Browns’ Hue Jackson to jump in lake (for good cause)

After the Browns went 0-16 last season, head coach Hue Jackson will fulfill his promise by jumping into Lake Erie.

There’s no denying that Hue Jackson’s tenure as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns has been far from good. He was hired for the job in January of 2016, and he has made it through two full seasons. In that time, he’s compiled a record of just 1-31.

Jackson’s Browns started the 2016 campaign at 0-14, before finally picking up a 20-17 win over the San Diego Chargers in late December, eventually finishing 1-15. In 2017, the Browns became just the second team in NFL history to go 0-16, following in the footsteps of the 2008 Detroit Lions.

But here’s where things get interesting. After going 1-15 in his first season, Jackson made a promise that he would take a jump into Lake Erie if the Browns delivered a repeat performance the following year. And as only the Browns can, they outdid even themselves by not winning a single game.

So now Jackson will make good on his word by making the jump into Lake Erie on June 1. But on the plus side, some good is coming out of Cleveland’s back-to-back disastrous seasons on the football field. Jackson’s jump will be held in a private location, and only Browns employees will be allowed to attend. But for every employee that makes the jump as well, Jackson will donate $100 to the Hue Jackson Foundation, which combats human trafficking in Cleveland and other parts around Northeast Ohio.

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To Jackson himself, however, he hopes that jumping into Lake Erie will be a symbol of change for the Cleveland Browns franchise.

“It’s going to be a cleansing of the Cleveland Browns,” Jackson said at the NFL combine, according to the article on ClevelandBrowns.com. “That’s what it will be.”

Only time will tell if that part is actually true, but it will be hard to do much worse than 1-31. And the Browns definitely can’t do worse than 0-16.