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OH yes didn't take you that way All's good in Dawg Talkers

Who is Mike Silver again? A nobody talking head with no real understanding of what took place. What I see of Silver is that he has a preconceived idea about Cleveland and he accepted any facts that fit his narrative and discarded those that did not. The Browns made an offer PRIOR to free agency. That is important. The article stated that the price of a RT was 6-8M a season. The Browns valued Schwartz in that range. Schwartz and his agent felt he could get 10-11.5M a season like that one RT signed. The Browns did not value Schwartz at that amount.

Schwartz and his agent decided to test free agency. No one in the Browns came out and criticized Schwartz for attempting to get more money. No one has come out saying that Schwartz only said he wanted to play in Cleveland because he thought it would increase the contract salary. But we hear that the Browns did not negotiate in good faith. What that tells me is someone was caught with their hands in too many cookie jars. The Browns just took their cookies and went home.

The replacement at RT is irrelevant at this time. We have not seen what the Front Office and coaching staff have in mind for RT. The only thing we can honestly discuss with certainty is that Schwartz was offered a "reasonable" contract prior to his filing for free agency. That offer was declined. The offer was then removed. Schwartz should fire his agent if he honestly wanted to play in Cleveland. All the talk about the room under the salary cap is just rhetoric. It has no value or meaning to the contract negotiations. It is a straw man.

I wasn't accusing you of making it up. I was hoping for a link without pressing you to prove it. That's the reason I asked.

I've read everything from "pulled", "yanked", "rescinded", "the offer no longer stood", to "It may have been posturing on the Browns' part, but any hopes of reaching a deal were apparently dashed when NFL Network reported Wednesday morning that the Browns had pulled their offer." link. But I've not read anywhere that the offer "timed-out".

That's all.

Excellent summary of what happened Farmville.

"Ask yourselves if the Browns would be better if they were to overbid to keep Mack, Schwartz, Gipson, and Benjamin? For the upcoming season, maybe, but, in a year or two those contracts would seem like an anchor, pulling the team farther down into mediocrity. The Browns would be in the same position the Indians were in with Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher, overpaying for underperforming players, saddled with bloated contracts to pay for what players did, not are doing and going to do. This new front office and coach seem to understand the Browns are far from being competitive, not a player or two away from competing—which is what good teams use free agency for, bad teams rely on free agency to cover up for poor draft picks—and have accepted that some of their players will leave for more money or a seemingly brighter future. Remember, winning free agency doesn’t equate to winning games."

This may have had a lot more to do with it than anything else.

this just isnt true. most contracts anymore are just 2 or 3 year rentals. once the gurranty money is paid a team can cut them with very little cap hit. wonder if they are going to cut haden?

There is a 0% chance Haden is cut. He would carry a $20 million cap hit if he was cut.

http://overthecap.com/calculator/cleveland-browns

If he was traded the cap hit would go down to $10 million, but I don't see this front office trading Haden when his value is at its lowest point.

Also, Haden will only be 27 when the season starts.

I don't see where they low balled him.

If they "defined" themselves as anything, it is the economists that some of them are actually trained to be. As an economist you are trained to price things at the level the market demands. You don't just pay someone 50% above market value because he might get his feelings hurt if you don't. If he wanted to be here, he'd still be here. The NFL is not just business for the players; it's business for the teams, too.

why offer the contract at that price in the first place if they were not going to follow through?

Because they hadn't seen what the market was, and they expected more demand for him. When the demand they had expected wasn't there, they adjusted their offer to market value.

Schwartz played the market and lost. Don't blame the Browns for good business practices. I don't think the Browns were trying to stick it to Schwartz. I think they are trying to follow a sustainable model, which is pay what a players worth has been determined to be by the market.

How often do the teams that spend big in free agency go on to win the Superbowl? It seems to me that more often they end up cap-strapped and hemorrhaging good players. We're not a step from a Superbowl, so why take on bad contracts which will set us up for more decline in the future?

