The Cleveland Browns cut down to 53 players today, although our guess is that the final roster will won’t be finished for several days.
A common theme since the beginning of last year has been youth. If your name is not Joe Thomas, and you are over 30 years old, it is very difficult to make this roster.
After the end of last season, we speculated that Desmond Bryant and John Greco might have difficulty being with the team in 2017, and we wound up being correct. Neither are still wearing brown and orange.
Besides Thomas, only two players have reached their 30th birthday, and one of them is the punter, Britton Colquitt. Only CB Jason McCourty escaped the wrath of the organization’s obsession with Father Time.
Not that we disagree with what Sashi Brown, Paul DePodesta, and Andrew Berry have done. They took over a football organization that made one playoff appearance since returning to the NFL in 1999, and never really tried to build through the draft.
From the first year Cleveland returned, they had players like Jerry Ball, Lomas Brown, and John Jurkevic on the roster.
The second and third year, they didn’t have many players over 30 on the roster, and they got to 7-9 in the third year (2001), and made the playoffs in 2002 at 9-7.
After making the playoffs, it seemed like that became the goal, and the organization started adding veterans every year, mostly guys nearing the end of their careers, players like Orpheus Roye, Ross Verba, Jeff Garcia, Trent Dilfer, Joe Andruzzi, Kenard Lang, etc.
Combined with not drafting well, and you can see why the franchise was floundering.
Brown and DePodesta stopped the madness, although many veteran football media people couldn’t see what they were doing.
Outside of Thomas, they unloaded veteran players who were no longer improving. The only holdover was Thomas, a future Hall of Famer for sure. And Thomas had to buy into the process, otherwise he would have asked out.
As of right now, 42 of the 53 players on the roster were brought in the past two years, and that doesn’t count players like Christian Kirksey, Joel Bitonio, and Danny Shelton, who are still young guys, but were drafted by Ray Farmer.
The new regime needs to has success, for sure. We aren’t saying that Brown and DePodesta did the right thing after going 1-15 a year ago.
However, we do feel the team is going in the right direction, and fans shouldn’t be discouraged if the Browns go 4-12 or 5-11 this season.
Why? Because they will be doing it with a very, very young roster that should continue to improve over the next three or four seasons.
And because the front office seems to be drafting better. Knock on wood, but it looks like both first round picks, Myles Garrett and Jabril Peppers, can be impact players.
Last year’s choices look to be improved too. Emmanuel Ogbah, Corey Coleman, Shon Coleman, Derrick Kindred, Joe Schobert, and Seth DeValve look like contributors.
The scouting department has found solid players like Briean Boddy-Calhoun, Tyrone Holmes, and Dan Vitale off the waiver wire.
Whether success comes in the next few years or not, what the Browns are doing is the right thing to do.
We have said it many times, the only thing worse than being a bad team is being a bad, old team.
The Cleveland Browns definitely cannot be considered the latter.
JD
Cleveland Sports Perspective 