DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum cont...The Browns Front Office...ready for prime time?...

My guess is that Sashi is begging this guy to let the Cavs win so that the pressue to win on him is lessened...LOL

Maybe they are going to steal Kerr from the Warriors to be the new HC of the Browns? Yes, I think that's what it means..

Why? Do you have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia?

I love hippos

Ok Vers how did you find that Skeleton in my closet?

Kind of cruel, using that tongue-breaker as the word for "fear of long words."

Kinda like have an "s" in the word "lisp."

j/c It is unfortunate that this thread got sidetracked. IMO, it was the best thread going at this time...

Best as in, repeatedly saying the same things over and over and over again? Sure, I'd agree with that.

j/c..

I have not been privy to the latest intel, is our FO ready of prime time yet?

Mac - I thought it was obvious from several of the posts above on this page of the thread. While I don't agree in entirety with your observations (conclusions?), you certainly have "inspired" a lot of comments...

I'm only on page 4.

Just like in school, eh? lol

MON JUN. 20, 2016
Joe Haden: LeBron and the Cavs Show the Way

The Curse is dead—and now it’s up to my teammates and I to follow LeBron’s inspirational lead and give Cleveland the NFL championship it’s been waiting so long for

BY JOE HADEN
CLEVELAND — Oh my goodness.
It’s 20 minutes after the Cavaliers just ended 52 years without a championship in my adopted city—I play cornerback for the Browns, I love LeBron James, and I go to 25 or 30 Cavs games a year—and I’m in a club where they’re spraying champagne like it’s the locker room where our new champs are celebrating out in Oakland.

The Cleveland curse is over. We’ve finally got a champion in northeast Ohio.
Over my seven years as a Brown, I got so tired of hearing about the curse, about no team in the city winning a championship since the Browns won in 1964. But you’ve got to go out and end it, not just talk about ending it. And that’s what the Cavaliers did. The emotion in the streets downtown … just unbelievable. People flooding the streets, throwing toilet paper and celebrating, screaming. Insane. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never anything close. But that’s probably to be expected when you haven’t won a title for so long.

When I try to think about what this means, I think how it shows the athletes in this city, and the people in this city, that anything’s possible. LeBron came back to Cleveland and made it his mission to win a title. It’s like he willed it. And it happened. I look at our Browns team now, with the new coach, Hue Jackson, a lot of new coaches on the staff, and so much new blood, and I can tell you we’re going to be competitive. This is an inspiration to us, and to the Indians I’m sure.

As an athlete here, it gets frustrating sometimes because the teams have lost for so long. But the fans are such blue-collar fans, and they support you in the bad times. You want to win for yourself, but you want to win for them too. That’s what I felt throughout Game 7. I watched the game downtown, in a room downstairs in Bar Louie. And at one point it felt and sounded like 1,000 people were going to come down through the ceiling, they were jumping up and down and going so crazy. That’s when you know how much sports mean to the people here—and it’s one of the reasons why it’s such a rewarding place to play when you win.

I can tell you for sure that people just love the way this team plays. Great shut-down defense, the way we want to play defense, is so important to them. And it’s not just this win that made everyone so excited. It’s how they won.

When the Cavs were down 3-1 nobody gave them a chance. But LeBron believed. There’s a lesson in that for all of us.

The block by LeBron with the game tied and under two minutes left said everything. He runs the length of the floor, catches up to Andre Iguodala at the last second and out of nowhere blocks it and pins the ball against the backboard. That happened and we all just jumped up and ran around the room and went crazy. What effort! LeBron wants it so bad! Don’t hold anything back! All those things you’ve heard all your life in sports, LeBron brought to life. No matter what sport you play, there’s a good lesson in that.

