Ex-Browns DB Jason McCourty stands with Hue Jackson amid tanking allegations: ‘Duh’
Jason McCourty, just like coach Hue Jackson, lived the Cleveland Browns’ 0-16 season in 2017.
That experience, he said, is why he believes Jackson is telling the truth when he alleged that Browns owner Jimmy Haslam incentivized “tanking.”
“There’s no way we were trying to win. It was very obvious,” McCourty said on his podcast on Friday. “That is no surprise to anyone. You don’t need me to corroborate the story and say, ‘Oh yeah, we were tanking. We were trying to lose.’ Duh.”
Hue Jackson speaks out after Brian Flores lawsuit
Jackson spoke out earlier this week after former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed his lawsuit against the Dolphins, Denver Broncos, New York Giants and the NFL alleging discrimination and more.
As part of Flores’ allegations, he said that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross tried to push him to lose games on purpose in 2019 in order to improve their draft stock — and that Ross even offered him $100,000 per game to do so.
Jackson spent more than two seasons leading the Browns from 2016-18. He went 1-31 in his first two seasons with the team, and then was fired eight games into his third season.
Since Flores’ lawsuit was filed, Jackson has said that he too was incentivized to lose with the Browns. He told ESPN that there was a “four-year plan” that incentivized losing in the first two seasons, and that bonus money was available if certain goals were hit — including having the youngest team and having a certain amount of draft picks.
Jackson then clarified on CNN on Friday night that he wasn’t paid specifically to lose games like Flores alleged he was, but he did say that evidence “will come to light at the right time.”
“No, I was never offered money like Brian [Flores] had mentioned,” he said on CNN, via ESPN. “I think it is a totally different situation but has some similarities … I told Jimmy that what he was doing was very destructive, to not do this because it's going to hurt my career and every other coach that worked with me and every player on the team. And I told him that it would hurt every Black coach that would follow me. And I have the documents to prove this."
Haslam has denied Jackson’s allegations, and told the Knoxville News Sentinel that Jackson “has never accepted blame for one thing.” Haslam also said that any allegation that he paid Jackson to lose is “an absolute falsehood.”
McCourty spent last season with the Dolphins after a three year stint with the New England Patriots. McCourty landed on injured reserve after seven games with the Dolphins after sustaining a foot injury.
While he wouldn’t have been in the room when any alleged incentives were laid out to Jackson in Cleveland, McCourty knows something isn’t adding up. Winning at least a few games, he said, isn’t that hard.
“I said this when I got to New England, you realize winning in the NFL is not easy, so you don’t want to take it for granted. You celebrate your wins,” he said. “But the year I spent in Cleveland also taught me, winning ain’t this hard either. You don’t just go 1-31. It’s not that hard to figure out on the other end of it.”
