DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Paul DePodesta joining Browns as Chief Strategy Officer

Ya know pit, I feel what you are saying and you make sense. Let me say this, we've tried various structures, some of them two and three times. Not one has actually worked, not one has been without DRAMA.

While I admit to not totally understanding this move, hell man, nothing else worked, maybe this will..

So, you were ok with the Pettine and Farmer hire. They didn't know each other and could not work it out.

Two very successful companies Microsoft and Apple. Hmm, a group of friends getting together building something no one said would work. IBM took note nearly collapsing trying to catch up.

guys, we've tried the "football guys" way. it hasn't worked.

let's give this a chance.

No doubt you are unimpressed. Football guys put us in this hole because they couldn't manage how to get out of a wet bag. Picking players is the easy part. Managing how to make it all work is the hard part.

You still need a couple of football guys at GM and HC. Still gotta scout and coach.

No doubt, but forget the GM post, we won't have one. We will have a coach and a top scout or what ever you want to call it, but it won't be a GM as we have known for the last 100 years.

I like it. We're probably freaked and then some, but it just might be special.

We're definitely freaked and then some though.

Only the Browns.........

..........and so many fans are buying right into it.....Again.

It might work, but I can't say I see how it would. Like, "Oh, I see what they are doing! They are getting a baseball guy to run the football team! Zigging while others zag!"
If it works, it'll be because this guy is some sort of savant and the team got really lucky.
Hard not to be skeptical.

I don't know vers... Really like the idea of outside help in hiring the coaching staff. And i do think Analytics have a place in bringing in nfl talent.

could see them using it and letting the gm/coach pick the cream? Also i do like having someone inbetween the gm and owner .. Even with the best intention a loose word from the owner could sway the pick.

hopefully they will bring outside help for the draft also... fresh perspective?

do wonder how quickly they could make a decision on draft day if someone wants to trade though.

Vers, one either buys into it to the degree that he tries to understand what they're doing and try to find the positives/negatives in it. OR, bitch and complain until it's proven one way or the other.

As much as things didn't go my way in this matter I choose the former. It's actually out of character for me to be the grumpy old guy day after day. I'm approaching this the same way I approach my real life, seek contentment where I can find it through understanding while always looking to upgrade my knowledge.

I can be content without being satisfied.

Something I read many years ago said, "Try to be like a clock ticking in a hurricane. While all around you people and things are swirling in the wind, be constant so you can still make good choices."

Right now I'm that clock. Right now my choice is to try and understand. Until I understand I can't be right or wrong. I can only be satisfied or dis-satisfied without basis.

Funny how that works. If a person has serious doubts that are based on knowledge, research, and experience........he is said to be a whiner, a complainer, a Negative Nancy, and likes to b....

I heard that a lot this summer. Funny how time, even it is a short period of time, apparently cleanses the memory and people can go right back to the name-calling directed towards those who are voicing their honest opinions.

You know.............not ONE of you guys has said to guys like me, BTTB, Pit, etc............"hey man, sorry for all the namecalling, turns out you were right and I was wrong." Not one of you. It's like it never happened and now I get to hear it all over again.

Tired of this junk!

Peen, you know that I wanted a football guy in Sashi's position. But I can accept him in that role because VP of Football Operations has actually become a role. We've been missing that in our organization. Plus, I don't think his responsibilities are as cut into stone as many fear. He's a very smart man. Smart enough to know what he doesn't know. He's not going to step on the feet of the football guys, rather, he's going to help get them aligned so they can work together.


On Paul DePodesta...

That video was a great find. It was eye-opening to watch. It would absolutely do everyone a world of good to watch it.


Analytics goes far, far beyond judging talent. Depodesta speaks on so many mind sets that it could even help us posters on the message board develop good opinions without being fooled by typical, human emotional habits that drive them.

Watch one of our new guys speak for an hour. Then decide who he is and what he can do for the team. Or, ignore that and spit out strong opinions on him and his methods knowing nothing about him or his ideas.

I never once called you a name early in the season. I admit I didn't always agree with you but never called you a name over it.

And I didn't call you a name just now when I said one can either buy into it or bitch and complain. I simply stated my opinion that one can either be happy or sad.

Maybe I'm sorry now that I didn't use those two exact words.

I think the GM is going to be a player personnel director with the title "GM.

A .300 hitter is a .300 hitter. If you sign a short stop from Oakland he can probably play for the Sox or the Tribe. Now, try doing the same with a CORNER. There are lot of DIFFERENT types of corners.

If a guy misses a play in baseball you know who is at fault. Same can't be said for football. If a QB overthrows a receiver, a number of things could have happened. QB read it wrong, WR read it wrong, WR got hung up, QB timing was off due to pressure etc. etc. Same can be said of almost all plays in football. It's a TEAM sport at ALL times. Baseball is not. It's very difficult to make a statistical analysis of a football game. It's even MORE difficult if you have no clue what your watching on film because you're not a football guy. Therefore any statistics could be slightly flawed, or they could be WAY off. Making them virtually meaningless.

