What if Mike Holmgren had been the coach to launch Browns’ enlargement period?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We are marking the 80th birthday of the Cleveland Browns with tales that define the franchise. Articles proceed by the 2026 season. This first package of stories focuses on the return of the Browns in 1999. This is the third of 4 tales on the crew’s return.

Maybe Timmy might have been no less than a bit of like Tommy.

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Not the GOAT, after all, not a quarterback who was Super Bowl MVP in his good years and a mere 12-4 in his dangerous ones. A Tom Brady comes alongside as sometimes as an Otto Graham.

But possibly Tim Couch might have been the least of what’s needed from a No. 1 total draft choose, a QB round whom a gentle playoff contender is constructed. Bruce Arians, who referred to as Couch “Timmy” when he was Cleveland‘s offensive coordinator, thought so.

Maybe Timmy might have been Bernie with an extended shelf life.

The Browns have been 39-23-1 in Bernie Kosar’s first 5 seasons, making the playoffs in every of them. Had the enlargement period begun with an skilled head coach, maybe Couch might have grow to be a Kosar.

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Carmen Policy hoped he had the coach, Mike Holmgren, to develop a quarterback.

Policy and Holmgren labored collectively in San Francisco when the 49ers gained Super Bowls capping the 1988 and 1989 seasons. Holmgren’s work as a 49ers assistant bought him the top teaching job in Green Bay, the place he went to Super Bowls capping the 1997 and 1998 campaigns.

Holmgren’s observe file, contacts, bodily presence and wit appeared fitted to his subsequent objective, being a head coach with closing say on selecting gamers. In Green Bay, General Manager Ron Wolf exercised closing say.

Holmgren’s accoutrements have been excellent for cooking up a QB. He had been …

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A star highschool QB … a 6-foot-5, 245-pound passer at USC … Steve Young’s school place coach … Joe Montana’s offensive coordinator … the top coach who took Brett Favre from undertaking to legend.

Holmgren’s want to depart the Packers coincided with the brand new Cleveland crew’s seek for a head coach. Having left the 49ers, Policy was the Browns’ level man.

Holmgren and Policy spent the Nineteen Nineties crossing paths.

Policy’s 49ers gained the Super Bowl capping the 1994 season, then misplaced to Holmgren’s Packers within the subsequent three postseasons.

Holmgren gained the Super Bowl capping the 1996 season, however Wolf regarded dropping within the following 12 months’s Super Bowl as an unacceptable failure. Holmgren bought the Packers again to the 1998 playoffs, however once they fell to the 49ers within the first spherical, he and Wolf agreed to separate.

Policy needed Holmgren. Policy says the league advised him to again off, though Wolf was completely prepared to let Holmgren out of the remaining 12 months of his Packers contract.

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Wolf and Policy had their very own historical past. In 1992, Policy was behind Wolf and the Packers having to fork over a second-round choose in trade for releasing Holmgren from his 49ers offensive coordinator contract.

Now it was 1999, however Cleveland was blocked from pursuing Holmgren. Seattle was not. The Packers agreed to launch Holmgren to Seattle for that acquainted value of a second-round choose.

“Mike would have come to Cleveland,” Policy mentioned this 12 months in an interview with The Repository. “They would not allow us to rent him. Mike needed to return. We have been going to let him deliver lots of people.

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“Al Lerner and I each bought fined by the league for tampering, simply from public statements we have been making, kidding round when the press would ask me about Mike.

“But the reality of the matter is, they mentioned, ‘You’re not allowed to rent him.’ How’s that? Think of that.

“Mike went to Seattle. They could not cease that. It was ‘we, the Browns,’ who weren’t allowed to rent him.”

Unfair?

“I assumed it was,” Policy mentioned, “as a result of they have been making it up as we went alongside.”

Policy, retired in California wine nation, mentioned his pitch to Holmgren was the problem of taking a program from floor zero to the heights.

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“We advised Mike, ‘This is your Bill Walsh second,'” Policy mentioned.

The 49ers languished earlier than hiring Walsh. With him, they gained three Super Bowls. Walsh gave Holmgren his first NFL assistant teaching job.

In a 2010 interview, Holmgren mentioned, “I realized my commerce underneath Bill, who bought credit score for the West Coast offense, however truly, in the event you requested Bill about it, it was Paul Brown (who invented it).”

Brown constructed a dynasty in Cleveland and later landed in Cincinnati, the place Walsh was considered one of his assistants.

“We advised Mike, ‘C’mon in right here to the Browns,'” Policy mentioned. “You’ve bought an proprietor who’s prepared to provide you what you want. I’ve expertise on this. I’ve seen it, and also you’re able to this, and I’m going to work with you. I will not sleep at night time. And Al can be there to assist us each step of the best way.'”

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Seahawks proprietor Paul Allen signed Holmgren to an eight-year, $32 million deal that was the richest in NFL teaching historical past on the time. Holmgren and his household fell in love with the Pacific Northwest.

Would Holmgren actually have come to Cleveland? He actually did, 11 years later.

