Joe Thomas is on NFL Live again today... 1/24/18

mjp28

@logicisforsquares said:

I think Drango was the one who played in Joe's place. For those who do like PFF, it says that Drango played pretty piss poor.

Happens quite often the heralded superstar followed by the bum replacement.

Maybe he can be like Brady and hang around until after his prime and EVERY team can figure him out and he'll stink, oooops a ghoolism just snuck out.

Sober Poet

Link

Joe is a better writer than many of the beat writers.

By JOE THOMAS

January 23, 2018

In 2016 and ’17, the Cleveland Browns went 1–31. One win in two seasons. When you look at the record on it's own, it’s abysmal. Horrible. Monumentally poor. But I’m glad that the Browns, a team I’ve proudly spent my entire pro career with, decided to retain Hue Jackson as head coach after two awful seasons in the standings. It wouldn’t be fair to judge Hue based on his record after just two seasons because few NFL teams have put themselves at such a disadvantage in order to save assets and focus on winning three or four years down the road.

When Hue was hired as head coach, he had no understanding that management was going to trade all their good players and current draft picks for future picks. The front office’s strategy was to save as much cap space as possible over two years, get rid of almost all the veteran free agents and compound draft picks for future years. The guys in charge realized that if the team was willing to accept two really horrible years, we could get some top-five picks, and if we trade one to somebody else, were going to get two first rounders in the future and so on. As the head coach, Hue was expected to hold the team together, develop players and get them to play hard—when everyone in the building knew the front office put us in the best position to lose. It’s hard to split hairs on that comment.

Ultimately the degree of losing became simply unpalatable, and the guys who enacted the plan couldn’t see it through. The team realized that while some of those strategies may work to rebuild baseball teams, it doesn’t quite work the same way in the NFL; the pain of losing is so much greater in the NFL, and fans, management and coaches struggle to tolerate it.

But the wheels are in motion, and I believe the original plan will work. I’m more excited about the team’s direction than I’ve ever been before in Cleveland, because many people in the building understand what it means to truly tear down a football team and start over.

Think about when a new coach comes to a college football team. He runs off all the older players and develops the players he recruited. At the end of the first four years, they're better players than they would’ve been had they sat behind the veterans for two or three years. The strategy: Play all these rookies, see what you got, then when those players are hitting their stride, you have all this cap space to spend money in free agency and you give yourself the best chance to win in the third and fourth years.

Welcome to Year 3. The Browns added three first-round picks in the NFL draft last April and have 12 picks in this year’s draft, including four picks in the first 35 and the No. 1 and No. 4 overall selections. And more importantly, in spite of playing with half a deck of cards, Hue kept the team together, kept the players focused, kept the coaches motivated and continued to develop players through two of the worst seasons ever. I don’t think many coaches could do that.

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When Hue said, “nobody could have done the job that I did,” he took a lot of heat for it because it was perceived he was talking about the record. But he was talking about the way this team fought to the end, the way the players prepared and went out and played with as much passion and toughness and intensity as they did. There was nothing on the line, there was no reason to do it, but they still gave their best effort to the last play.

But the media turned on Hue, and I worried the team would be influenced into the wrong decision. Stay around the league long enough, and you realize there’s a big difference between team owners who grew up in the NFL and those who didn’t. The lifers in many cases have more patience; they understand that media and fans have roller-coaster mood swings. When the team is doing well, they heap praise, and when you’re doing poorly, they’ll criticize to no end. The coach has to be somewhere in the middle, with a steady approach, and it’s important not to listen to what they’re saying about the team, because those words and comments go into your head and start to affect the close decisions.

I understand that hirings and firings stir up controversy, which is great for the media—that makes the job fun and easy. What’s hard to communicate is nuance. It’s so much easier to say, ‘well, they've won one game in two years—time to fire the coach.’ The reality is there are plenty of bad coaches who have made the playoffs with good quarterbacks and plenty of good coaches who have never made the playoffs because they don’t have the quarterback, the supporting cast or the defense. It’s important not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Most players on the team think Hue’s a great head coach and really like him, but I’m sure there are some guys who don’t like him. When I was a younger player it was easy to either fall in love with the coach if you’re doing well and hate the coach if you’re doing poorly without knowing why. And just like fans, players can judge the coach based on the record. But as a player who’s been around more coaches and GMs than most players and seen different ways of operation, I can look beyond the record.

John Dorsey and Jimmy Haslam looked at why the team hired Hue in the first place. He was the hottest coach on the market for several years, developed QBs like Joe Flacco and Andy Dalton and went 8–8 as a head coach in his only full season. He’s a great leader, a great manager of coaches and a great x’s and o’s football guy. Firing him based on the record wouldn’t have been the right move.

And now we get to the fun part. We got rid of everybody we had that was really good for two years because we knew that we would be ahead of all the other teams in year three or four. We have more than $100 million in cap space; we could sign three Kirk Cousins if we wanted to. We could legitimately add three Hall of Fame players in free agency if they're out there. We have an upcoming No. 1 pick who could transform the roster by himself. You throw an experienced quarterback in the mix and there’s nothing that says the Browns can't make the playoffs next year.

TexasAg1969

So playoffs or bust this fall. OK-I'll wait.

LionOfBuddha

@claretbrown said:

Got a link??

