THURSDAY: Haslam denied paying Jackson to lose games, saying during an appearance on Knox News the current Grambling State HC has lobbed salvos at the Browns to cover up his poor performance as a head coach. While Jackson was saddled with terrible rosters in 2016 and ’17, Haslam pointed to the 2018 season — when the Browns finished 5-3 after starting 2-5-1 before Jackson’s ouster — as evidence Jackson deserves more of the responsibility than he has accepted for the failures of that period. The former Cleveland coach’s claims center on the 2016 and ’17 slates, though Haslam said “unequivocally, Hue Jackson was never paid to lose games.”
WEDNESDAY: Former Browns head coach Hue Jackson plans to speak with Brian Flores‘ attorneys about the latter’s class-action lawsuit against the NFL, Charles Robinson of Yahoo.com reports. While Flores named the Dolphins, Giants and Broncos in his suit, the Browns would come to the forefront if Jackson signs on as a plaintiff.
The former Cleveland HC has expressed a willingness to reveal proof Browns owner Jimmy Haslam incentivized tanking during the 2016 and ’17 seasons, Robinson adds. The executive director of the Hue Jackson Foundation, Kimberly Diemert, accused the Browns of paying bonus money to Jackson, current GM Andrew Berry, current chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta and former executive VP Sashi Brown to tank during those seasons (Twitter link).
Jackson has replied to several tweets on this matter as well. In a tweet Tuesday night, Jackson said, “I stand with Brian Flores. I can back up every word I’m saying.” While the Browns were attempting a radical rebuild during those seasons, ones that pitted Jackson against a new-age front office, the team strongly denied Diemert’s allegation. Jackson is currently the head coach at Grambling State, which hired him in December.
“The recent comments by Hue Jackson and his representatives relating to his tenure as our head coach are completely fabricated,” a Browns spokesperson said, via Robinson. “Any accusation that any member of our organization was incentivized to deliberately lose games is categorically false.”
In a separate Twitter reply, Jackson made another claim the Browns were incentivizing losses, saying, “Trust me it was a good number” when asked about the Dolphins’ alleged $100K payments to Flores. The Browns, who hired John Dorsey as GM late in 2017, fired Jackson midway through the 2018 season. Jackson went 3-36-1 in Cleveland. This tenure included the league’s second 0-16 season in 2017.
“We were paid for it. You’re going to see it as losing, but the way the team was built there was no chance to win at a high level,” Jackson said when asked about being incentivized to tank during a SportsCenter appearance on Wednesday (via ESPN.com’s Jake Trotter, on Twitter). “My record that year [2016] was 1-15. There was a four-year plan that was crafted, and I have documentation that any coach would cringe if he saw it, because it talked things that had nothing to do with winning. Aggregate rankings, being the youngest team, having so many draft picks — none of those things lead to winning.
“I didn’t understand what the plan was. I asked for clarity because it did not talk about winning and losing until Year 3 and 4. That told you right there that something wasn’t correct, but I still couldn’t understand it until [seeing] the team that I had. And once being in the midst of it and finding out the team that I had and understanding that, ‘Wait a minute. At the end of the year there’s money coming in?’ Like I said, I didn’t understand it, here’s this money and percentages based on what you did, that didn’t make any sense to me.
“I remember very candidly saying to Jimmy, ‘I’m not interested in this bonus money,’ because I’ve never known that to be a bonus. I was interested in taking whatever money that was and putting it toward getting more players on our football team, because I didn’t think we were very talented at all.”
Fielding a team bad enough to go 1-31 in a two-year stretch and offering payments to a coach and execs for losses are obviously two different things. The latter accusations levied against the Dolphins and Browns being proven would certainly double as one of the biggest scandals in NFL history. Having not been an NFL coach since 2018, Jackson also has less to lose than Flores, who interviewed for four HC jobs during this year’s cycle. Attorneys for Flores anticipate other coaches joining the since-fired Dolphins HC’s litigation, Robinson adds.
The Mets are even smeared in football with former execs. Ugh…
Browns and Dolphins should lose their 1st round pick for 3 years and revenue share reduced by 50%.
Show proof 1st.
If the Browns incentivized tanking, Hue must be the richest man on earth.
for what, being lied about. browns fan here, HUE couldn’t coach girls golf.
Why? They tanked. It was a strategy to build for the future. Don’t understand why everyone is so devastated by this. It’s been going on for years. In several professional sports teams.
Link?
The NFL as another coach accuses an owner of incentivizing tanking: Can’t we talk about how racist we are instead?
If true, it merits the NFL forcing said owners to no longer be owners.