Holmgren plugged away in Seattle for 10 seasons, getting the Seahawks to 5 straight postseasons, together with their first Super Bowl in 2005. He left after the 2008 season, burned out from 17 straight years of NFL head teaching. He did not work throughout the 2009 season.

By then Randy Lerner had owned the Browns for some time. Al Lerner fell in poor health with most cancers and died on Oct. 23, 2002, leaving son Randy to function the crew.

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After head coaches Butch Davis (2001-04) and Romeo Crennel (2005-08) did not work out, Randy Lerner hoped Eric Mangini, newly fired by the Jets, can be his Belichick, a brainiac who would take off in a second probability.

Mangini spun his wheels In Cleveland. When his 2009 Browns fell to 1-7 with a grim outing at Chicago, Lerner fired Mangini’s hand-picked common supervisor, George Kokinis, declaring a necessity for “a reputable soccer authority.”

Lerner flew to Green Bay to hunt Wolf’s recommendation on who that is perhaps. This is from a 2010 Canton Repository interview with Lerner:

“Ron Wolf regarded me proper within the eye and mentioned, ‘Randy, pay attention, one of the best man to return in and lead the Cleveland Browns, flip the Browns round, is Mike Holmgren … if you will get him.'”

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Lerner persuaded Holmgren to check the Browns in December 2009. Holmgren signed on as Browns president in January 2010. Aside from cash, the phrases of the deal mainly have been, “What Mike says, goes.”

Holmgren retained Mangini, primarily based on a 4-0 ending streak that introduced the 2009 file to 5-11. By October of 2010, Mangini was 1-5, and one other 12 months was over earlier than it started.

Holmgren changed Mangini with Pat Shurmur in 2011, however when that changed into a 4-12 12 months, Lerner felt misplaced. His initially fashionable “credible authority” wasn’t setting any information.

Lerner bought the crew to Jimmy Haslam in the summertime of 2012, disappeared, and has not spoken in public since.

Holmgren requested Haslam about staying. Haslam’s imaginative and prescient did not embrace the earlier proprietor’s 64-year-old president. The Holmgrens have been gone from their home on Lake Erie by December.

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The time to get Holmgren would have been 1999, when he turned 51 and was within the prime of a head teaching profession that finally bought to 174 wins. That consists of 13 postseason victories, seventh all-time behind Belichick, Andy Reid, Tom Landry, Don Shula, Joe Gibbs and Chuck Noll.

Policy insists he tried.

“We advised Mike, ‘The individuals in Ohio love soccer.’ And do not forget, Mike was in Green Bay. It’s not like he wanted the brilliant lights of New York or L.A.”

In retrospect, not discovering a solution to Holmgren in ’99 appears unlucky for the Browns and maybe for Holmgren, who can be a Cleveland legend if he had gotten the crew rolling as a head coach. Instead, he had an excellent however not nice run in Seattle (86-74 regular-season file) previous to changing into a Cleveland crew president whose Browns have been 9-23 (14-34 in the event you rely the 12 months Haslam arrived and confirmed him the door).

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The enlargement period bought off to a tough begin and by no means has taken off. The unique Browns, who performed for 50 seasons spanning 1946-95, compiled a regular-season file of 421-270-13. The Browns who got here again in 1999 went 146-290-1 of their first 27 seasons. They’re 0-1 to start out their twenty eighth season again.

The start-up was going to be laborious for whomever was the top coach.

“They turned this factor over too late,” Policy mentioned. “It was past an uphill climb.

“Al and I made a visit to New York to attempt to get the league to postpone our first season from ’99 to 2000, however the league simply could not, though they sympathized with us.”

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There had been an opportunity Cleveland would land an present franchise. Doing so might need supplied game-changing benefits that confirmed up elsewhere.

• The Baltimore Ravens have been 16-31-1 of their first three years after leaving Cleveland, however they went .500 crew of their fourth 12 months and gained a Super Bowl of their fifth.

• The Houston Oilers bottomed out at 2-14 in 1994 and relocated in 1997. As the Tennessee Titans, they went 13-3 in each 1999 and 2000.

• The Rams have been 42-111-1 of their final 9 years in St. Louis. In their third season after a 2016 transfer to Los Angeles, they went 13-3, en path to a Super Bowl.

Moving a crew to Cleveland, although, would have entailed stealing one other metropolis’s treasure. Thirty years after the actual fact, loads of Browns followers nonetheless consider the Ravens because the Ratbirds.

Plus, no person knew when another person’s crew would grow to be out there.

“They have been permitting Cleveland for use as a instrument for different golf equipment that needed new stadiums,” Policy mentioned.

Such issues have been solved by awarding Cleveland an enlargement crew. The value to Al Lerner, apart from the $530 million league payment, was having to start out from scratch, at 100 mph, with an unknown head coach.

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NEXT: Unable to land Holmgren in 1999, Policy thought the Browns have been taking off underneath Butch Davis in 2001. Rather a lot occurred between then and Holmgren arriving as crew president.

Reach Steve at [email protected]

This article initially appeared on The Repository: What if Mike Holmgren had been the coach to launch Browns’ expansion era?