Getty ImagesBrowns Owner Jimmy Haslam acted quickly Sunday after firing general manager Ray Farmer and head coach Mike Pettine.
Haslam promoted the Browns’ general counsel, Sashi Brown, to executive director of football operations and gave Brown control of the 53-man roster. Haslam made that announcement during an 8 p.m. Sunday press conference, about an hour after the Browns made the firings of Farmer and Pettine official.
Justice comes swiftly after a 3-13 season. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted that Haslam fired Farmer and Pettine by e-mail.
Brown joined the Browns in Jan. 2013, not long after Haslam took ownership. He previously worked eight seasons as general counsel with the Jaguars. Brown was an attorney in Washington, D.C., before joining the Jaguars.
Haslam said he’s hired the search firm Korn Ferry to assist himself, his wife, Dee Haslam and Brown in searching for a new head coach. SI’s Peter King reported the Browns’ first interview will be with Doug Marrone, but Haslam told reporters that is not true.
Haslam indicated that the Browns will hire a coach before hiring a general manager, a sign that the general manager eventually hired will answer to Brown.
Dumbfounded. What a mess…they better hope they can land a guy as good as Marrone to coach this. Not many may want to.
Hiring a coach before the gm? Then they wonder why they are dysfunctional.
Brown on the Browns. A lawyer in control of the roster.
Yeah, this is going to end so well, JIMMY!
Haslam and Ross are trying to out-moron each other.
I have them tied on my scorecard…..
Hire a coach first?? That NEVER works. This guy is nuts.
Amazing how stupid this man is
That’s not what Rapoport’s tweet says…
Nope they are still screwed. What a pity . . .
General Council? It’s football, not Star Wars or the Last Stand of the 300.
Fired by e-mail. How classy.
Maybe Johnny Fool-ball will be a part of the search committee. At least reward the homeless guy who told you to draft him!
who would want to even consider going to Cleveland?
Word is Haslam is bringing in the homeless guy for the GM position.
York or Haslam?
Huh?
Rich people problems.
Firing someone by e-mail, now we know how gutless Haslam really is. Total lack of class. Cleveland fans deserve a better owner.
This structure is sure to attract the best available head coaching candidates.
Kudos to Sashi Brown for his new promotion, but a lawyer in control of your 53 man roster.. i dont know about that.
Firing by email. Even though this was a home game and they were right there in the stadium. Keep it classy, Jimmy. Reminds me when Bobby Petrino quit the Falcons in the middle of the night and left his players boilerplate notes letting them know attached to their lockers.
They just need to wait a little while and they will have a shot a Tomsula. I mean, come on, if Tomsula is going to be available, you can’t settle on mere mediocrity with Marrrone when you can go full train wreck. Embrace the suck Cleveland, its all ya got going for ya.
What a mess! As bad as it is being a Bills fan, Browns got it worse! I hope you don’t get Marrone
WoW! I thought we were dysfunctional in Niner land but after reading this I think maybe we are closer to a model franchise. Good luck Cleveland.
Hire Pettine and later promote Farmer as GM
– Disfunctional mess
Hire a coach and later a GM
-what could he be possibly expecting?
I believe king over Haslam. Oh Peter u suck
Relax all you Haslam haters. Go watch his 8pm presser. He didn’t fire them via email. And, he explains the organizational structure and processes going forward. He put the blame squarely on himself. Everyone is so eager to point out what a joke Haslam is. He didn’t become an NFL owner by being stupid, and I’m sure he couldn’t care less what all you crotch-scratching finger-sniffing Fun-Yun-munching and warm Busch-swilling trolls have to say on PFT.
Go Browns.
Fired by email? They were only a few hundred feet away in the stadium. Who does he think he is? Montgomery Burns?
NO! Hire a GM first you knuckleheads! Have you learned nothing?!!
Why does everyone insist that Cleveland fans deserve better than what they get? They are one of the worst fan bases in all of sports
Jimmy Rebate screws up again, first he promotes the cap guy to oversee football operations, giving him final,say on the roster. Then he decides to keep the same structure that failed the Browns this time, with the coach reporting to Jimmy and not the head of football operations. This is a classic screw up by Jimmy. He just doesn’t get it.
