Jim Owczarski

jowczarski@enquirer.com

Hue Jackson’s football year began with a challenge to quarterback Andy Dalton to take the next step in his career and become a top 10 passer in the league and help lead his offense, and the Cincinnati Bengals, to unprecedented success.

Those challenges were nearly met.

The Enquirer has confirmed Jackson will now move on to a new challenge as head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

League sources say Jackson has yet to sign a deal.

Under Jackson, Dalton was a Most Valuable Player candidate through 12 games before a fractured thumb prematurely ended his season, though he still finished as the league’s No. 2 passer. Tight end Tyler Eifert turned in a Pro Bowl campaign. Running back Jeremy Hill tied for the league lead in touchdowns. Rookie offensive lineman Jake Fisher tied a league mark for targets to a lineman and backup quarterback AJ McCarron proved he belonged.

The Bengals yet again saw their season come to an end in the first round of the playoffs, however.

Hue Jackson next branch of Marvin Lewis� tree

Owner Jimmy Haslam, who was part of the interview process with Jackson, is remaking his organization yet again. First, he promoted Sashi Brown as the vice president of football operations on Jan. 3.

On Jan. 4, general manager Ray Farmer and head coach Mike Pettine were fired.

Two days later, Haslam hired former New York Mets vice president of development and amateur scouting Paul DePodesta to oversee Brown.

Jackson will now face his good friend Marvin Lewis two times a year in the AFC North for the foreseeable future.

The Browns settled on Jackson after interviews at Paul Brown Stadium on Sunday after the season concluded and again later in the week.

Prior to his first interview with the Browns, Jackson interviewed with San Francisco. He was to interview with the New York Giants on Thursday. He was scheduled to also speak to executives with Miami, but the Dolphins hired Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Adam Gase on Friday.

The reasons were many for Jackson to be coveted by so many teams, but former Oakland Raiders CEO Amy Trask noted another reason why Jackson may have been an attractive candidate for owners across the league.

Trask was part of the Raiders’ front office when owner Al Davis first brought Jackson to Oakland in 2010 as an offensive coordinator and then promoted him to head coach in 2011.

“He’s a leader,” said Trask, who is now an analyst for CBS Sports. “He’s a leader. And the other thing is, he’s a great, great teammate to everyone throughout the organization. So, I can tell you from the business perspective, that when Hue was our head coach, there was not one time that someone in a department – sponsorship, legal, finance, luxury suite sales, ticket sales – there was not a time that someone needed an assist from the head coach that Hue wasn’t absolutely gracious about offering that assistance.”

A Los Angeles native with deep roots in California, Jackson left the west coast after being fired as the Raiders head coach after one 8-8 season.

The next year, in 2012, Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis brought Jackson on to his staff as a secondary and special teams assistant. In 2013, Jackson was moved to running backs coach and when Jay Gruden left to take over the head job in Washington in 2014, Jackson was promoted to offensive coordinator.

“I hope it was beneficial to him,” Lewis said earlier in the year about Jackson’s experience coaching different parts of the team. “I know it was certainly beneficial to us, and to me because he came back here with a whole different perspective of things. He came back with the perspective of a head coach, about the team, about the 46-man roster. He came back with a different perspective of why things are the way they are, of how a cut down occurs, how you go from 75 to 53 and why those 53 stay.”

In Jackson’s two seasons as offensive coordinator, the Bengals offense has ranked 15th total offense in both seasons and 15th and seventh in scoring offense.

Before Dalton was lost for the year on Dec. 13 though, the Bengals were averaging 376.3 yards of total offense and 27.8 points – numbers that would have been good for fifth and fourth in the NFL if that trend continued through the end of the regular season.

Throughout the season, Jackson was the first to call out Pro Bowl receiver A.J. Green for stopping on a route against San Diego, for Jeremy Hill for not establishing himself as a force in the run game, or even himself for mistakes like calling a jet sweep to Rex Burkhead against Seattle that led to a fumble and a Seahawks defensive score.

“I give them sugar, don’t get me wrong, but I’m always going to ask for more,” Jackson said earlier in the year about his style. “My job is to make them be the best we can be. We’re not going to settle. We can’t do that. We’re going to keep reaching and growing.”

Jackson, who called the 2014 campaign his greatest coaching job considering the injuries to key offensive players, had to work around major injuries this season as well.

Losing Dalton was the biggest blow while Eifert also missed the better part of five games with injuries. He also moved rookie offensive lineman Jake Fisher to fullback after Ryan Hewitt was injured late in the year.

Jackson was also known for designing a variety of formations that included unbalanced lines, his tackles split wide, Mohamed Sanu in the Wildcat formation and, in 2014, introducing the ineligible player formations that would help the New England Patriots beat the Baltimore Ravens in the playoffs en route to the Super Bowl.

It’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to place a specific label on the “type” of offense Jackson runs.

“In my view, the best coaches evaluate the talent before them and find a way to maximize that talent,” Trask said. “They find a way to put players in the best position to allow those players to do what they do best and to succeed. And that is what precisely what Hue did (in Oakland), and what Hue does.”

For his part, Lewis felt Jackson helped him as much as the players.

“There’s a lot of leaning on each other,” Lewis said earlier in the year. “I can go in and ask Hue a question, or look at something critically, and he doesn’t take offense. He knows what I’m doing it. It doesn’t impede him from moving forward. Or he can come in say, ‘Why can’t we have more of this or less of that?’ Or whatever it may be. I know he’s looking at it from the big picture and not just one-sided. That’s a good perspective to have. When you gain that kind of experience, I’d be foolish not to listen to it.”