I’m pretty close to Tristan Thompson, and I’ve been around LeBron a few times. When I was drafted here in 2010, he was leaving for Miami. We kind of ended up passing each other in the air. But I’ve got so much admiration for him. I’ve been a huge fan of his forever. I was sort of a quiet Miami Heat fan when he left. I can identify so much with the pressure he’s faced his whole career. In high school, he’s The Chosen One. The next Jordan. Every game he’s ever played, there’s more pressure on him than any other player on the floor. He can have a great game, but he misses two shots in the last minute and loses, and everyone comes down on him.

It’s a lot like in football—you’re only as good as your last play. I feel that as a cornerback. You can have four pass breakups and an interception in a game, but you get beat one time late in the fourth quarter on a double move, and it doesn’t matter what came before that … you’ve had a bad game. LeBron faces that every game, 82 times a year, and through the playoffs. I’m so tired of the LeBron haters. Six straight NBA Finals! He led every player in this series in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. Who does that? So show him some love—forever. Stop looking at the glass half-empty. Come on.

Now we’ve got to work like LeBron and the Cavs to get ours. This is motivation for our city, and for our team.

Since he came back to the Cavs two years ago, you can feel the different vibe in the city. He means so much to Cleveland, especially now. Economically he’s great for the area, obviously, and he makes it a place you want to be. At Game 6, I’m on the floor, and my wife and I are five seats down from Jay Z and Beyoncé.

But there’s something about the hope he brings, too. That’s important. When the Cavs were down 3-1, and they needed to win two games at Golden State to win the series, nobody gave them a chance. But LeBron believed—or at least he played like he believed. There’s a lesson in that for all of us in Cleveland. I know it’s a lesson that’s going to help me.

So the Curse is dead. The Cavaliers are champs. Now we’ve got to work like LeBron and the Cavs to get ours. This is motivation for our city, and motivation for our team. I am just so ready to go win a championship right now.

Article

Tips on.....How to acquire and keep top talent. How to build quality team depth.

I wish other posters would have been this reasonable and level about the DePodesta hiring. I always found it a bummer people allowed the baseball part to override the fact that he was extremely successful at what he did.

Well, at least he knows what he needs to work on. I hope he allows this performance to inspire him.

I forgot that Pettine met with the GM of the Cavs, he must've not gotten much out of the meeting.

It has to help motivate the Browns players.

I mean, look at it...the Cavs are Champs. The Indians are in first and playing great baseball, then you have the Browns.

Extra pressure to outdo your city sport counterpart = extra motivation to be the best..

I am hoping for great things, even THIS season.

As Cleveland celebrates a Cavaliers championship, is there hope for the Browns to win one some day?


By Dan Labbe, cleveland.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on June 20, 2016 at 11:20 AM
link

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland is finally a championship city. It took 52 years and the storybook return home of LeBron James, but finally, the city's sports fans were able to celebrate something they weren't sure they would ever see.

The heavy lifting is done. No team in Cleveland will ever have to face the weight of the expectations of an entire city like so many have in the past -- and failed. If you're scoring at home, the Indians could be next in line for a shot at a championship, currently sitting at first place in the American League Central.

As for the other team in town? The Browns are on to yet another new coaching staff and front office this season, coming off of a three-win season that was disappointing even by their standards.

Nothing will ever diminish what the Cavaliers did for this city last night. I write this as someone who grew up a Cavaliers fan first and as someone who loves basketball.

Football, though, is in Cleveland's DNA, and the yearning for a Browns Super Bowl win -- or even a playoff win -- isn't going anywhere.

"I talk to Tristan (Thompson) all the time," cornerback Joe Haden said last month. "He knows if the Browns were winning like the Cavs are, it'd be a whole different vibe. Not to knock it at all, but it just is what it is. So just being able to know how much love they show the Cavs and how much the fans are still supporting the Browns, even though we haven't really gave them anything to be proud of, it just shows that when we do flip it around, it's going to be special. We know that. We honestly seriously do."

