Jimmy Haslam walked the practice fields at the Browns’ training facility like a conquering Caesar on Aug. 3, 2012.

Sporadic shouts of “Jim-mee” greeted him from the throng of 3,175 fans as the Tennessee billionaire watched his team for the first time. He acknowledged well-wishers, occasionally stopping to shake hands, but mostly he focused his attention on the players, rarely leaving the side of team president Mike Holmgren.

Tall and trim with an athletic build, Haslam looked more the part of an assistant coach in his gray team-issued T-shirt and brown shorts than a new majority owner. Long-suffering fans thought they saw in Haslam a reflection of their passions.

Here was the anti-Randy Lerner, the previous owner who treated the inheritance of the Browns from his late father like a burden rather than a gift.

Haslam’s energy and excitement radiated. Rather than sitting on the dais, the truck-stop magnate stood for the entire 24-minute introductory news conference, confessing there was much to learn even after having spent four years as a Steelers minority owner.

As the media session drew to a close, Haslam made one pledge:

“If you walk out of here and only remember one thing, remember the Haslam family is 100 percent committed to making the Cleveland Browns a winner again.”

Since that summer day, the Cavaliers have ended the city’s 52-year championship drought in 2016 and the Indians came within one win of a World Series title five months later.

The closest Haslam and the Browns have come to a parade was one organized last year by Columbus-based fan and social media maven Chris McNeil, who vowed to stage it if the team finished winless. The Browns went 1-15.

After the loss Sunday to the Ravens, they are two losses from the NFL’s first 0-16 season since the Lions in 2008. A second “Perfect Season Parade” is in the works with McNeil’s enterprise receiving corporate sponsorship from Excedrin, the headache-relief company.

“We have not done a good job as owners, and it has been hard, harder than we would have thought,” Haslam said Dec. 8 in announcing the firing of Sashi Brown and the naming of John Dorsey as his replacement to oversee football operations.

Haslam, 63, has not just lost consistently. He’s lost at a historic rate.

‌‌‌ Although no official record exists, research from The Athletic and Pro Football Hall of Fame suggests Haslam’s winning percentage is the worst by any NFL owner during his first six seasons in the Super Bowl era. He is 20-74 (.213) since the start of the 2012 season and 19-69 (.216) since fellow owners approved the Browns sale for $1.05 billion.

The Lerners, who labored through expansion pains, were 30-66 in their first six seasons.

When considering the league used to play fewer games per season, a case can be made that Haslam’s start is the worst in NFL history. Steelers patriarch Art Rooney won 24 times in his first 100 games from 1933-41.

The Haslams pray they don’t need to wait four decades like the Rooneys to start winning.

In the last month, The Athletic has interviewed 17 sources from the around the NFL, including executives, agents, coaches and Browns employees past and present regarding the Haslams. Many spoke on condition of anonymity as they remain either on the club’s payroll or have league ties with the organization.

The majority portrays Jimmy and co-owner Dee Haslam as franchise stewards devoted to the community and willing to pay almost any price to win. But many also offered sobering critiques of why Jimmy Haslam has fallen so short of his stated goal.

The composite sketch reveals an impetuous owner, one who lacks leadership skills and a clear vision, one who listens to too many outside voices and cannot discern good advice from bad, one who continues to make the same mistakes in mismatching front-office personnel and coaches, one who has fostered organizational infighting by not confronting it early enough.

The Haslams did not speak to The Athletic for this piece and didn’t provide answers to emailed questions regarding comments from sources. A team spokesman did address several criticisms, however.

It’s important to note the Haslams remain the second-newest ownership group in a league where some teams have been guided by the same family for generations. Only the Bills’ Terry and Kim Pegula have joined the NFL more recently in 2014.

But Jimmy Haslam has developed an almost Wile E. Coyote reputation. He’s forever changing strategies only to watch them backfire. Of his recently fired vice president of football operations, one league source summarized Brown’s football acumen this way: “He couldn’t draw a Cover 2 if you spotted him the two safeties.”

Dorsey becomes his fifth head of football operations and represents a return to the traditional approach of team building after two years of relying heavily on analytics. Hue Jackson is Haslam’s fourth coach.

The Steelers, whose continuity Haslam touted upon his arrival, have had five general managers since 1951 and three head coaches since 1969.

Obviously, players, coaches and management bear major responsibility for a brutal six-season run that often has them playing before swaths of empty seats at FirstEnergy Stadium. The seven home games this season drew announced crowds of 62,403 — which reflect tickets sold, not spectators in the venue. It marks the team’s worst attendance figures since 1984, according to Kevin Kleps of Crain’s Cleveland.

