Every year, one firing comes as a surprise. This year’s surprise could be Browns coach Rob Chudzinski.
Which, of course, now means it wouldn’t be a surprise.
Several reports have mentioned the possibility of a new supervisor at the Factory of Sadness. Tony Grossi of ESPN Cleveland writes via Twitter that "[t]here are some bad vibes indicating uncertainty about the future” of Chudzinski. Chris Mortensen of ESPN believes that “there’s some turmoil [and] unhappiness with how [the] team folded [in the] 2nd half of [the] year.”
Veteran NFL scribe Dan Pompei got the ball rolling on Saturday night, explaining that Chudzinski essentially was a fallback option for the Browns after they failed to attract a big name like Chip Kelly. This year, the Browns could opt to pay Chudzinski for three years to not coach the team, and to pay someone else even more to take over.
It would be a shock, to say the least, if the lifelong Browns fan gets fired. The hiring of CEO Joe Banner was supposed to bring the same kind of stability and continuity to Cleveland that the Eagles exhibited throughout Banner’s tenure there. While that may indeed happen, it may have been delayed by a year.