Yesterday morning the Cleveland Browns made my day right off the bat. One of the first things I heard was that they had hired Rob Chudzinski as their new head coach. All the talk in the past month has been that the Browns were going to go for a big fish. I remember talking to Quinn Maddux a couple months ago and he said “Nick Saban to the Browns” My first reaction was he was crazy. Nick Saban isn’t going to leave Alabama for Cleveland? The more I thought about it and well money talks. If new Browns owner Jimmy Haslam would make him some outragious offer-maybe he would take it. Stranger things have happened. I do not know if there was ever any contact at all with Saban. They interviewed Oregon’s Chip Kelly but he didn’t  want the job. Would they give Bill Cowher a call? Would they get in touch with the Ghost of Vince Lombardi? The talk was Haslam didn’t buy the Browns for a billion dollars to have Pat Shurmur as his head coach. It turns out he paid a billion dollars to have Rob Chudzinski to be his head coach.

The last time I laughed this hard was when the Browns made senior-citizen Casey Weldon a first round pick in the 2012 draft. Word is the Browns are already about to scrap the idea of Weldon as the answer at QB.

As a Steelers fan I am hoping I am right about Jimmy Haslam. I am thinking he might not really want a Nick Saban. If you hire a Nick Saban or a Kelly they would want some control. Saban wasn’t coming to Cleveland just to be head coach. I am hoping Jimmy Haslam bought the Browns for a billion dollars and he views it as his toy. That he isn’t just going to hire football people to run the operation but that he will meddle in things. That he is going to made some football related decisions and not just sign pay checks. Kind of like a Jerry Jones or the Snyder boy in Washington.

To be fair to Rob Chudzinski you never know. Maybe he will do a great job and turn the Browns around. Maybe this is the start of a Thousand Year Reich in Cleveland. But my guess is in 3 or 4 years the Clowns will be searching for a new head coach. It will be interesting to watch. If I were a Browns fan I wouldn’t be too happy today. I don’t think Rob Chudzinski was what anyone was expecting. When you go to bed with thoughts of Nick Saban in your head, waking up to Rod Chudzinski seems like getting a lump of coal for Christmas.