Eric Mangini’s players seem to hate him. In fact, some have already taken their case to the NFLPA. The media in Cleveland certainly hate him, and the public is pretty disenchanted, too.



His rules and actions seem petty and pointless. He seems to treat his players like children, not men. And his secretive nature makes him look frightened and paranoid. With his team at 0-4 after an overtime loss to the Bengals on Sunday, he looks like the captain of a sinking ship headed straight for an inevitable mutiny that will result in his head.



Of course, he could be heading straight for a Super Bowl in a few years, too.



This is not an endorsement of Mangini, who in spectacular fashion has taken the joy out of two franchises in his short four-year tenure as an NFL head coach. Quite frankly, he acts like a jerk at times, and his players and paying customers deserve far better than that. He deserves his status as a national joke, and he’ll eventually have to lighten up if he wants to be a success.



But the truth is, I could have written that same paragraph about Tom Coughlin back in 2004. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did. And similar things were said about Bill Belichick, not only during his failed tenure in Cleveland, but during his rough start as the HC of the NEP, too.



“When Bill first got to New England, there were some tough times there,” Mangini told reporters in Cleveland last week. “It was tough at the beginning of the next year. But I know how we approached it. I know the way that we worked. It took time. But when it hit, it hit.”


It seems like ancient history now, but Belichick didn’t descend from the heavens when he arrived in New England. He had a miserable first go-round as an NFL head coach, failing with the Browns and alienating everyone with his dour demeanor. Then he was skewered for walking out on the Jets on the day he was to be named the successor to Bill Parcells, resigning with a piece of paper that said simply he was done as the “HC of the NYJ.”


Then the Patriots went 5-11 in 2000 and started 0-2 in 2001. When they lost Drew Bledsoe to an injury and had to turn the quarterback duties over to an unheralded, sixth-round draft pick named Tom Brady in Week 3, they were the laughingstock of the NFL. Nobody had any inkling that four months later, a dynasty would be born.



Coughlin had plenty of struggles, too, though he did come to New York in 2004 with a relatively impressive resume from his time in Jacksonville. Still, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Popularity when he stormed into Giants Stadium, set all the clocks back five minutes, declared that injuries are a “cancer” and started fining players because their socks were being worn too low. Within four months, about a dozen players filed a grievance with the NFLPA over the way Coughlin ran his offseason program, keeping the players there longer than he was allowed and committing the unthinkable sin of forcing them to have breakfast — breakfast! — at the stadium during workout days.


What seemed like an inevitable players revolt continued for three up-and-down years, with players, fans and media piling on Coughlin like nothing I had ever seen before. It was so bad that the Giants’ usually patient ownership had to seriously consider firing him after the 2006 season.



Instead, they brought him back on a short leash for one more season, and 12 months later the Giants were Super Bowl champs.



That’s not to say the Browns should be penciled in for a Super Bowl anytime soon, or that Mangini will be able to avoid a firing squad. There are several big differences. For one thing, the Browns have a lot less talent than the Giants team that Coughlin inherited. And it has yet to be seen if Mangini and GM George Kokinis can overhaul the roster as well and as quickly as Belichick and GM Scott Pioli did in New England.



For another, Mangini — believe it or not — is far more over-the-top crazy than Coughlin and Belichick were with their rules and dictator styles. Just witness the ridiculous 10-hour bus trip he reportedly forced his rookies to take to help out with his personal football camp in Hartford, Conn. Or his insane refusal to name a starting quarterback before the opener, not even telling Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson so he could completely prevent a leak — as if the prevention of World War III depended on it.



Mangini, who has left a locker room full of Jets players laughing at the Browns’ misfortune, will have to lighten up a lot more than Coughlin did to win over his locker room. But if he does, he’ll learn that his biggest problem isn’t his Napoleon complex.



It’s that his team is 0-4.



Seriously. Coughlin may have lightened up with the press and his players a little, but those tyrannical rules that his players once hated are still there. Coughlin’s philosophy of discipline and accountability didn’t change. He just started winning. And when he did, his players bought in. It was the same in New England, where Belichick is the same Belichick everyone hated in Cleveland. Now free agents flock to his team because he knows how to win.



When you’re not winning, everything seems worse. Mangini, with no resume and currently no Cleveland wins, can’t stand up at the front of the room and say, “Do what I say, because it works.” There’s no evidence to support that. And the players he brought with him from the Jets can’t really vouch for him, either, given that his tenure in New York wasn’t exactly a rousing success.



Coughlin has a ring. Belichick has three. And both of them have had plenty of recent wins. If Coughlin wants to fine a player $500 because he was four minutes early to a meeting and not five minutes early, he has several dozen players on his team who will tell that player to not whine about the money and to get his butt into his seat a little earlier because “that’s the way we do things around here, and it works.”


Will Mangini ever have that? Or will he always be perceived as a paranoid clown who thinks he’s Bill Belichick Jr.?



“There are certain things I learned from my experience being here (in Cleveland) in 1995, then transitioning to New York with Parcells, then transitioning to New England with Bill,” Mangini said. “I feel I got a real good perspective on it and was lucky to be around those situations to understand the difficulties you encounter and the importance of having a plan, having a vision and sticking to it.



“Traditionally, taking shortcuts usually doesn’t result in long-term success. All of our parents tell us that all the time and we tell our kids that. You’ve got to work at it and be committed to it. There’s going to be difficult times and challenges you have to overcome. But you work through it, keep at it and good things happen.”



In other words, the city of Cleveland needs to be patient, turn down the laugh track and the vitriol and wait to see if Mangini’s way — no matter how offensive — actually works. Who knows? Maybe he will turn out to be like Coughlin or Belichick. Maybe in a few years columnists will be writing about how his discipline was needed and about how today’s players need a firm hand. Maybe instead of running to the union with complaints, players would simply run to the Browns.



And perhaps even a growing number of Browns would be insisting to the mutineers, “Let’s do things his way … because I like winning … and it seems like it works.”

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