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ok i concede that one...but in general Sipe and Kosar did not make a habit out of it.

I know you are joking, but I didn't say veteran players. I said old, expensive, running backs.

Holy crap, the Donks not taking the foot off the gas. They just gave Okung 10.5 mil per, 5 years. Very interesting.

Josina AndersonVerified account
‏@JosinaAnderson
Sources tell me that OT Russell Okung is close to finalizing a 5-year deal with the Denver #Broncos worth $10.6M per year.

That would mean they're cutting Clady.

We should be on the phone with Clady's agent right now. Can't talk about him until he's cut, but keep the line busy, lol.

It looks like the Broncos are trying to trade him.

Clady doesn't seem like the type of player we are looking for, he is going to be 30 in September and is expensive.

Unfortunately, Clady's coming off the ACL and is getting close to 30. I don't see this new FO pursuing him. Stranger things have happened, though.

Okung getting that much money is pretty crazy. I was seeing him only being offered short term deals. My guess is that that guarantees are very low.

yeah, good point. I just didn't want to have to spend yet another top 40 pick on a RT.

Is it possible that our right tackle is on the roster (Bitonio or Pasztor)?

Clady was making $10.1 mil so this is a wash cap wise. They might even make some room if they structure it right.

Well yeah... If we had to play a game today we would go:

Thomas || Bitonio || Erving || Greco || Pasztor

But I'm not sure that's what the plan is going forward. That is, unless they like Bailey starting at RT. I haven't seen him play since college.

I'm interested to see if they try Bitinio at right tackle. Pasztor was pretty good at left guard in his brief time playing.

You nailed it!



https://twitter.com/JasonLaCanfora/status/710571040259383299



https://twitter.com/JasonLaCanfora/status/710571244261908480

Kelvin Beachum's deal with Jacksonville is also pretty interesting:



http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/201...uld-get-longer/

That could work. They would (obviously) need a bit of time to develop chemistry...and the necessary game experience.

ryan clady is up for a pick and his salary averages 9.5 million over the next two years

CapCityDawg noticed what you did there.

The Broncos are in a very different place than we are.

If I'm a player and Elway asks me to restructure, I consider it because playing for the Broncos gives me a chance to win the superbowl.

If Sashi asks me to restructure, I say, "Umm, no". If he releases me so what? I sign for the money I would have gotten from the Browns but get to play fro ateam that will win more than 5 games in any one season.

I couldn't possibly see, unless there just was zero other options to take, how any free agent would want to come play on this team.

There's absolutely nothing outside money to use as leverage. You don't even have to pay attention to this team or be a fan at all to know we've been in a hole, and there's no evidence of any tools or miracles coming to get us out of this hole that gets deeper and deeper.

Pats, Broncos and etc, they have leverage and etc, because they have the respect.

I agree and I find it incredible that so many posters are actually excusing the Browns for saying that players don't want to play here or the Browns/Broncos are in different spots.

Jimmy Haslam owns the Browns. He has made a series of insanely terrible decisions. His franchise is always embroiled in controversy, deception, dysfunction, back-biting, in-fighting, continuous change, marketing over winning, hollow promises, etc

And fans excuse it all away. I got news for you folks: Jimmy Haslam is still here! Be patient. See where that gets you. LOL

When you consider the degree of frustration, displeasure, annoyance, embarrassment and exasperation many, if not all, Browns fans feel because of the insanely terrible decisions made by Haslem and all the Bad Press that comes with him then you have to naturally consider that most in the building and many of the players feel that to some negative degree.

Most of those in the NFL understand that it's a business and that serves to shield them somewhat from getting too emotionally wrapped up in all the dysfunction. Enough to publicly toe the company line at least. Still, you'd have to allow that this effects them in a similar way as it does the fans. Maybe not so incensed as yourself and many others, but they are part of this too and human nature says they aren't playing skip-to-my-lou and blowing bubbles while running through a field of daiseys. Some of them are very much not doing that.

Given that, and I do believe that's a given, then it's not so much a stretch to think those who get a chance to leave for equal money to a better team they'd have to give that deep consideration. They've been dreaming of a career in the NFL since they were children. They work their ass off to attain their dream and this is what they get: A career killing team that seems to have no idea what it's doing regardless of who's in charge. And no one gets to be in charge long enough to figure it out.

