Don Banks: Kokinis Lost Power Struggle With Mangini

Eric Mangini might not be a good football coach. He might not be a particularly pleasant gentleman. But he can win an intra-organizational power struggle with the best of ’em. George Kokinis was actually his close friend before the two began working for the Browns. Not so much anymore:

“He thought he was getting the job of a lifetime working with one of his best friends, but it wasn’t that at all,‘’ said a league source who is familiar with both Kokinis and the Browns organization. "It was working for Eric Mangini, not with him. Eric was in charge of everything, and George resented that. It wasn’t the job he thought he’d taken. It wasn’t the partnership as he thought it would be. And he would have never taken it if he thought it was going to go that way.

“Ultimately what happened was he started to question his own existence in the organization. He was very unhappy. He takes the job, and from day one it was like they both had recipes for chicken soup, but they ended up trying to combine the recipes and all they did was ruin the dish.’’