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Hue Jackson and Todd Haley Fired

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Yeah, like a lot of things, I think the Hue hate may be a little over the top.

He makes very poor in-game decisions. That is undeniable.

The players are also playing for him, and we see a mutual respect and togetherness that is required to win games in any sport at any level.

The Amos hire looks really bad right now. The Greg Williams hire looked very bad this time a season ago, but now looks fine. Getting Haley to sign on was a huge get, IMO, as I think he's one of the best in the league.

I don't trust Hue's decision making in close games, but at the same time, I do believe he's a factor in the Browns being in those tight situations to begin with - if that makes sense.

It goes beyond that though, his time management is piss poor.
 
Because most fans had him fired after the season last year for multiple months, only to find out Hue was staying. Fans are prideful and don't like being wrong. Hue hasn't and won't be given a chance by the fans even if ownership felt he deserved one.

A post like this would hold a bit more weight if the coaching staff hadn't literally already cost us at least two wins this year with poor clock management, the conservative playcalling the second we take a lead, and the bad habits and poor preparation of the players (bad discipline on the field comes down to coaching).

I just don't know how anyone can watch this team, especially on offense, and think they're well-coached.

Again, I point to the Packers as a frightening example of what can happen when you commit to mediocrity with your coaching staff. The Packers have one of the best QBs to ever play the game and they've effectively wasted his entire prime playing for a coach who hasn't evolved with the game. I don't want to waste the next few years of Mayfield's rookie contract hoping Hue isn't as inept as he appears to be. And I really don't want to run the risk that Baker is so good like Rodgers that he carries the team to wins despite a shit coach, causing the team to retain that coach for a goddamn decade.
 
A post like this would hold a bit more weight

This post holds weight like your momma. I mean that as complimentary to both. The weight is in all the right places. Okay, let's move on and discuss the concerns.

if the coaching staff hadn't literally already cost us at least two wins this year with poor clock management,

The Raiders game has some issues from the perspective of play calling and decision making. Some of the decisions have been over blown by people who don't agree with traditional NFL logic. Hue does err on the side of traditional NFL management. So does most of the head coches in the NFL. His decision making in both the Steelers and Saints games are definitely over blown. The execution was a bigger issue.

the conservative playcalling the second we take a lead, and the bad habits and poor preparation of the players (bad discipline on the field comes down to coaching).

The poor habits of players and poor discipline of players is often attributed to a coach, but not accurately attributed to the coach. The coach puts players in a position to improve, and with such a young roster I've seen improvement. We are no longer talking about eggregious and obvious bad positions on the field like the crap Jim O'Neil used to pull with the defense. I can definitely listen to criticism of play calling since Haley has underwhelmed, but that's no longer Hue's responsibility. Understanding that young players make mistakes because it's a growth experience and not necessarily the coach's mistake shouldn't be hard to grasp... it's just never popular to grasp. There is a difference there... just like I grasped your mother last night, Trebeck!
 
The Raiders game has some issues from the perspective of play calling and decision making. Some of the decisions have been over blown by people who don't agree with traditional NFL logic. Hue does err on the side of traditional NFL management. So does most of the head coches in the NFL. His decision making in both the Steelers and Saints games are definitely over blown. The execution was a bigger issue.

Yes, most head coaches in the NFL do adhere to traditional clock management, and that's why teams like the Rams are blowing them out of the water every week because they're miles ahead of the curve. I want to be a team that's ahead of the curve for once, not one that's lagging fifteen years behind like the McCarthy Packers.

Why continue to stick with traditions that are proven to be inefficient?
 
This post holds weight like your momma. I mean that as complimentary to both. The weight is in all the right places. Okay, let's move on and discuss the concerns.



The Raiders game has some issues from the perspective of play calling and decision making. Some of the decisions have been over blown by people who don't agree with traditional NFL logic. Hue does err on the side of traditional NFL management. So does most of the head coches in the NFL. His decision making in both the Steelers and Saints games are definitely over blown. The execution was a bigger issue.

The poor habits of players and poor discipline of players is often attributed to a coach, but not accurately attributed to the coach. The coach puts players in a position to improve, and with such a young roster I've seen improvement. We are no longer talking about eggregious and obvious bad positions on the field like the crap Jim O'Neil used to pull with the defense. I can definitely listen to criticism of play calling since Haley has underwhelmed, but that's no longer Hue's responsibility. Understanding that young players make mistakes because it's a growth experience and not necessarily the coach's mistake shouldn't be hard to grasp... it's just never popular to grasp. There is a difference there... just like I grasped your mother last night, Trebeck!