I don't think it's a function of the imagination to think they'd might like to be playing their career where they can feel the glory of winning some games and not being a part of the laughing stock of the NFL.

Compare the record, compare the team, compare the press clippings and the Browns/Broncos are in very different spots. If one were not already a Browns fan with which team would one rather work on his career?

To change the culture the change must come from the top. Those things you mentioned about Haslem's decisions are truth. As bad as all that is things are no worse than they've been since '07 or even before. Yeah, 3-13 is worse, but my point is all those things you mention have been going on before Haslem even got here, he just keeps on keeping on with the ineptitude.

In the story I'm making up, and I could be on shaky ground with it, Haslem has finally taken himself out of the mix. I don't mean he's made Dee the go to guy. I mean the guy he hired as his Chief Strategy Officer has already told him, [paraphrased]"I have a reputation of taking several sports teams and turned them into competitors by changing the way they make decisions and re-aligning the method of how the various parts of the team work together. I don't want to blow my reputation by failing because someone gets cold feet and prematurely ends it."



“When I was going to the Browns,” DePodesta said, “I had met with the ownership, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, and they asked me, ‘What do you want out of an owner?’

"I said, 'If you ever take your kids to an amusement park at Disneyland or whatever, they beg you to go on the big-daddy roller coaster. They beg you. You say, 'Are you sure?' They say, 'Absolutely, I want to go on this thing."

"So you wait in line for 45 minutes, it takes up a good chunk of your day, you finally get to the front of the line, they eyeball it, and they say, 'Uh, I’m not getting on that thing. Not at all.'

"And that's what happens to a lot of owners. They would say, 'Hey, we want Moneyball, we want this disciplined approach to what we’re doing.'

"But then when it comes time to making that hard decision, they say, 'I don’t want any part of this.'

"I said, 'I need someone who’s going to want to get on the roller coaster with me knowing that it's not always going to be fun. There are going to be parts of the roller coaster that are going to be scary, that are going to be uncomfortable, but hopefully at the end of the ride when we get off, you’re going to want to say, let's do that again."

I think DePodesta made all that very clear to Haslem.



Haslem, who is now suffering the embarrassment of his exploits of trying to run an NFL team and knowing he knows even less about "MoneyBall", he has to have resigned himself from decision making beyond what DePodesta allows him.

I'm gonna hold to that. Otherwise I don't see DePodesta being here. He's got too much of a good reputation, even beyond baseball, to allow some rich hillbilly, megalomaniac to ruin it for him.



I mentioned it elsewhere, the negative articles I've seen about the Browns FO, the Money Ball guys, remind me of the same type of articles being written in Philly about Banner. They complained as he got rid of fan favorites, got rid of guys over 30, about how he drove such hardball contract negotiations with the players. But the Eagles did well through that period. I think he was trying to do the same thing here. The same thing that's being done here now.

I think Banner's biggest downfall is that he has a face for radio. As he's releasing your favorite player, letting good players leave in FA and being ruthless in contract negotiations you look at his sour face and it becomes really easy to paint him as a dick. He had his success in Philly but people there hated him, even though. A lot of fans expected the dick when he got here and sure as hell, he lets Phil Dawson go, he trades the #1 running back, he wants to trade Gordon and when he tries to explain himself he looks like a sinister character in a Disney cartoon. Add to it that he hired Lombardi when everyone knew he would but he said he wasn't sure yet and then he did hire him, like everyone knew he would. He hid him in the background as if no one would notice. Again, that face.

That whole thing may sound wacked as hell talking about the way someone looks as having such an impact on their career but I see it that way. He was running Money Ball in Philly and it was working for years. That made him revolutionary but he didn't really get enough credit for it. (To this day he tells anyone who will listen how smart he is). He tried it here but didn't get the time to work it. Dude was at a disadvantage completely blamable upon his mother and father.

DePodesta brings Money Ball but people warmed up to him. He was successful with it in baseball and everyone recognizes that and gives him credit. Banner didn't get that. DePodesta, having succeeded with several teams already, has a very good chance of making it work here. It's already been proven it works by none other than Joe Banner.

