The sad-sack Browns have staged an AFC North coup, swiping offensive coordinator Hue Jackson from the Bengals. And Bengals All-Pro tackle Andrew Whitworth thinks Jackson will do very well in his new job.
“People think Hue Jackson’s gonna be an exceptional coach and I would agree that,” Whitworth told PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio earlier this week. “Hue is going to be a guy that whoever gets him is going to be very fortunate. I think he’s a tremendous football coach. I’ve been very, very impressed with him over our time together and he’s one of those guys that I think is going to encourage guys to be better men as well as football players. . . . That’s kind of his thing, man he likes pushing people. He likes driving people to achieve more than they think they can and so I would be shocked if Hue Jackson’s not a successful football coach.”
Making the job harder will be the placement of the Browns in a division that includes the Bengals, Steelers, and Ravens. Making it easier will be a chronically low bar in Cleveland, which has gotten to the postseason once since returning to the NFL in 1999.
Plenty of questions remain to be answered for a franchise that currently has a few too many chefs. But the Browns finally have a coach -- and maybe this coach, who went 8-8 in one year with the Raiders, will be the one to finally turn things around.
To do that, he’ll need to find a quarterback who will become the year-in, year-out starter like the one he had in Cincinnati.