The Cleveland Browns finally came to a conclusion on their head coaching search, hiring Todd Monken for the job.

Our reaction to the hire will be reserved until Monken actually coaches a game because despite what everyone will read over the next five months until training camp starts, no one really knows what kind of job he will do.

Monken, who will be 60 a week from today, has been an offensive coordinator in the pros with Tampa from 2016-18, with the Browns in 2019, and with the Ravens for the past three years with the three years in between spent at Georgia.

He ran a passing offense with the Buccaneers and a running offense with the Ravens, so he seems like someone who can adapt, which is always a good trait.

He’s only been a head coach at the college level, three years at Southern Mississippi where he took over an 0-12 team and led them to a 9-5 record in his third year.

However, the month long process is something we have to take issue with because it points to the reason as to why this organization has been stuck in the mire for the last 14 years, since Jimmy Haslam bought the team.

“A camel is a horse designed by committee” – Alec Issigonis
“If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it” – Charles Kettering
“If you see a snake, just kill it, don’t appoint a committee on snakes” – Ross Perot
“A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours” – Milton Berle

There are hundreds of quotes criticizing committees out there, yet that’s how the Browns continue to look for head coaches.

They started out with nine candidates, whittled it down to six. Two of the half-dozen dropped out, one because they took another head coaching job, leaving four to undergo second interviews.

That field was narrowed to three.

This seems like a process where either too many people are involved or the person/people making the decision are afraid to make a mistake. That’s because it’s a committee making the decision.

We haven’t hired an NFL head coach, but we have hired people and the process the Browns went through seems incredibly unwieldy. First, if we had a pool of nine candidates, we would probably narrow it down to three or four right off the bat.

Of course, that’s just one person doing the review. If you have three, four, or even five people involved, each of those people are going to have their own favorites.

Then after the second talk, you would have two candidates and then pass the decision over to the ultimate decision maker, in this case, ownership.

It points out once again that what the Browns really need is a head of football operations, who then hires a GM and a coach and they all work together, having one vision for how to build a winning team.

Instead, we have another cliche: “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

With the current set up, we fear the only way the Browns will succeed is by luck.

On the other hand, Monken is a veteran coach, and we agree the Browns need that. They need to win and we believe they couldn’t afford to go through a learning curve with a younger first-time head coach.

Was he a compromise between the owner who wanted Jim Schwartz and the GM who wanted Nate Scheelhaase? Maybe. But that’s not going to matter to Monken, who is getting the biggest opportunity of his career and will want to make the most of it.