances, 8 division championships, and a sad 13 measly Playoff Appearances. Now let us go to the Polar opposite of the Browns, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Since 1968 the Best Franchise in Football has had 3 head coaches, 6 Super Bowl Championships, 8 Super Bowl appearances, 20 Division Championships, and 26 Playoff Appearances. Now the key thing to point out here is the Steelers have had 13 less head coaches. Consistency with that man on the sideline is the cornerstone to a successful franchise. Put that with a Franchise or HOF QB and you have yourself a Dynasty, Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw(4 Super Bowls), Brady and Bellichick(3 Super Bowls), Bill Walsh and Joe Montana(3 Super Bowls). Now their are other current franchises that aren't technically dynasties but are still successful, Sean Payton and Drew Brees(1 Super Bowl), Mccarthy and Rodgers(1 Super Bowl). Now look at the Panthers who about fired Ron Rivera last year and now they have a first round bye under him. Patience is key, it is definitely not the easiest thing in the wold to become an NFL coach and succeed. It is much harder to be asked to do it immediately. In Bill Bellichick's first season with New England he went 5-11, now what if the Patriots would have done what the Browns did. Football history would be drastically different, there is too much parity in this league to analyze anybody by one season.
However I do realize that sometimes it is just time to move on as a franchise, the greatest example of that is the Colts releasing Peyton Manning arguably the best QB ever to transition quickly into Andrew Luck. It was a genius move, They have 2 straight playoff appearances and their QB of the future. They waited and made the correct move at the correct time. Peyton Manning went 2-14 in his first year, if that were the Browns they would have traded him and looked somewhere else, but it was the Colts who waited and didn't get another losing season from Manning. The Colts were prepared for the same futility in the First year with Luck, they would've waited and placed complete trust in Pagano and Luck. That is why they are successful, patience. Something the Browns have
lacked in for over 40 years.
Now many ask the question why is it that the Browns are so impatient, well if you haven't been successful for over 40 years that is usually the reaction. A nice analogy would be if let us say you bought a pack of light bulbs that you knew took a while to get to full light. So you screw in the first one and it stays dim for 2, 3, 5 and eventually 10 minutes. So correctly assuming the light bulb is broke you throw it away. You try the next one, it stays dim but this time you only wait 8 minutes, so you throw it away. Try the next one same result but you only wait 6 minutes, this cycle continues on and on until eventually your throwing the light bulb away after 5 seconds, completely forgetting that they will take a while to heat up. So in this frantic search of bright light you may have been through some bad bulbs but your anger and impatience most likely caused you to throw away a bulb that works. That is the phase the Browns are in now, just praying that a bulb burns brightly quickly. To finally become relevant the Browns must find patience. They need to follow a model of past franchises, and they must realize that to have longevity in this league as a Playoff team you must show resiliency and patience in which the Browns do not have. Big free-agent splashes won't get you to the top, only good drafting by one coach with one goal and one path to get there shared by the whole organization will. One Organization working as one mind that orchestrates the quality of patience. A clear fallacy with the Browns. I repeat the title Where is the belief in "Believeland"?
Until this attitude ceases in the Cleveland Browns from the Front Office to the Fan base they will always be the Losers of the NFL. So my message to Cleveland comes from Star Wars, Patience my young padawan, patience.
