Hue Jackson claims Browns incentivized losing during tenure

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Hue Jackson claimed the Cleveland Browns offered bonus money for losing during the 2016 and 2017 seasons – his first two years as a head coach.

Jackson, who is now the head coach at Grambling State University, told ESPN on Wednesday there was money to be made for hitting certain milestones, like attaining a certain number of draft picks and being the youngest team in the league.

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Special assistant to the head coach Hue Jackson of the Cincinnati Bengals on the sideline in the second quarter of a game against the Cleveland Browns on Nov. 25, 2018, at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cleveland won 35-20.
(Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images)

“Teams that win are just not the youngest team, not that the youngest teams can’t win, so I didn’t understand the process. I didn’t understand what the plan was, I asked for clarity because it did not talk about winning and losing until year three and four. So that told you right there that something wasn’t correct, but I still couldn’t understand it until I had the team that I had,” he told the outlet during an appearance on “SportsCenter.”

“And I remember very candidly saying to [Browns team owner Jimmy Haslam], ‘I’m not interested in bonus money,’ because I’ve never known that to be a bonus. I was interested in taking whatever that money was and putting it toward getting more players on our football team because I didn’t think we were very talented at all. I know what good football teams look like, play like, what they act like, and we didn’t have a lot of talented players on the team at that time.”

Jackson was 1-31 during his time with the Browns and was at the helm in 2017 when the team became only the second in NFL history to finish a season winless. He was fired in the middle of the 2018 season.

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