Mike Holmgren’s last press conference on Tuesday hung with a sense of regret. His time as President and “de facto” owner has sped by, and it seemed everybody in the press room had expected a little bit more, Holmgren included. It does not seem that long since he took over (and really, honestly, it’s not. A little under 3 years) and the visible results have not been overly impressive. It is obvious then that as Holmgren rolls out of Berea on his Harley that he leaves behind an air of disappointment. $40m seems to have bought so far an overall record of 10-29 and a lot of promises. It’s fair to say that he has left some people feeling like they’ve been stiffed. And therein lies the issue.
What we’ve seen from Holmgren has been a mixed bag. In terms of positives, he has provided the Browns with a great GM in Tom Heckert, who has bought in entirely to the idea of building for the future and has provided the Browns with consistently strong rookie classes, something they have lacked since their return to the league in 1999. He and Holmgren have overhauled the roster, turfed out declining vets and have provided the team with a healthy amount of cap space. Holmgren was keen to point out in his farewell presser his admiration for his GM:
“I don’t think you can get a better general manager, in my own opinion, than Tom Heckert. I think he’s tremendous.”
Whether Heckert survives the ownership change (word is he believes he won’t) has been a much discussed topic and it’s a credit to the job that he’s done that pretty much everybody would like him to stay. Someone even set up a website in his defence. There’s a general belief that you usually get one crack at being a GM, but if Heckert does go I think it’s likely that this won’t be his only run at building a team.
It also seems likely that Homgren had a large hand in the selections of Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden in the draft this year. His mildly cryptic quote could have referred to either the decision to trade up to get Trent Richardson or to pick then-28 year old Weeden at #22. Either way it’s likely that he had a strong influence in these picks. Both picks drew varying amounts of consternation at the time, but since Week 2 the grumbles have incrementally faded and been replaced with a sense of optimism. Richardson, although never quite 100%, has flashed immense ability and Weeden has improved week on week and is looking like he can be the man for the job. If these picks work out then Holmgren’s tenure looks a little more productive.
There has, however, been plenty with which to condemn him. His tenure has been punctuated by missteps, mainly the decision to retain Eric Mangini as coach for the 2010 season. With their football philosophies differing so immensely there was realistically nothing that Mangini could have done to have been retained beyond then. It was essentially a wasted year in the building process, and although Holmgren himself said that he wouldn’t change his decision to keep Mangini on, I’m certain he knows that in reality it was the incorrect one, morals or not.
Mangini’s successor, Pat Shurmur, has done little to dispel the notion that he got the job through nepotism. The nephew of Holmgren’s coaching friend Fritz Shurmur and a client of Holmgren’s agent Bob LaMonte, has seemed overwhelmed and out of his depth during his two seasons with the Browns. This has obviously fallen back on Holmgren, who has taken flak for supposedly helping Bob LaMonte turn the Browns into a cash cow for his agency.
His prickly relationship with the Cleveland media, affronted by his frequent interviews on Seattle radio, has not helped matters either. He said himself Tuesday that perhaps he should have been more “visible” during his time with the Browns and a little more defined in his role. It is this issue that has probably tainted his “legacy” the most. Nobody actually knows exactly what he’s done and the effect it has had. His instruction on hiring was little more than to bring “legitimacy” to the Browns and he has been hard to get a grip on whilst in Berea. He has been a little bit the owner, a little bit the GM and a little bit many other things. It’s likely that we don’t ever find out the amount that he did behind the scenes, but I don’t think anyone will contest the fact that the organisation has been a mess since ‘99 and no doubt needed a lot of cleaning up behind the scenes. Holmgren spoke about how they had “fixed a number of problems in the organisation” and how it had been “a three-year period fixing things”, but with the W-L record being the one thing that remained unchanged. With the team losing so many games it has become easy to question how hard people are working. It’s natural. When things aren’t going right, the automatic reaction is that someone somewhere is not doing their job properly (also much easier to say when they’re on their way out).
Ultimately, it’s an unfinished job. I had questioned that Holmgren had been blindsided by the sale, but with his comments about surprise around the timing it seems he may have been. He did not finish what he came here to do, which was create a long-term winner, and seemed to have spent the first two years working out his role. For me, if anything, he lacked a little urgency. His plan seems to have been an organic one, to let the team grow into a contender, but has missed chances to catalyse the process. There have been things that could have been done quicker, such as firing Mangini and finding an OC, though this summer they did go all-out on building the offense, suggesting that things were speeding up. It is impossible to say that he would have succeeded in his own aims, and what was produced certainly did not match the fanfare, but it is too early yet to definitively praise or condemn.
If he had been here one more year, in my opinion, the view would be a better one. The team is close to getting it and with better coaching things would probably have been rosier than 1-6. This is Heckert and Holmgren’s roster and how it performs in the future will ultimately define his reign. What is certain is that although he didn’t fulfil his “last great adventure”, he did fulfil everything Randy Lerner required of him, to the tune of one billion dollars.
The Factory of Sadness 