Talk about curses. The Cavaliers, at least, had made it to the NBA's biggest stage prior to Sunday night's improbable Game 7 victory. The Indians have played in two World Series since 1995 and have made the playoffs eight times between then and now. The Browns, the team that previously held the honor of last Cleveland champion, won theirs before the Super Bowl was even a thing. I don't need to tell you that they've never played in one -- even though I just did. They've made the playoffs once since they came back in 1999. Their last playoff win was in 1994.

Still, everyone is feeling hopeful. The Cavs may win another championship or two before the Browns even sniff contention, but on a day of unabridged optimism, here are some reasons for hope:

Hue Jackson

No player is going to openly question the new coaching hire before he's even coached a game. There are jobs on the line here. That being said, the praise for the energy and excitement level Jackson and his coaching staff have brought has been universal. Players have gone above and beyond in complimenting Jackson.

Of course, Jackson hasn't coached a game yet. He hasn't had to bench anyone. He hasn't suffered through a losing streak. Will cracks start to show when that happens? We'll see. For now, though, in as much as spring football can tell us, it sure feels like the Browns finally stumbled onto something here.

They're set up to get their quarterback -- eventually

Jackson announced that there will again be a quarterback competition this training camp. The early front runners are Robert Griffin III, a reclamation project, and Josh McCown, who turns 37 on July 4. This is a house money season at the position for the Browns. They obviously didn't believe in Carson Wentz as a franchise quarterback or they would have stayed at No. 2 and picked him, at least one would think.

What the Browns did, though, is give themselves an opportunity and the flexibility to target a player in the coming years and go get him, much like Los Angeles and Philadelphia did this year. Will they be able to execute that plan if necessary and get the right guy? We'll see. The opportunity is there, though.

It appears they're ready to play the long game

I completely understand if Browns fans don't want to wait. They've been waiting since 1999. That being said, Jackson and his staff along with the new front office should still be given the time to do this right. How much time? It's hard to say, but it appears Jimmy Haslam -- perhaps at the prodding of his wife, Dee -- is willing to let this marinate a bit.

The Browns declined to spend frivolously in free agency and valued quantity in the draft. If the foundation is laid properly -- and that's still a big if -- the time will come when the team will need to add in free agency and take a more targeted approach to drafting. The foundation comes first, though, and that's what 2016 is about: finding out who is a part of it, who isn't and making the necessary adjustments once those answers start to emerge.

Ownership might finally get it

"I don't think this is a team that is going to go from three wins to 13 wins in a year," Haslam said after firing Mike Pettine and Ray Farmer back in January. "I think this is probably a several-year rebuilding program."

Granted, this is the man who declared, prior to the 2015 season, that he wouldn't blow things up and he felt the team was on the right track, so take it for what it is, but there's also a reason that Jimmy has stayed out of the spotlight and Dee has taken on a more public role.

It's showing, too, in the team's beefed-up emphasis on player development.

"I've seen things that work and things that are supposed to work that don't work," longtime NFL strength coach Joe Kim told me in an interview last week, "but, at the end of the day, this organization has a plan and it's to develop players. ... For Mr. Haslam to invest in the high performance like he's investing tells me he cares about developing his players."

We'll see if Haslam can tame that itchy trigger finger if things start to go south, but for now, at a time when it's admittedly easiest to do so, it feels like the commitment to this version of the plan is real.

It has to turn sometime, right?

Look, outside of stumbling across LeBron James in the 2003 draft lottery and being lucky enough that he wanted to come home in 2014, the Cavaliers haven't always been a shining example of a well-run franchise. They seized their moments of luck and ran with them.

The Browns, through their own ineptitude, mostly, have never been able to capitalize on opportunity, whether it was blowing that lead in Pittsburgh in the playoffs or failing to make the playoffs in a year in which everything seemed to be going their way in 2007.

There's something to be said for momentum, and Cleveland certainly has it. The facility at 76 Lou Groza has been mostly immune to momentum for a while. Maybe this time will be different, even if this coming season is a long one.

Hey, we're all cockeyed optimists today, right?

Until the Browns actually win, I don't think the Cavs win will provide new hope or faith with the Browns. C'mon, it's the Browns. A championship to us is a season we come close to breaking even.