The circus continues in Cleveland, gotta feel sorry for the fans. Name a lawyer in charge of personnel/roster, hire a headcoach before you hire a GM. While you’re at it Haslam, why don’t you order SB rings before you win the SB. Gotta give Browns’ fans credit for sticking with such a dysfunctional owner.
bert1913 says:
Jan 3, 2016 8:57 PM
York or Haslam?
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York is definitely the dumber of the two. He fired a coach that took the 49ers to multiple NFCCGs and a Super Bowl, and replaced him with a guy that used to be a street sweeper.
The Browns are expected to make the wrong decisions.
Jeezus is this owner clueless!
What is with these owners constantly mentioning their wives. Pegula in Buffalo always does it, and now Haslam. Really guy’s ? You married a ttophy, she’ll live s fabulous life and get a tremendous estate in the end. Why pretend she’s a part of the decision process? Her only decisions involve homeand where to holiday
None of this matters. I’m sure Sashi Brown isn’t the one who’s going to be watching film and putting grades on college prospects. That’s not glamorous work, but it’s what determines the success of the franchise. As long as the Browns hire a good personnel chief, they’ll be fine. It might not even make it into the news cycle, but that’s the hire I’m waiting to see.
The Ukraine has Pripyat and the NFL has the Browns. Both places have seen meltdowns and remain contaminated messes which are uninhabitable by all life forms.
What’s worse than a dumpster fire?
Put me in charge of football operations.
I couldn’t possibly do worse, and I have built many a dynasty in Madden.
This just in: Bruce Coslet has just tweeted that he is not interested in the Cleveland Browns coaching vacancy.
That’s right Bruce Coslet.
Hot Rumor: David Shula has already declined to be interviewed for the Cleveland Browns coaching job.
What a mess in Cleveland.
My 2 cents to help.
Hire a GM first. There are 31 teams with qualified assistant GM’s. Have that person hire you HC.
I only know this much because I did stay at a Holiday Inn once.
You can tell Jimmy Haslam inherited his wealth.
Jimmy-
It’s me, homeless dude. Hey, Lane Kiffen! That’s our guy!
PS hit me up before the draft- I really like what I’ve seen from Treyvon Boykin lately. Call me!
Dee Haslem reportedly excited that Buddy Ryan has not yet declined to be considered.
The factory of sadness just added sashi to the menu. Harlem is the Peter Angeles of cleveland
Guys that always say they are taking the blame never really mean it. Haslam put his mess together and doesn’t have the guts or the patience to see things through.
He’s a constant meddler. Who would ever want to work for him, except for the 4 years of pay…. including severance.
I can sleep well tonight knowing Dee is involved. UUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What do you guys think about giving Marty Mornhinweg another chance?
sushi brown or brown sushi .. eekk keep up the clevelandy work there……. the good ole cleveland clowns NFL laughing stock …. all the AFC north teams are quite pleased to have the browns as a respite from the rest of the division wars
You gave roster control to a lawyer???!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Hey, Jimmy…..look in the mirror and just say
YOU’RE FIRED!!!!
Add the recently fired Jim Tomsula to the list of candidates not interested in coaching the Browns.
This mess just keeps getting worse and worse. If it was a TV series, it would be cancelled for being too ridiculous.
I’ve rooted for the Browns all my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the reality, and the reality is that this is currently the most incompetent organization in pro sports. The Browns remind me of the L.A. Clippers of the 1990s. Now, there was an organization that may have been even more incompetent than the Browns. But they’re a solid organization now. The Browns are clearly the worst of the worst at this point. Hopefully they can eventually climb out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.
You are giving a lawyer with no personnel experience control over the roster? I always thought of Jerry Jones as the village idiot of NFL owners, but Haslam, Stephen Ross, Jim Irsay, and Dan Snyder are giving him a run right for the title.
It doesn’t matter who is coach or GM, no one will be able to win with this ownership, I feel for you Brown’s fan….and how did this guy become an owner?