Except that that means forcing them to sell their teams…for INSANE profits. Not the biggest punishment.
Sure, tell us how much of a racist you are, as you stated.
A nobody trying to stay relevant.
Great pic of Hue, you get the whole clueless vibe without being able to see or hear the birds chirping inside that head.
If your going to make this statement it had better come with undeniable verification. Any person can lash out after being fired, divorced or emotionally compromised. BUT prove it! So if there are trails to clearly demonstrate these accusations people should be held accountable. If not, the empty mud slingers should equally be held accountable!
So, is he telling the truth or merely using the Miami fiasco to attempt to explain away his poor coaching ability?
Poor coaching ability? Who were his QBs? He was also coordinator of the year in like 2015.
Coordinators and head coaches are two different levels. Wade Phillips was an awesome DC, but horribly inept HC.
Good point, Buddy Ryan as well.
And Rex
If true, and as a Browns fan this is infuriating. This goes beyond anything Flores is saying this is something I feel should warrant the forced sale of the browns to ownership with competitive interests.
if you are a browns fan, as i am, you know those guys were trying, they didn’t tank a thing. HUE IS A LIAR !!!!!!!!
if anything the browns did constituted “tanking” it would be the hiring of Hue Jackson. Those players played very hard for that guy, which made you think (for a minute) that he was the right guy. But so many times he proved that he was awful as a coach. If this is true, then Haslem should be severely punished. But, Flores coming off of his Dolphins tenure is no comparison to Jackson. Flores was doing a good job and dealing with the rebuild. Jackson sucked no matter how much talent he had.
Nonetheless in gory, gutsy excavations reality stings
Everyone and their grandmother wants to believe in the sanctity of athletic contests but as time goes by, you can’t help but wonder. Add in sports books now sponsoring teams and the ideas of “tanking” for whatever reason, or shaving points, doesn’t seem so far fetched
Professional sports are not rigged….they are manipulated. Big difference.
Never mentioned the word “rigged” but since you bring up the idea of manipulation, I don’t see much difference where the purity of an athletic event is concerned. Maybe I’m from a different era or just a dreamer, but money corrupts everything
ah timing. this reeks of bandwagoning. so either Hue did lose on purpose or the team/his coaching sucked ao much that it didnt matter. none of these outcomes are good for Hue.
So when Hue goes 3-33 at Gramling State and is fired, will he say they paid him to lose games or will he realize that he is not a good head coach on any level.
Isn’t that why you hire a stiff like Hue Jackson to begin with….to lose?
Why would you need to incentive a coach that didn’t need to be incentivized to lose.
Good luck with that! Being offered a bonus check from a franchise that has profit sharing from all 32 teams isn’t very clear it was to TANK!
I hope Jackson has alot more than that? I mean make an accusation based on profit checks and your thought you need better players will fall just a little short! They went two years without a single win? Saying they needed more players was an obvious even to Jackson!
Notice that Jackson didn’t return checks he got from the Browns? So the now dirty money wasn’t so dirty when he cashed them?
I guess the tanking stopped after he left. Browns finished decently strong after he was fired and Mayfield set the Rookie record for touchdowns that was broken by Herbert last year
I don’t think you understand the concept of Tanking.
If both these coaches knew this then why did they stay with the teams? If they are that righteous, wouldn’t they have said something then and walked away? The timing is really convenient. Not saying there aren’t some things that need fixed in terms of minority hiring of head coaches but the tanking accusations are a little odd to me.
Haslam and Ross should be forced to sell their teams.Busted
Nope. You don’t have to like them but that’s guilty until proved I innocent.
Words $100,000 and LOSE in a professional game.If it was a player betting a 100 stacks on his team losing he would be sent to jail and disgraced worst then a NBA referee with a gambling habit because he’s a PLAYER.Guess what,OWNERS aren’t above going to jail.Racketeering is not a hand slapper.
Everyone involved is going down.Hue & Flores are a little late with the information to the NFL.Both eventually will end up in the NFL office working to make hiring more ethical and moral.This isn’t going away and it’s going to end very badly for everyone with any knowledge of a fix on NFL games.If I was a degenerate gambler and had the coach deciding plays.I would have the best guy inside to pull the greatest hussle sting ever in the history of sports bet fixing.Everyone is freaking toast
what !!!!!!!!!! these 2 jagoffs are going nowhere. they shot at the king and missed. you cannot make up stories like this and get anywhere. owners and coaches cannot throw games, it takes 22 players at a time and they cant find 22 that will work together to do that and if asked most would have already told of this. this is a fantasy by these two because they are mad. should they be upset there are not more black coaches in all sports… YES. but being a liar isn’t going to help the problem. wrong 2 guys trying to do the right thing.
