Cleveland Browns vs. Buffalo Bills December 18, 2016

Cleveland Browns head coach Hue Jackson congratulates quarterback Robert Griffin III on his touchdown against the Buffalo Bills in the second half Sunday.

(Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - Coach Hue Jackson takes little satisfaction in the narrative here in Buffalo that the Browns are more on the right track by starting from scratch and rebuilding the team.

He's white-knuckling it through this 0-14 season too much.

"Maybe a little,'' said Jackson, whose team lost 33-13 to the Bills on Sunday to tie a franchise record for losses. "But sitting in my seat now, because I'm too competitive, this is not what I want us to be. This is not my vision of how we're going to be and what I want us to be.

"I built my reputation in this league by winning and getting players to perform and getting them to play as well as they can play, and I don't ever want to go backwards on that challenge to myself. So, I've earned this reputation with our team and organization and everybody, and I'm a huge part of it. But, we're going to fix this.''

Despite Jackson's 0-14 mark and a regressing team that gave up a season-high 280 yards rushing Sunday, it's Bills coach Rex Ryan who's on the hot seat at 7-7 and not Jackson. In a column in the Buffalo News and on radio talk shows this weekend, the Browns were held up as the model for how to start over with a concrete plan: Collect draft picks and cap space, tear down the roster and build a solid foundation.

But Jackson is struggling with this winless season, and it's worse than he ever imagined. He doesn't want that historic 0-16 next to his name, and each loss hurts more than the one before. The Browns viewed this as a winnable game, and hoped that Robert Griffin III would show dramatic improvement over last week. The Browns are now down to two more chances to avoid the dreaded 0-16, on Christmas Eve against the Chargers (5-9) and New Year's Day in Pittsburgh (9-5).



"I'm determined, like I've said several times, more so now than ever before to get this right on all levels,'' he said. "And I think that's what we have to do. I know everybody who I'm connected to in this organization is determined to get this right on all levels. I appreciate their support through it all, and I think our players appreciate their support. But our players deserve an opportunity to win and we have two more chances to have that happen. So we just have to go work, put our heads down, and go see if we can make that happen.''

Jackson waited five years for another head coaching opportunity after he was fired by the Raiders in 2011 after only one season in which he went 8-8, and said he is not about to fail at this.

"This is my career and this is my reputation,'' he said. "I'm not going to back down from the challenge. . . .



"The players mean too much to me, the people here mean too much to me, so I said a long time ago that we're going to fix it. We have to. We have nowhere to go but up, but we have a lot of work to do.''

Jackson, who communicates frequently with Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, is so determined to get it right that he'll undoubtedly seek more input in personnel decisions this offseason. He's too rattled to the core to have his name on a product over which he has little control. He knows the Browns need a major talent upgrade, in part to compensate for some of the draft misses this season.

But he does take satisfaction in the fact that his players haven't quit on him.

"Today, maybe it didn't look that way or feel that way (that they've made progress) because of the results and maybe statistically the way it looks,'' he said. "But these guys haven't quit. I'll be the first to tell you that. I know that without question. Joe Thomas was in there rallying these guys again.

". . . Physically, we got beat in some areas today. That team was better than us. That's going to happen. But I'm never going to ever question if these guys are quitting because I know they're not. They're playing as hard as they can.''

Robert Griffin III, who doesn't even know if he'll start Saturday against the Chargers, backed him up on that.

"Even if we have to turn to backyard football, we're going to find a way to get a win and that's the focus of everybody in that locker room,'' he said. "I'm proud to be a part of this team.''