Written by Jeff Rich

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So, I’m here to beat a dead horse.

If the Browns have any intention of being successful anytime in the not-too-distant future, Pat Shurmur cannot and will not be part of that plan.  That may not come as news to many of us, especially those who anticipated this fate for Pat on Day 1.  There wasn’t anything to suggest that this hiring held water as anything more than nepotism combined with a wing and a prayer.

I wasn’t so quick to jump on that particular bandwagon.  I’d had enough of the coaching carousel, the arm-chair GM, and more than anything, the perpetual re-build of the Browns.  I didn’t think they had to win the press conference, and knew by the beginning of Shurmur’s tenure that there is no formula.  They simply had to hire the right guy for the job, a guy that was on the same page as the front office, but more importantly, they needed someone capable of leading a winner.

The Browns had tried it all, the accomplished coordinator, the man who re-built a college program, the one with NFL head coaching experience (better known by cynics as the re-tread), but maybe this coordinator would be different.  The winners of the last three Super Bowls were lead by young, up-and-coming Head Coaches with backgrounds as position coaches, and brief stints as coordinators or Assistant Head Coaches.  Though Shurmur wasn’t as in-demand as McCarthy or Payton may have been, he fit the mold.  Even if you try to pin it down to that detail that the Eagles and Rams weren’t wildly successful with Shurmur guiding the signal caller or coordinating the offense, Mike Tomlin and Mike McCarthy played very small coaching roles on the Super Bowl teams.

I didn’t know what went on behind closed doors; I was surprised at the hire of this guy I knew little about, but trusted the brain-trust of Mike Holmgren’s Cleveland Browns.  I wasn’t very well-versed on Holmgren’s front-office experience at the time, and believed that he built that Seattle team that reached the Super Bowl, with himself inserted in the Head Coach’s role.  I was wrong, that Seahawks team wasn’t engineered properly until Holmgren was recused from that role.  Technically, he’d never hired a Head Coach before, and will likely never do so again.

Having received his walking papers, it’s clear that he came and went without putting a dent in the momentum of the futility of the Expansion Era Cleveland Browns, but if I’m offering the benefit of the doubt, I tend to wonder if it was all bad.  Despite everyone’s complaints, maybe Pat Shurmur is a viable Head Coach.  I joked at the date of his hire, that we are in the midst of “The Shurmur Dynasty”.  It was the benefit of the doubt, but what a joke that courtesy has become.

I mean, what did we know about Pat Shurmur at the time?  We knew that he was the nephew of Fritz Shurmur, Holmgren’s long-time friend and colleague, so maybe we should have believed he came from good stock.  Good stock or not, Shurmur either fell too far from the tree, or being the nephew of Fritz Shurmur was just a way to get your foot in the door.  Honestly, I could spend weeks at that football museum in Canton and struggle to find mention of Fritz Shurmur.  Truthfully, Fritz may have benefited from being in Holmgren’s good graces more than his merit as a football coach ever could have.  I don’t know what to think; he was the DC for that Super Bowl win in 1997, but I’m not sure anyone could have failed with Reggie White on the field and Elway’s Broncos watching at home.

Then, the season starts and Shurmur’s first impression with a hungry fan-base is to lose to what we believe is a pathetic Bengals team because he doesn’t have the sense to call a timeout to prevent a quick snap by Bruce Gradkowski.  Early returns: Gradkowski :1, Shurmur: negative four.  He steals a couple of wins from teams that went winless for a while, and loses control of one his best assets three weeks in to his tenure.  Having made his video-game cover-boy into a jerk, a title which ended up fitting Peyton Hillis quite well, he was still 2-1.

A 31-13 loss against Tennessee that sent Shurmur to a .500 winning percentage as a head coach, down from his high water mark at 2-1 after 3 games, was surrounded by the obvious implications that Shurmur had no control of his locker room.  They had the bye week to regroup, but you’d never know it from the way they took the field in Oakland in Week 6, a seven-point defeat to the Kyle Boller/Jason Campbell-led Raiders that wasn’t as close as the final might have suggested.  The offensive genius managed to lead the team to a 6-3 victory in Week 8, getting the team back to .500 for the final time in his career coaching the Browns (we assume).

Everything was a mess after that, the Browns lost 9 of their final 10 games, and either weren’t competitive or done in by questionable team management on the sidelines or a lack of discipline on the field.  The incompetence was obvious to everyone but me.  I was still offering up the benefit of the doubt.  I wasn’t exactly buying the excuses, but I was listening to them.  Shurmur didn’t have the benefit of an off-season.  Shurmur was so busy calling the plays, after refusing to hire an offensive coordinator, that he didn’t notice his starting quarterback had a concussion.  Shurmur’s front-office didn’t provide him with enough talent.  Even after pink-slipping Eric Mangini because winning five games wasn’t enough, the brass was able to tolerate Shurmur winning just four in his first year.