What do you mean when you say the clock management/game decisions were "overblown"? Were they the right decisions, or not?

Because personally, I think the decision not to go for a two-point conversion when we were already up by 7 points against the Raiders with 4 minutes left was by itself sufficient reason to fire him. That decision is logically inexcusable and very well may have cost us that game.

I don't believe head coaches should get cut slack for decisions of that magnitude. It is particularly egregious in his case because he's made similarly indefensible, game deciding decisions in prior years.

You don't make decisions that stupid unless you are literally a stupid person.
 
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It goes beyond that though, his time management is piss poor.
I feel like there are about 24-26 other fan bases who say this same thing just about week after week. Not excusing cases of individual poor clock management, but I just feel like relative to the vast majority of coaches in the league, it’s not as bad as you think or uncommon
 
I feel like there are about 24-26 other fan bases who say this same thing just about week after week. Not excusing cases of individual poor clock management, but I just feel like relative to the vast majority of coaches in the league, it’s not as bad as you think or uncommon

Personally, I think the NFL is just filled with dumb coaches who have been existing in a bubble for decades now, and that bubble is about to burst as more and more teams embrace creative college and high school playcalling to give their teams an edge. I'd rather be on the right side of history here and move on with a young, creative coach than be left in the dust.
 
Personally, I think the NFL is just filled with dumb coaches who have been existing in a bubble for decades now, and that bubble is about to burst as more and more teams embrace creative college and high school playcalling to give their teams an edge. I'd rather be on the right side of history here and move on with a young, creative coach than be left in the dust.

Back to the 2 point conversion, we agree on that one. My post was referring to punting on fourth and inches on the 19, which was heavily debated for about 48 hours afterwards. My post could have been more specific.

What you bring up here is a thematic divide across far more than football. How much of every discipline should swing with the flavor of the month? People approach life differently. Younger demographics who are just voicing an opinion without any skin on the game will always lean towards innovation, older folks with skin in the game often avoid as many suggested risks.

In the NFL, I don't believe coaching is the same silo you make it out to be. Coaches like DeFilippo, Monken, and yes even Hue Jackson have vascillated between the pro game and college. Hue just hasn't been bumped down to college for a long time. That is mostly because of success at the highest level rather than a failure to adapt. I see pro coaches adapting all the time. Hue was considered innovative when he was OC in Cincinnati.

If you are referring to analytics driving the NFL for younger coaches, I don't agree that older coaches aren't using them. I heard Steve Young talking about this locally on the radio yesterday. They used many stats on coaching tendencies back in the 1990s. This isn't new, it is simply progressing. Young estimated that while analytics has been most embraced in baseball, football is simply a different type of game. He put 90% of decision making in baseball driven by analytics and 50% in football because there are so many different factors in the game itself that don't lend analytics to football as exactly. If you want me to put forth more on the Young and analytics thing, I could go on. I found it fascinating since he is plugged into the national media for both sports.
 
Back to the 2 point conversion, we agree on that one. My post was referring to punting on fourth and inches on the 19, which was heavily debated for about 48 hours afterwards. My post could have been more specific.

What you bring up here is a thematic divide across far more than football. How much of every discipline should swing with the flavor of the month? People approach life differently. Younger demographics who are just voicing an opinion without any skin on the game will always lean towards innovation, older folks with skin in the game often avoid as many suggested risks.

In the NFL, I don't believe coaching is the same silo you make it out to be. Coaches like DeFilippo, Monken, and yes even Hue Jackson have vascillated between the pro game and college. Hue just hasn't been bumped down to college for a long time. That is mostly because of success at the highest level rather than a failure to adapt. I see pro coaches adapting all the time. Hue was considered innovative when he was OC in Cincinnati.

If you are referring to analytics driving the NFL for younger coaches, I don't agree that older coaches aren't using them. I heard Steve Young talking about this locally on the radio yesterday. They used many stats on coaching tendencies back in the 1990s. This isn't new, it is simply progressing. Young estimated that while analytics has been most embraced in baseball, football is simply a different type of game. He put 90% of decision making in baseball driven by analytics and 50% in football because there are so many different factors in the game itself that don't lend analytics to football as exactly. If you want me to put forth more on the Young and analytics thing, I could go on. I found it fascinating since he is plugged into the national media for both sports.

