Commentary: Bad News Browns still searching for next head coach

Enough with all this nonsense already. Who should the Browns hire as their next coach? I would go with the next guy who walks through that door, and if he's no good, I would take the guy after that. I mean, come on, already! It's not like the Browns are hiring an astronaut. Find a guy with a sense of humor, and lots of experience handling a nine-man quarterback room, and make it happen. It's not like the Browns are booking rooms for next year's Super Bowl. All they really need is a coach and two or three assistant coaches who enjoy a well-placed guffaw, then load up the team busses and get ready to start enjoying those breakfasts at the Greenbrier. If that doesn't work, give Mike Tomlin an offer he can't refuse. The Haslams are good at that. The last time I checked, there were multiple NFL teams who were still trying to find a head coach worth hiring and firing. That's not counting Hue Jackson. On the other hand, if the Browns play their cards right, not having an employable head coach in their building — come and get them, folks, they aren't going to last forever! — is a strategy the strategy-challenged Browns should probably consider. I mean, what is the worst that could happen? The Browns only win three games next year? Let's face it, at this point, the Browns are playing with house money, or, at least, with Haslam money. That's good news for Browns fans because when it comes time to hire a new coach, there is no such thing as "bad money." Bad coaches? Yes. There is no such thing as bad money. Browns fans know that! In fact, I think I remember, not that long ago, a quote from Deshaun Watson that went something like this: "Money talks!" If Watson doesn't know it, nobody knows it. Unfortunately, this is a bad time for a bad football team to be looking for a good coach, because all the good coaches will soon be taken, and all the out-of-work coaches will be out of work. The Browns know this, because in recent years — and distant years, for that matter — they have only had two of their coaches win the NFL Coach of the Year Award, and those two coaches are one coach: Kevin Stefanski. Anybody remember him? Finding a really good coach is harder than it looks. Especially for the team in need of a coach. As Vince Lombardi once said, "I don't grow on trees." It's been a few years since the Browns had to go looking for a coach, but they allegedly have gone looking for one now. Anybody seen them? Coach hunting can be an exhausting exercise because the teams with good coaches don't want to tell the teams with bad coaches (or no coaches at all) where all the good coaches hang out. Fortunately for the Bad News Browns, they currently don't have a bad coach. Unfortunately for the Browns, they also don't currently have a good coach. However, the good news for the bad teams with no coach is that the NFL season doesn't start for eight months or something like that. So all the teams with bad coaches still have some time before they start to freak out, because they not only are running out of time, but they are running out of out-of-work coaches. This is the time of the year when NFL coaches, both good and bad, start to get nervous because most of them attend the Super Bowl, which gives them an up-close chance to see how far away their teams are from the elite coaches and teams, while simultaneously learning how close they are to being the Browns. The Browns, as we know, are very far. Bring your binoculars. They are so far from it that they can't even see the outskirts of respectability. Bottom line: The Browns, for multiple reasons, picked a bad time to be a bad team, although they have been bad for so long they didn't have much choice. In today's NFL it's tough sledding for the teams who find it impossible to gain any traction. For whatever reason, bad NFL teams tend to stay bad longer than good teams tend to stay good. Then there are the Browns. These are tough times for bad NFL teams, and there seem to be more of them with each passing year. However, these can also be tough times for good NFL coaches, because there are only so many of those jobs out there. In the meantime, Jim Brown's former team is a mess. It starts at the top, it languishes in the middle, and below that it's unwatchable. As you may have noticed, the Browns, to the surprise of nobody, have not yet hired their next coach. Gee, I wonder why? Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com.