If it helps at all Vers, Banner is a big analytics guy and was the guy that origionally hired Sashi Brown.

I'm still learning about it to make any decision..

Fans buying into or not buying into it is everyone's prerogative.

I'm staying even keeled, I see no reason not to..

It's like holding an unlit match in your hand...Your not going to get burned from it.

In the movie peen posted in the DePodesta thread DePodesta game the example of a batter hitting a line drive into mid-left field. The outfielder makes a diving catch for the out.

Baseball scores that as the batter is responsible for the out, the pitcher get credit for the out and the outfielder does not even figure into the play.

In analytics, the pitcher gets a negative number for the hit, the batter gets a positive number for the hit and the outfielder gets credit for making the out.

That's two very different ways to look at the same play.

Websites like url=http://www.footballoutsiders.com/]Football Outsiders.com[/url] are analytic sites. They take into account all the variables you mentioned into their football stats. Because they consider all those variables their stats are much more accurate than those on NFL.com.

Analytics is not the end-all-be-all but they can help. Plus, they go much farther than player evaluation in the business.

Do yourself a favor and watch the 1-hour movie peen found on DePodesta There's a lot to learn watching that.

Or, you can ignore the guy while you complain about him and his methods/ideas without knowing anything about them.

But you might get a finger cramp if you hold it too long.

i think everyone is going of the rails about nothing, this is basically the structuring of the FO..we revamped our analytics department with the inventor of it and hired a really smart referee. Thats all I really think Brown is going to be, someone to make sure there is communication between all, which i think was a huge problem with the last staff. Brown did go out and get the best talent acquisition firm out there with a very solid track record. Let's let them get the GM and coaching staff in place, i think that will determine more if we are going in the right direction or not

lol

"Since Brown has control of the 53-man roster, a team can turn down any request the Browns make to interview one of their assistants. In theory, this would make a pool of eager candidates relatively shallow and has more than likely prevented the Browns from lining up certain scouts and evaluators."

Now this is very interesting to me. By announcing Sashi Brown as being in charge of the roster, teams don't have to allow interviews with their assistants and scouts etc. It didn't dawn on me, but just having a CHANCE at controlling the roster opens doors we have now firmly shut. If a team has a young assistant GM or player personnel guy that they value they won't let him interview with us now.... Or at least they don't have to which is in practical terms the same thing....


IF hiring a baseball guy to do statistical analysis(watch film and grade players) is such a smart move, then I reiterate my point of yesterday... why hire a football coach to be the Browns next head coach? Why not look to other sports or even outside the sports world altogether?

How about hiring Phil Jackson? Maybe he can come up with a triangle offense in this sport? Mike Hargrove is a local hero and took the Tribe to two WS births.... Since hiring football guys to evaluate talent and draft players is so out of date why the hell would we want to hire a football guy to coach the team? That is so last century.... *snicker*

Sure. Everything is beautiful in Brownsville tonight. Why, when someone is given the ultimate power they NEVER use or abuse it. lol How naïve are you?

Good luck finding a good GM candidate to interview. With Haslams announcement that Brown has that control, teams don't have to let us interview their assistants. If there's a chance at control of the roster then the job is an advancement and they can't refuse an interview(within certain parameters). With no chance at all to take over the roster, the "GM" job here is considered a sideways move..... And with that teams can refuse if they wish and most probably will....

Money Ball football has come to Cleveland. Unfortunately sabermetrics and analytics is of little use in the NFL. It has it's place of course, but it's not some voodoo that will magically make us winners. Statistics in baseball and in football are two entirely different things.... And how the hell is Mr. baseball going to grade football plaers?

Only if we hire a non-football guy to COACH the team. We HAVE tried football coaches in the past and it hasn't worked.... Phil Jackson is looking for work. Can't say he isn't a winner.... How about Pat Summitt? Winningest coach in NCAA women's basketball history. She's TOUGH!

Depo's job title is HMFSG.

Head Mother Freakin Strategy Guy.

He isn't going to be analyzing film or grading players. He is going to be telling the guys that do it how to structure the department, how to figure out what data is relevant and how the different departments fit together. He is chief geek and Sashi Brown is gonna translate from geek to the football guys.

Come on Spirit.....open up a bit. Coaching is a skill. Picking players is much easier. That is why almost any schmuck can scout for a while.


I am all in. Take the emotion out of it and go strictly by the numbers. That takes the whole man crush out of the equation.

That's a very good explanation.

You think Phil Jackson doesn't have the skill to coach a team? You think Pat Summitt doesn't know how to coach? If the ability to watch tape, scout players and then draft them is easy, then setting up an offense and defense and blowing a whistle once in a while is as well.....

Only problem I see with Analytics is this...

Will it lose the players trust? If I'm a good player (and starter), and being taken out of the game bc analytics says I shouldn't be in, I'm gonna be pissed.

