Johnette Howard

You wouldn’t know it to look at Eric Mangini now. But it was just three years ago that Jets owner Woody Johnson introduced the 34-year-old whiz kid as his new head coach and repeatedly mentioned Mangini's "pedigree” as if he were some dazzled horseracing mogul raving about the bloodlines of his latest purchase at the Keeneland yearling sale: "Mangini, out of Parcells, by way of Belichick?

“We’ll take him!"

Sometimes that’s the trouble with coaching trees. Some starry-eyed owner or athletic director thinks if he plucks away a top assistant who sat at the knee of a “genius” such as Bill Belichick he’ll get another Secretariat, and he ends up with some nag called WhoKnewThisGuysAStiff? instead.

In case you didn’t hear the head-banging coming from certain precincts of New England, Ohio and South Bend, Ind., the past few days, it was a lost weekend for the Belichick coaching tree. Even worse gloom seems just ahead. Football is a copycat sport, and Belichick clones could be out of vogue any minute. Expect phones to be ringing off the nightstands of all those unemployed Bill Walsh spinoffs such as Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden and Mike Shanahan. Expect more Tony Dungy disciples to see their stock soar.

On Saturday, Belichick’s former offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis, saw his Notre Dame team lose to Top 10-ranked Pitt a week after a mortifying home loss to a Navy team, which only has the top-rated armada in the world. (Not a BCS category.)

Now many alumni want Weis fired.

Video   Belichick's gamble doesn't pay off Nov. 17: While Gregg Rosenthal can't criticize Bill Belichick too much for going for it, Mike Florio compares the coach's controversial call to playing Madden with a 12-year-old. NBC Sports

On Sunday, Belichick invited wrath for choosing to go for a first down on 4th-and-2 at his own 28 with his Patriots leading the Colts by six points with 2:08 to play. New England lost, 35-34. He later said he didn’t want to punt and risk having Peyton Manning drive 70-some yards to beat him. So he chanced letting Manning have to cover only 28 yards for the game-winning touchdown if the gamble failed? 

That make any sense?

Then there’s Mangini, the Cleveland Browns embattled first-year coach. Where do we start? The 1-8 Browns are so bad, they’ll probably go off as underdogs to the wretched Detroit Lions this week. The Browns are so bad, they waited just weeks into the season to fire their first-year general manager (another import with New England bloodlines named CantGetTheDraftRight — naw, just kidding. His name was … Excuse me? He’s already in the federal witness protection program? Since when?)

And did you see the Browns’ game against the Ravens? A fan named Dawg Pound Mike tried to organize a boycott at the start of the game. Signs in the stands read “Baltimore, Can You Take This Team Too?” and “Gruden, We’re Hiring.” Then re-installed Browns quarterback Brady Quinn didn’t look anything like a pocket passer — he looked like the setter for the Pepperdine volleyball team the way the Ravens kept spiking his passes back at him. In the third quarter alone, Quinn’s first two passes were slapped down at the line of scrimmage, then two of his next three were intercepted, turning a scoreless tie into a 16-0 Ravens’ win.

Guess who Quinn played for in college?

Charlie Weis.

Guess who preceded Mangini as coach in Cleveland? Romeo Crennel, the defensive coordinator on Belichick’s three Super Bowl-winning teams who didn’t win enough with the Browns.

If you’re playing this parlor game at home, it means the Browns’ extended coaching tree is Mangini after Crennel with a long-distance contribution from Weis by way of Belichick after Belichick’s Oedipal break from Parcells in New York. (Long story. Don’t ask.)

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