I mean, yeah, I guess it could be motivation to the players. I'd recommend keeping your expectations low though.

What is "reasonable" expectations for the upcoming Browns season?

2 wins in a row sandwiched by 7 game losing streaks?

2 wins in a row, + 2 other random wins?

The defense has taken a hit, safety position departures.

The O-line has taken a hit, experienced center gone.

The skilled positions have taken a hit. Benjamin, and Manziel.

Oh they only won 3 last year, but I think those two played a part in some of those wins.

So, What ARE reasonable expectations? Every other team in your division, almost every other in the whole NFL knows how to keep a team together worlds better than the Browns know how to keep a team together.

So, what is reasonable, expansion level win totals?

Luck into a couple wins here and there?

How will these Browns play; so they are hard for the other team to beat.

In such a way that going forward they will start to gain respect around the league?

I know what won't do it. A complete shuffling of the coaches and the roster, getting rid of key contributers to start over, 9-12 months from now.

I know that won't get respect from the other teams.

I'm counting on this fact to earn us another 3 wins this year so I'm going to go with 6 and 10.

Man, it's nice to be able to hate on him a bit more, for the football stuff. I'm sick of his personal life.

every dead former NFL QB just rolled over in their graves

. And now Manziel is in more trouble...hit-n-run.

Analytics and the NFL in 2016, part two: Checking in on the Cleveland experiment

By Dan Lavoie on Jun 29, 2016, 8:40a 16






Jimmy Haslam put together a major re-org in his front office to try and spur success. Are the Browns doing the right things to embrace analytics?


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In the seventeen years since the Cleveland Browns returned to the NFL, the team has had a 87-185 win-loss record. If not for a fortunate wild card appearance in 2002 and a ten win season in 2007, they would be the unquestioned worst-performing franchise of the 21st century (Buffalo still has to get the burden of the playoff drought, which has never seen them double-digit games in a season, out of the way). Cleveland goes through coaches and general managers faster than Westeros changes rulers, a gray fog where players fade into mediocrity and obscurity away from the public eye.

It's the type of organization that is perfectly primed for a paradigm shift, if an innovator could be given the reins to drive a long-term experiment. Just like that, owner Jimmy Haslam announced the next wave of executives for his front office, and shocked the world. Today, we're going to look at Cleveland's ongoing experiment, and discuss what it means for the field of football analytics.




An Ivy League front office


Replacing Ray Farmer (a former NFL player who worked his way up the ranks to general manager by starting as a scout) as Executive of Football Operations was Harvard graduate Sashi Brown, an attorney who spent ten years in the Jaguars organization as a Senior VP doing a lot of business negotiations.

Taking on the high-powered Chief Strategy Officer role is Paul DePodesta, a Harvard graduate who spent the last twenty years working in Major League Baseball, holding various General Manager and Executive VP roles. Most notably, he rose to fame as part of Billy Beane's organization, using mathematical analysis to inform player scouting and free agent decisions.

The new VP of Personnel is Andrew Berry, a former scout from the Indianapolis Colts who also happens to be a Harvard alumnus.

Interestingly enough, Haslam then chose to fill his head coaching position with someone well-respected by the NFL's mainstream football minds: Hue Jackson, who most recently was responsible for scheming an offense that rose Andy Dalton out of mediocrity.

As the Browns went through free agency and the draft, those were the names in the room where it happened.




Free Agency

The Browns annoyed a number of agents for their "frugal" approach to the start of the offseason.They cut veterans Donte Whitner, Karlos Dansby, Dwayne Bowe, Brian Hartline, and Randy Starks. Pretty much every player whose contract expired in 2016 was allowed to leave without any courtesy negotiations. That includes their best playmaker, Travis Benjamin, their top safety (Tashaun Gipson), and reliable right tackle Mitchell Schwartz.

