BEREA, Ohio _ Although the Browns are 0-12 and in serious danger of finishing this season winless, coach Hue Jackson is convinced his job is safe.
"I am not distracted by what my fate will be because I never would have taken this job if I thought it was going to be anything other than me being here and seeing this through," Jackson said Tuesday as many of his players left town for the bye. "That part has never been an issue."
Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has fired three regimes since he officially bought the team in October 2012. He even fired CEO Joe Banner, general manager Mike Lombardi and coach Rob Chudzinski after just one season on the job. That crew went 4-12 during the 2013 season.
"I know the history here," Jackson said. "Trust me, I don't need you guys to tell me. I know it extremely well. I get it."
Still, Jackson is confident he won't be a one-and-done coach in Cleveland because he asked Haslam blunt questions along those lines when he interviewed with the Browns in January.
"I have trust in the people who hired me," Jackson said. "Those questions have been asked. I wouldn't be standing here. You have to ask those hard questions. I feel very comfortable that they are committed to what we are trying to do. They haven't been anything but committed.
"Continuity is a huge piece of this. They told me that from the outset and I knew it. Now, did I know we were going to be where we are today? No, I didn't, and I don't think anybody did, but this is where we are and this is our reality. There is no getting around that. This is not where any of us want to be, so we just have to fix it."
Nine-time Pro Bowl left tackle Joe Thomas has played for six head coaches since the Browns drafted him in 2007, and he's starving for some continuity.
"The optimism and positivity and the effort you still see out there on a daily basis is because everybody here knows we're working for something down the line in the future and it's not just going to get destroyed at the end of the season," Thomas said.
"Whereas some of the years past when you're sitting in this situation with poor records, the coach is imminently going to get fired, all the players on the team are going to get cut, traded or released, and you know a bomb is going to get dropped on the organization."
Thomas lamented the bomb Haslam dropped on the team at the end of the 2013 season.
"I thought, 'No way are they going to fire (Chudzinski). That would be idiotic,' " Thomas said. "I couldn't believe it. But we did, and that's the way it was, I guess. That was the most shocked I've ever been."
But neither Jackson nor Thomas can envision a similar scenario unfolding this time around.
