Cleveland Browns: Hue Jackson’s Working a Con

Since taking over as head coach of the Cleveland Browns, Hue Jackson has been working a con on Northeast Ohio. It’s an elaborate plan involving the entire coaching staff, and it might just be exactly what this team needs right now.

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Jackson and his coaching staff have been so sweet and positive about the entire roster and where this team is going, it might give some fans reason to check their blood sugar. Everyone looks great and has a real shot to play or start this year. It may sound stupid and there have been members of the media who have poked fun at this, but everything about this is strategic and prudent.

Outside of saying that Corey Coleman wasn’t in shape at rookie minicamp, everything out of the coaching staff has been remarkably positive coming out of OTAs. Even the criticism of Coleman, which was an easy target to make a point, was mixed in with a number of positive things Jackson had to say about the Browns 2016 first round pick.

Hue Jackson is no fool and he’s gone through this before, so he’s developed a little bit of a blueprint on what he believes it will take to turn around a losing team. So what is he really doing?

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First, it’s OTAs. No one is wearing pads, so if there’s a time to be super positive, it’s now. They can’t lose any games in June, and there’s the excitement of finally getting out there with his team for the first time since taking the job in January and seeing what they can do.

Players are making strides. Well, of course they are. They haven’t been there long enough to go backward at this point. Starting at zero, there’s really only one way to go.

That much is common sense. Getting deeper into it, the perception (and some reality) was that the previous coaching staff held grudges and especially on the defensive side of the ball, there were players who felt that the coaching staff wasn’t looking out for the team’s best interests (warranted).

And although it wasn’t likely to trickle down to the locker room much, the front office had its own share of rifts and serious issues that were hopefully addressed.

From Jackson’s standpoint, he specifically tells the rest of his coaching staff to be extremely positive with everyone, especially when it comes to the media. There are three main reasons for this approach.

First, Jackson wants to give players the feeling that they all have a legitimate shot to make an impact here and for the sake of their career. This is for the players who are in Cleveland and any prospective players who could join the team.

Second, half the battle with the Browns is getting a team that is accustomed to losing is getting them to believe they can compete and to win.

Third, there are players on the Browns that have to either get a lot better or will get released (Justin Gilbert most notably) and in the hope of salvaging their career, the idea is that focusing on the positive might get the best out of them, .

The first element is an element of trust that former coach Mike Pettine and some of his staff (Jim O’Neil) broke the trust of the players. Whatever the level, from youth up to professional, lying to players is the fast track for a coach their job.

Pettine stressed competition when he arrived. Starting with the infamous Johnny Manziel start against the Cincinnati Bengals, that went out the window and it only got worse from there. Players knew he wasn’t close to ready and then they got destroyed as a result of the decision.

This is a problem in any sport, but with football, players are putting their bodies on the line, so playing someone they knew couldn’t do the job was a major problem. They had a better quarterback in Brian Hoyer (even though he wasn’t the answer either) sitting there and they threw Manziel in because the front office and owner wanted to see him.

In his second year, this became a bigger problem with defenders not being utilized to the best of their ability, certain players being favored who didn’t warrant it while others were shelved because certain members of the coaching staff had problems with them.

Jackson has players excited and on board, but so did Pettine. Certainly, Jackson comes in with more inherent credibility than Pettine did but he has to be consistent to avoid falling in the same trap.

The Browns have been bad for nearly two decades with an occasional glimpse of competence. The media and fans bring an aura of negativity that infects the team. Because both have been fed such a bad product for so long and they bring so much baggage for past mistakes current players and front office personnel had nothing to do with, the line between excitement and ‘here we go again’ is razor thin and it can turn almost at a moment’s notice.

The combination of not winning and having media, especially nationally, suggest that Cleveland is where careers go to die has an impact. Jackson is trying to get this team to believe they can succeed and believe they can win, even if the coaching staff isn’t sure they can.

There is definitely an element of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ in this. The Browns have a lot of work to do when it comes to making over their roster but this is who they have right now, so even as they keep discussing a long view in building the team, they also want this group of players to truly believe they can win now and believe in each other.

