Cleveland Browns: Mike Pettine undermined himself against Ravens

Mike Pettine’s hypocrisy made him look incompetent yesterday before the game had a chance. The Cleveland Browns head coach made a difficult but correct decision in demoting Johnny Manziel the week before only to completely undermine what he’s been saying since he was hired in starting Justin Gilbert against the Baltimore Ravens. As bad as the record looks, it is decisions like this that will kill whatever credibility Mike Pettine has as a head coach.

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The job of the head coach is to do what’s best for the team, something Pettine said at the press conference the day after Manziel was made the third string quarterback. Yesterday, he failed in that responsibility.

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Manziel was benched, demoted, grounded as some like to word it for the lying to the organization. That was the tipping point of an issue that has not changed this season. He is still immature and still doesn’t understand what it takes to be an NFL quarterback. The difference is that Manziel at least works hard when he is in the facility. He may be a child once he leaves Berea, but he does work hard when he is in there.

Meanwhile, Gilbert is just as useless in the building as he is out of it. Kevin Jones wrote a great article detailing just how bad Gilbert is that came out hours before the game. He started the game. Not surprisingly, after starting out the game at strong side corner, Gilbert was ineffective. The Browns responded by reducing him to playing outside in nickel and having K’Waun Williams, the team’s starting slot corner play outside in their base defense.

If all of this was not bad enough, Pettine got it worse. Not only did he start the undeserving Gilbert, but he deactivated the team’s best outside corner aside from Tramon Williams this year in Pierre Desir. Desir, the type of player that should be playing because he is not only effective but is the professional type of player this team should be encouraging in light of issues with Manziel and Gilbert, was a healthy scratch.

And who was the last active player so that Desir could be scratched? Johnny Manziel, to be the third active quarterback.

This decision had a direct impact on the game as Gilbert was ineffective and then ultimately left the game after suffering a concussion on a kickoff return. Instead of being able to insert Desir to play outside, they had K’Waun Williams play outside and after Gilbert was injured, had to rely on Charles Gaines as their third corner. It was all they had left.

The timing of Manziel’s demotion and Gilbert’s promotion also did not go unnoticed. In addition to making Pettine look incompetent, it has the stench of front office involvement. In essence, he got their blessing to bench Manziel but had to showcase Gilbert to do it. None of it worked and all of it made a bad team look like a team with no direction whatsoever.

Keep in mind, while Pettine wanted Gilbert and deserves criticism for his role in acquiring the young man with the 8th overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, he has not wanted anything to do with Gilbert almost since he got him and he is not the only coach in the building who understands how useless he is – to go from that to starting him is suspicious at best.

And what is the message being sent to a player like Desir? Desir, the player driving a minivan with a wife and two kids, who knows exactly how precious an opportunity he has, and has warrants playing time; nothing more than a pawn in some political struggle. Play like a Brown and get jobbed.

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Pettine looks like a hypocrite and incompetent in all of this, taking the brunt of the criticism, which is hardly new. He has taken some blame that he does not deserve simply by being the team’s mouthpiece. Pettine earned it this time, but he is still not alone. He just happens to be the public face of an organizational disaster that goes back to the proximate cause of this team’s continued failure – Jimmy Haslam. Nevertheless, if Mike Pettine can’t do what’s best for the team, which he clearly did not in this case, then he can’t be the team’s head coach.