Scott Pioli-Kirk Ferentz Combo a Possibility for Cleveland Browns

It is time for our daily discussion of the Cleveland Browns’ GM and head coaching positions.

When I left off yesterday, I mentioned that Browns owner Randy Lerner had interviewed Scott Pioli for the GM position. As of last night, a report out of Boston indicated that Lerner had placed a pretty immediate deadline on Scott Pioli to make a decision. However, as reported by Mary Kay Cabot in the Plain-Dealer this afternoon, sources close to the Browns say that no such deadline was placed on Scott Pioli.

So who knows what the real deal is with all of these unnamed sources floating around. All I know is that at this point no announcement has been made that Scott Pioli is or is not the next GM of the Cleveland Browns. So I shall continue hoping that eventually the announcement is made that he takes the job.

Over the past few days I have spent some time discussing many of the candidates for head coach that Randy Lerner has already scheduled interviews with, and others who are rumored to have a chance at Romeo Crennel’s former gig. One name that has been thrown out that I have not discussed much is Kirk Ferentz, the head coach at Iowa.

The rumors of Kirk Ferentz having a chance at the Browns job are based upon his close relationship with Scott Pioli. The two worked together with the Browns back in the mid-90s when Bill Belichick was in Cleveland. The conventional wisdom has been that, should Scott Pioli leave New England and become GM at another franchise, that he might bring his good friend in as head coach.

You may remember that back around the 2002-2004 seasons, Ferentz’s name was mentioned often for NFL jobs. During that three-year span, Ferentz’ Iowa Hawkeye teams compiled a 31-7 record. In the years since, however, a couple of factors have cooled the Ferentz-to-the-NFL talk:

1. The Hawkeyes have fallen off a bit. Before this season’s 9-4 record and Outback Bowl victory, Iowa was only 19-18 from 2005-2007.
2. Many of the high profile college-coach-to-NFL experiments have fizzled big time. Nick Saban left LSU for the Dolphins, and stayed only two years before bolting for Alabama and leaving lots of hard feelings in Miami. Bobby Petrino infamously walked out on the Atlanta Falcons mid-season to take the head job at Arkansas and not only left bad feelings, but forever became an icon of douchebaggery in the eyes of NFL fans everywhere. These are just two examples of many over the years.
3. The last few seasons have seen many incredible year-to-year turnarounds, in which an NFL team is pathetic one season and good the next. Just this season the Dolphins, Ravens, and Falcons completely defied preseason expectations to make the playoffs. All three teams had rookie head coaches who were assistants in the NFL the previous season. That is why names like Jim Schwartz, Josh McDaneisl, and Steve Spagnuolo, among others, have become such hot commodities this offseason.

With these three factors working against him, it is no wonder that Kirk Ferentz’s star has faded a bit with respect to his potential candidacy as an NFL coach. Plus, when many teams made overtures to Ferentz when he was hot in 2002-2004 (and even a few during 2006), he rebuffed them to stay at Iowa where he had been a coach under Hayden Fry in the 1980s. Ferentz signed a contract extension in 2004 to keep him at Iowa until 2012, and then restructured his deal in 2006 to become the highest paid coach in the Big Ten at $2.7 million annually. (All of this bio information is from his Wikipedia page, by the way.)

Earlier today, as reported by College Football Talk, after Iowa defeated South Carolina in the Outback Bowl, Kirk Ferentz addressed the renewed speculation that he could be a potential candidate to become head coach wherever Scott Pioli ends up.

Here as an excerpt from the CFT story on Ferentz:

Said Ferentz: “Scott’s a great friend of mine, and I think it’s a mutual thing. I think it’s presumptuous to think anybody knows what he’s doing right now, and he and I haven’t talked in three weeks. We’ve both been doing our jobs. I’ve got a great job at Iowa, I’ve said that many, many times. The people are fantastic, and I just feel very, very fortunate.”

Asked where the NFL fits on his “to do” list, Ferentz said, “I don’t have a ‘to do’ list. I never have. I just try to live every day and enjoy them, and I can’t think of a year I’ve enjoyed much more than this one.”

