Football

The Cleveland Browns plan to review whether comments made by fired coach Bud Carson would allow the team to cancel his six-figure salary contract.

But Carson told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer he was misquoted or taken out of context in an interview published Wednesday in a column in USA Today.

Carson, who was fired Nov. 5 in the middle of his second season as Browns’ coach, was quoted by USA Today columnist Gordon Forbes as saying the real power of the team lay with owner Art Modell and executive vice presidents Jim Bailey and Ernie Accorsi.

“They like numbers,” Carson was quoted as saying. “They just didn’t want me to have any power.”

The column also quoted Carson as saying that Accorsi was “not a football man,” that pro personnel director Mike Lombardi had too much authority and that new Coach Jim Shofner would be a victim of the same power game.