Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini is a self absorbed egotistical jerk

No one likes Eric Mangini. The players don’t and people around the league don’t. Not that anyone condoned “Spygate”, but people around the league didn’t like the fact that he “broke code” and squealed on Belichick.

There is a little published fact that deserves some attention here. When Mangini was obviously a hot candidate for a head coaching job, Belichick who disliked the Jets (that’s a whole entire different story, Belichick is a dope himself for hanging the Jets out to dry like that) asked Mangini to take any job except the Jets job. Not that he had the right to do that, but the reality is that Mangini would be a school teacher somewhere right now if it is wasn’t for Belichick so I guess some loyalty was warranted…..

When Mangini returned back to the Patriots complex after interviewing for the Jest head coaching position he’s key card did not work. Belichick was pissed and changed the lock. And there started the feud between Mangini and Belichick …

Let’s look at where Mangini is coming from:

College

Mangini has a Wesleyan University education. In college he played nose tackle at Division III Wesleyan and holds the school's single-season (11.5) and career (36.5) sacks records. During the second semester of his junior and senior years, he coached the Kew Colts, a semi-professional football team in Melbourne, Australia, to two regional championships. Mangini joined the Chi Psi Fraternity that coaching mentor Bill Belichick, a Wesleyan alumnus, was part of two decades earlier.

Coaching career

Assistant coach

Mangini first caught the attention of Bill Belichick, as a 23-year-old ball boy with the Cleveland Browns. His work ethic impressed Belichick, and the head coach was instrumental in promoting Mangini to a public relations intern, and later, an offensive assistant.

After spending 1996 as an offensive assistant with the Baltimore Ravens, Mangini rejoined Belichick and spent three seasons as a defensive assistant with the New York Jets. When Belichick was hired as the New England Patriots head coach in 2000, he brought along Mangini as his defensive backs coach. Mangini, who won three Super Bowls with the Patriots, turned down defensive coordinator positions with the Miami Dolphins, Oakland Raiders and Cleveland Browns before accepting the position with New England in 2005.

Head coach

Mangini, 35, became the youngest head coach in the NFL when he was hired by the Jets on January 17, 2006, to replace Herm Edwards. He beat internal candidates Donnie Henderson, Mike Heimerdinger and Mike Westhoff and external candidates Jim Haslett, Mike Tice, Tim Lewis and Joe Vitt for the job.

In his first season, Mangini led the Jets to a 10-6 record and a postseason berth. New York, which finished the previous year 4-12, lost to New England in a wild-card playoff game.

New York went 4-12 in 2007, failing to make the playoffs. Early in the regular season, Mangini complained to league officials that Belichick's Patriots illegally filmed the Jets' defensive signals, causing the "Spygate" scandal.

In 2008, a late-season collapse—the Jets missed the playoffs despite an 8-3 start—led to Mangini's firing on December 29, 2008, one day after the season ended.

Mangini was hired as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns on January 7, 2009, signing a four-year deal. Mangini currently has an 0-3 record as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns and is now replacing his young QB 3 games into the season. Not that I like Brady Quinn better than Derek Anderson to begin with, but if you are going to name your young “franchise QB” the starter, you have to have a longer leash than that.

Mangini seems to pride himself on running a tight ship. He does in fact run a tight ship over there on the Cleveland Browns. How do we know? Nothing says d-bag no-nonsense like fining a player $1,701 over a bottle of water snatched from a hotel mini-bar. (The NFLPA has filed a formal grievance.) Apparently, the parched player grabbed the H2O but didn’t pay for it during a team road trip. Are you serious?