You pay your talented players to be on the field in critical situations. Lots of unknowns in football compared to baseball.

Doesn't she have Alzheimer's disease?

All I'm saying is, if hiring NON-football people to build the roster and run the team is such a stroke of genius, then why not go ALL THE WAY with it? I keep hearing the point that we have hired football people in the past to be our GM etc. and it hasn't worked. Same exact thing can be said of the head coach. We've tried hiring football people to COACH the team. That hasn't worked. So hire outside the sport..... If we hired Mike Hargrove tomorrow all you "I'm all in" guys would be singing his praises and trying to convince everyone how inspired the hire was.

Let see what kind of coach these two can provide before we start building their statues. I'm curious what kind of coach would sign up for this freak show. Don't be surprised if they hire someone from out of "left field" lol

I had not heard that. If true I'm sorry to hear of it. Always liked her. She was bad ass. Didn't take crap from anyone. Tough as nails. But she sure did get everything out of her players. We've had worse coaches on the sidelines.

I agree. She intimidated many a male coach over the years. Sadly, she does have Alzheimer's.

I think this is brilliant. I often asked myself on Sunday's "do the Browns actually know they're playing tackle football?" We were actually building a baseball team all these years and went to the wrong stadium!

In all seriousness, I like both of the moves made. There was clearly a rift in the organization this year, you put strong leaders in place and they help reduce those rifts.

Nothing in my adult life has worked for the Browns, I'm not optimistic yet, I think we'll still suck next year, but these moves seem to make sense.

Well if we have a strategy guy, then maybe he could explain the value of a not minimizing the play of the QB or the advantage of a tall WR.

Well we paid one analytics guy $100,000 and he told us to pick Bridgewater over Manziel. Maybe they already did tell us how not to minimize the play of the QB spot at least.

Pat Summitt was one of the best basketball minds. It was really sad when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I lived in Tennessee during the 80's. I remembered talks replacing Men's basketball coach Don DeVoe with Pat. Pat's teams were so good more people watched women play basketball then the men.

I just watched the documentary you guys posted.....awesome. Depo is a man crush of mine and has been for a few years. As a fellow nerd I appreciate that he came into one of the most macho industries in the world and changed the way that they looked at everything, and he did it with science and mathematics. For guys like me who love sports but are math/science nerds it was vindication...lol.

I say that to admit that I am biased toward the guy, and analytics in general. I honestly think they can work in any industry and really anything in our daily lives. At the heart of analytics is how to be more efficient. I was really depressed Sunday when we hired what I perceived to be a lawyer as our top football guy, but have to admit I am excited as to where this can take us. I really don't care what former execs say on Twitter because quite frankly former execs/scouts/managers in baseball said the same thing until sabermetrics started kicking their butt.....same for basketball, and look at the success of the Rockets, Spurs, and Warriors. Will it work in football?? I don't know for sure, but it has worked in the other sports when all the traditional "baseball/basketball" people were calling it garbage.

So maybe my bias has me blinded, but I am genuinely excited about how they go about doing this in football.

A mets fan broke this guy down for me. The Moneyball draft approach that DePodesta has followed involves taking players that line up with a market inefficiency early.

With the A's at the time of the book (2002), that involved taking college players early. In the past five drafts with the Mets he has gone heavy on high school bats.

In his first draft with the Mets in 2011, the team had two first round picks and took high school OF Brandon Nimmo with the 13th pick and high school RHP Michael Fulmer with the 44th pick. Nimmo in particular was considered a very interesting pick as he comes from Wyoming where there was no organized high school baseball and no player from the state had ever been drafted in the first five rounds of the draft. He then took a college pitcher with each of the next four picks, which was part of a strategy to take advantage of the depth of college arms in rounds 2-5 while taking high end talent in the first round. The Mets clearly felt the difference between the high school talent available in the first round and in the next four rounds was greater than the difference between the college arms in the first round and rounds 2-5. the 2011 draft was considered to be a strong one for college arms. They wanted to be able to take advantage of the depth of college arms in the early rounds while still adding high end talent that they wouldn't be able to find later.

It gets a bit harder to pin down the exact strategy in the four years since, as the new CBA added draft bonus pool limits to each team that in essence force you to consider more than just market iniefficiency when devising your draft strategy. Under this new (not really that new anymore, but whatever) system, each team gets a set amount to spend on their picks in first 10 rounds with any dollar over $100,000 given to a prospect selected in rounds 11-40 counting towards the bonus pool. Under this strategy, the Mets, like many other teams, are incentivized to take college seniors that will sign for practically pennies to save pool money. The Mets over the past four years have tended to take a senior for around $1,000-$10,000 in round 9 and/or 10 in addition to taking another senior, a more highly regarded one, around round 4 or 5 that will sign for around half of the slot for that pick or even less. This would give them money to spend in the later rounds where they liked to load up on high school arms (and sometimes high school bats) that may have slipped out of the first few rounds due to signability questions in rounds 11-20ish.