Why Losing Free Agents Isn’t That Big Of A Deal For Browns

Since the NFL calendar year started a week ago, the Cleveland Browns have once again become the butt of jokes in the national media because five of their six free agents have left the team.

Included in those five players are four starters, including Pro Bowl offensive lineman Alex Mack and RT Mitchell Schwartz.

In our eyes, the latter was the biggest and really only loss from a team that went 3-13 a year ago. Schwartz showed he was one of the best right tackles in the league, and he would have entered this season at 27 years old.

And apparently, according to some reports, he left because Sashi Brown and the new regime showed stubbornness in the negotiations, telling the lineman the offer they had made went away if he left the room.

While many football writers are hammering the Browns for losing the four players, although we would have kept Schwartz, we can see the front office’s thinking.

In losing the two starting lineman, you can be sure Hue Jackson’s team will be near the bottom of the NFL in running the ball and in protecting the passer.

Oh wait, that’s where Cleveland ranked in 2015 with Mack and Schwartz. So, how big of a loss is the duo?

It could be that the front office thinks there is a losing attitude within the entire roster and they are going to have to start from scratch to establish a winning culture.

If that’s true, then we can definitely see the Browns trading their All Pro left tackle, Joe Thomas, as well. We have often said that although Thomas is undoubtedly going to the Hall of Fame, he seems to accept defeat easily.

He doesn’t think losing is unacceptable, he thinks it just stinks. We always say that everyone likes winning, but we would rather have players who hate to lose.

We aren’t sure the Browns have enough players who have become sick of what has gone on here over the last five years, let alone since 1999.

We would not be opposed to trading Thomas, but only if the Browns can get a first round pick this year in return. As we have advocated before, if you are going to start over, then get rid of all players over 30 years old (outside of perhaps punter Andy Lee), and accumulate as many draft picks as possible.

That will accelerate the process.

As for the pursuit of Colin Kaepernick, we believe it does not change the Browns’ intention to get a quarterback early in the draft, but it may allow them to wait until the 32nd pick to do so.

Kaepernick has struggled over the past year and a half, but the guess here is the front office views him as an upgrade to 37 year old Josh McCown.

Really, the Browns are saying if we are going to have a mediocre veteran at the position, we would rather have him be 29 years old instead of 37.

However, we believe a third round pick is way too high for a player who was benched a year ago. We wouldn’t give up anything more than a fourth rounder to San Francisco.

After over 15 years of terrible football, it looks like the Cleveland Browns are basically starting over, and that starts by getting rid of players who aren’t still in improving mode.

That might hurt for now, but it’s really the only thing they haven’t tried.

Why not give it a shot?

Browns Start Dumping Vets, Who Should Be Next?

The reshaping of the Cleveland Browns roster started last week with the release of DL Randy Starks, now 32 years old, and TE Jim Dray, who is 29.

We would anticipate the roster being pared of many more players in the same situation over the coming weeks.

As we have said for a long time, the only thing worse than being a bad team, which the Browns were in 2015, it’s being a bad, old team.

It appears that Sashi Brown, Paul DePodesta, and Hue Jackson think the same thing.

If you aren’t going to be good, you should at least do it with young players, guys who will get better over the next few years.

Here is a list of the players 30 years old and over currently on the Cleveland roster–

Josh McCown           36
Karlos Dansby         34
Andy Lee                   33
Tramon Williams    32
Dwayne Bowe           31
Joe Thomas               31
Gary Barnidge          30
Desmond Bryant     30
John Greco                30
Paul Kruger               30
Alex Mack                 30
Donte Whitner         30

Out of those dozen players, we can see perhaps 8-10 being elsewhere in 2016. And we could make a good argument it would be a good idea to replace all of them.

We were surprised at the age on the offensive line, where three of the five starters are on the wrong side of 30 years old.

Especially, since the unit didn’t play well last season. Mack can opt out of his contract and become a free agent, and the age involved with the entire unit makes it imperative that Brown and company sign RT Mitchell Schwartz, who is a free agent.

Of the players listed above, the only players who could be considered to have a better than average season would be Dansby, Lee (the punter!), Thomas, and Barnidge, with the latter two going to the Pro Bowl.

Mack went as well, but that seems to be a reputation selection.

When the league year starts on March 9th, it would not be a shock if Williams, Bowe, and Whitner were released. Bowe rarely saw the field in ’15, while Williams got burned more and more as the season went on, and Whitner’s play declined from his first year with the Browns.

We understand that new/old defensive coordinator Ray Horton talked up Kruger in a press conference last week, but the reality is Kruger has a high salary and low production. Does anyone really think he’s an elite edge rusher?

And although Joe Thomas is the best player on the Browns, a future Hall of Fame player, if the front office could get a first round draft choice in this year’s draft, we would think very, very hard about making a deal for him.

Again, the collective age of the offensive line plays into this decision, especially if the Browns are drafting a quarterback in the first round.

That QB should take a couple of years to be fully ready, and by then, Thomas will be 33 or 34. Will he still be the same player?

And would getting an additional first round pick this year speed up the rebuilding process?

If Brown, DePodesta, and Jackson see progress in Cam Erving in the off-season, do they make he and Joel Bitonio the anchors of the line going forward, and make a move with Thomas.

The Browns may decide to keep the All Pro, and even if they do, the rest of the veterans listed above could have shaky futures here.

