Apparently, the NFL season must be starting on April 1st.
If you listen to all of the Cleveland Browns’ fans peppering the airwaves and internet, it must seem like the regular season is starting very soon, and the Browns haven’t done anything to help a roster that finished 4-12 last season.
Except that it doesn’t start that soon, and in reality, Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert have four months to bolster the team for the 2012 season, including nine draft picks in next month’s draft.
Heckert said Cleveland would not be big players in free agency, and he wasn’t lying. The Browns did sign DE Frostee Rucker and DE Jaqua Parker to replace Jamie Mitchell and add depth on the defensive line.
However, the team also lost RB Peyton Hillis, leaving the organization without an experienced runner, and S Mike Adams also went to Denver, thus depleting the depth in the secondary.
Cleveland also released G Eric Steinbach, but he didn’t play last year, so you really can’t count that as a loss for the organization.
How many truly great players signed at the outset of the free agency process? Think about that.
There were a lot of good players, most notably WRs Pierre Garcon, Eddie Royal, and Vincent Jackson. But the real prize in the process, DE Mario Williams, is the only perennial All Pro player signed last week.
In fact, many of the national football writers felt the Browns did the correct thing by not overpaying for average to slightly better than average players.
Look at the teams that were very active in the opening salvo in the process? The elite of the NFL didn’t exactly light up the newswire with a bunch of signings. That’s because free agency isn’t the way to build a football team. You do it through the draft.
You can certainly understand the fans reaction. They’ve been watching a football team that has gone 18-46 that last four years and they are tired of the losing. It is funny to hear both media people and Browns’ supporters alike already forecasting another 4-12 season, and some are predicting even worse.
Do they really think the front office is going to enter training camp with the same roster they have right now?
Although we don’t know for sure, you can take a pretty educated guess that Heckert will address the offense in the draft, getting a running back, perhaps a couple of wide receivers, a tackle, and hopefully a quarterback in the first few rounds of the selection process.
What the fans have to figure out is free agency is just a way to overpay average players.
In the past few years, only the New Orleans Saints have been very active in this market and been successful. Most of the other franchises who partake in the process struggle.
Why? Because they do not build a core or foundation through the draft.
There are no quick fixes in the NFL. You build through making the correct picks in the draft.
Fans can argue all they want about whether or not the Browns have made the correct picks.
Certainly, RB Montario Hardesty appears to be a second round bust, but the other players picked in the first three rounds are contributing, although the jury is still out on QB Colt McCoy and S T. J. Ward.
Everybody wants the Browns to win. However, giving big money to average free agents is more often than not the incorrect way of achieving that goal.
JD
Cleveland Sports Perspective 