Hey! Who stretched the thread?
There is a lot to like about Mangini. There is a lot of bonehead in him as well.
• I do think his plan, his "process" if you will, is a good philosophy in building a team. To a degree it seems to be working. Though I'm not so sure sometimes if his 4 step process of bringing in the right type of players, to playing tough and physical, to learning to win, then learning to win consistently is a philosophy so much as an observation Still, knowing what stage your team is in and focusing the coaching on improving that stage is huge in building a contender.
• His offensive philosophy of planning to the strengths of his own team and against the weakness of the opponent, making each game's plan an individual effort rather than doing the same thing vs. every opponent with only minor changes, is sound as well. I don't think he's been good at implementing this but it is a good philosophy.
• I'm in agreement with his defensive philosophy of running a 3-4 although the 3-4 that we are running is not necessarily that which he would run so much as what Rob Ryan runs. Mangini's defensive background is not the attacking style that Ryan prefers. It is more of the Romeo Crennel bend-but-don't-break version. Still, I like that he sticks with the 3-4.
• His philosophy of building a very strong special teams unit is sound too. As we've witnessed many games are decided by close scores and it is often the special teams units that come up big in those games.
• He seems to handle his players well. Some of that is due to his efforts in bringing in the sort of characters who do not rock the boat, though perhaps at the expense of talent sometimes. I appreciate that we no longer have the soap opera crap we had here for so long. Notice that we no longer have to deal with either the prima donnas or overly outspoken idiots that infested our team previously.
The players all seem to be on the same page or at least work together as if they were. Given enough time to build an entire roster of highly talented players of this ilk would go a long way toward building a dynasty. But in todays NFL is there enough time for that? If he has a shortcoming in this area it's that he is not a strong personality so he avoids dealing with the strong personality. But often in sports as in business, it's the strong personality who excels.
• He is willing to work with his superiors in a harmonious manner to implement team philosophies and seems to work hard at being on the same page with them. At times I wonder if that is simply a means to an end in trying to retain his position as head coach but so far he looks to be buying into Holmgren's plan.
There are probably more positive points in his favor that I'm not thinking of at the moment but a look at this list would make it a no-brainer to retain him as head coach as he has the team as a whole heading in the right direction and deserves credit for much of that. It would be very different if a new head coach was installed who lacked in these important areas of head coaching.
Though those are positives most of which are philosophies regarding off the field, non-game time issues, you still have to game plan and coach the team on game-day. I'm sorry, but I don't see as many positives in that regard and that's where I see more negative issues than not.
• Even though he has shown that he can game plan successfully as witnessed by a couple of wins and our close scores vs. top competition, the consistent manner in which this team plays up or down to the level of the competition make me wonder exactly what is his approach and mind-set vs. any given team.
It seems we go all out vs. the really good teams yet play timid and afraid to lose vs. the bad teams. This does not make sense to me. If he would plan for and coach vs. the bad teams in the same manner in which he does vs. the really good teams then I believe it would have shown in a much improved record overall. Why is he obviously not doing this? And it is obvious if you get the chance to watch the games.
The "no talent" card cannot be played in these instances. Talent enough to go toe to toe with New Orleans, the Pats, the Jets, but lacking in enough talent to do the same vs. one and 2-win teams? Here is where I throw the BS card on the talent issue. Those games vs. the lesser teams are being planned differently and it makes no sense.
• His game day decisions, particularly in stressful situations is questionable and it has been questioned by fans and media alike.
• The end of the game vs. the Jets when it seemed he was not sure if he wanted to run out the clock or play for the win. That was obvious as we were backed up in our own territory and he called a series of plays that at first made it look like he was going for a win, then like he gave up on that and was willing to settle for a tie, then went right back to a call that was again playing for the win.
I'd have been good either way, but it was that 2nd down play that appeared he gave up on winning that made the 3rd down play a last resort destined to not work. If you are going for the win then all three downs need to be plays of that approach. If you are going for the tie then all three plays need to be plays that run time off the clock for the tie. But the way he mixed them up was detrimental to either approach. Is that sound coaching?
That series resulted in neither getting us a first down in our quest for a win nor did it run enough time off the clock for the possibility of a tie. So what happened was we gave the Jets the ball with enough time to score for a win.
Never mind blaming the defense for giving up the play. What about the decision, or lack of decisiveness that put them in that situation in the first place?
• Vs. the Bills we drive down the field on nothing but Hillis, and a 5 yard run by Bell, completely dominating the Bills' defense and are facing the opportunity to score on 4th and 1. With Hillis, at the time, being the best back in the league at getting that 1 yard we don't run him again. Nor do we run any other type of play that could possibly result in a TD opting instead to take the three points.
