Skull shaved tight, default goatee, eyes of flint, mandatory frown. He's bigsix twoand beefy. It's a humid afternoon, and sunny, but he's in a long-sleeved parkablack, zipped to the neckand polyester shorts. He looks like what he is: a coach.
His grip is solid, strong. He's sizing you up, toohe's a judge of men, a teacher of football players, and now he is head coach of the Cleveland Browns, the seventh hearty to walk that plank since 1999, when the once-fabled franchise rose staggering from the tomb to feast upon its fans' vital organs. The past five NFL seasons, with four different head coaches, his team has won twenty-three games and lost fifty-seven. His best player is reportedly appealing a full year's suspensionfor smoking weed. His rookie quarterback is a TMZ regulara binge-drinking, Instagramming fool. His own boss is a first-year GM. His boss's bossthe Browns' second-year owner, Jimmy Haslamfaces the possibility of federal charges after a two-year joint investigation by the FBI and the IRS into the Haslam family business.
His name is Mike Pettine. Pett-in. Pray for him.
Pray hard. Not because he is young but because he's pushing fifty; not because the Browns are an NFL punchline, but because Cleveland is a head-coach killing floor, the place where hope's throat is slit and careers are butchered. Only one of Pettine's six predecessors ever got another job running an NFL team; the last hanging carcass belonged to big, beefy, clean-shaved Rob Chudzinski, gutted just as he stepped from the team bus after last season's final game
move them there.
