The big problem with the Browns wasn't even the quarterbacks, whom everyone was focused on. The problem is Jimmy Haslam, "Hotspur" as I have called him for his recklessness and impatience. (No wonder he wanted Manziel in the draft! Neither has shown the ability to refrain from a bad impulse or to learn from his mistakes.)
The first time Haslam sat down with Plain Dealer editors and reporters shortly after buying the team, he spoke with admiration of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a superb businessman and brilliant marketer.
Jones has a reputation for interfering too much in the football side of the franchise. It was no surprise. He'd be involved, he said the day he bought the Cowboys, "from socks to jocks."
Compared to Hotspur, however, even Jerry Jones is closer to one of the patient, steady Rooneys in Pittsburgh, where Haslam was a minority owner. There, Haslam apparently learned none of the Steelers' lessons in successful stewardship of a franchise.
As for Jones, he has never fired a coach after only one season. Even Chan Gailey got two years. Haslam, an outsized personality, fired coach Pat Shurmur and the rest of the Mike Holmgren regime soon after he arrived.
