Would Paul Brown be successful today?

Doc’s being a bit disingenuous here, I think. “Given his fathers unsurpassed legacy for success and innovation”? Well, yes…prior to Cincy. But once here, Paul never really lived up to the rep he built in places like Massillon and Ohio State and Cleveland.

As I noted in my own review of “Rise” a few weeks back, the way Mike runs the team isn’t all that different from the way Paul did. Like his son, Paul meddled in his coaches’ decisions, especially on draft day. Like Mike, Paul complained endlessly about money, decrying everything from contributions to the players’ pension funds to request for a training camp per diem. Like Mike, he hated agents, the player’s union, and free agency. Like Mike, he balked at upgrading facilities, once wondering how new carpet in the locker room would help them win any games.

In short, the apple has not fallen all that far from the tree. The only difference is that Paul was modestly more successful as a GM than Mike. He at least got the team to a pair of Super Bowls. But the bottom line is that Paul produced the same number of World Championships as his son has so far: zero. And in football, no one cares who comes in second.

http://stripehype.com/2008/08/27/paul-brown-revisited/

I think sticking it to Modell was definitely an incentive for Paul, but even more than that, he simply didn’t know what to do with himself outside of football.

Didn’t Paul also run off the man who made pro football- at least offensively, what it is today? Seems like I remember, was it Forrest Gregg who got the head coach job over Walsh?

Still, unlike Mike, I expect Paul, liking it or not, would have adjusted his style of management to compensate for the changes he couldn’t do anything about. Unlike Mike, I think Paul was relatively sane, in the sense that, if something was proven not to work, he wouldn’t do it another seventeen times- and counting- before trying a different way. I’m pretty sure Paul was concerned enough about his own legacy not to have let the Bengals become a ginormous crap stain on his shiny reputation(Then again, his boy Mike is, his ownself, the personnification of 17 years of pigeon guano accumulated on the cast bronze shoulders of Paul’s memorial statue). Also, guessing here, but Paul actually cared about the product he put on the field, he actually knew that product backwards and forwards, and he cared what the consumers- we fans- thought about it. Obviously, the whole question is hypothetical, pointless, and invites waxing nostalgic but that’s my $1.99.

Yes. Next question.

Really? Why? Paul Brown has his shot as both head coach/owner and GM/owner, and while more successful than Mike, didn’t bring home the bacon. Next question? Hardly.

But the real "hypothetical" to ask is how the apple fell so far from the tree?

Just on the assumption that intelligence in offspring is at least partially predicated on that of the parents, I’d have to guess Paul Brown slipped the bonds of matrimony to give the old pickle tickle to a vegetable of some sort- a preheated eggplant, maybe.