Holmgren is ‘Mr. Browns’ all the time

By TONY GROSSI

The Plain Dealer

ORLANDO, Fla.

In the Browns headquarters, people still refer to Mike Holmgren as coach. But at his first NFL annual league meetings, Holmgren is acting as club owner.

Indeed, the gamut of Holmgren’s responsibilities as team president stretches farther and wider than any club executive in the NFL.

One day Holmgren is working out Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. The next he is conducting budget meetings within the Browns organization. A day later, he is listening in on the NFL’s top secret strategies on labor and future growth of the sport.

“He’s the reincarnation of Paul Brown and George Halas, only doing it in the 21st century,” said noted sports consultant Marc Ganis. “He’s doing everything those guys did.”

Owner Randy Lerner is not even here. He has entrusted Holmgren with representing the views of the Browns on all league matters. If there were a vote on locking out players for the 2011 season — there won’t be one here — Holmgren would cast it.

When the meeting agenda calls for an “executive session,” meaning one person per club, to discuss the most sensitive of topics, Holmgren occupies the chair reserved for the Browns.

“Let me tell you, that stuff is interesting ... very interesting,” Holmgren said Monday after sitting in on his first session.

When Lerner set out to hire a “serious, credible leader” for the organization in November, he cited the model established by Bill Parcells with the Dolphins. Parcells, a Super Bowl-winning coach, brought instant credibility to a franchise that had descended into a 1-15 disaster. But Holmgren’s duties go well beyond those of Parcells’.

Parcells doesn’t attend the league meetings, doesn’t concern himself with the business operation. Parcells immersed himself in changing the culture inside the Dolphins on the football end only. He hired the general manager, the coach, the coordinators, and wrote the manual on the kind of players he wants to bring in.

In Cleveland, Holmgren hired Bryan Wiedmeier, formerly of the Dolphins, coincidentally, to revamp the Browns’ business operations from top to bottom. He hired general manager Tom Heckert to do the same to football operations.

“I’m kind of doing it in stages,” Holmgren said. “We had budget meetings all [last] week. I never had that before as a coach. Being fiscally responsible — coaches don’t care about that — but now that’s part of my job. So I have to try and make decisions along those lines, too.

“It’s kind of interesting to me. It’s new. But I’m going a million miles an hour, but I think after the owners meeting then I can dive into football a little bit.”

Holmgren prepped for the league meetings with a one-day visit with Wiedmeier at NFL headquarters in New York. He also attended a special league meeting in south Florida last month, and that served to break the ice with other club owners.

Holmgren also brought a lot of equity from his years as an active member of the league competition committee while coach of the Packers and Seahawks.

“Mike has always been very involved in the organization, with the Packers, the Seahawks, and now the Cleveland Browns,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “Mike is very engaged and obviously understands the game and the business. So I think Mike’s going to be terrific.”

Holmgren’s sour experience in Seattle as coach, general manager and executive vice president left even some of his friends questioning his decision to take the Browns’ job as president. A layer of management above him terminated his GM title and power after four seasons.

“I thought, I can do this. If I set my mind to something typically in my life, I can usually do that. Maybe not be the greatest in the world, but I can do it,” he said.