Real reason why Hue left

[Benton]

(04-11-2016, 12:13 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Our dark age didn't last 16 years though. It lasted 12. So you're including 4 years of Marv's tenure when we're talking about how bad the Bengals were before Marv.

Are the Browns really that much worse for having 5 more starting QBs and 1 more HC in a 10 year stretch? (Wyche was fired after 1991 so I include him because 1991 was the beginning of the bad stretch) Especially when many of these QBs only started a game or 2? It just seems silly to me. We all watched the Bengals in the 90's and they were every bit as dysfunctional as any team in NFL history, including these Browns. 

You say you don't see any growth, but I didn't see any growth from the Bengals until they hired Marvin. I had a really good feeling about Marv when we hired him. I also felt better about Palmer than any QB we'd drafted. Chad and several young players showed promise. 

I'd say Browns fans probably feel the same way about Hue. Carson Wentz looks like a solid prospect. RGIII is the most promising vet they've had in years and could probably play the Kitna role. They have some solid young players, especially if Gordon continues to keep his nose clean.  

I'll end by saying this. Everyone trashes the Browns for not keeping HC's long enough, but which ones really deserved 5 years? When we hired Marvin, he turned 2-14 into 8-8. Almost immediately, you could feel the difference. Butch Davis and Romeo Crennel are the only guys who coached the Browns to winning records. Davis had a solid start (16-16) but followed it by going 8-19 over the next 2 seasons. Crennel was terrible for 2 years (10-22), had a fluke 10-6 season, then followed it with a 4-12 season. They deserved to be fired. They all have, really.

Chad and Carson were pre-Lewis. So was the most contributors of the 2005 team. Carson, Chad, TJ, Willie, Braham, Levi, Rudi. All those pieces were in place. Odell and Chris were the only contributors that year I can think of that Marvin drafted. To me, the organization was already doing things right 4-5 years before Marvin was doing anything.

2001 was really a good starting point. We started drafting well, we started getting some decent FAs. I think the biggest contributor to that was a couple years earlier when we hired Duke Tobin, but that didn't show up for a while. Not until Marvin was already in place as head coach. Honestly I think with Tobin and staff doing things a lot better, most coaches would have had similar success to Marvin.

And that's the problem with the Browns. I can't say what coach deserved 5 years. None of them have had a situation like Marvin walked into, one where scouting and drafting were improving to the point we were drafting quality players and there was already a plan in place. The coaches and QBs of the Browns reflect the institutional problem. You had Farmer and Haslam for two years, Lombardi and Haslam for a year, Eckhart and Haslam for a year, Eckhart and the previous owner for two years, who also had Savage and another guy. Four or five general managers, two owners. There's a lot of different directions to build a team around.