Bernie Kosar

Bernie Kosar throws a pass to Eric Metcalf on September 17th, 1989 in a game against the New York Jets.

(David I. Andersen, Plain Dealer file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Bernie Kosar: disgruntled ex-employee or right all along?

Back in December, Kosar made waves when he went on Mike Trivisonno's radio show (full interview here) and blasted the Browns following their 30-0 home loss to Cincinnati. It was the first career start for rookie Johnny Manziel and the loss essentially ended any shot the Browns had at the playoffs.

Kosar spent much of the interview taking shots at the Browns' front office and reiterated time and again that, essentially, people within the front office needed to stay in their lanes.

"You need that linear focus of just doing what you're supposed to do," Kosar said in the interview. "If you're a nose guard, you're gonna stop the run. DB, you're gonna stop the wide receivers. If you're a general manager, you're looking at players. If you're a quarterback coach, you're going to coach the guys that they get you and you just stick to that. And [the Browns] do everything else but that."

At the time of Kosar's interview, much was made of what he said as it pertained to the quarterback situation: "The names change, but the way we do things as a culture above them is still the same. ... And until that changes, we're always going to have two quarterbacks that we just manipulate back and forth and throw names in there, but it's not going to be consistently successful."

Revisiting the interview after a week of ugly news -- Mary Kay Cabot's report of punishment looming for Ray Farmer for texting the coaching staff during games and Jason La Canfora's report that paints a picture of a blurred line between the business and football sides of the building -- and it's clear there was much more to it than just helping the quarterbacks succeed. Begin with his take on Mike Pettine's performance:

"He was hired under these set of rules where everybody gets to giggle and laugh and talk about things and everybody is involved in everything," Kosar said, "and he was hired in a tough, tough spot, in a culture above him that's not a football culture. It's not a winning football culture, so it goes above that."

Culture. So many GMs and owners and head coaches and any other number of team personnel love to toss around the word "culture." If Browns fans have learned anything since 1999 it's that culture is really important. Maybe the Browns were making progress on a culture change during their 7-4 start, before the train flew off the tracks and the pressure mounted to switch quarterbacks.

This week has shed new light on the Browns' culture, and it's not pretty.

"This is an obsessive game of high stakes, high competition," Kosar said, "and the feeling of winning is good. But the distaste that those guys -- [Bill] Belichick -- that distaste that they have for losing fuels them to obsessively focus on their job. And you can't expect a 23-, 25-year old kid to know that.

"If they don't see the examples from the people above them, then how are they supposed to know? They don't even know, sometimes, what they don't know, if that makes sense."

Who knows? Maybe Kosar was just being a disgruntled ex-employee. Or maybe he was on to something.