Some other reasons Mangini is an called “A-Hole” we haven’t discussed yet:

- He kept Brett Favre’s injury hush-hush while coaching the Jets last season. Oops, there’s a fine.
- He made rookies take a 10-hour bus ride (each way) to and from his one-day football camp in Hartford, CT. This took place on a weekend between voluntary minicamp and team activities slated for the following Monday. Oh, and he took a plane on the way down. After some heat, Mangini rode the bus with them back to Cleveland.
- He showed up in Cleveland and had a mural of Browns greats removed. Something tells us that isn’t a team-building exercise in the NFL Coach Handbook.
- During training camp he fined a player for parking in a spot that he did not first pre-approve of. (Ok, I don’t know that actually happened, but I heard it did, and why wouldn’t you believe it?)

This guy is more concerned with bullshit stuff that has nothing to do with playing the game. The bottom line is that he takes the fun out of it for the players as well as the fans and he won’t get the players to play for him or the fans to root for him.

I feel sorry for the Cleveland fans. I’m a Jets fan. I wished you would have asked me before hiring him, you would have saved yourself some pain. Get rid of him. -Keith A. Baker

Keith A. Baker is a sports agent in Stamford, Connecticut. His goal is to offer a unique insight to the world of sports and Major League Baseball in particular. Comments in his columns are for entertainment purposes only and do not reflect the views and opinions of his firm or his clients.

----------

Have a Fantasy Football or Rotisserie Baseball question? Want to know who to pick up, who to activate and who the hot prospects are? Ask Dr. Roto. Let Dr. Roto guide your team to a league championship!

How much is enough?

If you were a coach on the field at the Patriots/Redskins game the other day, no matter which sideline you were on, you would’ve asked yourself this questions at least once “Have I’ve seen enough from my starters?” After Albert Haynesworth leveled Tom Brady, and if you were the Redskins Defensive Line coach, the answer must’ve been a resounding YES!

However, if you’re Bill Belichick, you have to be asking yourself today, at what cost do I need to see if Tom can still find the open guy?

And therein lies the dilemma. A head coach is expected to have his team game-ready and prepared opening day. To accomplish that, high priced players are asked to put their bodies in harm’s way in an otherwise meaningless game. And now, for the sake of argument, I present to you the two leading schools of thought on pre-season play.

Position 1: No game is meaningless when people are competing for a job. You see, teams are still completing their roster, and everyone must defend their place on that roster.

Position 2: Are you kidding me?…Tom Brady’s position is not open if Tom is healthy. Period.

Yeah…about that last part “if Tom is healthy”. It seems that there are growing questions about the health of Tom’s shoulder. And the ironic thing is, his place on the roster was not in jeopardy UNTIL he played in Friday’s pre-season game.

So what’s a coach to do? And, how much influence does an owner have on that decision?

Well…that depends. Currently the logic is, they play their professionals regardless of the price tag. Bill Belichick doesn’t have the luxury of depth at the quarterback position, and so one may want to reconsider the loss of value should the starting quarterback go down in an otherwise meaningless game. And let’s not kid ourselves. Owners like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are renowned for their meddling in personnel decisions. And don’t think they’re the only owners meddling, every owner does it. Jerry and Dan are simply the two most visible examples. And since owners hold the purse strings, their influence has far-reaching effects. Coaches don’t last as long as they once did because owners want to see immediate results. One risk that didn’t pay off, one costly injury that gave you one bad season, could signal a coaching change. That has to have some effect on the coaches decision, regardless of what they say at those orchestrated press conferences. And today’s coaches aren’t merely coaching men and women. Coaches are now the caretakers of today’s athletes. And today’s athletes aren’t the athletes of days gone by. Today’s athletes are now income generating machines. If a star athlete goes down, owners hear the sound of cash registers slamming shut and they envision rows of empty seats in the stands. So now the cost of injury has some measurable value. Men who had entirely too many accounting classes can actually calculate what an injury costs. And because teams can now calculate the real value of an injury, the days of pre-season (meaningless) football are numbered.

But for today, for now, in this game of risk with so much money on the line, players, coaches and owners are all asking themselves “How much is enough?”

For some may have already given too much. - Paul Moyer

Paul Moyer is an independent contributor from Reading, PA covering NCAA and NFL football.