Yahoo Sports Hue Jackson writing book on time with Cleveland Browns: 'I was lied to by ownership'
Hue Jackson didn’t even finish his third season with the Browns before he was fired, something that came amid a brutal stretch of football in Cleveland.
Now, more than two years after he lost his job, Jackson is writing a book about his time with the Browns — and said he was lied to by his bosses.
“There’s no doubt I was lied to by ownership and leadership of the team,” Jackson said on ESPN Radio on Monday, via Cleveland.com. “They were going to be football plus analytics, but it was football vs. analytics.”
Jackson said he received a contract extension
Jackson was hired by the Browns in 2016, though he went just 1-15 that year. The following season, of course, was the infamous 0-16 season.
In the middle of that campaign, however, Jackson said he actually received a contract extension from team owner Jimmy Haslem — something that Cleveland.com reported was a one-year deal that would have kept him there through 2020.
“I got a contract extension at 1-23, midway through the season,” Jackson said, via Cleveland.com. “I wanted to go public with it, but the Browns did not.”
Yet a year later, after starting the 2018 season 2-5-1, Jackson was fired. He finished with a 3-36-1 overall record.
During that season, Jackson said the front office started “a teardown of the roster,” something he said he was never told about ahead of time. While that seems to be working out — the Browns won more than 10 games last season for the first time since 2007 and made the playoffs for the first time since 2002 — Jackson feels like he was set up to fail.
“I think I became the fall guy because that was the narrative … the truth needs to come out … for other minority coaches,” he said, via Cleveland.com. “They need to know the pitfalls out there. My story has affected some of their futures.”
Though he declined to share the title of his book, Jackson did say that it would be published later this year.
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