The one constant in all the losing and dysfunction has been ownership.

“It’s like an island of misfit toys,” one former NFL general manager said. “They never have a linkage or synergy you need to go across an organization. It’s such a mishmash of people with different backgrounds and experiences. And when things start to go poorly, there are a lot of individual manhole covers because the focus becomes on surviving rather than winning. That’s the atmosphere ownership has created.

“Pat Riley likes to say coaching is overrated, but leadership is not, and I think there is a void of leadership in that building and it starts at the very top. In this league, you have to have people you can lean on from the top down when things start to go bad, and the Browns just don’t have it.”

Bad news hounds Haslam on multiple fronts.

He is a major booster of the University of Tennessee football program, which recently aborted the hiring of former Browns coaching candidate Greg Schiano, a move that’s produced embarrassing headlines. Meanwhile, former executives from Haslam’s family-owned Pilot Flying J remain on trial for fraud in Knoxville, Tennessee. Haslam is not charged — he steadfastly denies any knowledge of wrongdoing — but the NFL continues to monitor the case.

The owner’s association with the University of Tennessee and Pilot Flying J will be addressed in separate stories later this week.

“The entire investigation has been painful and tough to go through,” Haslam said Dec. 8. “As you know, we are not on trial, myself nor the company so we can’t comment. We will continue to not comment and see the investigation process, but it has not been easy.”

Five years after buying the Browns, Haslam is an embattled owner who has exhausted much of the goodwill fans extended him from the days of sitting in the Dawg Pound for the first exhibition game in 2012.

While he has no plans to sell, disenchantment and apathy have reached unprecedented levels.

“I think his head is spinning with all the losing and it really eats away at him as he sits in a half-empty stadium in November and December,” a source said. “No matter what they do, whether it’s building new fields for Senate League teams downtown, the reality has hit him like a punch in the nose: You’ve got to win on Sundays. Everything else will take care of itself.”

Jimmy Haslam was viewed as the franchise savior when he bought the Cleveland Browns in 2012. Unfortunately, not much has gone right over the last six years. (David Dermer/Getty Images)

Voices carry

Jimmy Haslam transformed a successful filling station business founded by his father into the nation’s 14th-largest private company by asking lots of questions. He’s allowed family members to fly to vacation destinations, while at times taking a car to make surprise visits to some of Pilot’s 750 locations en route.

He wants to know what candy bars are selling and how certain items are being displayed. Such attention to detail has helped generate $22.9 billion in revenue last year, according to Forbes, and amass a personal fortune of $3.6 billion.

Business practices that work with corporations, however, don’t always translate to sports ownership. Multiple league sources said one of Haslam’s biggest weaknesses is he relies too much on opinions from outside the Browns organization.

A team spokesman said it’s common practice for owners to solicit feedback from others around the NFL and those affiliated with the game. Sources counter that Haslam takes it to the extreme and that the chorus of voices clouds his judgment. His name dropping around the Browns facility also erodes confidence in the people running the team.

Among his confidantes are Super Bowl-winning coaches Jon Gruden and Bill Parcells, along with super agent Jimmy Sexton and members of the Manning family. Haslam makes no secret of his affinity for Peyton Manning and, without prodding, acknowledged Dec. 8 they had recently dined together.

“Jimmy speaks to a zillion people about anything and everything with no ability to figure out who knows what they are talking about and who doesn’t,” a former league executive said. “Even when he’s talking to someone really smart, he doesn’t have the ability to figure out, ‘what is the width of their expertise?’ He fails at that miserably and it’s a terrible message to the people who are actually working for him.

“It gives the impression he has no faith in management and coaches. Once you have them looking over their shoulders, you don’t have effective managers or coaches anymore.”

After firing CEO Joe Banner following the 2013 season, Haslam structured the organization to where all the top decision-makers report directly to him. The system is not uncommon around the league — Dorsey operated under the same setup with the Kansas City Chiefs — but it forces owners to make sound judgments when disputes arise.

“I get the sense that Haslam is so pliable that it’s really who has his ear last,” a former league executive said. “You don’t want to talk to him at 7:30 in the morning. You want to talk to him at 7:30 at night.”

Sources believe Haslam’s penchant for soliciting outside opinion has fueled his streak of impatience. No NFL team has fired more top decision-makers in the past six seasons.

Three sources said Haslam should have, in hindsight, retained Tom Heckert, the general manager he inherited in 2012. (The opinions were offered before the Dorsey hiring.) Heckert, who immediately began his job search upon learning of the ownership change, helped John Elway win a Super Bowl three seasons ago in Denver.

