When the Pittsburgh Steelers play the Cleveland Browns next season, they will have yet another head coach as the team announced Sunday night that Rob Chudzinski has been fired after just one season.
The Browns issued the following statement on their website:
“We appreciate Chud’s passion for the Browns, and we have great respect for him both personally and professionally. 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.
“Browns fans are the most loyal and passionate supporters in the NFL. We’re fully committed to bringing them the winning football team they deserve.”
The Browns finished the 2013 season with a 4-12 record after starting the season 3-2. They traded away running back Trent Richardson after getting off to an 0-2 start and wound up having to start Jason Campbell at quarterback for most of the season after Brandon Weeden was ineffective and Brian Hoyer was lost for the season with a knee injury.
While I find it hard to feel sorry for the Browns, I do feel sorry for Chudzinski as he was behind the eight ball right from the start. There is obviously more to this story, but for now, the Browns obviously felt that the team was moving in the wrong direction with the young head coach and that direction wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
As far as the rest of the Browns coaching staff goes, for now, they all still have jobs and that includes defensive coordinator Ray Horton, who just a few years ago was the Steelers defensive backs coach. Horton will more than likely be allowed to interview for the job, but odds are good that management already has someone else in mind. Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels is considered by many to be on the short list of people that the Browns want to talk to and I suspect Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien will be another name on that list.