Well where to begin, first off you are never going to build a respectable team let alone a contender, by cleaning house every two years. By doing that there is going to be almost zero continuity. Everyone a new coach and our gm is brought in they are going to have their own way of wanting to do things and they will want to bring in their own players so the current group of players are sitting ducks next year cause you can’t replace all 53 players in one off season and by year two when you start getting your people on the team you have endured 2 more years of 4-6 wins per year. Then the cycling starts over. Second the fact that the owner fired his coach and gm by email is a classless move and any halfway decent coach is not going to want to work for an owner like that so they will be stuck hiring someone who is not qualified to be a head coach. Until the Browns give a coach 5 years to do it hits way is going to continue to be a losing team.
Why does everyone insist that Cleveland fans deserve better than what they get? They are one of the worst fan bases in all of sports
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I disagree, no fan deserves this cluster mess, I wouldn’t even wish this on a patriot fan….
Rich dudes are not usually intelligent dudes.
Jimmy is going with what works.
Hired a lawyer to fix his legal problems.
Hire a lawyer to fix his football franchise problems.
“NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted that Haslam fired Farmer and Pettine by e-mail.”
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Ummmm…. not what the tweet said. It said he notified the coaches by email that he Pettine and Farmer had been fired. Judge for yourself – the tweet says, quote: “It’s a new world: #Browns owner Jimmy Haslam notified the coaches of the changes with Pettine and Farmer via email.”
Can accuse Browns’ ownership of lots of things – but firing the coach and GM by email is not true. Everything else, though, likely is.
Let me get this straight…he fired his football people (as bad as they were, they were football people)…and promoted his GENERAL COUNSEL to the top football role in his organization? LOL!
How Clownlike!
With each day, the window for putting together your board is closing. You say you want to build through the draft. You have the 2nd over all pick and multiple supplemental picks. You have only 2 players on your roster from the last time you let a cap manager manage your draft (Joe Banner – Mingo [unlikely to be resigned] & Armonty Bryant [suspended]). Your inability to attract a great coach is due in large part to the lack of talent on your roster. All that, and you still undervalue the importance of the GM position. You still say you’re going to go through a coaching search that could take 2 months before filling the GM vacancy. Ostensibly, that could give your new GM less than a month to prepare for the draft. This franchise can’t afford another squandered draft. If they get the draft right, and screw up the coaching decision, at least they’ll be positioned to get a good coach in the future, as the one thing a coach looks for is a roster with which he can win. I don’t know that I care if the GM is a “team player” so much as I care that the GM has a track record of excellence. Any GM worth his salt wouldn’t allow other front office personnel to meddle too much in his process. So, instead of getting a guy with a stellar track record, we’re gonna get a broken record. So frustrated. What’s the point of all this change if everything’s going to stay the same? I just don’t get it.
If the league is interested in the quality of its brand, I think they ought to –secretly– assemble a small group of owners and have some kind of intervention with Haslam regarding the way he is going about business. Enough is enough, now.
So there now interviewing the guys (Marrone) who FiRED Pettine as Buffalo DC upon taking the Bills Job? Lol
Can’t say the Browns don’t try. Plus can’t get any worse……oh, wait.
Browns should go after Hue Jackson. He may be the only guy available capable of making something out of that roster and also injecting some much-needed swagger into the organization.
I like the idea that I read about on one of these sites; Peyton Manning to sign with the Browns to give the teams respect and then put the team in Mannings hands to run and then see what happens. What have they got to lose. At least there will be a football guy running the team.
Even Rich Kotite would run screaming from this.
I have confidence in Haslam. Yes he has hired some lousy people in the past, but at least he gets rid of them as soon as he figures out he made a mistake. Eventually he’ll get it right. The Browns have an opportunity to draft a good young QB, which should set them up nicely for the next decade. That will attract a good coach.
i’m going to say it…bring in Nick Saban. he hates the bama fan base and was once a DC in Cleveland.
Who in there right mind would want that job. You don’t get to pick your guy and you do not report to the owner but a middle man who doesn’t know football? Ya that’s a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe this owner is american and doesn’t understand our culture. A GM RUNS THE TEAM
Haslam is an idiot. Better off with Art Modell or Randy Lerner.