They finally dipped their toes into the market, signing Robert Griffin to a two-year, $15 million deal (with less than $7 million guaranteed). They signed DeMario Davis to a two-year, $8 million deal ($4 million guaranteed), added guard Alvin Bailey for a three-year, $6 million deal ($1 million guaranteed), and signed three more players to one-year deals for a total of $0.4 million guaranteed.

That's it.

Moneyball cap management

In my previous article, we dove into the details of how teams can manufacture space under the salary cap. To their credit, the Browns seem to be embracing this approach. They cut four of their top ten salaries from 2015, turned $21 million of cap space into $40 million, and only have two players locked into big-money contracts past 2017: Joe Thomas and Joe Haden.

Assuming they understand the strategy employed by the Oakland Raiders and the Jacksonville Jaguars, expect the Browns to be quiet in free agency next season. They'll spend a little bit, free up more cap space, and wait for their young players to develop. 2018 is the turning point for the franchise. Right now, they only have $69 million committed to the cap for that season. Add in a couple free agents and some draft picks, and you could bump that up to $90 million. Well, the salary cap will probably be around $170 million by then. Also, they'll have around $50 million in cap space to carry over. Yeah, this will be a team with money to burn in a couple of years.

Another smart strategy by the Browns: Buying low on Griffin. As I've said, the biggest market inefficiency in NFL contracts is the valuation of the veteran quarterback. Griffin's $5 million cap hit in 2016 ranks him 28th among quarterbacks, and although his salary rises in 2017, he can also be cut for $1.75 million in dead money.

Griffin was the most intriguing quarterback on the market this year, a reclamation project who had the greatest rookie quarterback season ever in a reined-in simplified offense. If he can rediscover his magic with the help of Jackson's system, the Browns may have stumbled upon their franchise quarterback. If not, that's okay, because the team is supposed to suck.

Embracing the tank?

Of course, by being so careful with their money, the Browns are also essentially acknowledging that their team doesn't have a chance to challenge for the playoffs this season. This image I grabbed from Dawgs By Nature essentially sums it up:



Browns

The Browns aren't exactly brimming with talent this year.

The team lacks star talent, it's young, and its best course of action is probably to accumulate draft picks and look to the future. They did just that, with 14 picks in this year's draft, and they added a first and a second round pick for next year. Given how well the Browns did with scouting players in previous years where they had extra picks, you can excuse us for being skeptical about how they intend to use those selections.

Player prototypes

By far, the most intriguing part of Cleveland's restructured front office (in my mind) was what effect this would have on the types of players being added by the team. What sort of prospects would they seek out, and did they already have a plan in place? With such a small group of free agent signings, this answer would come from the draft. The Browns made some things clearer, but there is a lot to be confused about.

Reshaping the wide receivers

The Browns had a whopping 14 draft picks, and they used four of them on receivers, including their first round pick Corey Coleman. Two of them stand out for athletic ability, but are coming from very basic college offenses with little polish: Coleman and Ricardo Louis. The other two are less athletic, but known for their route-running skills.

One analytical thread tying these players together: They were all crucial pieces of their passing offense. Look at the shares that these players claimed:

Corey Coleman*: 37% of receiving yards, 34% of receptions, 45% of touchdowns
*Coleman didn't play in the final game of the season, so I didn't count it

Ricardo Louis: 32% of receiving yards, 26% of receptions, 27% of touchdowns

Jordan Payton: 30% of receiving yards, 26% of receptions, 22% of touchdowns

Rashard Higgins*: 38% of receiving yards, 35% of receptions, 35% of touchdowns
*Higgins didn't play against Minnesota, so I didn't count it

There are already some theories that receivers who dominate their team's passing production tend to be more successful in the pros. It's possible the Browns could be buying into this thought process, while also testing the merits of different agility metrics.

Okay, seriously. Cody Kessler?

Obviously the most important indicator of the team's scouting values was going to show up if and when they drafted a quarterback. The Browns failed to disappoint, using their third round pick on someone I didn't think would survive training camp.