“When things are going bad and the owner is calling around, the rare answer he gets is, ‘You have good people in place — you just have to stay the course,’ ’’ a former Browns employee said.

Banner and Haslam, put in touch through the league office, lasted less than two years together. The former Eagles executive orchestrated a string of profitable business moves and got a first-round pick in trading Trent Richardson. Some think Banner might still be running the club if not for recommending Michael Lombardi as the team’s top talent evaluator.

It was an open secret weeks before the announcement that Banner had intended to hire him to select players while the CEO would oversee all football operations. Lombardi had a poor reputation in Cleveland from his first stint with the Browns before the franchise relocated to Baltimore.

Sources said Haslam was warned about Lombardi but decided to hire him anyway. The owner jettisoned both Banner and Lombardi in 2014 after a second chaotic coaching search in as many years. The last straw was a disjointed interview with Schiano for the job that ultimately went to Mike Pettine.

“Banner and Lombardi poisoned each other,” a source said. “Sometimes in Berea, they eat their own. You think the struggle should be on Sundays against the opponent, but the bigger battles are being waged inside the walls there.”

Former Packers executive Andrew Brandt is among those who defend Haslam’s willingness to make changes even if it means spending a tidy sum on severance packages.

Haslam era Record Coach GM 2012 5-11 Pat Shurmur Tom Heckert 2013 4-12 Rob Chudzinski Mike Lombardi 2014 7-9 Mike Pettine Ray Farmer 2015 3-13 Mike Pettine Ray Farmer 2016 1-15 Hue Jackson Sashi Brown 2017 0-14 Hue Jackson Brown/John Dorsey

The downside is a lack of continuity and an ever-shifting organizational philosophy on style of play and draft strategy. In 2016, the Browns took a deep dive into analytics, which values the accumulation of draft picks. Sashi Brown and fellow executive Paul DePodesta opted to trade down from the No. 2 overall selection and pass on taking Carson Wentz. DePodesta said he did not believe the small-school quarterback was worthy of a top-20 pick.

Wentz has developed into a star with the Eagles, and the Browns’ search for Bernie Kosar’s replacement enters its 25th year.

“The key is hitting on these transcendent picks like Carson Wentz, and the Browns haven’t been able to do that,” said Brandt, who writes a column for The Athletic. ‘They could have had Wentz, and I’m sure it will haunt them for a long time.”

Haslam’s decision to entrust Brown, the team’s former legal counsel, with final say on the roster despite no previous experience in player personnel remains bewildering to many observers. Dorsey wasted no time taking shots at his predecessors, who did acquire some decent talent and a raft of high draft picks while creating millions in salary-cap space.

“The guys who were here before, that system, they didn’t get real players,” Dorsey said in a WKNR interview last week.

The statement is harsh, but others outside the organization were even less diplomatic. One league talent evaluator said: “The Browns are (1-29). I think Jimmy could have pulled Big Dawg (John) Thompson out of the stands and he could have picked a team that went (1-29).”

The Haslams have grown accustomed to the criticism and second-guessing. Not everybody, however, chides their habit of casting a wide net for information and opinion.

Browns players like the family’s willingness to ask for their input. The Haslams recently addressed the club’s leadership council and told players they appreciated their fight and spirit in a winless season.

Randy Lerner was so anonymous around the facility, former linebacker D’Qwell Jackson pulled aside young players to say, “See that guy? He’s our owner.”

The Haslams also scored points inside the locker room this summer for giving players the freedom to express themselves during the rash of league-wide anthem protests. No NFL team did more to raise awareness of social injustices or search for common ground than the Browns even in the face of strong backlash from some fans.

Jimmy Haslam recently was one of five owners named to the league’s Players Coalition/Social Justice Initiative Working Group. The Haslams, who donated to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, denounced the president’s social media rants on anthem demonstrations as “misguided, uninformed and divisive.”

“No doubt, we appreciate the support,” linebacker Christian Kirksey said early in the season. “Not everyone has been as understanding of our views.”

‘A unified thought’

The crowd of 67,431 fans at FirstEnergy Stadium roared with delight for much of the afternoon on Oct. 12, 2014. It was a beating years in the making as the Browns took out a decade’s worth of frustration against the hated Steelers in a 31-10 victory.

It ranks among the signature wins of the Haslam era, a dominating performance that helped catapult the Browns to a surprising 7-4 start. Amid the joy, Pro Bowl center Alex Mack broke his leg — and unbeknownst to many in attendance, the injury escalated troubles between the coaching staff and front office that had been festering since the fateful 2014 NFL Draft.

