Rob Chudzinski was fired on Sunday night as coach of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, only hours after the end of a 4-12 season and less than a year in the post.
The Browns were beaten by Pittsburgh 20-7 earlier on Sunday and the team wasted little time in delivering the axe, the first of several firings expected for coaches of clubs who failed the qualify for the NFL playoffs.
“We appreciate Chud’s passion for the Browns and we have great respect for him both personally and professionally,” the Browns said in a statement.
“We needed to see progress with this football team. We needed to see development and improvement as the season evolved and unfortunately we took a concerning step backward in the second half of the year,” they said.
The Browns dropped their final seven games of the season.
“Our fans deserve to see a consistently competitive team,” the Browns said. “We have high standards and there’s an urgency for success. When we believed we were not positioned to achieve significant progress in 2014, we knew we had to admit that a change was needed, and move forward.”
Chudzinski was hired in January after the Browns fired Pat Shurmur as coach.
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