I don’t know about you, but I certainly do not read anything in there that leads me to believe that Kirk Ferentz is 100% committed to staying at Iowa. And I’m certainly not saying that to be negative in any way — it’s much better than Nick Saban chastising reporters for asking him if he is interested in Alabama, and then lying and saying no, only to leave shortly thereafter.

What I am saying is that it certainly appears that if Scott Pioli gets a GM gig in Cleveland, Kansas City, or anywhere else, that Kirk Ferentz will be right at the top of the list of candidates to be head coach. Add up the success that Ferentz has had at Iowa, his close relationship with Scott Pioli, a realization that he may be running out of chances to jump to the NFL if that is one of his goals, and the obvious bump in pay he would receive, and I think it is actually presumptuous to not consider Kirk Ferentz as a possibility to be the next coach of the Cleveland Browns. Scott Pioli is the #1 choice of Randy Lerner to be GM, and until Pioli is ruled out, you have to assume the possibility that Kirk Ferentz could follow if Pioli takes the job.

How do you feel about that?

My position has always been that I do not want one of my teams reaching into the college ranks for its head coach. Just look at the litany of failed experiments bringing college coaches to the NFL. Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier, Butch Davis, Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino, and I could go on and on.

(As a quick aside, look at the picture of Bobby Petrino to the right, and notice how uncomfortable he looks holding the Falcons helmet. This is a perfect metaphor of what happens to college coaches in the NFL. They are out of their element, out of their comfort zone, and it leads to problems.)

Now try to list off the successful examples of college coaches jumping to the NFL. I can come up with Jimmy Johnson, and that’s it. Please, if I’m leaving someone out, tell me in the comments section.

The fact remains that there have been far more failures that successes. And when you look at the history of the Cleveland Browns since they returned to the NFL, the franchise itself has had far, far more failures than successes. So how would it possibly make sense to take a strategy that fails more than it succeeds, add it to a franchise that fails more than it succeeds, and expect success? Sounds like a pretty ill-advised strategy if you ask me.

Look, I have gone on record saying that I want Scott Pioli to be the next GM of the Browns, understanding all the way that he very well might tap Kirk Ferentz to be the head coach. So my endorsement of Pioli and my criticism of the idea of Ferentz-to-the-Browns certainly seems contradictory, even to me. And if a Pioli-Ferentz combination is what we get, Kirk Ferentz will certainly have my support as I take a leap of faith that Scott Pioli knows much more about what he is doing than I do.

But boy would I be skeptical and a little nervous.

NFL teams keep trying to make college coaches into NFL coaches, and it keeps failing. Perhaps Kirk Ferentz is different though. Nick Saban and Butch Davis, for instance, failed because they were control freaks whose coaching style is much more suiting to dominating college boys that working with and motivating professional men in the NFL. They also tried to handle personnel responsibilities as well. Kirk Ferentz obviously would just be coaching, while Scott Pioli would be handling GM/personnel duties. So that right there is one advantage over some of the other college-coach-to-NFL scenarios we’ve seen in the past. And Kirk Ferentz does, at least, have some NFL experience having coached with the Browns and Ravens.

Can you tell that I am trying to talk myself into a potential Kirk Ferentz era of Browns football?

I suppose I could be wasting my time. I have heard no rumor of Kirk Ferentz to the Browns that does not involved Scott Pioli being named the GM. And there is a very real possibility that I could post this and immediately find out that Scott Pioli has said no — rendering this post useless and making me want to bang my head against the wall for wasting my time, at least from a Browns perspective.

But I still think that Scott Pioli will end up in Cleveland. And after reading the post on CFT about Ferentz’s statements, it sure as hell sounds like he would be interested if Scott Pioli came calling. So as a Browns fan, I feel it is only prudent to prepare myself for an outcome that goes against my own personal philosophy for how to build an NFL winner — never choose a college coach for an NFL team.

Luckily, my #1 philosophy for building an NFL winner is to have a proven winner in place at the top, and trust him to make sound decisions. Scott Pioli is as proven a winner as there is available to the Browns right now for GM, and obviously has infinitely more qualifications than I do to choose a head coach. So I trust that if he is the Browns GM, he will make the right choice.

Even if it is…*gulp*…Kirk Ferentz.

---

---

---