Behold - the Wisdom of the Mangenius!

I've been steering the "fire Eric Mangini" bandwagon weeks before the NFL season even started; I secretly hoped I would be wrong, but I haven't been (and when Lyrad predicted the Browns would go 5-11, I said he was dreaming, and 3-13 was likely, and I might have overestimated the Browns). The season has quickly become a weird kind of sports-depression I've never experienced before. It's not that I'm down, or even despondent - those conditions would have required some sense of expectation of some success coming into this year, and I really had no expectations of any successes. Still, the speed at which Mangini has absolutely destroyed this team is mind-numbing. I didn't think they'd be good for at least 3-4 years coming into this season, but seeing the wrecking ball that is the "Mangenius," I don't think they'll recover for at least 5 years after Mangini's gone, and while it would be nice if that happened this offseason, it may not. Cleveland fans are used to "waiting for next year," and even when "next year" wasn't too likely (as with the Indians for 2010), at least you could hope they were building something good. But there's none of that here. Mangini isn't driving the team off a cliff - the stagecoach went over the cliff 10 miles back, and we're somehow still falling.

I'd take joy in my accuracy on the disaster of Mangini, but I don't - they're just terrible, and he makes some of the worst decisions I've ever seen in any professional sport and carries himself in one of the most appalling ways of any coach I've ever seen on any team. But I don't need to cite any examples - the snark over at this post at Waiting for Next Year hits it perfectly:

Once again, not only does [Mangini] leave the media guessing, but his two QB’s didn’t even know which way he was going. Brady Quinn, when asked if he was knew what his status for Monday Night, told the media he had “no idea.” Mangini claimed he would tell everyone Wednesday (today) what his plans are. “I haven’t sat down with the quarterbacks about it yet, so that’s part of it. We’ll talk about that in conjunction with our work on the Ravens.”

That’s exactly the way to run your team. Keep the QB’s in the dark when you had a bye week to prepare your chosen guy.

*Sigh*.....there's just nothing to hope for here, save for the removal of Mangini, and even when he's gone, it's going to take years to overcome the damage. I'd hope that the Cavs could keep LeBron, but fortunately, I'm a Cleveland sports fan. We had the audacity of hope mercilessly beaten out of us years ago.