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Hue Jackson reportedly didn’t react well to getting fired as head coach of the Cleveland Browns during the 2018 season.
According to an in-depth report by ESPN.com’s Seth Wickersham, both Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and general manager John Dorsey entered Jackson’s office in October to inform him of his firing.
Dorsey reportedly told Jackson that the team had “quit” on him when asked for a reason for the firing, which prompted Jackson to respond, “Get the f–k out of my office.”
Cleveland was 2-5-1 at the time of Jackson’s firing, although it was clear the team was making improvements with several close games, including four that went to overtime. It would have been difficult to rationalize keeping Jackson around after a blowout loss to the rival Pittsburgh Steelers, however.
In the previous two seasons combined, the Browns went 1-31 under Jackson, and he finished his tenure in Cleveland with a 3-36-1 mark. When adding in his 8-8 record with the Oakland Raiders in 2011, Jackson is just 11-44-1 as an NFL head coach.
Wickersham shared a copy of what the Browns called “guardrails,” which “consisted of nine tenets, from talent retention, to ending uncoordinated leaks, to communicating more with coaches, to accumulating as many draft picks as possible, especially high second-rounders.”
Seth Wickersham @SethWickersham
One day, an entire book will be written about the Browns 2016 and 2017 seasons. This was a small sample of how it was supposed to unfold, on paper: https://t.co/LSn5iP3pn9
Wickersham’s report explores numerous incidents that spanned regimes and helped make the Browns a running punchline.
One such incident included a team marketing staffer accidentally projecting pornography onto a “giant wall” at the Browns’ facility:
“Marketing executives wanted employees to see how fans were engaging with the Browns on social media, so they projected the Browns feed onto a giant wall at the facility. It was like broadcasting talk radio over the entire building, and one day in particular, it was worse than that. One of the marketing staffers entered a search for #dp — for Dawg Pound. The problem was, that hashtag carried a few different meanings, one of which triggered an array of porn to be broadcast onto a wall for the entire office to see for more than 20 minutes, until a tech employee killed the feed.”
After firing Jackson, the Browns promoted defensive coordinator Gregg Williams to interim head coach. That move paid dividends, as Cleveland went 5-3 down the stretch to finish 7-8-1, its best record since going 10-6 in 2007.
Following the season, the Browns promoted offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens and made him the new head coach.
After his firing, Jackson returned to the Cincinnati Bengals as a special assistant to head coach Marvin Lewis. He had previously served as an assistant under Jackson from 2012 to 2015 before getting hired as Cleveland’s head coach.
When Lewis and the Bengals parted ways at the conclusion of the 2018 campaign, however, Jackson was let go as well. Jackson is currently free to go anywhere, but given his lack of success in Cleveland, he will almost certainly have to settle for an assistant role for the foreseeable future if he wants to remain in the NFL.
from Top Viral News Blog http://bit.ly/2S8RIc4
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