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Home > Blogs > Dawging the Browns > Archives > 2009 > October > 29
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Savage comes out of hiding
Phil Savage apparently just couldn’t take it anymore.
And so the fired general manager of your favorite football team dropped a few morsels on his hometown boys about the sorry state of that football team and how most of the good work he did for four years has been driven asunder by the latest bunch to take up residence in the Berea facility.
In so many words, Savage (who might have violated the terms of the separation agreement that stood to pay him the $12 million remaining on his contract) told a Mobile, Ala., newspaper on Wednesday that the current regime has destroyed not one, but two, quarterbacks and that he takes no pleasure in watching the organization circle the drain.
Savage reportedly said, “You don’t take a lot of solace in watching a place you leave go downhill further. But they took what we did have going there and they just dismantled that even further.
“We left two quarterbacks behind that both seem ruined right now. They traded a lot of players out of there. I feel for the guys we brought in because they’re good players and good people and they’re stuck in a situation and can’t get out for at least the time being.”
Didn’t always agree with everything he did, but Savage does have a point here, I think. What he’s really saying is, “Why did you fire me instead of letting me make a coaching change, continue to build the organization and see where that leads us?”
Looking back, that’s probably what should have happened. Savage never actually got to pick his own head coach, if you’ll recall. Romeo Crennel, while hired a month later, essentially was forced on him by owner Randy Lerner, who desperately grasped for any limb of the Bill Belichick coaching tree he could get his hands on.
Savage, of course, had enough of his own lapses in judgment to bring his competence into question. Using profanily while trading e-mail barbs with a fan was probably the last straw. But when you consider he also put together a team in 2007 that came within a few intercepted Derek Anderson passes of going to the playoffs, maybe he should have been looked upon more as part of the solution than the problem.
A savvy owner might have been able to separate the coach from the general manager and make a better decision, because what’s currently in place obviously isn’t working.
Granted, some of the criticism of Eric Mangini has been over the top. Even a guy writing in Rolling Stone got into the act, calling him the “Hurricane Andrew of football mismanagement.” Then there’s the Akron columnist, who used to work for the Browns, calling for Mangini’s dismissal already.
The last thing this team needs is yet another change in direction. Unless, of course, it involves a new owner.
