Jim Brown, Joshua Cribbs Voice Support for Eric Mangini

What a difference a couple of weeks (and wins) can make.

Sitting at 1-11, the conventional wisdom was that Eric Mangini was basically coaching out the string, essentially a placeholder for whoever the Browns future “football czar” were to choose to be the new head coach.

After two straight victories – importantly, one of them against arch-nemesis Pittsburgh – two of the most influential voices in Browns Nation have now publicly pledged their support for Mangini.

None other than Joshua Cribbs and Jim Brown.

Here are a couple of excerpts that are extremely telling of just how much better the Browns have played over the last two weeks:

From Peter King’s MMQB column today, which included the following Josh Cribbs comments on Eric Mangini:

I asked Cribbs Sunday after the game: If you polled all the players on the team, what would be the vote on whether to keep or get rid of Mangini?

“I think it’d be unanimous,” Cribbs said. “I think the guys would definitely want to keep him. You can’t judge coach Mangini on one year. The camaraderie in the locker room is great. You hear things in the media about coach Mangini being too tough on us. But I think we’re building something here, and I think the players are behind him.”

And from James Walker’s AFC North blog on ESPN.com, which included the following Jim Brown comments on Eric Mangini:

Following Sunday’s win, Brown, an executive advisor for team owner Randy Lerner, said Mangini should be back in 2010. Brown believes the team is improving with “a lot of young people who we don’t know who are playing good football.” Brown also said he didn’t want to contradict his boss.

I cannot think of two people more important for Mangini to have on his side than Brown and Cribbs.

Brown is obviously the most legendary Brown of all, and someone whose word still carries immense influence both inside and outside of Berea.

Cribbs is the most beloved and decorated current Brown, whose effort and selflessness endear him to everyone. Add in the fact that he now holds the NFL record for career kickoff return TDs, and is the most complete and explosive special teams player in the NFL, and he has emerged as a bona fine NFL superstar.

Remember earlier this year when the Browns looked listless as they lost game after game after game in embarrassing fashion? And remember when Jamal Lewis was extremely critical of his coach publicly?  I think it is now fair to ask if perhaps Lewis was a lone wolf, balking at a routine that was different from what he had known under more laid back regimes in Baltimore and under Romeo Crennel.

Jamal Lewis was placed on IR on December 2nd. At the time, the Browns were 1-10. Since then, the Browns are 2-1 after battling the hottest team in the NFL, San Diego, to a 7-point defeat, and then beating the Steelers and Chiefs in back-to-back weeks.

I’m not close enough to team to draw any sort of direct correlation between Lewis’ absence and the drastically improved play and attitude of the team (at least from my vantage point), but I do think that the timeline is interesting.

Either way, Mangini’s job status has gone from a foregone conclusion to very much an unknown – and rightfully so. The Browns were dreadful for the first three months of the season, but the fact that they are winning games in December with so many starters injured has got to come back to the head coach in the form of credit. Doesn’t it?

Had the Browns simply played out the strong and continued losing badly, the decision for the future czar would have been easy. But if the Browns get to four or five wins and Mangini has Jim Brown, Joshua Cribbs, and the majority of the locker room in his favor, he just may have done enough to buy himself another year.

And with the way the team has played the last two weeks, I no longer think that would automatically be such a bad idea.

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* – Eric Mangini photo credit: Sports Full Circle

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