Mangini declined to say whether he thinks the 5-7 Browns have shown enough progress to keep the current regime intact.
View full size"We've got four more games left and I really want to move the team forward," Browns head coach Eric Mangini said on Monday when asked about his job security. "All the other stuff will take care of itself."BEREA, Ohio -- Eric Mangini said he won't spend time over the season's final four games worrying about his job security and team President Mike Holmgren's planned evaluation of the coaching staff.
"If I did spend a lot of time on that I'd be a hypocrite," said Mangini on Monday. "I'm asking all these other guys to look at one game at a time and you can't know what's going to happen four weeks from now. You can't control it. Do the best you can with what's in front of you and when you do that, that's when the best things happen."
Mangini declined to say whether he thinks the 5-7 Browns have shown enough progress to keep the current regime intact. At this time last year, the Browns were 1-11 and finished with a four-game winning streak.
"I respect Mike and I think he'll evaluate things at the end of the season," said Mangini. "We've got four more games left and I really want to move the team forward. All the other stuff will take care of itself. I'm proud of the way the players and coaches have fought. Now I want to see us getting rewarded with wins."
But does the boss seem happy?
"Yeah, I mean, it's been positive," said Mangini. "We weren't high-fiving and belly-bopping on the plane or anything but it was a much better plane ride than some I've taken."
What will it take for Holmgren to maintain the status quo? Will 7-9 or 8-8 be enough? If the Browns win out, they would finish 9-7. They play on the road against the 2-10 Bills and 2-10 Bengals the next two Sundays, then finish at home against the 8-4 Ravens and 9-3 Steelers.
"I give the guys last year a lot of credit," said Mangini. "They hung in there, they fought, they kept working and they were rewarded at the end of the year, which was great to see. Now this year, I think we've taken some more real strides.
"If you're just looking statistically, almost every category has improved. It's a good group of guys, everyone is pulling in the same direction."
The Browns have used three quarterbacks because of injuries and have faced the NFL's toughest schedule, with a combined opponents' record of 85-57. They beat the 9-3 Saints on the road and the 9-2 Patriots at home before taking the 9-2 Jets to overtime before missing three tackles on Santonio Holmes' game-winning touchdown catch.
They lost to Jacksonville on a 75-yard screen pass in the final minutes. The first two games to the Bucs and Chiefs, were losses by a combined five points.
But Holmgren made it abundantly clear in a post-bye week press conference on Nov. 2 that he'll reserve judgment until after the finale Jan. 2.
"Any coach, any staff where I'm in the position I'm in, will be judged at the end of the season," he said. "I also said this, wins and losses are not the only criteria. The crummy part of our business is that most of the time, it's the main one."
Holmgren also stressed during that press conference that he's had to adjust to this coaching staff and it's way of doing things. That's why observers such as Sports Illustrated's Peter King have kicked around the possibility of former Raiders and Bucs coach Jon Gruden, now ESPN's Monday Night Football analyst, coming here if Holmgren makes a change.
Gruden, who worked for Holmgren in Green Bay, was a Browns fan as a young boy growing up in Sandusky. Both are from the same West Coast Bill Walsh football family, and the two have remained close. Gruden highly recommended Holmgren draft quarterback Colt McCoy, whom many think is best suited to the West Coast style.
Last week, after Gruden talked to University of Miami officials about their coaching vacandy, an unnamed member of the Miami Board of Trustees told the Miami Herald that Gruden was "keeping all of his options open, including the NFL."
During a conference call last week, Gruden, under contract with ESPN through next season, said, "I'd just like to say I'm committed to ESPN."
But even his high-school age son, Jon "Deuce" Gruden II has apparently heard of Cleveland as a possibility down the road. During a podcast Sunday on the Sporting Rave, the Tampa-area high school football player revealed that his dad could wind up coaching either the Browns or the 49ers after another year in the booth.
"He was gonna let me finish high school," said Gruden II. "He was talking about going to San Francisco, but that's really probably going to be in the next two years or something like that. He'll probably keep the Monday Night Football job for the next year, my last year of high school, and then probably head out to a team like San Francisco or maybe Cleveland."
Despite the uncertainty, Browns players are excited about what they've accomplished.
"Last year sitting in this spot, we didn't know if we were going to win any games," said left tackle Joe Thomas. "But this year, it's totally different. We feel we're a much better team. Right now, I don't think anybody wants to play us because we're playing well; we're keeping every game close. Guys believe in themselves. They believe in the system a lot more than last year."