I am at a loss for what metrics or analysis could have led the Browns to make this selection. He passes the Bill Parcells filter, but he played in a safe college offense that keeps sending talented receivers to the NFL. Pro Football Focus doesn't like him, noting that he ranked 21st out of 22 quarterbacks with regard to deep passing accuracy. He won't win any track and field competitions, stands six-foot-one, and has a notably weak arm. His mechanics are solid, but when you watch him on the field, he really struggles to read defenses quickly, and he plays tentatively.

Hue Jackson said "trust me" in regards to the Kessler selection. I'd love to hear the reasoning for this pick in a few years, because I'm baffled. But then again, Billy Beane thought he was outthinking everyone when he drafted an overweight catcher with a patient approach in 2002, and Jeremy Brown only spent a month of his career playing in the majors.

Is "compete" really the best metric you could come up with?

A large assortment of other players in this draft class are ones who were overlooked due to weak athleticism or low production, but that are renowned for their hustle. Carl Nassib was a former walk-on who gained 70 pounds in his transformation to a defensive end. Scooby Wright had outstanding production as a sophomore but didn't find the same magic after being hit with injuries. Shon Coleman overcame cancer to return to the field. Derrick Kindred played through a broken collarbone. Joe Schobert was an undersized outside linebacker but one of Wisconsin's most productive defenders.

These are all great stories, but it's tough to say if players with "compete" will elevate their team in a game. Is this the approach that Brown and DePodesta thought would earn them an edge? Or is this just an overreaction to the disastrous Johnny Manziel and Justin Gilbert picks?

It's still early in the experimentation phase

When Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesta came to the New York Mets, they had an overpaid, underachieving roster to manage. Making matters worse, the team's owners were fooled by a Ponzi scheme, which severely hamstrung the salary. Their first big move was to trade star centerfielder Carlos Beltran for a talented pitching prospect. In the amateur player draft, they added a raw, toolsy outfielder from Wyoming and a high school pitcher with a strong arm using their first two picks. In 2012, they went in the other direction, selecting a high-floor shortstop and two high-floor college position players with their first three picks.

After R.A. Dickey won the Cy Young award that year, Alderson and DePodesta chose not to keep him around, dealing him for highly-ranked catching prospect Travis D'Arnaud, a young flamethrower named Noah Syndergaard, a young, raw, outfielder, and a journeyman catcher. When the recently-added Marlon Byrd got hot midseason, they traded him for another pair of prospects.

Two years later, the team found itself in contention at last. The young power arms already in the system developed into a fearsome rotation, bolstered by Syndergaard. Sensing their moment was near, the Mets traded away a chunk of prospects for a few relief pitchers and Yoenis Cespedes, whose hot streak carried the team into the playoffs. They made it to the World Series.

In the first few seasons, the Mets were treading water, settling for fourth place finishes and trading away their stars. They experimented with a few different options in free agency. Eventually, they figured out their prototype: Tall, athletic pitchers with tons of velocity, position players with plenty of power, and backups who could fill in at multiple positions.

I'm pointing this out to say that it might seem like the Browns have no idea what they're doing, but it's entirely possible they don't. At least, not yet. If Haslam has patience and allows the team to bottom out, we'll be able to see what a forward-thinking front office can accomplish. He would be the first.

http://www.buffalorumblings.com/2016/6/2...owns-experiment

I stopped reading because that is a lie.

I stopped reading because this is hyperbole.

I stopped reading because this was reading.

21w321swq

Stopped reading because it was...Vers.

WEll I did read the article and thought it was pretty good and also very balanced in their opinion.

j/c:


https://twitter.com/twithersAP/status/758745648468373506

Reports say they've also renovated 60,000 sq. ft of existing space.


https://twitter.com/MaryKayCabot/status/758745668135464960 (video)


https://twitter.com/MaryKayCabot/status/758745678939992065 (video)

Ya... but did they remove all the "Play Like a Brown" silly sayings? Lol