I disagree with the term "low ball". I prefer to see it as reevaluating value of the RT position and the market for the services of Schwartz. Schwartz did not offer to come down in price, did he? The Browns made a fair offer. It was rejected. Once rejected, there was no moral or professional authority to keep the offer available to the player. The way that the media seems to have spun the negotiations is that the Browns front office is incompetent and acted stupidly. I see it as acting in a manner consistent with analytics. The value for Schwartz was not there in the marketplace. The Browns adjusted. We do not know if the Browns offered a lesser contract. We only know what Schwartz's brother, agent, and the media talking heads have said. It is a new day in Cleveland boys and girls. Enjoy the show. Not to mention, the NFL will be completely transformed if the Cleveland experiment works.

Voleur

I have a thought on that. I believe the front office was influenced by all the hype about the market for Schwartz if he were to hit free agency. They can calculate other team RT contracts. They can adjust and figure a value of keeping Schwartz versus the cost of replacing him. I believe the Browns front office believed that Schwartz would have been offered a contract in the $7-8M dollar range. They made an offer in that range. Once they realized the market did not warrant that contract, they adjusted by pulling it. Schwartz and his agent also miscalculated the market for Schwartz. They wanted the Browns to overpay to keep him. When the Browns refused to overpay, they cried incompetence. In my opinion, the mistake the Browns made was trying to keep Schwartz under contract by offering the $7M contract knowing that he and his agent were going to go test the market. If that were the case, there would be no talk about pulling a contract offer that was overvalued in the first place. I suspect the talk would have been the stupidity of not trying to keep Schwartz a Brown.

Voleur

Before free agency started, most of the posters who spoke on the subject were saying that Scwartz must be re-signed. They said things like the NFL has reevaluated the RT position and they were as important as LT's {I disagreed w/that one, btw.} They said that Schwartz was one of the best tackles in the entire NFL and one of the two best RTs in the league.

So....what do I read now that the Browns have not retained Schwartz? The NFL is reevlauting RTs and Schwartz isn't that good.

Spin, spin, spin........

Look, I get the plan, but you gotta re-sign your best players when their contracts come up. Sashi even said that.

What is the sense of drafting good players and then allowing them to walk in 4 years? You will be in a constant state of rebuilding if that is how you do business.

It's not like Schwartz, Gipson, and Benji are older players. They are in their mid-20s.

It's too early to properly evaluate the FO, but thus far, they have been a dud. And no amount of spin is going to change that.

Schwartz lost nearly $1M a season. True he goes to the Chiefs. The Chiefs are a better team record-wise than the Browns. I suspect they will continue to stay a playoff contender. Schwartz will not be a difference maker, IMHO, in Kansas City. He will be just another cog in the machine. The Browns front office won, IHMO, because they have established what they intended to establish, financial stability and a performance based analysis of players. No more, we drafted him we should keep him, even if we have to overpay to keep him mentality.

No more Whitner, Dansby, and Bowe types. That day is over in Cleveland. Players will be paid by performance and success. No more Joe Thomases, the best or one of the best players in the league on a 3-13 team consistently. Joe Thomas has NOT been a difference maker in Cleveland. He is beloved by many fans but analytically, he is the best player on a losing team his entire career. His value is not much better than any other LT on any other losing team. I suspect he will not serve out the remainder of his contract with the Browns.

If you didn't think Schwartz was worth that much money, why are you complaining about us not keeping him at that price?

What?

I said that I disagreed w/RTs being as valuable as LT's.

I never thought Schwartz should be paid like a top LT and said so. However, I knew he was a very good RT and deserved to be paid like one. He is certainly worth what he got paid.

It's amazing how there were so many guys saying how great Schwartz was and now they are all gone........

Vers,

Let me ask you a question since you brought it up about how the RT position was discussed and that Schwartz was one of the best in the league. Would you have offered Schwartz $10M/year to keep him? That was what it is reported he and his agent felt he was worth and looking for. Or do you believe it would have been overpaying for Schwartz?

If you believe $10M/year is overpaying Schwartz and you would not have done so, then you cannot rationally say that refusing to pay him $7.5M/year is not overpaying him as well when in the end $6.6M/year is what he signed for. Schwartz and his agent felt his value was worth more than $7.5M a year or they would not have gone to test the market. Who made the bone head decision here? A man who turns down $7.5M/year to settle for $6.6/year or the team that refused to pay him $7.5M because the market did not command that sort of salary for Schwartz?