It's not like it was crunch time and we
had to get that 3 points or face a loss. that drive only took 4:49 off the 60 minute game clock. We had virtually the whole game to still to play even if we hadn't scored. I'm no NFL coach, but it seemed the perfect time to take chance. Had we scored we would have set the tone and to a degree made them feel we could kick their ass. If we don't there's still 55:11 to play and we let them know that we're playing to win.
Instead, we give the Bills defense a ton of momentum because we backed down, (yeah, they would have had momentum if we'd not scored at all but at least they'd have come away knowing they were in for a fight. But we backed down basically telling them we didn't think we could beat them), we also gave a vote of no confidence to our offense who I'm sure were chomping at the bit to go for it.
We weren't playing the Steelers where you'd better get your points when the opportunity arises. We were playing a 2-win team.
These kinds of coaching decisions can be game changing in favor of or against us.
• Horrible clock management at the end of the half vs. the bengals.
• Brutal clock management at the end of the half vs. the Rats and questionable decision to begin the second half. In the red zone facing an opportunity to score a TD he was more concerned with stopping the Rats from scoring. He admitted as much. Does that make sense? Of course the time you leave on the clock is important, but he made it more important than our own scoring and as a result robbed us of an opportunity.
He mismanaged the clock so severely that it impeded McCoy on his second down throw, (as he knew he had to make a quick decision and throw to leave time for the field goal), and also lost us a shot at a TD on third down as we didn't have enough time and had to take a field goal on third down. That lost us a play from the red zone because Mangini didn't want to
risk, and
risk is an important work in this scenario, that the Rats might haven an opportunity to score.
Then, completely reversing his philosophy of not wanting to
risk a scoring opportunity for the Rats he calls an onside kick to begin the second half. Yes, had it worked it would have been genius.
But what concerns me is how you go from losing a down and a scoring opportunity for your own team because you are afraid to
risk giving the opponent
30 seconds to score on a 60 to 80 yard drive, to taking such a
risk as to call a play that is 50/50 at best and knowing that if not successful your opponent will have the opportunity to
score on a 40 yard drive with 30 minutes to do so?
Does not anyone else see this as questionable thinking, undecided in the approach, Jekyl & Hyde
risk management and simply a bad decision both at the end of the 1st half and at the beginning of the 2nd? Do good head coaches make decisions like this? And especially, do they do it back to back?
There have been many other questionable in game decisions. Most of them put our players in less than the best situation to succeed. A lot of them were made from the offensive side of the ball which brings up the next bullet point...
• His offensive philosophy is designed for a team with great talent. Instead of playing to the strengths of his own team he stubbornly game plans the offense to be something it cannot be, which is namely a smash-mouth running offense who can ride the back of one man (Hillis) for 16 games. It seems that by design this offense is geared to running the ball and throwing to the running back and TE almost exclusively. In my opinion, and maybe it's only me, but somehow the offense has to be more creative than that. Teams have discovered, duh, that if you stop Hillis and double Watson we got nothing else going for us.
With a full training camp and a 16 game schedule Mangini had done little to incorporate much else into our offense, other than some trick plays, to help the offense grow. The reason I think Robo is coming on as of late is because with Hillis hurting we've had no other choice but to throw the ball to a WR once in a while. Had this been part of the plan all along Robo's insurgence may have happened in game 8 instead of taking so long. Maybe by now Mass might be making some contributions.
No creativity and fear of taking any other risk since Hillis was doing so well has gotten us in a situation where we can't do much of anything now since he's been hurt.
I will say that being forced to play 3 quarterbacks in rotation throughout the season is not an easy thing to overcome. It does address a high hurdle. We can all think of a million ways this is detrimental to an offenses growth. I can give him a bit of a flyer on this as should anyone. But it doesn't answer all of the problems with the issues that make this offensive so unproductive.
With a lot more talent he could win a lot more games. But then again, with a lot more money I could buy a lot more things. The proof is in what you do with what you got.
I tire of this. You're probably tired of reading it if you got this far.
In summary I'll say that Mangini has done a ton of good for this team in his philosophy of building a team. We now play tough, to the whistle and to the end. For these reasons I can see a very good team being built and would like to keep Mangini as head coach.
I'll say too that his in-game decisions are very questionable, verge on outsmarting himself all to often, are inconsistent in the approach and generally display an inexperience in being willing to attack the opponent in quest of a win. He is a close-to-the-vest type game manager which, with him, results in close losses. I'm afraid he will always be that guy, close losses.
So what will Holmgren do? He hired on to turn this team around. Keeping Mangini for 2010 did the team a lot of good if you're not looking at the record. Does he see Mangini as a head coach who can manage the team on game day and continue to improve in that area? Or does he think that even with a stellar OC that Mangini will still mismanage the clock and make curious decisions at important moments?
My crystal ball broke years ago.
![[Linked Image from i26.tinypic.com]](http://i26.tinypic.com/30vow7m.jpg)
![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/6WV79RV/Browns-Coach-Sig.png)