Your Favorite Team President Sucks: Mike Holmgren

It’s like Martin Mull gained a few pounds and made a million bad football decisions

When I started this feature a little under a year ago, I never thought I’d be covering more than the 32 teams in the NFL. It was supposed to just focus on whatever team sucked the most that week. But then I started realizing that there were several different players and coaches who sucked significantly enough to get attention. Even as it grew, though, I never thought I would ever have an article titled “Your Favorite Team President Sucks.”

Good for you, Mike Holmgren, you’re a trendsetter!

Holmgren, the vaunted Super Bowl Coach, is certainly a trendsetter in sucking. His track record in Cleveland has been impressive, if we’re using the word “impressive” to mean “disgustingly bad.”

Holmgren sucks because, for the most part, the Team President is supposed to be a figurehead who is largely not responsible for football operations. Quick, name me 5 team presidents without the aid of google. It’s okay, I can’t either. But with Holmgren, former owner Randy Lerner was so excited that he was getting a credible guy that he handed the keys to him and started making plans to sell the team.

Holmgren has always been good as a coach. He has fostered a good relationship with his quarterbacks, and that is what has led him to most of his success. The problem is, and this is something several people in the sports world fail to recognize, just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’re good at another, even if they are in the same job field. The dude who makes you those awesome crepes probably can’t grill a steak to save his life. Michael Jordan is the GOAT, but he’s a shit GM and owner. Holmgren was a good coach, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to build a team.

And if the Browns are any indication, he really doesn’t know how to build a team.

It may not all be his fault – the Browns haven’t had more than 5 wins in a season since 2007 – but the adjustments he is making don’t seem to be helping the team much. When Mangini failed to turn the Browns around, Holmgren canned him and brought in Pat Shurmur, which is the equivalent of throwing a half-eaten cheeseburger away, then noticing there’s a piece of moldy pizza in the dumpster and fishing that out instead.

Holmgren’s drafts with Cleveland haven’t done anything to correct this winless problem. Joe Haden has turned out to be a good player despite his apparent addiction to staying up late at night studying his playbook, cleaning his room, polishing his china, and rearranging the action figures on his shelf. But on the offensive side of the ball, the Browns have struggled to find anyone worth anything. And while it’s understandable to be impatient with your starting quarterback when he struggles, it isn’t understandable to replace Colt McCoy with 28 year old Brandon Weeden.

This is why Holmgren sucks the most. Because after coaching Favre, after leading Hasselbeck to a Super Bowl, he apparently looked at his draft board, looked at film footage of a guy who ran a video game offense in Oklahoma State, then looked at his own quarterback and said, “Yeah, fuck our guy, that’s the guy we want.”

Hey, Cleveland, that’s your quarterback! Feeling alcoholic yet?

And that’s AFTER Cleveland traded away the rest of their draft to move up on spot to get Trent Richardson. I thought the whole point of hiring Holmgren was his credibility. It seems like with every year he resides over the Browns, he is losing it bit by bit.

Pat Shurmur probably won’t last much longer as coach, and if Weeden continues to struggle and the Browns get a top 5 pick, he probably won’t last much longer as quarterback. The question is how much longer will they replace personnel pieces before they decide to replace the person making all the decisions. And if they’re smart, the answer is “PRETTY FUCKING SOON.”