AP

The Browns have fired their head coach. And angered their franchise left tackle.

Joe Thomas, the Cleveland left tackle who was named to his seventh Pro Bowl this season, doesn’t believe firing a coach after one year is a good move. Thomas told the Akron Beacon Journal after Sunday’s game that “I’d be very disappointed” if Rob Chudzinski was fired.

Now the Browns have announced that Chudzinski was, in fact, fired. And Thomas doesn’t think firing a head coach after his first season is the mark of a good football team.

“You look at the great franchises. They don’t fire your coach after the first season. You can’t do it,” Thomas said.

What Thomas thinks the Browns need is consistency, not to fire a coach who had just begun to build his team.

“It sets everything back,” Thomas said. “You just hit the reset button. Anytime you hit the reset button, it severely damages the organization, and it lengthens the amount of time that it takes to get back to the playoffs and turn the team into a consistent winner. … I think that this organization needs continuity and that’s the only chance that we’re going to have to turn this team into a consistent winner.”

If there’s any good news for Thomas, it’s that a league source tells PFT the rest of the coaching staff has been retained, for now anyway. It’s possible that the same offensive and defensive systems could remain in place in Cleveland next year, and there will be some consistency in Cleveland. But there will be a new head coach — the Browns’ fifth head coach since 2008.