Three weeks earlier, new general manager Ray Farmer had begun sending impermissible texts to coaches during games, a league violation that eventually led to a four-game suspension in 2015. One of his first messages went directly to new coach Mike Pettine, according to a source familiar with the investigation, that questioned offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s strategy in just the second game of the season against New Orleans.

New general manager John Dorsey and Jimmy Haslam. (Nick Cammett/Getty Images)

Textgate, as it came to be known, was among the reasons Shanahan cited in his famous 32-point presentation, which he successfully used to wiggle out of his contract after one season. Another obvious point of contention was the controversial decision to select quarterback Johnny Manziel, who had big fans in Haslam and the marketing department, but no support from Shanahan.

But a grievance that flew under the radar perfectly illustrated the potential pitfalls of Haslam’s arranged marriages between coaches and personnel departments.

Shanahan employs a wide-zone blocking scheme that requires athletic linemen who can run well and move laterally. The offensive coordinator was comfortable with his starters but asked management to add several reserves in free agency who fit his style.

The primary signing was Paul McQuistan, a versatile lineman from the Super Bowl-champion Seahawks. McQuistan was an established veteran, but not one suited for Shanahan’s scheme.

The Browns’ rushing attack, among the NFL’s best through the first five weeks, gradually fell apart after Mack’s injury. The club finished the season 7-9 as quarterback Brian Hoyer lost his confidence in part because of Mack’s absence and the lack of a competent replacement.

“There was not a willingness from Ray to immerse himself in what we were doing,” a source said of Farmer, promoted from within the Browns organization after Banner’s firing. “I’m not saying that’s totally uncommon around the league. Some front offices don’t include coaches much in personnel decisions. But when the personnel department is not fully educated on what you are running, it’s hard to pick the players.

“I don’t think Ray had a good enough understanding of the type of linemen they were looking for. I think there is much more variance in skill set based on what system you run in football than in most other sports. That’s why you have to be on the same page with the people selecting the players. Otherwise, you are going to be spinning your wheels.”

Haslam’s reign has never featured a coaching staff and front office in total sync. Losing obviously increases the natural friction between the two bodies, but when a regime starts with like minds, the chances of success are often better.

For instance, Banner tried to hire Doug Marrone in 2013 because the coach embraced a hybrid approach to analytics and traditional football philosophies, according to a source. Marrone, who is flourishing this season in Jacksonville, turned down the Browns job for one in Buffalo. The club also was unable to work out a deal with Chip Kelly, leading to the hiring of Rob Chudzinski.

“There has to be a unified thought with coaches and general managers on what we’re doing and what direction we’re going and what we’re looking for,” said former NFL linebacker Chris Spielman, an NFL on FOX analyst. “I don’t know if it’s weird, I just don’t know how successful it can be. That would be a good study. If you trust the guy who’s in charge of your whole football operation, then you have to trust him enough to bring in his own coach who philosophically has the same ideas.”

Sashi Brown and Paul DePodesta were part of the search committee that hired Hue Jackson. Yet even during the winter of 2016 some wondered how a front office pushing analytics would mesh with an old-school coach like Jackson. It proved to be a poor match as the two sides squabbled over roster construction and the coach seldom passed on a chance to take a veiled jab at Brown in the media. Although Haslam denies it, the fiasco involving the botched trade for Bengals quarterback A.J. McCarron at this year’s trade deadline likely sealed the executive’s fate.

Two months later, Haslam is hoping Jackson and Dorsey, who are traditional football men, can coexist.

“They have never really spent much time or any time together,” Haslam said Dec. 8. “I just want to assure you that having worked with Hue for the last couple of years and then spending a lot of time with John the last five or six weeks, I think their backgrounds are similar. They are football lifers, particularly NFL lifers. Philosophically, they line up if not identically, almost identically. Personality-wise, they share a lot — both extroverted, high-energy individuals. It is our expectations that they will form a great team and help turn this franchise around.”

The Panthers and Lions are examples of franchises where new general managers have retained inherited coaches and found common ground. With Jackson’s 1-29 record in two seasons, however, some think Dorsey will ask Haslam to make a change despite the owner’s stated wishes to keep the coach.

On Tuesday, Dorsey told Browns radio partner 92.3 The Fan that ownership already had addressed the question regarding Jackson’s future. When asked whether he had a list of coaching candidates ready if Haslam changed his mind, Dorsey added: “That’s one of those questions that’s speculation.” The general manager stressed he’s building a good relationship with the coach.

