Wednesday, June 17, 2009
By STEVE DOERSCHUK
BEREA — Once upon a time in Berea, Phil Savage and Eric Mangini squeezed into the kind of offices young underlings live with.
Bill Belichick was their boss. Mangini’s office happened to be just down the hall from Jim Brown’s.
The world has turned quite a bit for Savage, Mangini and Belichick.
Not so much for Brown. He still has an office in Berea, not far from the captain’s chair now commanded by Mangini.
Jim Brown is still Jim Brown. He never stopped being a dynamo from the past with a deep voice in the present.
As things have evolved, many new Browns are ultra-sensitive about saying anything that might get them in trouble with Mangini.
Brown isn’t one of them. It was more than brown-nosing when he heaped praise on the new head coach at the end of minicamp.
“I see a man that runs the show,” Brown said. “What you have is a man with a plan, and it’s about football.”
The Savage-Romeo Crennel relationship cracked early on. The expanding canyon between them showed up in last year’s 4-12 finish.
Savage the general manager had more power than Crennel the head coach.
“When you understand the concept of team — and football is a team sport — then you get certain kind of result,” Brown said. “But when you’re allowing individuality to take over your organization ...
“You can’t have one or two guys with more influence than the coach.’
Two guys? Brown declined to use names, but he did answer a question about the difference between the last regime and the new one.
“You’ve got one boss,” Brown said, “and you know who he is. And the boss knows what he’s doing.
“He’s emphasizing intelligence and understanding more than just ‘your job.’ Those are all the things we did with the ’64 team.”
Brown was the biggest name on the 1964 Browns team that beat the Baltimore Colts, 27-0, in the NFL title game that still stands as Cleveland’s last pro sports championship.
Brown said a theme of mutual respect pervaded. Players’ opinions counted with the brass.
“We didn’t make the kind of mistakes you make when you don’t know what you’re doing,” Brown said.
It remains to be seen if Mangini knows how to extract the Browns from a six-year funk. Brown likes that Mangini is bringing in the players he wants, in consort with general manager George Kokinis, rather than accepting what the GM insists is best.
“Toughness comes from being confident in what you’re doing and having players with that attitude,” Brown said. “So, if Mangini goes and gets the players he wants, you may not understand it, but he understands it.
“I can see it just looking at certain drills.”
Brown loves a tackling drill that simulates full-speed collisions. It promises to produce some of the juicier moments of training camp, when full contact will be allowed.
“A tackling drill exposes you,” Brown said. “That requires a mental toughness you’ve got to deal with.”
Brown has been a top adviser to team owner Randy Lerner in recent years. Savage seemed to feel an uneasy tension as he coexisted with the Hall of Fame running back. It was harder to gauge Crennel’s thoughts about Brown.
Mangini, on the other hand, wasn’t hard to read Saturday. He beamed when asked about Brown.
“I’m a pretty giant fan of Jim Brown,” Mangini said. “When he spoke to the rookies [at a minicamp] ... it was powerful.
“I’ve known him for a while. I’ve respected him forever.”