Ex-coach gives insights into Browns’ firings
It’s been a change of pace that the latest drama with the Cleveland Browns is about their coaching, not about the quarterback or how bad the team is.
This time it’s about the Browns’ recently fired offensive coordinator Todd Haley. And the news comes from former Browns coach Sam Rutigliano. He and Haley are close, so Rutigliano was able to share some inside information when he spoke this week with Andy Baskin and Jeff Phelps of Cleveland sports talk-radio station 92.3 FM-The Fan.
“Why did they fire Todd Haley?” Rutigliano said. “I talked to him on the phone. When he was going to the office he thought he was going to take over. And he got fired. He said to me, ‘I had no idea. When I was going back into the office I thought possibly if they were going to let Hue Jackson go, that I would have the opportunity now to be the interim coach and then get the job eventually.’ And then it went the opposite direction.”
But Rutigliano may have revealed a bit more than he intended to or perhaps more than Haley wanted him to. According to Rutigliano, Haley’s purpose in taking the job with the Browns in January was to eventually become the head coach. Haley was the head coach for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2009 until he was fired in 2011.
“I don’t think they had a relationship,” Rutigliano said. “You’re working with a guy [Jackson] who had one win and 31 losses, and he’s going to tell you what to do? And he proved all three years that he was incompetent. He wasn’t qualified for the job.”