Romeo Crennel reportedly signed a two year extension yesterday that will pay him $4 million per season. This comes after Romeo led the Browns to a surprising 10-6 season that saw them miss the playoffs by about as little as a team can ever miss the playoffs. I have been Romeo’s biggest critic. In fact, I was so critical that I wrote on August 29th before the season even started that I wanted Romeo fired. Well, I have softened a little bit. Not much, but a little bit.
Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t understand why there is a need to extend a coach after his first decent season as head coach of a team that has been historically horrendous. Keep in mind, as much of a pleasant surprise as this season has been, the Browns still didn’t make the playoffs for the right to lose in the first round. To go out and extend a coach with one year of proof that he might be just OK seems a bit unnecessary. With this burden of proof, Marty Schottenheimer would still be coaching the Chargers. He made the playoffs and got fired.
Either way, let’s look at what did Romeo do this season. Here are the bullets that I could think of. Some are positive and some are negative.
- He refused to name a starting QB even though offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski reportedly wanted Derek Anderson from day 1.
- He eventually chose Charlie Frye who went out and shit the bed against the Steelers and was subsequently traded after game 1.
- Romeo kept the team together and wouldn’t let them quit on him.
- Romeo slightly improved his challenging of plays.
- Romeo finally gave up on his good buddy Ted Washington, who just became too old to play on the defensive line.
- Romeo finally strong-armed his defensive coordinator midway through the season and the defense started to improve in the last six games.
- Romeo stayed out of Rob Chudzinski’s way and let him reshape the offense.
Certainly there are a lot of positives there. There are also some lingering negatives which were typical of occurrences that have been happening since Romeo got the job in Cleveland. Romeo’s player loyalty is a fault sometimes like with Charlie Frye. He felt like because Charlie had the starting job last year that he deserved a shot to do it again this year. Meanwhile with his “flip a coin” philosophy he made it nearly impossible for an equally young Derek Anderson to hit any kind of comfort zone in the pre-season. At least if a young guy knows he is going to start from the beginning of the week, he can work on his focus. As we saw this season, the guys didn’t excel competing during each week to find out the night before the game who was going to start.
One of the big positives that I saw from Romeo Crennel this year is really like an anti-negative. He kept out of Rob Chudzinski’s way. But keep in mind, Crennel has been showing this behavior since he got to Cleveland too. He proved that as he let his buddy Maurice Carthon use pass blocking schemes on EVERY SINGLE OFFENSIVE PLAY INCLUDING RUNNING PLAYS. I know that the Mo Carthon stuff occurred the previous season, so I won’t go into it. I just want to make the point that he exhibited the same behavior toward the offense this year that he exhibited toward the offense when Carthon was here. So, in essence, Romeo is getting credit as a head coach because Phil Savage finally forced his hand in firing Carthon, bringing in Chudzinski, and then on top of that reshaped the offensive line over night.
I guess the bottom line is this. Romeo showed some improvements this season. He showed that he could be a leader of men. He showed that he could help this team overcome some adversity. He showed that he was willing to admit mistakes and occasionally step up and dig into more specific pieces of the game when the coordinator wasn’t getting it done. Much like the Browns who missed the playoffs this season, Romeo is far from a finished product. He hasn’t proven that he can take the team to the playoffs. And this is why I really don’t understand why there was such an imperative to get a deal done with Romeo. He had two more years left on his deal. Would it have been too much to ask that he show one more year of improvement with this team before they decide to extend his deal?
Other NFL Notes:
As I was reading about Romeo’s extension it occurred to me just how much bigger football has become than baseball. Remember during the playoffs and the World Series when news about A-Rod opting out of his deal hit the wire? The baseball viewing public and the league insiders lost their shit. “How DARE you make news during the sport’s biggest games?” They wondered, “How could you be so selfish as to distract from the game’s biggest moment of the season with your news about your contract?” And to A-Rod’s credit, he was contrite about the timing of this leaked information.
Fast forward to pre-Super Bowl week and nobody is critical that an NFL team would make a personnel movement. Nobody would care if LaDainian Tomlinson came out and endorsed a new video game on press row in the days leading up to “The Big Game.” That is how it should be. Don’t tell people not to do things with their personnel during the World Series because it is a distraction. If A-Rod’s deal can become a distraction away from the World Series then Bud Selig and company aren’t doing enough to make the World Series a big enough deal. That’s why the NFL doesn’t care that the Browns extended Romeo Crennel in the pre-Super Bowl week. NOBODY can distract people away from watching the Super Bowl. Major League Baseball WISHES it could say the same thing about their World Series.
