By Zac Jackson
FOX Sports Ohio
January 2, 2011
CLEVELAND -- Trying to make some sense of the train wreck that was the Browns' 41-9 loss to the Steelers Sunday...
1. Oh, yeah. The aftermath. Let's talk about the aftermath, too, since the season has been over and now the Eric Mangini Watch is on. It won't be on for long. Word on the street is Mangini will meet with Mike Holmgren at 9 a.m. Monday, an hour before the players are due to report for one final meeting. It's darn close to a certainty that Mangini will be fired and the Browns -- who eight weeks ago appeared to be very much on the improve but are now, again, back to being a laughingstock -- will be looking for another head coach. They've been back 12 seasons. Mangini was their fourth full-time head coach, the third to not get them to the playoffs. Despite the fact that the Browns were the only team trying to hire him at the time, he was given the keys to the kingdom two Januarys ago after the Jets fired him. He had most of his organizational power taken away last January when Holmgren became team president but was given a chance to return as coach. The Browns again won five games, again won just once in the division and it's hard to believe Holmgren, whose own coaching philosophies couldn't be much different than most of Mangini's, won't make an immediate change. A year that was supposed to yield progress and long-term answers brought few of either.
2. Holmgren confirmed early Sunday that he would meet with Mangini Monday morning. About 35 minutes after Sunday's game, after Mangini's postgame press conference had aired on the in-house television feed, Holmgren and some of his most trusted Browns confidants -- longtime friend and advisor Gil Haskell, salary cap man Matt Thomas and executive VP of business operations Bryan Wiedmeier -- emerged from their game day suite and began the trek out of the stadium. They didn't look like they had been discussing vacation plans. Where the Browns go from here is unknown (and all too familiar territory), but Holmgren saw the Terrible Towels overtake the stadium today for the first time. The rest of us have seen it too often. He has to know Browns fans are eventually going to give up all their tickets, not just the ones to the Pittsburgh game. Think about what they paid for Sunday.
3. If you've seen the Browns in the second half of the season, you won't be surprised that Sunday's game included a bunch of dropped passes, two lost replay challenges and the Browns, down 14-0, choosing to kick a field goal from the Pittsburgh 3-yard line early in the second quarter. If you've seen the Steelers and the Browns play in, say, any of the last 12 years you won't be surprised that Sunday's game included the Steelers owning both lines of scrimmage, emptying their playbook, forcing turnovers and making Colt McCoy look like Charlie Frye. One team was aggressive, prepared and hungry. The other wore orange helmets and finished the year on a four-game losing streak. A pathetic, mostly non-competitive, four-game win streak that featured an offense that did next to nothing. In Sunday's third quarter, the Browns ran six plays for -9 yards. Negative. Nine. Here's what Steelers linebacker Larry Foote said about the Browns after the game: "They talk about going out with a good game, but the truth is their cars are packed up. They're on the last month of their lease." Ouch.
4. Sometimes football is a complicated game, one which requires intense mental and physical preparation and is often decided by a handful of plays at crucial but impossible to predict points of the game. Sometimes, it's much simpler. Like when one team is a championship team from a championship organization playing for playoff positioning. And the other wears orange helmets. "It helps when you score on the first play," Ben Roethlisberger said. Yes. It does. The Steelers clinched the AFC North Division title, their sixth division crown in the last 10 years. They are fast. And ruthless. "We were outexecuted," Joe Thomas said. Um, true. "They had a better plan than we did," Mangini admitted afterward. And better players. And something to play for. And, again, they scored on the first play.
5. It was not the Christmas Eve Massacre of '05, but it was a massacre. The last thing the Browns need is another Bloody Monday in Berea, but in a bottom-line business it seems like that's the only outcome. It was visible in body language Sunday, in the faces of people on the sideline, on the field and in the upstairs coaching booth. This season was supposed to be different, and for two magical and now unexplainable Sundays in late October and early November it was. That was a long time ago. I'll cut this short for now because we'll have plenty more to discuss Monday morning and afternoon, but the last thing the struggling-for-respect Browns need is more change. And yet it's pretty evident this beaten-up and beaten-down group of Browns needs change. And it's coming.
