Every Sunday, for four months out of the year, you make me wish I could have grown up in any other NFL city in our fine country. I don’t feel like I ever “chose” to be a fan of yours. Instead I was born into a family of fanatical people who basically, through years of conditioning, “forced” me to become a fan of yours.
Why don’t you just stop now you may ask? Well now I just feel like I have too much invested in this thing. You don’t spend your entire life building a house just to move into an apartment across the street.
I don’t think I am alone in my resentment towards being forcibly molded into a fan of your franchise. In fact, I would be surprised if there weren’t hundreds of thousands of people exactly like me. People, who could have been born 80 miles to the Southeast of Cleveland and been perfectly happy, celebrating six Super Bowls for Pittsburgh. As sick as the thought makes me, those people really lucked out compared to us.
Why is it always something with you guys? If it’s not an outbreak of staph infections, it is how you are transitioning into a new defensive scheme. If it’s not your transition into a new defensive scheme, it is how you are trying to install the West Coast Offense (in Cleveland, in the windiest stadium in the country, for some insane reason). If it’s not that, it is your inability to court decent free-agents, or your players are in trouble with the law or the league, or your owner cares more about soccer then football, or your running back is either a pansy whose agent won’t let him play with a sore throat or his backup has a fractured knee for the fifth time. How can you consistently find wide receivers who can’t catch, it seems like that would be harder to accomplish then finding guys who can? How come you can’t hire a proven NFL head coach in 13 years? How is that even possible? Do you think that every obscure offensive/defensive coordinator is some sort of a diamond waiting to be discovered by you?
The fact is, that most of those guys are coordinators because that is exactly what they should be… coordinators.
At what point, with as incensed and deprived of a fan-base as you have, did you think it would be a good idea to try installing the Holmgrem/Heckert/Shurmer five year plan? Do you think you have five years? Five years? Five years to produce a winner in a town that hasn’t seen one in 16? Five years is a long time to stay patient with something you already lost patience in years ago. If I am running a business that has been screwing its customers for the better part of two decades, whatever reforms I make to rectify that situation had better not take five years. Not If I want to retain any clientele.
You have a great, young core of players on both sides of the ball, but you have them coached by a man, who is easily the worst excuse for an NFL head coach that I have seen in my 32 years. Hiring Pat Shurmer as your head coach, after he coordinated the St. Louis Rams to a 6-10 record is one of the most curious decisions I have seen made by your franchise. And that is high praise for a team so mired in an ocean of ongoing, nonstop, curious decisions.
The problem is, if you replace him now, which you kind of
have to, and bring in a whole new system, it has to work immediately. Otherwise your core of good, young talent
will leave for greener pastures and we are all stuck for another 3+ years
waiting for you guys to acquire new talent that might work in whatever system
the new regime installs. I think, if
that happens you might as well just see if Baltimore needs another team and
just relinquish your strangle-hold on one of the most prime pieces of property in
our city.
My advice is this.
You’re going to have to bring in a new head coach. Retain your offensive/defensive coordinators
and bring in a head coach that is proven in the NFL and who doesn’t want to
completely overhaul everything. In parallel,
sign some free agents. We can’t keep
trying to cover Dez Bryant and Victor Cruz with 7th round
picks. Hope to god, that your young core
buys in, and that the system works.
Because you are just about out of time with your fans.
Sincerely,
Matt Coan
