Three and half years after being fired as head coach, Hue Jackson's stinging comments are haunting the Browns -- at least until an NFL investigation is completed soon.
NFL winding up investigation of Hue Jackson allegations the Browns paid him to lose in 2016-17
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
Even on the day the Browns rewarded Denzel Ward with a record contract extension, their controversial offseason again overshadowed the good news.
The NFL confirmed the Browns were under league investigation for tanking games in 2016 and 2017, allegations first made by Hue Jackson and then recanted by the former Browns coach.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy emailed the following statement to TheLandOnDemand.com:
“We can confirm the NFL engaged former SEC chair Mary Jo White in February to look into allegations made by Hue Jackson against the Cleveland Browns. The review is ongoing and is expected to conclude soon.”
Jackson’s allegations were first made in an appearance on ESPN Cleveland in March of 2021.
Jackson revived the accusations in appearances on several national programs in February after former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a class-action lawsuit charging racist hiring practices against the NFL, the Dolphins and two other teams.
On April 7, Flores’ suit was joined by former NFL assistant coaches Steve Wilks and Ray Horton. Ironically, both Wilks and Horton served as Browns assistant coaches, but their complaints were directed at other teams.
Jackson has not joined Flores’ suit, but his statements in 2021 and then in February gained enough traction to cast aspersions on the Browns, prompting the Browns to “welcome” the investigation to prove Jackson’s statements “totally false.”
Through a spokesman, the Browns issued the following statement to TLOD and other news organizations:
“Even though Hue recanted his allegations a short time after they were made, it was important to us and to the integrity of the game to have an independent review of the allegations. We welcomed an investigation and we are confident the results will show, as we’ve previously stated, that these allegations are categorically false. We have fully cooperated with Mary Jo White and look forward to the findings.”
In a series of tweets in February made by Jackson and Kimberly Diemert, executive director of the Hue Jackson Foundation, Jackson implied he was paid by the Browns to lose games, and that the executive team headed by Paul DePodesta and Sashi Brown also received bonuses for not winning.
In subsequent interviews, Jackson clarified that he wasn’t offered $100,000 for losses – as Flores alleges in his lawsuit – but there were bonuses for meeting certain incentives such as aggregate rankings, having the youngest roster in the NFL, and owning multiple draft picks. Jackson said he turned down bonus money.
But Jackson said he was rewarded for going 1-15 in 2016 and 0-8 at the midway point of the 2017 season by having an option year on his contract picked up by the Browns.
Jackson said he wanted the option to be made public by owner Jimmy Haslam, but it never was.
“I think we can all understand why it was not made public,” Jackson said to ESPN Cleveland in March of 2021. “Because it would have really set the tempo for exactly what was going on there. And No. 2, I wanted to have my name cleared from all of this that had been going on.
“I didn’t take the job under the pretense we were going to tear down the team and use analytics as the lead to do everything we were doing. That made no sense to me. And I wanted to make sure we started getting players that would give us a chance to win. I know what good teams look like. I know what it takes to win. But if you’re not in control of that, you do not get to make those decisions.”
Jackson was fired in the middle of the 2018 season with an overall record of 3-36-1.
