Former Browns head coach Hue Jackson said publicly on Wednesday that he would be willing to join Brian Flores' lawsuit against the NFL if necessary, after claiming that the Browns incentivized losing during the early seasons of his coaching tenure, and offered "a good number" in regards to money value to lose games.
On Thursday, Jackson joined Tiki and Tierney to further detail his accusations against Cleveland ownership.
"Basically, you misled me from the beginning," Jackson said. "You never did what you said you were gonna do. That's why people take jobs. So you say you kept me and kept saying you were gonna fix this and move on from this and get better and move on from it, and then you don't, that's very misleading."
Jackson was hired by the Browns in 2016, and became the first NFL head coach in eight years to start a season with an 0-14 record, as Cleveland limped to a 1-15 finish. He then became the first coach in eight years, and the second ever in league history, when the Browns went 0-16 the following season, claiming the No. 1 overall pick in both of those years.
But Jackson claims the Browns cleaned house once he was hired, and had a four-year plan in place for losing games, finishing low in aggregate rankings, and maintaining a young team, something that was nothing like the tone of his interview for the job.
"That wasn't told to me," Jackson said of the Browns' alleged plan to lose for higher draft picks. "What coach is gonna take a job where you don't win and don't have a chance of winning? I had no idea until after I've been there and now I'm in it.
"When you look at it, that's the only why you can describe it. I came there to win. You can look at my press conference. I came there to turn the organization around…and now you take all the players off a team that was a 3-13 team, and starting over. That doesn't say 'you're going to win.' And then you suck basically…and get a contract extension, and nobody hears about that. Nobody is told about that in the media. How do you give a coach that went 1-31 a contract extension?"
Asked why he stayed around during a time where the team he coached allegedly prioritized losing, Jackson had this response to Tierney:
"How can you say something publicly? You're trying to be collaborative and understand this. Couldn't you lose your job in that situation, to say something? I think what I wanted to do was understand it and make sure I knew what this was, and I couldn't truly understand it until I got through the first year."
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