There is no reason to keep these players if you are going to rebuild from the ground up.

And really, that’s what the Browns should be doing this spring.

Browns In No Position To Gamble

The big shake up in Berea is now two days old, and quite frankly, we are still shaking our heads.

There is no question at all that Mike Pettine and Ray Farmer needed to go. The rumors of discord between the two appear to be true, and owner Jimmy Haslam felt he needed his coach and GM to be on the same page.

However, we are still stunned at the direction that Haslam chose on Sunday.

When your franchise has floated in the abyss for 16 years, and 10 loss seasons becoming the norm, the smart and prudent thing would seem to be hiring a football guy, someone who has been involved in rebuilding projects.

Instead, Haslam chose a lawyer. Sashi Brown may be a brilliant man and has been around football for awhile, but that doesn’t make him the ideal choice to get resurrect the Cleveland Browns.

As we have said, the house staff for rich and famous people are around money all the time, but it doesn’t make them rich.

We have seen people out there, contrarians, saying there are several ways to accomplish building a winning football organization, and there is no question that is true.

But it would seem to be prudent that if you are trying to change the culture here and develop a winning team, you should hire someone who is a football man and has a history of evaluating talent.

The way it appears now is that Haslam is trying to be Jerry Jones, with the ultimate control over the franchise. He seems to want the head coach of the team reporting to him, not a general manager or a head of football operations.

Since Jimmy Johnson left Dallas after a disagreement with Jones, how many Super Bowls have the Cowboys won? Just one, a couple of years after Johnson left, with the talent that he accumulated.

It appears that the owner doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and that is a major problem.

Again, no one is saying that it won’t work for sure. Heck, winning the lottery is a way to get rich. It just isn’t a high percentage way to do so.

And that is how we feel about the Cleveland Browns’ “plan”.

They hired Paul DePodesta, a former major league baseball executive as a vice president today.

This smacks of trying to show everyone how smart they are. They have a new, exciting way of building a football team. Maybe it will work, maybe it will fail miserably.

The reality is that Haslam is conducting a scientific experiment with our football team. It’s a risk that may payoff with a string of playoff appearances, or it could blow up in their face and extend our current misery by several years.

If the ownership had tried getting a solid, successful, football man in place and it failed, we could understand trying a different approach. But they never did that.

We will keep our fingers crossed, but right now, we don’t see how this power structure works.

The tried and true method is usually just that for a reason. We wish Jimmy Haslam had done that at least once.

Browns’ Upheaval Not Off To Promising Start.

The Cleveland Browns’ 28-12 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers was the least news making event of the day for the beleaguered franchise.

The rumors started over the weekend that GM Ray Farmer and coach Mike Pettine would both lose their jobs following today’s game, regardless of the result.

It turns out that Farmer was informed he was out prior to the game, while Pettine wasn’t officially told until his club finished the season with a 3-13 record and 18 losses in the last 21 games.

Farmer’s mistakes were well documented by the media, but as we have said many times, we believe there is some talent on the roster. The former GM’s weakness was not getting a playmaker on offense outside of RB Duke Johnson.

Pettine’s issue was stubbornness, an unwillingness to not change schemes and personnel that were obviously not working. The run defense has been poor since the day he was hired, and several stories have come out, including one quoting former Bills and Colts’ GM Bill Polian said the Browns’ defensive concepts were too complicated.

And while offensive coordinator John DiFilippo and quarterback coach Kevin O’Connell were given credit over the course of the season, they too seemed to abandon the run too often, including today where they threw twice as much as they ran even though they were getting close to four yards a pop on the ground.

The Johnny Manziel issue reared its ugly head last night when it was reported he was in Las Vegas, and then didn’t show at Berea this morning for a mandated examination as part of the concussion protocol.

We have supported giving Manziel a full shot at the starting quarterback spot going into next year, but no more. The young man obviously doesn’t take being a starting quarterback in the NFL seriously and we would dissolve ties with him as soon as possible.

His cloud can no longer linger over this franchise.

However, it is very concerning how the new hierarchy in Berea will play out.

Owner Jimmy Haslam once again has decided against putting a football man in charge and letting that man make the football decisions.

Haslam instead announced Sashi Brown, a lawyer and salary negotiator for the Browns as the vice president of football operations.

Brown will play a part in hiring the coach, along with the owner, his wife Dee, and a high powered recruiter who has helped NFL teams in the past.

Then Brown and the new coach will hire the general manager.

If that sounds different, it’s because it is.

As for a new coach, we will reiterate that the Browns do not need another first time head coach.

They need someone who will instill discipline and accountability throughout the entire organization and the forty man roster.

They must rid themselves of the excuse makers that permeate the roster. They need to find players who aren’t tolerant of losing, even if some of those players are headed Pro Bowl players.

The thing that disturbs us is that the Browns are in the football business, yet Haslam seems to be giving more power to lawyers and accountants, who are studying game films to learn about the game.

Why not hire people who already know about the sport? Wouldn’t they know what is needed to move this franchise in the right direction?

Haslam made the correct move in ejecting Pettine and Farmer from positions they weren’t capable of handling.

However, we don’t like the first step in solving the problem. If Haslam owned a law firm, or an investment group, Sashi Brown might be a great choice.

He owns a football team though, so we will keep a jaundiced eye on who they will hire to guide this team back into the winning column.