their future. They feel, with their shared histories, more
connected with this team than any before. The GM and
the coach and the quarterback—they understand us.
Those castoff receivers—they, too, want to rethink labels,
like the ones ascribed to this city for so long.
They are optimistic, of course. And cautious, of
course, after all they’ve been through. They talk
about a home playoff game, a winning season—or
just winning the first game of the season, which theBrowns haven’t done since 2004. They’re actively
trying to manage expectations, but they also want to
enjoy the ride, this feeling that they haven’t had in
so long, anticipation mixed with apprehension. Still.
They can’t help but wonder what it would mean for
the Browns—their Browns, the old soul-of-the-city
Browns—to return.
“... It’ll go back to like how we know it.” “How it
should be.” ±MORE ON SI TV
To watch Greg Bishop’s full-length Big Interview
with former Browns coach Hue Jackon, visit SI.T Vman with an inspiring life
story, a minority coach
who grinded his way to
the top, who has been
bombarded by personal
tragedy. To say nothing of
his own football-affected
health.
Jackson suffered a heart
attack after a morning
jog in 2014, when he was
the Bengals’ offensive
coordinator, and while he
doesn’t believe coaching
almost killed him, Michelle
is less sure. She had seen
how little he slept, how he
would leave home at 4 a.m.
and return at midnight.
Then he started to have
episodes, similar in some
ways to panic attacks—
what both Jacksons
describe as nonepileptic
seizures. Anxiety would
overwhelm him and he
would black out.
That all predated
the real loss. One week
before Browns camp
last summer Jackson
learned that his older
brother, John Jr., had died
in prison, where he was
serving a life sentence.
(Hue still doesn’t know
exactly what happened;officials told him only
that John “bled out.”)
Two weeks later his mom,
Betty Lee, died from
dementia. By the end she
would confuse her son
with her brother, and it
crushed Hue that she
couldn’t revel in so many
of his accomplishments.
She didn’t know that
in 2016 the Pro Football
Writers Association had
named Jackson—who had
come up from nothing
in South Central L.A.,
systematically climbing
the college and proranks—the Co-Assistant
Coach of the Year. Or that
he had been offered an
interview that offseason,
he says, for the Giants’
head opening. Or that he
had passed up that job—
and walked away from
a handshake deal with
Bengals management
to succeed his mentor,
Lewis—for the Browns
job, even though, as
Lewis says, “few minority
coaches have gone
into great situations.”
She never got to hear
about the first timehe addressed his new
players about Cleveland’s
losing culture, telling
them, “Change is here.
Change is now.”
Instead, more losses,
and with them more stress,
more blackouts.
Jackson understands
the baseline; he knows
that even as an otherwise
successful football
mind—his teams were
a combined 130-109-1
before he arrived in
Cleveland, certainly good
enough for sustained NFL
employment—he will now
and possibly forever be
known for his disastrous
tenure with the Browns.
He vacillates. That is
him... that is not him. “I’m
not a loser,” Jackson says.
“So that bothers me. I’m
not built that way. I hate
losing, and it hurt every
day. It ground me down
every freakin’ week.”
He pauses, his face
twisted into a grimace. He
wants to coach again. He
must coach again. Because
3-36-1 still hurts. “Let’s
be honest,” he says. “Right
now, that’s what’s on my
DYL tombstone.” ±