Maybe they should call it BannerBall.

When I say the Browns and Broncos are in different places, I am not making excuses for the FO. Just stating a fact. The Browns and Broncos are in different places. They can't approach things the same way.

My point wasn't to excuse the FO but rather to point out that comparing the Browns moves and the Broncos moves isn't a good comparison.

PFT has been slamming Okung all day about the deal.. its oddly set up.

However PFT is run by a lawyer, who has made it clear he is against the idea of player representing themselves.

j/c:


https://twitter.com/MikeGarafolo/status/711292822029275136

Robert Griffin III visits the Browns

Posted by Michael David Smith on March 19, 2016, 4:52 PM EDT

The Browns have been quiet this offseason, but they’ve just visited with one of the highest-profile players left in free agency.

Quarterback Robert Griffin III met with the Browns today, Mike Garafolo of FOX Sports reports.

The former rookie of the year whose career in Washington flamed out after a knee injury, Griffin has so far not found any teams looking to offer him a starting job or a starter’s salary. It’s unclear just how interested the Browns are in Griffin, and how good a chance they’d give him of earning the starting job.

But they’re at least interested enough to bring him to Cleveland for a visit. For Griffin, who has drawn little interest since Washington cut him, that’s progress.
link

wow really? well I think he is better than Conner Shaw so we have room for a back up guy

I am all for the signing. Bring him in let him compete give Lynch some time to work on his footwork and learn how to run an NFL offense.

j/c:

Andre Smith signed w/the Vikings.

did the bengals cut him? or was he a FA signing?

Very good signing by the Vikings, I am sure Peterson is is thrilled, dude is one hell of a run blocker. I would have brought him in but I do wonder why we didnt go after him? or why the Bengals really didnt make a lot of effort to resign him?

Maybe the Browns and the Bengals were as grossed out as the rest of us by that video of his moobs flopping around while he ran the 40 at his Combine workout. What the hell was he thinking not wearing a tee shirt? C'MON, man!

That video was before the draft. He has turned into a pretty good player.

Mourg, the Vikings pass blocking is just about the worst in the league. I don't think their done revamping their OL.

Yeah, it was.

I would have figured him or Marvin Jones would have been playing
For the Browns considering RT and WR are areas of need
For the Browns right now.
Good signing at a bargain price.
He would have been a upgrade over Schwartz.
Maybe the Browns can get Loadholt from the Vikings now.

And a bigger upgrade over Schwartz's replacement, whoever that is.

"It’s very tough," Mack said in a phone interview with Bleacher Report. "I spent seven years in Cleveland, knew a lot of great, great people in that building, and the city really grew on me. Finding a place to really entice me enough to let those things go was tough.

"I have a ton of respect for the city of Cleveland. The people I knew during my time there were incredible, and they'll be friends for a lifetime.

"It was an emotional decision and difficult to make."

Plenty occurs during the few days a free agent has to contemplate his future and NFL mortality. Fans are generally ecstatic or downtrodden based on which side of the transaction they sit. And people spew plenty of misinformation within the hours and days between a final decision.

There is always more to the individual's thought process than the finality of what team he eventually chooses.

"This is the only life I get to live," Mack said. "Life in football is even shorter. There are decisions that have to be made that are tough, but you only have so much time to play football.

"I felt it was time to experience a new city and team to make the best out of my football career."

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2623981-alex-macks-difficult-decision-to-finally-leave-cleveland

yea I think we can say that we had no chance in hell in keeping Mack.

What I see quite often with fans, is that they believe players should hold some kind of loyalty to a team or fan base. When the fact is, players are somewhat just like the rest of us. They are doing a job. The big difference is that their careers are much shorter.

I would say that anybody with a career would put what's best for their family and their career ahead of any business they work for. The same goes for players.

They have to think of their family and their future above all else. I felt Mack was gone two years ago when he put an out clause in his contract. It gave him the leverage any of us would want.

And while people look at contract numbers, the only thing players really look at is that guaranteed money. That's all that teams are really honored to meet.