More than likely, as much as Jackson will talk up the fanbase and the support level in public, he is probably using both, especially the media, to build a bunker mentality and try to convince the players to band together that much more and shut out the noise to help insulate them if (more likely when) the team starts losing games this year.

Maybe this attitude will change when the pads come on and games count, but it’s more likely that Jackson and his staff keep focusing on the positive and downplaying the negative in press conferences. When it happens, it’s easy to spot and it can still work, which is why coaches do it.

The Browns have been positive of most everyone to date, but it’s interesting who they have really singled out to praise. Robert Griffin III and Justin Gilbert are two good examples. Griffin, being the quarterback, is obviously the story, but these are players have yet to show much mental fortitude at the pro level, which has been a major stumbling block for both to this point in their careers.

Gilbert has been a complete disaster to this point. This regime need to get as much information on him and figure out what they are going to do with him pretty quickly because they have a ton of corners and if he’s not going to give them what they want, they need move on to other options.

As a result, it makes perfect sense for Jackson and his staff to pump up Gilbert and try to get the best out of him. If he responds, the Browns have an incredible physical talent that would essentially be found money for this regime and can contribute. If not, they can rationalize it by saying they did everything they could to support him and he still didn’t produce. It’s a low risk-high reward proposition.

This also has the added effect of potentially taking media pressure off of Gilbert. Obviously, the hope is that all of this is true and Gilbert is as good as they say, but it’s also a con in the best possible way.

Jackson is doing the same thing with Griffin. He keeps heaping the praise on Jackson in OTAs about how well he’s doing and everything else and while everyone on Earth knows that this job is Griffin’s to lose, they haven’t named him the starter and may hold off for several more weeks.

Jackson is trying to build up Griffin’s confidence as much as possible without actually giving him anything. In addition to the fact there’s no rush to name a starter (even though Griffin is it), he can motivate Griffin to keep pushing himself while keeping everything positive.

Look at this from the flip side. Who isn’t Hue Jackson talking about in these press conferences? Is he spending much time on guys like Joe Thomas, Joel Bitonio, Andrew Hawkins or Paul Kruger? Not really. He knows exactly what he’s getting from them, so there’s nothing that really needs to be said. Instead, he uses that time to focus on rookies or unproven players that could use the boost in one way or another.

When it comes to press conferences, Jackson is working them like a politician, focusing on talking points he wants to get out there. He also has shown the ability to steer the conversation to send the message he wants. Right now, that’s easy to do because he’s in his honeymoon period and there aren’t pressing issues that have to be addressed. It will be interesting to see if he can keep this up when games get played.

Jackson is doing the same thing when it comes to bringing in people like Jim Brown, Earnest Byner and Bernie Kosar. It’s fantastic optics to embrace them, a way to get positive press from certain members of the media and there’s virtually no downside. Jackson looks great and it’s deliberate to keep this positive message going.

Fans should realize this is a con, but that doesn’t make it a bad plan. If Jackson’s manipulation works and it gets someone like Justin Gilbert to become a productive player or gets Griffin to resurrect his career in Cleveland, he looks like a genius and it pays off huge for him.

It’s also important to note this approach has an expiration date; one that date moves up if the team struggles. Players, media and fans all get tired of this type of talk when the results don’t show even if this is the default mode Jackson wants to operate.

Should the Browns go 4-12, it’s tough to come out in May next year talking about how great everyone is doing. For now though, it’s an effective way to operate. How Jackson adjusts his message as his tenure progresses will be worth keeping an eye on.

Unlike Pettine or someone like coaches like Bill Belichick or Greg Popovich who view media responsibilities as something they have to do and would rather avoid, Jackson embraces it as an opportunity to keep on coaching and selling.

Jackson has in more in common with coaches like John Calipari or Urban Meyer. They are coaches, love them or hate them, who control the message and shape the way they, and by extension their teams, are covered. It remains to be seen if Jackson can be as adept as they have been, but winning helps.

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OTAs and minicamps mean little in the grand scheme and everyone looks great right now. When the pads come on and games get going, then it will be clear how much of what Jackson is saying rings true and how much was just talk. The answer is going to be somewhere in the middle.