“I wouldn’t be shocked if they went the other direction,’’ Spielman said. “If I’m in that coach’s chair, I’m not sitting there with a lot of confidence no matter what has been said by the owner.”

Sources said Haslam must become more firm in dealing with brushfires that spark within the organization. Several NFL executives from other teams point to former Browns president Alec Scheiner overstepping his bounds as a financial officer to get more involved in football operations.

“Why was this guy sitting in on film sessions and other meetings?” one league executive asked. ‘That would never fly on most teams. In talking to people who were in Cleveland at the time, they saw it as a power-hungry executive who was trying to take advantage of a first-time coach and GM. That’s where Jimmy has to step in and say, ‘enough of this shit, everybody stay in their lanes.’ Maybe it’s a new owner still trying to find his way.”

Another curious episode involved senior media broadcaster Nathan Zegura, a fantasy football guru, writing scouting reports for the team several years ago. A Browns spokesman said that stories of Zegura’s scouting exploits were overblown. But as a former team employee observed: “That kind of stuff doesn’t go unnoticed in the building.”

In recent years, the Haslams’ presence in Berea has grown. Husband and wife are at the facility on an average of three days a week as their lives become more entrenched in Cleveland. It is a large family with some members holding minority shares in the club. Jimmy Haslam’s son-in-law, JW Johnson, is getting more involved in an attempt to learn the business.

Nobody’s role has expanded more since the Haslams bought the team than that of Dee, who sits on the NFL’s conduct committee, while her husband occupies seats on the business ventures, Hall of Fame and media committees. Multiple sources said that Dee has been a positive addition and that she played a role in the departure of Scheiner after the 2015 season.

“She has spent a lot of time in that building and has tried to change the culture,” a team insider said. “She kept an open-door policy for people who were troubled by some of the stuff that was going on.”

The family’s influence in the community also continues to grow.

The Haslams established the Browns Give Back initiative to make an impact in education, youth football and community engagement and invested $10 million in Breakthrough Charter Schools, which helps provide equal educational opportunities for local youths throughout greater Cleveland. The family also supplied a substantial gift to Cleveland’s public schools to refurbish athletic fields and promote student attendance.

“They have really lived by the words of giving back to Northeast Ohio,” said Eric Gordon, CEO of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. “They have been engaged from the time of their first meeting with us four years ago. It has been a ‘we mean what we say and we’re here to work’ approach.”

The family has been honored by the local NAACP chapter and the Fritz Pollard Alliance for promoting diversity hiring in the front office. The league confirmed last week the Browns complied with the Rooney Rule when hiring Dorsey.

Sources critical of the Haslams’ management style do not dispute their desire to improve the club. They were aggressive in free agency until the front office began slashing payroll to maximize salary-cap space in the past two seasons. The Haslams also paid for a five-man, NFL-style graduate assistant program in 2014 to free up coaches from the crush of clerical work.

“If you presented something to Jimmy in a common-sense way, I can’t remember him ever saying no to a request,” a former Browns employee said.

Fan opinion about the Haslams, however, is unlikely to change until the Browns field a competitive team and find a franchise quarterback. They have not won more than seven games in any season. Cynically speaking, their biggest victories remain in the revenue column thanks to lucrative league television deals, stadium naming rights and changes in team-endorsed hospitals and uniforms.

In five years, the franchise’s value has nearly doubled to $1.95 billion, according to Forbes. In October, the Haslams sold major shares of Pilot to Warren Buffett.

The hiring of Dorsey is potentially the family’s best move since buying the Browns. The franchise has a seasoned executive with years of traditional football experience sitting on a pile of high draft picks and cap space.

A sampling of advice from executives around the league paints a clear picture: Learn from mistakes, speak up when it’s time to resolve internal issues, trust the people you have put in charge and stop “trying to hit five-run homers” with ideas from outsiders.

“Jimmy is almost like the kid who wants to prove to his dad how smart he is,” a source said. “The analytics stuff is a perfect example. It’s like he wants other owners to one day look back and say, ‘Boy, that guy with all the truck stops, he came in here and really showed us how to run a franchise.’ You just hope he finally figures it out.”

— Reported from Cleveland. Browns beat writer Zac Jackson contributed to this report

Top photo credit: Nick Cammett/Getty Images

===

Part 2: Rocky Top: Examining the Haslam family’s power and influence during Tennessee’s football turmoil

Part 3: Epitome of Jimmy Haslam era: How disastrous 2014 NFL Draft unfolded

Part 4: FBI investigation: What awaits Jimmy Haslam as trial proceeds for former Pilot Flying J employees?