Lol my bad I was drinking

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.si.com/nfl/2018/01/23/cleveland-browns-hue-jackson-head-coach

The Gipper

The hell with letting Joe go into media.....maybe the Browns should just make him their "Player Coach"

Fritz Pollard did it. George Halas did it. Curly Lambeau did it. Jimmy Conzelman did it. And FYI, so did Tom Landry...though not HC. He both played DB and was the Defensive Coordinator for the NY Giants.

So, maybe Joe can be both player and OL coach at least.

Marc1971

Anyone who wants to keep Hue-Hue is insane, imho. Worst head coach of all time.

LionOfBuddha

@syd said:

he was also on first take

so what this tells me is that he is making his rounds at espn planning on making his next career move say bye bye to joe folks

It depends. It sounds like if we sign a veteran QB (Smith or Cousins) and spend some money in FA, Joe will be back. Otherwise he’ll ride off into the sunset

syd

@mjp28 said:

Yeah the jocks do the announcers combine to see if they can say big words and such.......so how'd Joe do?

joe is joe he will tell ya how it is none of that pc cowpoop,so yep he did a good job

Tour2ma

Joe was better on Day 2. In no small part due to a pairing today with Teddy Bruski, so there was a lot more serious football conversation between the laughs.

And Joe's already a "player-coach"... just untitled.

@wargograw said:

Tour, is Shon Coleman ready?

For LT? Doubtful... he's developing at RT, but to flip sides? Doubtful... Since he was a RT at Auburn, he may not have played the left side since High School.

I have to assume that was a factor in not flipping him when Joe went down.

Nero

@texasag1969 said:

So playoffs or bust this fall. OK-I'll wait.

Dutch Oven

@the-gipper said:

The hell with letting Joe go into media.....maybe the Browns should just make him their "Player Coach"

Fritz Pollard did it. George Halas did it. Curly Lambeau did it. Jimmy Conzelman did it. And FYI, so did Tom Landry...though not HC. He both played DB and was the Defensive Coordinator for the NY Giants.

So, maybe Joe can be both player and OL coach at least.

The guy in the original "The Longest Yard" did it.

Canton Mike

@tour2ma said:

Joe was better on Day 2. In no small part due to a pairing today with Teddy Bruski, so there was a lot more serious football conversation between the laughs.

And Joe's already a "player-coach"... just untitled.

For LT? Doubtful... he's developing at RT, but to flip sides? Doubtful... Since he was a RT at Auburn, he may not have played the left side since High School.

I have to assume that was a factor in not flipping him when Joe went down.

Tour, I thought Coleman was a 2 year LT at Auburn. Joe had said he thought Coleman might one day succeed him at LT.

Mike

mjp28

@dutch-oven said:

The guy in the original "The Longest Yard" did it.

You mean the Deliverance guy? The former FSU star Burt Reynolds?

wargograw

@canton-mike said:

Tour, I thought Coleman was a 2 year LT at Auburn. Joe had said he thought Coleman might one day succeed him at LT.

Mike

I thought he was on the left side at least in his last year there.

Dutch Oven

@mjp28 said:

You mean the Deliverance guy? The former FSU star Burt Reynolds?

You are confusing the actor James Hampton, who plays the character Caretaker, for Ned Beatty. Hampton also is known for being the dad in Teen Wolf and the psychiatrist in Slingblade.

I was talking about Nate Scarboro, the coach of the convicts, who was an ex-NFL player (NY Giants) who goes in for one game and gets injured by the guards.

The Gipper

@dutch-oven said:

The guy in the original "The Longest Yard" did it.

You mean the Burt Reynolds character...or someone else?

Tour2ma

@dutch-oven said:

I was talking about Nate Scarboro, the coach of the convicts, who was an ex-NFL player (NY Giants) who goes in for one game and gets injured by the guards.

Nate also was the "Let's be careful out there" Sargent on Hill St. Blues.

@canton-mike said:

Tour, I thought Coleman was a 2 year LT at Auburn. Joe had said he thought Coleman might one day succeed him at LT.

@wargograw said:

I thought he was on the left side at least in his last year there.

I got that wrong. I was just going by memory Shon being "the other guy" at Auburn vs. Greg Robinson when in fact they had little overlap. Found this in Shon's Draft profile:

The past two seasons, Coleman has held down the blind side spot, starting every game and receiving second team All-SEC honors from league coaches.

So with a mulligan, I'd say his chances are better to succeed Joe at LT than I was giving him, but he still has a ways to go.

mjp28

@dutch-oven said:

You are confusing the actor James Hampton, who plays the character Caretaker, for Ned Beatty. Hampton also is known for being the dad in Teen Wolf and the psychiatrist in Slingblade.

I was talking about Nate Scarboro, the coach of the convicts, who was an ex-NFL player (NY Giants) who goes in for one game and gets injured by the guards.

Oh yeah I was thinking of the more or less on field leader also from Deliverance and the famous (but strange) Bandit from Smokey and the Bandit.....rednecks loved that one. Also I haven't seen the original Longest Yard in about 100 years plus the remake basically stunk.

Tour2ma

@mjp28 said:

... the remake basically stunk.

Isn't that true of every remake ever except Ben Hur?

... and the Heston remake was really only superior to the Novarro silent version because of... ummm... sound.

... of course then there was the 2016 remake for some unknown reason.

mjp28

@tour2ma said:

Isn't that true of every remake ever except Ben Hur?

... and the Heston remake was really only superior to the Novarro silent version because of... ummm... sound.

... of course then there was the 2016 remake for some unknown reason.

Godfather II? Oh Star Trek II my favorite Kahn! Terminator II. Jaw 2, well you're right the rest of the sequels throughout time all stunk.