The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
New GM Berry ready to be aggressive
Andrew Berry is back in Berea, and this time, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is convinced, he’s going to stick around.
Berry was introduced Feb. 5 as the Browns’ executive vice president of football operations/general manager. He replaces John Dorsey, who when training camp began last summer was heralded as the man who would lead the Browns to their first NFL championship since 1964.
Instead, on Dec. 29, Haslam fired Freddie Kitchens, Dorsey’s handpicked coach, and Dorsey parted ways with the Browns on Dec. 31 rather than take a demotion to work with whoever the next general manager would be.
Berry was the Browns’ vice president of player personnel under Sashi Brown in 2016 and 2017.
He had the same title under Dorsey in 2018 and then left to become the Eagles’ vice president of football operation in 2019. He was the heavy favorite to become the Browns’ general manager when Dorsey departed.
The difference between Berry’s first time with the Browns and now, theoretically anyway, is Berry, head coach Kevin Stefanski and Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta will work together like the Three Musketeers. Add Haslam to the mix and they (supposedly) will have the harmony of a barbershop quartet.
“We never say anything bad about people that are not here,” Haslam said. “I just think you have really smart people with low egos who continually want to learn and get better, don’t care who gets the credit and it’s all about winning. I can’t say it any more basic than that.
“To me, it’s a totally different situation. Let’s start with we did not have a quarterback then and we have a quarterback (Baker Mayfield) now, and that just means a
world of difference. We didn’t have the good core group of young players that we do have now so we are in a much different situation than we were then.”
Berry was the chief talent evaluator in the regime that passed on quarterbacks Carson Wentz (Eagles) and Deshaun Watson (Texans) so the Browns could accumulate additional draft picks. The Browns’ first draft pick in the BrownBerry era was wide receiver Corey Coleman. That pick was a flop — 56 catches in two years. Coleman caught five passes with the Giants in 2018 and missed all of
2019 with a knee injury.
Berry did not want to dwell on past mistakes. Instead he talked about the vision for the future he and Stefanski share.
“Vision encompasses a couple of different areas — one, how we are actually going to build the team and play the game,” Berry said. “Kevin, for instance, on the offensive side of the ball, has talked about his belief in the marriage of the run game and the passing game, how we’re going to be quarterback friendly and how we’re going to emphasize positions across the roster that really impact the
passing game.
“Then the other piece is how we actually behave and how we treat one another, not just at the senior levels but the staffs below us and making sure that we’re working cooperatively, we’re working progressively and most importantly, we’re working hard on a daily basis.”
Berry, 32, is the youngest general manager in NFL history. He believes he is ready for the job because he worked under Bill Polian and Ryan Grigson in Indianapolis, Brown and Dorsey in Cleveland and Howie Roseman in Philadelphia,
among others.
“I similarly broke in with different head coaches and different coordinators,” Stefanski said. “I think it’s so important as young coaches or young scouts that you’re exposed to different ways of thinking and different philosophies. I think that has really formed him into a very complete general manager, both in terms of evaluation, in terms of leadership style and all of the above.”
Berry described what he is looking for in a football player. In that regard he sounded like the other 31 general managers in the NFL.
“We want to aggressively add talent,” Berry said. “We want guys who are going to be smart, tough and accountable both on and off the field.
“We are going to attack every area of the roster that we can in terms of adding talent and competition. I do not know if that would be quite fair to characterize it as a priority one, priority two, priority three.”
The Browns have the 10th pick in the 2020 draft. Whether Berry keeps it, trades up to target a particular player or trades down to accumulate more picks will be up to him.