There simply isn’t any logic to incentivizing losing in the NFL. Theoretically this would be done to create a situation that would allow a team to improve in the future. The problem is that all teams are part of an equal revenue sharing policy so it really makes no financial difference if a team improves or not.
Depends on the draft.
This year? No. Doesnt look like it.
Other years where theres consensus cornerstone players? Yeah ton of incentive to tank.
Teams that haven’t bothered drafting in the first round have actually found more success than “tanking” teams. The Patriots won the championship in 2016 and the Rams are favored to do so now.
Totally. You just already need HOF players on the roster like Tom Brady + Aaron Donald to build around. Totally doable for someone like Jags Texans. Its pretty simple.
Trading away picks for guys like Jalen Ramsey and Von Miller is the opposite of tanking.
Did the Browns tank? Some call it a rebuild. They traded or released anyone making much money for draft capital and had some carryover cap. Once they drafted Mayfield, they started surrounding him with a supporting cast. Landry, Beckham, Conklin, Hooper and others. I remember reading that they were tearing the team down to the bare studs. Baseball teams do this all the time. Jackson may not be a good head coach but he wasn’t exactly given a great roster either. His riff with Haley got both of them fired
Talk about throwing players under the bus! His players should counter and say we played our butts off but our team handed us a lousy coach who couldn’t teach a dog how to sit. Maybe that’s how Cleveland tanked not because of the players.
Obviously this is 100% true. They hired him as HC which is the biggest piece of evidence that the NFL needs, particularly when he states that “I didn’t understand it. I asked for clarity.” The guy is clueless and the only bigger than his ego is his inability to grasp reality. Another example of someone thinking they are more important than they really are. Hue, do yourself a favor and STFU.
The allegations coming out from Flores and Douglas look bad for the shield. The snap of the text Flores received from Bill adds the possibility of legitimacy of the allegations.
The fact bill is involved at all is reason to stop and question.
The only thing the texts show is that BB can’t pay attention to which Brian he is texting.
Uh it shows that the Giants treated the Rooney Rule as a sham
So nobody says anything until they are fired right? A team should interview the best candidates for their team and not because they have to do so to meet a rule. Hire the best person regardless to meet the team’s need.
Yeah but teams actively don’t hire the best people. Look at Jim Caldwell, he goes 36-28 in Detroit and gets canned. They haven’t won 18 games in total over 4-6 seasons (can’t remember the year exactly). Caldwell hasn’t got another shot despite fixing P Manning and M Stafford and Flacco in 2017.
bro really said he turned down bonuses for doing his job yea okay man
“Haslam denied paying Jackson to lose games, saying during an appearance on Knox News.”
“I never pay up even after I say I will…ask all those Pilot J customers still waiting for their rebates” is what he probably said after that.
But notice how he’s trying to PRETEND he’s denying what Hue Jackson accused him (Haslam) of doing by denying what Flores accused Ross of doing…
“…though Haslam said “unequivocally, Hue Jackson was never paid to lose games.””
Jackson never said he was paid to lose games. He explained a structure of incentives whose obvious purpose was to encourage the loss of games. And Haslam carefully avoided denying THAT.
So all these coaches are so virtuous they quit when told to tank, right? Right? Uh, you mean they didn’t quit? So, they either can’t coach or they took the money.
Hue admits to taking the money, Flores said he refused to tank when asked and won 5 games.
Jackson was a garbage coach and this is a desperate attempt to cash in while the getting’s good solely because of the color of his skin. Pass.
I am curious if anyone will ask Jeff Fisher about his time in St. Louis.
STFU
The Rooney rule has always been artificial. Token blacks were only interviewed to satisfy the rule. Everyone knows that.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s racist to treat all these African American coaches and former players like they can’t be good coaches.
Some coaches are winners, some are whiners. Hue Jackson is a whiner. I liked Flores until he revealed he was a whiner.
Flores had the Dolphins start out 1-7, when they had playoff aspirations. Maybe he is just a lousy coach.
Shut up Hue, no one could lose as many games and be that competent at losing even if they we’re getting paid..
Recently you have also walked this back some, take some accountability you’re known to avoid doing just that.
Where is the follow-up to this story? I’m not talking about the update, I mean the new story that reveals either Jackson or the reporter as liars. For him to make the claim that he was given bonus money to lose games, and then to recant that accusation and there not be a new story just shows how coward these media outlets are. Hue Jackson should be getting absolutely exposed for the fraud he is (if his failure as a head coach didn’t do that already).