JoeSixPat

Mangini has to get the blame for the QB situation. He could have traded both Anderson and Quinn, and taken Sanchez with the #5 pick.

Now, no Sanchez, and he's destroyed the trade value of BOTH QBs.

Apparently he was making the GM calls and not Kokinis - which led to their bad blood - so you have to question whether getting rid of all the good players on the team was the wise move (though I'll grant you guys like Edwards needed to go)

Who ever could have predicted that teaming a former Baltimore personnel guy and a former Patriot DC would have ended so badly?

lamafist

Look, I think Mangini's a douche like most every Pats fan, and from what I hear, I believe it could very well be true that he might not have the character composition to be a successful head coach in the NFL. Then again, a lot of the same things were said about BB after his tenure in Cleveland, about his demeanor, his communication skills, and his ego. Oh, and some of his blow-outs w/ Parcells were legendary.

I think there's also a lot of "post hoc" speculation going on, retrofitting our perception of past events to come up with a narrative that jibes with our perception of the present. That kind of reasoning just leads to premature conclusion-jumping.

I mean, remember after Saban and Mangini's first years with their respective teams, when the media were dubbing them geniuses and saying that BB might not be the best coach in the division anymore? And then how quickly the conventional wisdom turned when they couldn't reproduce their success in the following years?

The problem is that there are so many factors that go into a team's success on the field that any attempt to connect correlation with causation is going to be uselessly reductive. Yes, we know that in 2005, Mangini had his playcalling duties stripped, and that in the 2nd half of the year, the defense improved. But there were also some key personnel changes the corresponded with the turnaround -- notably, the return of Bruschi, and him and Vrabel replacing Chad Brown and Monty Beisel at ILB. We also achieved some continuity in the secondary at that point, with Artrell Hawkins, though an unexceptional physical talent, bringing some stability and discipline to the S position.

So was it the play-calling or the personnel, or both, or perhaps a weaker 2nd half schedule, or the natural tendency of a BB team to play its best football down the stretch? We'll never know. We do know, however, that despite BB having taken over the play-calling, he had no intention of replacing Mangini as DC after the season, and tried to talk him out of taking the job w/ the Jets.

And it's funny how in the end, a team's performance establishes the context in which we see everything else. BB brought success to the Patriots franchise, so his oft-mystifying personnel moves, his obsessive secrecy, and steadfast refusal to be a communicator, to try to "sell" his idea of the team to the fans, all become part of his legend. But if Bledsoe's injury doesn't clear the way for Brady, if the Pats don't catch the week 17 breaks that have them home in the snow vs. Oakland, if there's no tuck rule, and, most germainely, if Kraft wasn't such a great, hands-off owner, and started interfering after BB's initial 5-11 season, those same qualities of BB would be part of the conventional wisdom of why he never made it as a HC.

MoLewisrocks

That's because Herm had no basis for being anything more than an assistant at this level. He got brought along for a reason that had less to do with his accumen than his witty reparte. Herm became the model for the motivator as HC. The reason he always looked so befuddled on the sidelines was he had no clue what went wrong or more specifically why or how to counter it. He was totally reliant on his own coordinators to do something he had never done, either. His own role models were far more successful because in addition to charismatic personalities they had some genuine football intellect and increasing NFL experience. And in Dungy's case it finally paid off only after he landed with an established GM in Polian who had all the requisite pieces in place for him.

Postscript recap: Pioli mercifully canned Herm, a man the chief traded draft picks to land as he was failing miserably in NY despite inheriting a Parcell's roster and infrastructure, when he was named GM of the Chiefs in 2009. The JETS simultaneously canned Eric Mangini, whom they had hired to replace Herm in 2006 even though he had just one lackluster seasons experience as a DC. They replaced him with the Ravens DC whom his own team had passed over for the HC position in favor of a relative unknown after firing Brian Billick the year before. Cleveland immediately pounced on the opportunity that presented to replace their own failed HC, a former BB DC, with another former BB DC and recently fired HC, and for good measure paired him with another Ravens FO staffer to replace the prior Ravens FO staffer they simultaneously canned after pairing him with a former BB DC produced thoroughly disheartening/dysfunctional results...

Honestly, you couldn't script this level of management blundering involving billion dollar franchises...and expect anyone to believe it.

I think there is as much a crisis in fielding functional coaching/management/ownership in this copycat league today as there is in identifying and fielding functional QB'ing... Every time somebody sees something work once, they rush to try to replicate it. Even if overwhelming evidence indicates it's failed more often than not. Mindboggling.

All of these franchises are owned by business men who have been wildly successful in their other business ventures. I saw the same syndrome when I bred horses. Managing the hobby investment they convince themselves will be a simple thing for them to master totally befuddles them because they never understood they had to undertake that involvement with the same painstaking, bottom line approach as they did all their other successful business ventures.

Disco Volante

At first I was very upset Mangini found a job this off-season.

Now it's one of the greatest things that happened this year. Instead of being able to leave on the note of a winning record and the exuse of Favre breaking down Mangini will be fired after one of if not the worst coaching jobs in the entire NFL this season.

Instead of possibly being seen as a guy who just had a tough break, people now realize how horrible this guy is.

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fnordcircle

I just can't bring myself to delight in Mangini's downfall.

I honestly think the spygate thing was not his intent, I think he was trying to screw with Bill and metagame him a bit and then NFL security stepped in and the press ran with it.

I don't think the guy is actually a bad guy I just don't think he's ready to be a good HC and neither did Belichick.

