Mangini excited about new team

The Browns coach says he’s happy to have Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert at his side.

BEREA (AP) — Browns coach Eric Mangini slipped into a chair behind the dais adorned with an orange helmet in Cleveland’s media room and noted the drastic changes.

He lost his wooden podium, the one he stood behind during a tough season. He found some friends.

Flanked by new team president Mike Holmgren and general manager Tom Heckert, and seated near business executive Bryan Wiedmeier, Mangini, who last week learned he would be back for a second season with the Browns, smiled and joked about his company.

“It’s pretty great to be up here with three other people answering questions,” said Mangini. “I can get used to this.”

Later, a relaxed Mangini made it clear that he wasn’t kidding.

“It wasn’t a joke,” he said in a back room following the news conference to introduce Heckert and Wiedmeier. “It’s nice to have other voices in the organization and to be able to share different perspectives. Everybody has different roles, and for them to be able to get clarity, I think that’s a good thing.

“This is a real fantastic situation for me personally and for us organizationally.”

Last year, Mangini had little help.

He now has a team.

In bringing in the respected Heckert, Philadelphia’s GM since 2006, Holmgren has given Mangini a qualified executive to add players and continue to build the Browns, who finished the season on a four-game winning streak.

While assessing Mangini’s performance last season, Holmgren concluded that Mangini had been “thrust” into a situation where he had too many responsibilities. Holmgren would know. He served four years as both Seattle’s GM and coach and found parallels in what he experienced to what Mangini went through.

Holmgren believes a coach should coach, so he reconfigured Cleveland’s front office to ease Mangini’s load.

“Are you are a better coach when you just coach and don’t worry about all that stuff?” Holmgren said. “You certainly have more time. And your focus should be better on coaching. But it’s not like all of a sudden we’re here and Tom’s here and all Eric has to do is doodle Xs and Os.

“He’s going to be very involved in the player decisions. Now, does he have to worry quite as much? No. I’m going to take some of the worry and some of the anxiousness away from him.”