The front office has a plan. We knew this going into the free agency signings. We thought they would resign a few of their players. The market was not there for them to be signed at value by the Browns. Teams overpaid for Mack, Benjamin, and Gipson. Perhaps the Chiefs also overpaid for Schwartz. Only time will tell. I plan to watch and evaluate what does happen not things that are speculated or what I think should happen. If the team wins more games in 2016 than 2015, the front office is doing its job. If the team does so with a lower operating cost, they are doing their job extremely well.

mac: The player's agents know darn well what the going market rate is. It's their job to know as well as to drive up the price. After all, it's in their (the agent) best interests...

Seems apparent to me that the agent mis-handled the situation...

Schwartz is the one guy out of the bunch that I think we made a mistake on. He is young enough to still be on the roster at the end of a rebuild. The contract he was going to sign with us would have been for less than I thought as well.

What I do not know is what exactly went on in the negotiations.

Did we give him a deadline?
Was he using our offer to squeeze more out of other teams?

I can't grade that either way, because I wasn't in the room for negotiations.

Free agency. Get excited. John Elway raised more than a few eyebrows by not convincing quarterback Brock Osweiler to stay in the mix. But look at it this way: Now the Broncos have a great chance to lead the league in interceptions two years in a row! Having the defending Super Bowl champs start at No. 6 is not ideal, obviously, but given their QB situation, as well as the departures of Malik Jackson and Danny Trevathan, there was no choice. I don't blame Elway for not ponying up for Osweiler or Jackson, so don't read this ranking as an indictment of the general manager. But Trevathan?

I think this is all on the FO guys right now. They are going to blow things up and build from the ground up. What I disagree on is that I think that plan could have included Schwartz. Again, I don't know what happened behind closed doors between the Browns and his agent though.

It is not about Haslam or the Browns past. It is about the present and the philosophy the Browns front office has taken concerning player contracts. Schwartz is in Kansas City. He could have been in Tennessee, San Diego, Jacksonville, or anywhere else for that matter. The fact that he is in KC is because they offered him the most money, which turns out is less than the Browns initial offer. If I understand you reasoning correctly, there was no way Schwartz wins if he signs with the Browns unless the Browns overpay for him. Is that what I understand you opinion to be? The Browns let a FS go who commanded 5 years/$35M dollars and signed a FS for 1 year deal and you see this as a loss by the Browns?

I have always suspected that the level of talent between most NFL players is not that different outside of the ELITE players. There is not much difference between McCown and Butt Fumble at QB or Hoyer and Fitzpatrick. If you honestly evaluate their talents, they are not far apart. Fitzpatrick wants 19-20 million a season. Do you feel that is a reasonable price to pay for Fitzpatrick.... Hoyer, Butt Fumble, McCown? I think it is ridiculous to think that Schwartz commanded any more money than he received. I think in fact that he may actually be overpaid as we see now that the talking heads were incorrect about the value of a RT and the demand for Schwartz.

The signing of their own players does not make the Browns a better team. Nor does signing players from other teams make the Browns a better team. What makes the Browns a better team is players who perform, coaches who perform, and victories on the field. Anything less than wins for a NFL team is a poor measure of the talent on the team. X-Browns players do not make the other teams they go to playoff contenders. They joined playoff contending teams already and became just part of the team machine.

The measure of a front office success is measured in two ways, IMHO. First, does the team win. If the team wins with the players assembled by the front office, the front office can be seen to be successful. However, much more of the success on the field is due to coaching than front office signings, outside of elite talent of course. Secondly, the team uses its resources efficiently. If the team stays under cap, is able to improve talent, and make money, the front office is a success. If the team wins and makes money, the front office is doing its job well. That is the only real means to evaluate them, IMHO.

Voleur

Exactly, I have the same views and same concerns/questions. Maybe his agent seriously fubared it all up, maybe there was a verbal or some kind of agreement about the offer being voided if not accepted by free agency start.

What is fact that we all know is: we lost a young talent as something, someone, somewhere, had a hiccup or something.