In an interview with "SportsCenter," Jackson said the Browns had a "four-year plan" in place when they hired him that incentivized losing in the first two years to acquire draft picks and cap space.
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"Then it made sense to me that this is a team that can't win," Jackson said. "That the first two years — that's why it doesn't talk about winning — is not to win so that you can capitalize that way. Not so much for me, but for draft picks, for creating cap space ... I do know that no head coach is gonna survive if you lose a lot of games. There's just no way.
"So I was put out as the face of this, and I ended up having to take this."
The Browns went 1-31 during Jackson's two years as head coach in 2016 and 2017.
Jackson said he approached Haslam to say he wasn't interested in taking bonus money to lose games.
"And I remember very candidly saying to Jimmy, 'I'm not interested in bonus money,' because I've never known that to be a bonus," Jackson said. "I was interested in taking whatever that money was and putting it toward getting more players on our football team because I didn't think we were very talented at all."
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Jackson added that he was not offered $100,000 for each game, as Flores alleged with the Dolphins.
According to Yahoo's Charles Robinson, Jackson is meeting with Flores' lawyers on the case. According to Robinson, sources say Jackson has "expressed a willingness to provide testimony and materials to Flores' lawsuit."
On Wednesday, the Browns denied Jackson's accusations.
"The recent comments by Hue Jackson and his representatives relating to his tenure as our head coach are completely fabricated," a Browns spokesperson said. "Any accusation that any member of our organization was incentivized to deliberately lose games is categorically false."
According to Robinson, in 2018, an arbitrator ruled against Jackson in a confidential fraud grievance he brought against the Browns after his firing. Robinson reported that Jackson's material may stem from that grievance.
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On "SportsCenter," Jackson said he has been trying to shine light on the same issues that Flores highlighted in his lawsuit, saying even spoke to Roger Goodell about it.
"People don't understand that I tried to sound this alarm a while back, but nobody wanted to listen because the record was so bad."
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