The winning organization

The Browns lost game one this season to Cincinnati for many reasons and without doubt one of those reasons was the poor job done by Pat Shurmur in his first game as an NFL coach. You could even hear in Shurmur's voice in the post game that he felt the burden of a job done poorly. His team made too many mistakes, especially with needless penalties and his defense got caught off guard and were still in their huddle as the Bengals quick snapped their way to the winning score. Does one bad game for a first year coach mean he is not up to the job? Of course not. Pat Shurmur is a relatively young, and obvioulsy skilled coach.

What is different about this Browns organization compared to those we have seen in the last 40 years is that the Browns President, Mike Holmgren, is not only a business man, but he understands first hand both the general managers role and the head coaching job. I can imagine that on Sunday evening following the Bengals loss, meetings were held with Shurmur and Holmgren to review the areas that needed attention following that game. Holmgren surely sought Shurmur's opinion on what went wrong, shared with Shurmur points that perhaps Shurmur did not see, and gave him some guidance on how to steer clear of those issues. The result was clear, mistakes in execution and game tactics were fixed and the Browns went on to win their next two games. Had Shurmur been left on his own without a boss who could both push him and also put things in perspective, our Browns could easily be 1-2 or 0-3 by now.

In many sports organizations, the senior executive does not have operational experience in critical roles. In the business world, when you have a young manager, he may have all the potential in the world, but he may be slow to face down problems he has no experience in managing. It's exactly the same in sports. A potentially great but young coach like Shurmur has a much greater chance of success if there is an experienced, mature and wise executive that he reports to, who can probe and assist in his development.

The Browns organization, led by Mike Holmgren is therefore capable of righting the ship quickly and efficiently and this is the main reason that in spite of being let down so many times in the past, Browns fans can justifiably start feeling optimistic about the 2011 season and the longer term future of the team.