Okay, so let’s get this guy more talent, and for the love of God, let’s get him an offensive coordinator and a full off-season to show us what he can do.  Mike Holmgren believes in this guy, and there’s more than meets the eye; there has to be.  With me, the glass is still half-full at this point.  There’s not a more fortunate beneficiary of doubt than what Pat Shurmur had from me as a Browns fan going into the 2012 season.  He wasn’t limited to what he had with Colt McCoy, and made the wise decision early in camp to dispel any thought of a quarterback controversy.  There was no doubt that Year 2 of The Shurmur Dynasty was going to be great.

Even with the optimism, Shurmur was treading in dangerous waters.  As the damage began to add up, he offered nothing in the way of damage control.  Okay, so maybe it isn’t his job to make sure Joe Haden isn’t (allegedly) crushing and snorting Adderall.  And, we know there’s little that could have been done about Trent Richardson’s necessary trip to Dr. James Andrews.  Perhaps, all of that was as out of control as Randy Lerner’s decision to sell the team the day before Training Camp, but the list of things that he mismanaged was becoming a lot longer than the routine things that he was doing right.  I’m still on board with The Shurmur Dynasty as this point.  These are just some growing pains, that’s all.  Pat’s better at this than I would be, so why question the decision not to play a rookie quarterback with six quarters of NFL preseason experience and ten practices under his belt.  We’re talking about Fritz Shurmur’s nephew for crying out loud.  How dare we question any decision made by that blood-line?

If anything, the sale of the team should have put Shurmur into “contract-year” mode.  Win now, because there is no tomorrow.  This was an acceleration of the “Shurmur-Ball” that I thought I’d have to wait until 2013 or 2014 to see.  How exciting!  Pat Shurmur was going to be auditioning for his own job; that would mean taking risks and being bold.  2012 was about to be the best year ever.

Then, his rookie quarterback screwed him and his defense; Browns lose to Philadelphia by 1.  You could question his decision to not go for two early in the fourth quarter, by hey man, Pat knows best.

Then, his secondary screws him, but let’s blame that on his suspended super-duper-star cornerback’s suspension.  But, the offense was clicking, where are all of the doubters who doubted this offensive guru?  Dick Jauron’s defense is out there making Shurmur’s team look bad; totally not Shurmur’s fault that his defense loses a 34-27 game.

Then, Buffalo comes to town in Week 3, and take a 14-0 lead before the Browns get a water break, but the Bills offense features CJ Spiller and he’s really good.  It doesn’t matter that Spiller touched the ball just six times before leaving with a first half injury; Tashard Choice is basically the same player.  The Browns would have countered with Trent Richardson, but were only able to get him 12 carries.  Let’s put that on the offensive coordinator, even though he doesn’t call the plays.

Let’s not even talk about the games in Baltimore or New Jersey, the bar is too low to have any expectation there.  Those teams are good, and the Shurmur has had only one off-season.  That’s right, in full-apologist mode, I’m back to blaming the lockout in Shurmur’s second first year.  So what if he looks lost in critical situations, and can’t handle the brutal Cleveland media?  The Bengals are coming to town and 11-5 starts right there.

Of course, the second coming of Lombardi takes the BATTLE OF OHIO, and everyone is on-board.  Brandon Weeden is great, the defense is positively spectacular, and the Browns are out of their rut.  He’s going to show his stuff now.  Pat is going to beat the Colts at their place, and come home to dismantle the incompetent Chargers, steal one from Baltimore, and enter the bye week with his eye on winning the AFC North.  Well, a funny thing happened on the way to 11-5.

He didn’t know his personnel; he tried playing a very injured Trent Richardson.  He took chances when he didn’t have to, then got passive in crunch-time.  His body language indicates fear, not confidence.  Sadly, it has the entire time; I was just hoping it wasn’t the real truth.  Now, it’s only a matter of time before he’s gone and we get to doubt the next guy.  And, that time can’t come soon enough.  Every minute these players are led by Pat Shurmur is detrimental to their future.

Of course, Pat Shurmur doesn’t know me, but he’d be saddened to know that he lost one of his bigger supporters.  He is no longer the beneficiary of my doubt.  I can no longer turn the other cheek with regards to his lack of leadership, and wonder if he’s trying to be this awful  Yeah, that the ticket; this is his idea of a joke.  It has to be.  I can’t even make excuses any more, not even in jest.

I absolutely yearn for the end of the once promising Shurmur Dynasty; not tomorrow, not after breakfast, but right now.  Enough of this nonsense, where’s the Tylenol?