Hue Jackson backtracks on whether or not he was offered money to lose

On Tuesday, former Cleveland Browns head coach Hue Jackson supported Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL as well as Flores’ claims that he was offered $100k per loss by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.

Jackson wasn’t clear that he was offered money by the Browns to lose but he revealed in tweets that owner Jimmy Haslam “was happy while we kept losing” and in response to someone joking that Haslam wasn’t offering $100k, Jackson responded, “Trust me it was a good number!” And then on Wednesday, Jackson appeared on ESPN and explained that bonus money was available at the end of the season if the team met certain achievements (like fielding the youngest team) that would likely result in more losses. So, drawing conclusions from that, it’s reasonable to believe Jackson admitted that he was offered money to lose.

Now, Jackson is clearing the air and revealed to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he was not offered money to lose games.

“No, I was never offered money like Brian (Flores) had mentioned,” Jackson said. “I think this is a totally different situation but has some similarities.”

“When you talk about incentivizing a four-year plan that led to the team not being able to play as well, that people benefited off of that — that’s different. But at the same time, it has some of the same similarities to it,” Jackson said, referring to Flores’ situation.

Okay. Then why the change of tone since Tuesday? Between Tuesday and Friday, the Browns denied Jackson was incentivized for losing games. The team said that Jackson’s comments were “completely fabricated” and that, “Any accusation that any member of our organization was incentivized to deliberately lose games is categorically false.”

Jackson might feel like he has a good reason to go about it like this but this is what can lose cases. Jackson might think he’s helping Flores by publicly supporting him like this but Jackson saying one thing and then later saying another while being vague is something the NFL could pick up on and use it against Flores.

Even if Flores is right, he’s fighting an uphill battle to prove what happened to him in a court of law and if Jackson is going to make any more public interviews or speak any further on this, he might want to be more consistent in his messaging.

[CNN]