Pettine almost certainly gone, probably Farmer too

Dawgs By Nature again gives us the most complete picture. Apparently Pettine is a whiny bitch (which makes me like him even less), saying that it was his players’ fault he was probably going to get fired. Classy. Might or might not be true, but that’s still an incredibly stupid thing to say.

More importantly, I keep hearing stories about how Pettine trusted O’Neil to fix the defense while he worked on the offense. A quote from Ian Rapoport seems a fitting epitaph for this regime:

Members of the front office were barely on speaking terms with the coaching staff, while Haslam informed them he must be consulted on endless football decisions.

Free advice to Haslam: hire the GM first (unless you keep Farmer). I would also keep Coach Flip, the best coordinator on the team; I don’t necessarily think he’ll be interviewed for the HC job, nor do I think he should, but Flip got chicken salad (or a reasonable facsimile) out of chicken shit.

Manziel’s concussion probably means that, unless he works his ass off between the end of the season and the draft, he won’t be in Cleveland next year. Showing up in Las Vegas the day before today’s game probably doesn’t help. (For the record, there isn’t a ton of evidence one way or another, but I choose to believe the Brownsiest possible scenario.) Ditto, I think, for Austin Davis, who isn’t demonstrably better than Josh McCown. McCown will, quite probably, stay on the roster.

We need a defensive guy in Cleveland. I think that much is clear. We need a GM and a head coach who work together. We need a head coach who doesn’t bench players for petty bullshit. We need a GM who either has the balls to stand up to the owner (Farmer wanted Bridgewater, who was my pick too) and/or a GM who doesn’t ignore glaring weaknesses (WIDE RECEIVER!!!!!!!!)

The new GM will have a top four pick to work with (maybe #1 overall). It is absolutely vital that this pick not get screwed up or, even better, that we trade out of the spot to accumulate multiple 1st rounders.

EDIT: Both have been fired, as per the owner of the Browns. The Browns are insisting on hiring the head coach before the GM — which is amazingly stupid — but hopefully they’ll move quickly on that. It looks like the person in charge of the roster, for now, will be the executive Vice President, Sashi Brown. The GM will report to Brown; apparently, Brown is a stats type of fellow, so maybe it will work out for the best.

 

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