Browns owner Jimmy Haslam won’t have a CEO to replace Joe Banner. But Haslam reportedly was inclined to install someone above G.M. Ray Farmer.
According to Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report, Haslam wanted to hire Bill Parcells to run the team. In an email to Freeman, Parcells said that no job offer was made, and that he spoke with Haslam “only about how I believe organizations succeed and others fail.”
Parcells has been consulting from time to time with multiple teams since leaving the Dolphins, where he became the first of a short-lived line of aging football czars who lorded over the operation. Coincidentally, Haslam’s predecessor in Cleveland, Randy Lerner, hired Mike Holmgren to serve in a similar capacity.
It appeared at the time to be a new avenue for otherwise retired coaches and General Managers to stay in the game. But Parcells has shown no inclination to accept a similar job since leaving Miami, and few owners have seen fit to formally hire a football person higher than the G.M.
Still, Parcells and Haslam spoke. Per Freeman, they met “extensively” in Florida. Since Parcells knows the business and Haslam is learning it, it’s safe to say Haslam was inclined to accept the advice provided by Parcells.
Which means that Parcells may have advised Haslam to have one person in charge of the football operation (Farmer) and to then get out of the way and let Farmer and the rest of the football operation do what they’re skilled at doing.
That’s the best advice any owner can receive. Mastering another industry to the tune of billions in profit doesn’t make an owner able to run a football team. Hire the right people, let them do their jobs, and instill a “do your [expletive deleted] job” attitude from the top of the organization to the bottom.