Browns owner believes team is getting better

Associated Press

BEREA

Randy Lerner’s vision of the Browns, fuzzy, blurred and almost indecipherable for most of the past eight seasons, is coming into focus.

Cleveland’s oft-criticized owner finally sees brighter days ahead.

Energized by the hiring of team president Mike Holmgren to fix his fallen franchise, Lerner believes the Browns are in the early stages of a dramatic turnaround.

The 48-year-old Lerner, who has owned Aston Villa of the English Premier League since 2006, was upbeat, confident and optimistic two days after the Browns stunned the New Orleans Saints 30-17. The win was Cleveland’s second this season, but it came against the defending Super Bowl champions and it came as the Browns hit their bye week.

Holmgren is spending the down time in Arizona, which is where he was last winter when Lerner lured him out of semi-retirement by promising he could mold the Browns as he saw fit.

Lerner couldn’t be more pleased with what Holmgren has already done.

“It’s been great,” Lerner said. “I feel very good about having Mike in the building. As it comes to my own profile, my sense was to lay low despite having probably too much of a reputation for laying low. Mike was coming in as the face and the voice of our organization, and I wanted that to really take hold.

““We spent a lot of time talking about the way things would play out if we were going to get this thing turned around, and so far it has gone pretty much according to those conversations.”

When Holmgren took over in Cleveland, there was speculation the 62-year-old would eventually fire Eric Mangini and coach again. Lerner said he and Holmgren have not talked about that possibility, and as far as assessing Mangini, he’s leaving that up to his top football executive.

“Part of bringing Mike in and part of my explicit understanding with Mike is that the evaluation of coaches and evaluation of other people in our football business is his,” Lerner said. “Having said that, I know Eric and I am naturally pulling for Eric for all the obvious reasons. I’m seeing a guy who is open to ideas, open to change, wants to enjoy being coach of the Browns and I would say he has acted in a way consistent in wanting change and being open to ideas.”

Lerner has the feeling the Browns can win again, win big again. He found comfort in recently reading how it took the Boston Red Sox 86 years to win their second World Series.

Patience, even generations of it in Cleveland, which hasn’t celebrated a championship since the Browns won it all in 1964, can be rewarded.

“Sometimes things take time,” he said. “But if you keep planning on winning and believing you’ll win, then that’s what it takes. It takes believing. If you work hard enough and you stay focused and get the right people it will happen rather than allowing yourself to feel somehow jinxed.”