The Cleveland Browns are one of the teams that have been dragged into the whole debacle centered around Biran Flores' racism lawsuit. For their part, the Browns organization has now responded to the allegations of former head coach Hue Jackson accusing the franchise of bribing him to purposely tank games.
A spokesperson for the Browns has come out with an official statement from the organization wherein they are vehemently denying any and all of Jackson's claims:
“The recent comments by Hue Jackson and his representatives relating to his tenure as our head coach are completely fabricated,” a team spokesperson said in a statement, via Dan Labbe of cleveland.com. “Any accusation that any member of our organization was incentivized to deliberately lose games is categorically false.”
On Tuesday Jackson alleged that the Browns were offering him bonuses to lose games during the 2016 and 2017 seasons. Cleveland was far and beyond the worst team in the NFL during those years, which included a record-setting 0-16 campaign in 2017. The Browns were only the second team in NFL history to have gone winless throughout one full season. If Jackson's accusations are true then this only means that the Browns did this on purpose.
Cleveland eventually fired Jackson midway through his third season in the league. At that time, the Browns were 2-5-1. This was following Jackson's 1-31 record over his first two years with the team. Cleveland's horrid standing in 2016 and 2017 led to the club earning back-to-back first overall picks in the succeeding seasons. This resulted in the Browns landing Myles Garrett and Baker Mayfield, respectively.
Jackson's accusations came after Brian Flores dropped a bombshell on the NFL. The former Miami Dolphins coach is suing the league and a handful of other teams for alleged racial practices in their respective hiring processes for head coaches. In particular, Flores has accused the New York Giants of interviewing him even though they never had any intention of hiring him, just to be able to satisfy league requirements (ie, the Rooney Rule). The Giants announced earlier in the week that they had decided to bring on Brian Daboll, a white man, as the team's new head coach.
Follow Us
Subscribe