The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Browns’ problems start at top
Irate fans love to pick sides for all that’s wrong with the Browns. Some want the front office blown up. Some want coach Hue Jackson fired.
The problem with the Browns starts at the top with owner Jimmy Haslam. They are 15-57 under his ownership since 2013. He began acquiring the Browns on the first day of training camp in 2012, but since the front office, coaches and players were already in place, we will give him a pass on that 4-12 season. That is being generous, though; the life was sapped out of the organization because everyone knew changes were coming.
Haslam is the one who came up with the silly idea to put his salary cap manager in charge of the football operation, so this mess really isn’t all Sashi Brown’s fault. He did not volunteer to become executive vice president of football operations, although he is culpable, too, for not admitting he needed help after the disastrous 1-15 season in 2016.
“Sashi, I believe, is the right person to do this for the Cleveland Browns,” Haslam said on Jan. 3, 2016, when he announced he was firing Mike Pettine as head coach and Ray Farmer as general manager. “He’s been in the NFL for 10 plus years, has been involved in the cap and has been heavily involved in our football administration and operations for the last year or two.
“He’s very smart, very organized, good at systems and processes and an outstanding team player. He’s also very strategic so we will use those skills and working for him will be a GM whose primary job will be talent acquisition.”
Haslam meets with the media twice a year — once during training camp and once at the end of the season. He held one of his sessions in Pittsburgh after the Browns lost the final game of the 2016 season to the Steelers and was asked whether he would hire a “football guy” to help Brown in 2017. Haslam said that would be up to Brown.
Brown answered the question the next day in a news conference in Berea.
“We don’t (need one),” Brown said. “We’re going to look to add some players that are talented. Other than that on the personnel staffing side, we feel good about our group.”
He said the same thing about his wide receivers after the 2017 draft.
Brown, chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta and vice president of player personnel Andrew Berry are the architects of the worst stretch of football in the history of the Browns with no reason to believe it is going to get better, despite Brown’s assurance the plan is working.
“We’re all disappointed for our fans and for our entire organization that the results haven’t been better,” Brown said on Oct. 4 when he last met with the media. “We’re committed to continuing to work towards building this roster to becoming a perennial playoff team, and we are on the way towards that.”
Think how different the Browns might be if an experienced football executive with a strong backbone had been in the front office — someone like Ernie Accorsi, who in 1985 as Browns made the trade that enabled the Browns to select Bernie Kosar in the supplemental draft.
Nineteen years later as GM of the New York Giants, Accorsi pulled off a trade with the San Diego Chargers to acquire rookie quarterback Eli Manning on the first day of the 2004 draft. Manning delivered two Super Bowl championships.
The Browns have five picks in the first two rounds of the 2018 draft because they traded down in the 2016 and 2017 drafts. But analytics be damned, there is no way Accorsi or another experienced football executive who knows quarterbacks would have passed on Carson Wentz in 2016 and Deshaun Watson in 2017 for the sake of stockpiling draft picks.
Also, there is absolutely no way an experienced football executive would have botched the trade the Browns tried to make for Bengals backup quarterback A.J. McCarron at the trading deadline on Oct. 31.
The saga is a complicated one of exchanged emails between the Browns and Bengals, but the bottom line is the Browns failed to inform the league before the 4 p.m. deadline that they were trading a secondround pick and a thirdround pick in 2018 for McCarron.
Everything wrong with the Browns can be traced back to having the wrong people in charge, and Haslam put them there. Ironically, the only one qualified to do his job is Jackson, and he is too busy bailing the boat to row it toward a safe harbor.
• The whole McCarron trade story smells fishy to me.
Normally when a player is traded, the team losing the player is under-compensated, as the Browns were in 2016 when they traded linebacker Barkevious Mingo to the Patriots for a fifth-round pick.
In this case, the Browns would have been trading a second-round and a third-round pick for a 2014 fifth-round draft pick who hasn’t attempted a pass since 2015 when he was 2-1 as a starter.
Being willing to overpay for McCarron, whom Jackson coached in Cincinnati, is an indication the front office wants to make peace with Jackson because it knows it is in trouble, or it is a sign of panic because the Browns fumbled the ball again when the 49ers acquired Jimmy Garoppolo from the Patriots for a second-round pick while the Browns were recovering from jet lag upon returning from London.
Either way, the Browns managed to look worse during their bye than they looked heading into it. That is difficult for a team 1-23 to do.
• I hope the Browns give Josh Gordon another chance, as Brown hinted they will, and if they do, I hope Gordon rewards the Browns for their loyalty. I would also understand if the Browns say the troubled receiver is out of doovers.
Gordon, reinstated by Commissioner Roger Goodell on Nov. 1 after being suspended by the league the last 2½ seasons for substance abuse violations, can resume practice with the Browns on Nov. 20 and play in a game on Dec. 3. In the meantime, he can be in team meetings, work on conditioning and participate in individual workouts.
“We respect and commend Josh for taking the steps necessary to have the opportunity to return to the league,” Brown said in part of his statement after Goodell’s decision was announced. “Josh will be in our building in the coming days and we look forward to having him back and sitting with him to discuss his future on our team.”
The Browns return from their bye on Nov. 6. If terms of his reinstatement allowed him to practice then, he would be the best receiver on the practice field despite not having played in a game in almost three years.
If the Browns choose not to keep Gordon, who in 2013 led the NFL with 1,646 receiving yards, don’t be surprised if he ends up in Pittsburgh or New England. Patriots coach Bill Belichick is known for giving troubled players another chance. Former Browns cornerback Joe Haden, now with the Steelers, might try to talk them into signing Gordon.
I didn’t know that
…until I read my Snapple bottle cap
Calvin Coolidge walked his pet raccoon, Rebecca, on a leash around the White House. … The pupils in goats’ eyes are rectangular. … Bowling pins need to tip only 7.5 degrees to fall. … William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, and died on April 23 52 years later. … A dog’s sense of hearing is 10 times more acute than a human’s. … Every tweet Americans send is archived by the Library of Congress.
The problem starts at the top with Jimmy Haslam. They are 15-57 under his ownership since 2013.