Look, I'm not saying we necessarily have to hire a young guy, or a college coach. However, I want someone who is willing to adjust and evolve with the game, and it tends to be younger coaches who are more willing to try new things and innovate. We thought when we hired Hue that he was gonna be that guy, but it's clear now that he is not.

But I mean Belichick and Reid constantly evolve as the game does, often ahead of the curve. That's why their teams are legitimate year in and year out while so many others are left in the dust. I want our team to be on the cutting edge like them, McVay, and Pederson, pushing the game forward, not stuck with Hue Jackson a mile behind the curve struggling to keep up.
 
Look, I'm not saying we necessarily have to hire a young guy, or a college coach. However, I want someone who is willing to adjust and evolve with the game, and it tends to be younger coaches who are more willing to try new things and innovate. We thought when we hired Hue that he was gonna be that guy, but it's clear now that he is not.

But I mean Belichick and Reid constantly evolve as the game does, often ahead of the curve. That's why their teams are legitimate year in and year out while so many others are left in the dust. I want our team to be on the cutting edge like them, McVay, and Pederson, pushing the game forward, not stuck with Hue Jackson a mile behind the curve struggling to keep up.

It is one thing to debate the wisdom of your head coach being a "new school" or "old school" kind of guy. There are a lot of guys who are good coaches but still "old school" in terms of things like clock management, 4th down decisions, etc.. It can be frustrating at times, but if he is otherwise good, you can live with it because you don't want to lose all those other things he brings.

The core issue with Hue isn't that he's old school. It's that he's incompetent old school. He has made multiple game-critical decisions that are indefensible even if you're an "old school" coach.

I don't understand the logic of fans being expected to give Hue "a chance". He's had chances. Multiple chances over three seasons to get correct basic decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with a lack of talent. Even when all the play calling responsibilities were taken away from him, he managed to do it again. How many games should a head coach get to blow with stupid decisions before he gets fired?

This isn't the NBA, where you have decisions that are made under much tighter time pressure, and we're talking about an 82 game season and best of 7 playoff series. In the NBA, a coach can make a game blowing decision in the regular season, and if they're truly a good team, it won't matter because they'll make the playoffs anyway. And one blown playoff game means you still have more games in which to recover.

This is the NFL. You get 16 games, and some damn good teams can miss the playoffs based on the results of one game. And the playoffs are one and done. You don't get mulligans in the NFL, and if you did, Hue has used up his allotment of them.

Hue Jackson is the damned George McClellan of the NFL. General McClellan built pretty armies for Abe Lincoln, trained them well, and his troops loved him. But when it came to actually fighting, he was a shitty general who repeatedly made stupid mistakes. And not unlike Hue, he tried to undermine everyone around him - including Lincoln -- to take the blame for his own mistakes. Lincoln actually hired him twice to lead the Army of the Potomac because he thought he didn't have better choices available. Eventually, finally, he was fired for good.

Screw Hue. Keeping him around after he's screwed up this much would have been like keeping McClellan around, and not firing him until after he loses the Battle of Gettysburg to Robert E. Lee.

@King Stannis
 
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It goes beyond that though, his time management is piss poor.

When I said he makes horrible in-game decisions, I meant that to be included in that statement as well.

On game day, Hue is simply poor.

My point is that outside of games, I think it can be argued that he actually does a pretty good job.
 
My point is that outside of games, I think it can be argued that he actually does a pretty good job.

Well, the reason that can really be argued is that none of us can see what he really does outside of games. How much of what we see is due to Hue v. the coordinators, or position coaches, or leadership by the players themselves? Who knows?

The only things on which it is really fair for players to judge a head coach are the in-game decisions that we actually do see, and a more bottom-line evaluation of whether the on-field production is commensurate with the talent.
 
Look at these next level play designs. The NFL is finally embracing forward thinking, both in an analytical approach to managing a team, and in offense. We desperately need if not Lincoln, then a guy like him who can grow Baker and co. into the next decade of football.

View: https://twitter.com/FB_FilmAnalysis/status/1050505113167523840


View: https://twitter.com/FB_FilmAnalysis/status/1050510861842825216
Going to have to fix the offensive line pass protection before you can start running slow developing plays like that. Baker (and Tyrod) have no time back there.
 

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