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lamafist

I don't think drafting two first-round QBs in three NFL drafts is a good way to build your football team. The Browns may have been able to get *some* value for Anderson, but Quinn had pretty much lost all his buzz, and with his 1st rounder's contract, wasn't going to make an attractive package.

And do we really know that Sanchez will end up being all that much better, and still would have on the Browns?

Personally, I think Mangini learned an important lesson from his tenure with the Jets -- manage expectations early, and do not let yourself get pressured into making moves for short-term results at the expense of long-term team-building. I've always thought that the Jets' making the playoffs in his 1st season was the worst thing that could have happened for Mangini.

As the Browns' HC, he's refusing to make any moves for short-term gain, which is very Belichickian of him. Braylon Edwards was not going to be part of the Browns' future, and wasn't going to make much of a difference in the present. The fact that he got as much as he did from the Jets for him is to his credit: it's essentially money for nothing.

The Browns were not going to be good this year, no matter who was coaching, and in the long run, it will be good for them that they hired a guy coming off an experience that made him adamant about only coaching with an eye toward the future. Maybe Mangini doesn't hack it as a head coach. Maybe he just can't win the respect of the players the way BB does. Maybe he's not as good at the x's and o's as was once thought. That's all possible -- but Lerner would still do well to take a page from the Kraft book of ownership, and give the guy he hired the room + support to execute the plan he hired him to execute.

MoLewisrocks

There are far more dis-similarities than similarities. In large part because Bill had a foundation anchored by both the healthy ego and requisite humility to be open to and learn his lessons. That's why he rolled the dice and engineered himself into this organization rather than simply remaining with the JETS. That's why he returned to Parcell's and did nothing to jepordize his ability to in the interim. That's why he stuck with Brady and persued a value strategy rather than opting for a QB competition/controversy that would have obliterated the value of one if not both of those assets. That's why he cut the dead wood and replaced it with sometimes aging system veterans but worked internally to sell the system to the limited top tier talent he inherited and avoided alienating them until it was sold so he had a core to back his play. Sure the ring helped, but he also assembled the staff that identified Brady and he immediately recognized the potential and worked at developing and rewarding that too...

Mangini was too egotistical to take a step back and too impatient to wait his turn and to selfish to avoid burning bridges. And too stupid to avoid back to back quagmires fueled by incompetent owners who repeatedly pay more attention to fan perception and media spin than the genuine business of football. It's the off the field equivalent of tying your coat tails to players who make the same mental mistakes over and over and over...and it's not like he wasn't warned.

Deus Irae

If Sanchez was playing anywhere other than New York, he'd be getting labeled a "disappointment" in his first season.

Mangini didn't draft Quinn, Anderson, Winslow or Edwards. He was saddled with that quartet. While I think that he was too fast on the trigger with Quinn, it's tough to blame him for the other three. I agree that he took way too little for the #5 pick, but nobody wanted to trade up in the draft. It's rumored that the Chiefs called pretty much every team in the league about their pick and didn't get a single decent offer.

Mangini was moderately successful in New York, and he'd still be in New York, as the toast of the town, if Favre hadn't gotten injured last season after an 8-3 start. I don't respect Mangini because of what he reportedly did when leaving the Patriots, but most of the other crap is just that: crap.

And Lombardi's article is far more damning of Lombardi's nature when he editorializes than it is of Mangini, imo.

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MoLewisrocks

Funny thing is that's what they were saying about McDaniels and somehow he found a way to make it all work including not just retaining his mercurial WR but turning him around.

Josh also had the sense to sign on with an owner who had a track record of giving it time and supporting his HC until his ego overtook his performance.

That handbook Bill gave him was clearly worth the price. Mangini didn't think he needed one. He honestly believed he'd outgrown his mentor and was ready to prove it. Moron.

He also became a backstabber. He sold himself to Woody by telling them "secrets" like about the filming that led Woody to believe he could in fact humble BB and the NEP. He had no intention of using it against Bill, but Tannenbaum did. He was not a BB protoge, he was a Tuna FO protoge from their Giants days.

He just saved his own ass by stabbing his former roomate in the back after essentially setting him up to fail as a first time GM.

Mangini won't get another HC job in the NFL. He may not get another job, period. It's a coaches league and all of them owe allegience to someone. Loyalty and trust are the stepping stones to and foundation of careers.

jimmyjames

The problem with the Browns lies squarely on the shoulders of owner Randy Lerner. And things don't look to improve any time soon. Don't forget that the Browns are still paying out contracts to Romeo and Phil Savage though 2011. Mangini got a four year deal so even firing him would keep him on the books through 2013. How much money will thay have to get any real FO or HC talent?

The Browns play in a stacked division. Pitt and Baltimore are not going to get terrible any time soon and Cincinnati at least has a solid foundation of players for a few more years. So even if they fire Mangini, I don't see any of the the big name coaches - Holmgren, Shanahan, Cowher or Gruden coming in. Which means they are going to have to hire an unproven College coach or NFL coordinator which is what got them into this mess in the first place - ie: Butch Davis, Romeo Crennel.

Mangini at least seemingly has a plan in place, but can't get his players to play for him. If you are on a losing team, you have to at least buy into teh system - something I don't think Mangini can accomplish.

Priority one for the Browns has to be the hiring of a true head of Football Operations that Mangini answers to. But I fear the Browns fans are stuck with the rat for a while longer. It's a shame, because those fans really do deserve better.