Man, I don’t know about this. I’m must a casual, outside observer but it seems to me that they just made the least attractive NFL coaching/GM vacancy and made it even less attractive to potential candidates!
They already are going to have a tough time filling the coaching/GM vacancy with any type of quality candidate because they all know that they only get 1-2 years to turn this mess around. I remember all the people that refused to interview with the Browns 2 years ago. I think it might be even worse this time around… I guess we will find out soon enough.
Sorry Browns fans. You don’t deserve this disfunction. We know your pain over here on the other side of Lake Erie.
I really thought Pettine deserved another year. The QB situation in Cleveland is a total mess, lots of failed draft picks, a lack of talent on both sides of the ball…
Bad teams stay bad by constantly firing their coaches and changing schemes (and the personell needed to run those schemes). Continuity is very valuable IMO.
Come back to Buffalo Mike Pettine, and finish what you started with this defense!
Not just “rich people’s problems” as one poster put it. It’s a community problem. The Cleveland community deserves better stewardship. As Pettine said, it’s a bottom line business. When the stands are empty, and television viewers are lacking, and the owner has burned through enough money maybe the the right owner will emerge. Love the Browns, just not this iteration of the franchise.
Quoting epensivewinos:
“Haslam and Ross are trying to out-moron each other.
I have them tied on my scorecard…..”
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You’d better start a GoFundMe to help cover the cost of paper and ink! That scorecard will be 500 pages long halfway through free agency.
Got it. A truck stop owner and his wife have given roster control to a lawyer and the three of them will in turn decide on a coach before a general manager. The general manager will have nothing to do with the hiring of a coach and he’ll be reporting to the lawyer. To round this out, the only thing missing is for the Cuyahoga River to catch on fire again.
Fired by email?
Boy, I hope they reinforced the doors at the Browns offices, because top coaching candidates are certainly going to be trying to beat them down to interview for that job
hey tonebones, hasn’t that exact same thing been said every two years in Cleveland for the last 16 or so years? Your owner needs to change the way they do business, you’ll only get mediocre coordinators and mediocre collage coaches with the way they currently operate.
Insanity= doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Jimmy Haslam you are insane.
Sell the team.
The Browns just joined the Indians on my pay no mind list. Its clear this guy is Larry Dolan #2, who famously said, “in a perfect world the goal of every professional sports franchise is to win a World Championship, but in reality, I’m going to run this like a business”
You dont care about winning, therefore, I dont care about your team.
I dont blame Johnny for skipping his medical treatment. I wouldnt let anyone this clown hires, near my body.
So there now interviewing the guys (Marrone) who FiRED Pettine as Buffalo DC upon taking the Bills Job? Lol
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Nope. Marrow brought Pettine in year one. Defense was awesome, Pettine was hired as HC of Browns. Marrow didn’t fire him.
With Sushi Brown in charge of the roster, I guess the next coach will be Caviar Black…smh
Isn’t sachet brown the guy that gave Dwayne Bowe the $13 million contract with 9 million guaranteed? I didn’t think it was possible that Dwayne Bowe could catch
less passes then Andre Rison for $9M.
Haslem is making the same mistake he did last time. This is like a horrible bad dream that one has over and over and over again.
If I was a brown season ticket holder I would be absolutely livid I would not read new my seats because that’s the only way this man will learn anything by a hit at his wallet! Then, his eyes will be opened just see what’s really going on around him. Also what is Haslem doing involving his wife in the GM/Coaching selection process???
That’s it! I’m putting my Brown’s highlights DVD from 84′ – 89′ relive yester-year!!!
Where’s the Comish now!!!!
Well, Cleveland won’t be hiring Chip Kelly since Mr. Absolute Power won’t be answering to the Browns version of Howie Roseman…
Marrone probably as good as Cleveland can get at this point. The top candidates won’t take that job.
Sorry Browns fans. You don’t deserve this disfunction. We know your pain over here on the other side of Lake Erie.
I really thought Pettine deserved another year. The QB situation in Cleveland is a total mess, lots of failed draft picks, a lack of talent on both sides of the ball…
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You know that Browns fans have been on this site since week 2 of the season demanding that Pettine get fired? How do they not deserve this? They have an owner that does what they want!