The
Cleveland Browns are starting over. Again.
NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Sunday that coach
Rob Chudzinski was fired after only one season with the team, according to a
Browns source. The firing happened Sunday night. The
Browns quickly confirmed the news.
"We appreciate Chud's passion for the
Browns, and we have great respect for him both personally and professionally," the team said in a statement. "We needed to see progress with this football team. We needed to see development and improvement as the season evolved and, unfortunately, we took a concerning step backward in the second half of the year.
"Our fans deserve to see a consistently competitive team. We have high standards, and there's an urgency for success. When we believed we were not positioned to achieve significant progress in 2014, we knew we had to admit that a change was needed, and move forward."
It's a move nobody saw coming as recently as a few days ago, when it was assumed that Chudzinski was part of a front-office plan to restore a sense of continuity to a franchise that has chewed through coaches like cotton candy since returning to the league in 1999.
Rapoport
reported, per a team source, that the
Browns are retaining their assistants for now, and will search for a head coach with them in place.
Rapoport was told earlier Sunday that team brass had soured on Chudzinski down the stretch because of a lack of effort and accountability on the part of his players. A seven-game losing streak, including a
20-7 loss to Pittsburgh on Sunday to cap a 4-12 season, didn't help.
Rapoport notes that the front office approached the coaching staff with issues late in the season, but the coaches did not acknowledge the problems. The
Browns coaches kept saying they were "close" but the team's performance continued to trend downward.
NFL Media's Albert Breer believes that Penn State's Bill O'Brien and
New England Patriots offensive coordinator
Josh McDaniels likely would top Cleveland's wish list as candidates to become the team's seventh head coach since '99.
The
Browns interviewed O'Brien last offseason, but the former
Patriots assistant has become a hot name since taking an interview with the
Houston Texans earlier this month. McDaniels worked his way out of a coaching job in Denver, but he comes from the
Bill Belichick coaching tree, like
Browns general manager Michael Lombardi.
"You look at the great franchises,"
Browns left tackle
Joe Thomas told the Akron Beacon Journal. "They
don't fire your coach after the first season. You can't do it."
We break down all the Week 17 games on the latest "Around The League Podcast."