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Bernie Kosar criticizes the Browns front office. (Lynn Ischay, Plain Dealer file photo)

BEREA, Ohio -- Bernie Kosar ripped the Browns' top brass Monday, saying Johnny Manziel and any other quarterback is destined to fail here because of the lack of a winning culture.

In an interview on The Mike Trivisonno show on WTAM 1100, Kosar said he's been talking all year about "how we're limited with our weapons offensively and it is somewhat of a tough spot for Johnny given this team and given this organization. It's just a complete recipe for a disaster.''

He said the quarterbacks keep changing, but the results are the same because of the way the team is run. He never specifically mentions owner Jimmy Haslam or general manager Ray Farmer by name, blaming the problems on the front office in general.

Haslam, in his second full year of ownership, is committed to turning the franchise around and is working hard to do that. Coach Mike Pettine has talked about changing the culture from the moment he walked in the door. The Browns were all alone in first place in the AFC North this year before losing four of their last five games.

"You can't put these kids (the quarterbacks) in these spots,'' Kosar said. "It's almost abuse. If you're going to keep running it the way we're running it, we may as well do nothing (to fix the quarterback situation), because you'll kill two more kids coming in here. It'll fail. It does not matter right now.''

Kosar, who was taken off the Browns preseason broadcasts on WKYC this year and has long wanted to help run the Browns, said, "We've had a headache. I've had a headache for 15 years with this and it's not stopping. It's getting worse."

Kosar said it doesn't matter if it's Brian Hoyer, Manziel or anyone else they can put behind center.



"You can take out Brian, you can take out Johnny Manziel's name and you can plug in (Tim) Couch.....(Derek) Anderson, Brady Quinn, Colt McCoy...the names change, but the way we do things as a culture above them is still the same and yeah he wasn't ready, but the team's not ready. December is when teams have to play good.''

Kosar said the Browns set the bar too high for Manziel by the way they praised him all week.

"They've been talking so positively like 'this is the savior' and that's what bad organizations do,'' he said. "They set these quarterback controversies up and it kind of takes the heat off of them and it gives everybody a little glimmer of hope. ...The organization and the players and coaches actually thought he was going to do good. I know they believed he was going to do good.''



Kosar said he's been hearing the same refrain since 1999 about the 21 quarterbacks who have started a game since then.



"I'm 51,'' he said. "At this pace, I'm going to die by 60 and for the last 25 years of my life, all I'm going to talk about is, 'Who do you think the quarterback should be?' That's all we talk about. And you can't fix it until you fix it above it.''

Kosar stressed that he's not pinning any of this on coach Mike Pettine.

"For all the reporters that listen to our show that want to say I'm dogging him, absolutely not,'' said Kosar. "He was hired under this set of rules where everybody gets to giggle and laugh and talk about things and everybody is involved in everything. He was hired in a tough, tough spot in a culture above him that is not a football culture. It's not a winning football culture. It goes above that.''

He also absolved the players.

"I ain't coming down on the players now,'' he said. "These are 25-year-olds. Yeah, they're men and yeah they're professionals, but, heck, at 25, did you know everything in life? You need leadership, and leadership just doesn't mean a player. There's a culture that's established within the building of intensity and focus and conviction and love for the game. You have to have a single-mindedness, a focus, in order to win."

Asked if the Browns should bench Josh Gordon, he said, "I wonder what culture they stand for and what their rules are systematically as to what they're supposed to do and how they're taught. The issue is systemically from a culture in Berea, they've got to get it together because I know of anyone who can be consistently successful within this culture, within this organization right now. You can't play football like this.''

Kosar, who was once a paid consultant for the Browns, said the front office doesn't have the right mindset to win. The Browns had no comment.

"When you have a front office that's really uneducated, and I'm not talking about just the coach, there's way above him that deserves this, they don't know how to lead and organize and set a culture to play winning football, to win in the NFL consistently,'' he said.

Throughout the interview he cites Patriots coach Bill Belichick as the model for success.

"This is an obsessive game of high stakes, high competition, and the feeling of winning is good, but the distaste that those guys have, Belichick, have for losing fuels them to obsessively focus on their job and what's going to take to win games,'' he said. "You can't expect a 23-, a 25-year-old kid to know that. if they're allowed to go out and talk about everything and laugh it up and yuk it up, then they're not told and then if they don't see the examples from the people above them, then how are they supposed to know?"

He said teams like the Patriots and Packers know how to win at this time of year, citing a television shot of Hoyer and Manziel chuckling on the sidelines of the fourth quarter of Sunday's 30-0 loss to the Bengals.

"You didn't see any chuckling or smiling (out of the Patriots or Packers) like we saw on the sidelines yesterday,'' he said.

He ripped quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains for texting owner Jimmy Haslam on draft day and imploring him to draft Manziel. Loggains also said he texted coach Mike Pettine.

"That's not acceptable,'' said Kosar. "It can't happen. (Even) the defensive people are talking about how Johnny is going to do. They were like us fans. Even the head coach said, 'Hey we're kind of looking forward to watching him play.' Everybody wanted to watch him play instead of do their job.

"When you start worrying about everybody else's and you don't focus on your job that's what happens.''