Hue Jackson, trying to cleanse the Browns of their perpetual dysfunction, apparently has taken to arguing with the other Cleveland coaches.
On Monday, Jackson scolded defensive coordinator Gregg Williams through the media for scolding a player through the media. Williams was upset at No. 4-overall pick Denzel Ward for the way he tackled in a preseason game — a form with his head up that is being encouraged by the league, but one that could have helped lead to Ward getting back spasms.
“Maybe he’ll finally listen to me and stop doing those stupid things,” Williams said, “the way he’s trying to tackle and tackle the way I tell him to tackle and he won’t get hurt.”
Jackson wasn’t a fan of the public call-out.
“Gregg doesn’t get to do just what he wants to do,” Jackson told reporters in Cleveland. “I mean, we’ll work through all of that. But our players, there’s a certain way we do want them to tackle because of size, structure, and all that. We don’t want a guy to get hurt or anything like that. I mean, I’m sure Gregg does advise, but we don’t need to do all that stuff in the media.”
Yet, all that stuff is happening in the media. The Browns’ presence on “Hard Knocks” doesn’t help, either.
The first episode featured bickering between Jackson and first-year offensive coordinator Todd Haley — whose occasionally prickly personality has caused issues when he was head coach of the Chiefs and offensive coordinator of the Steelers.
Jackson told his coaches that players would be occasionally held out of practices in hopes of keeping them healthy, and Haley spoke up.
“I have an opinion on it,” Haley said, via Pro Football Talk. “We need to get so much done, you know? And I know I said that to you and we joke about it, but if we live in our fears, I mean our team has to get mentally tougher and be able to fight through the s–t that we’ve gotta fight through. We’ve got to change this drastically and if we’ve got guys that haven’t done s–t sitting around doing nothing, you know, I just don’t know how we’re going to do it.”
Jackson then attempted to put Haley in place by reminding him who is in charge.
“I used to sit in the same chair you guys sit in and I used to feel the same way,” Jackson said. “I just wanted to kill them, OK? Until all of a sudden I sat in this chair and then they’re not there, and you don’t get them to practice, and you can’t get them through, and then you don’t have them for three weeks. And I’m not living in my fears, that’s real. And I think we all can appreciate that.”
Later, Jackson added: “When it’s your team, you can do whatever the hell you want.”
For a team coming off a season that saw it become the second in NFL history to go 0-16, and with Jackson having gone 1-31 in his two years running the show in Cleveland, the mess seems like it hasn’t left Cleveland.
