A new regime and a new era in Cleveland Browns football.
That’s what fans were promised when Jimmy Haslam bought the team from Randy Lerner, cleaned out team president Mike Holmgren, general manager Tom Heckert and coach Pat Shurmur and installed Joe Banner as CEO.
But in so many ways, it’s still business as usual in Berea with Friday’s announcement that the Browns had hired Mike Lombardi to serve as vice president of player personnel.
The week was coming to a nice close for the team with the announcement that new coach Rob Chudzinski was filling out his staff with offensive coordinator Norv Turner and defensive coordinator Ray Horton, while retaining offensive line coach George Warhop and special teams coach Chris Tabor.
While those may not be the kind of moves that win the off-season headline game, the fact that Chudzinski is building a solid, legitimate NFL staff should be encouraging for fans.
Then came Lombardi – who has been out of the NFL since 2007 and whose track record can best be described as dodgy – sucking the enthusiasm out of the room. The hiring has been reported as a done deal for months, which makes us wonder just how much effort that Banner put into the search and if the Browns ever had any intention of hiring someone else (much like how Holmgren was always apparently going to hire Shurmur).
The Philadelphia Eagles hired Oregon coach Chip Kelly on Wednesday, surprising, well, pretty much everyone.
Maybe, it’s just because we haven’t gotten over the move.
Before he officially took over as the new owner of the Cleveland Browns, Jimmy Haslam III went on a tour to visit his soon-to-be partners in the money printing business better known as the NFL. With the hiring of Rob Chudzinski as the new head coach, it's apparent what Haslam learned on that tour: it's more important to hire a guy that looks like he has that new car smell then one who actually does.
What a glorious week! The Browns identified an elite head coaching candidate that no one else in the NFL had even considered on Tuesday, and two days later they locked him up to run the team! What a coup! All that misinformation regarding the cowardly Chip Kelly and some sham interviews with guys like Ken Whisenhunt and Mike Zimmer to throw teams off their scent and then, BAM!!, the Browns had the courage and creativity to hire as head coach the same guy they fired as offensive coordinator just four years ago. Talk about misdirection!