DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum The Browns Front Office....still not ready for prime time..(imo)

j/c

I know I'll get blasted for this, but I see reason for hope. Not expectation of success, hope. This FO is looking for a nearly complete rebuild from the foundation up. That means, if you're looking for wins, this team will be hard to watch for awhile. But then, it's been hard to watch for many years, so not much different there. And while their first draft didn't net any sure-fire superstars, there has been flashes of potential in this preseason. We haven't seen much of Corey Coleman, but Ogbah, Nassib, Shoebert, and Kindred have all shown talent. Throw in Taylor who was acquired with a 7th round trade down, and there's 6 players from the draft who, at this point in time, look like foundation type players. Yes, Kessler doesn't look good, and we haven't seen enough of Shon Coleman, Louis, DeValve, or Caldwell to get any idea of how they fit. But Drango, Higgins, Payton, and Wright look like role players.

All in all, at this extremely early stage, that looks like a successful draft class, especially compared to our historical success rate.

I see reason for hope in the longer term, but this year is going to be tough. I liked many of the players we drafted, and especially liked picks like Ogbah, Nassib, Schobert, Kindred, Payton, and Higgins. I liked that we picked a fast WR in Coleman, and we'll see how he develops. I like that we added tons of extra picks, and have tons of extra shots at finding productive players.

I do think that every draft pick this year will make the team.

Without the details of the Colquitt signing in, we have $51,992,636 in cap space.

Holy crap.

With this year's draft, the only really objective outlook can be "Are the players we picked better than the ones we had on the team last season?" If the answer is "Yes", then the draft was successful. If the answer is "No", then it wasn't.

The key is simply doing this consistently, year after year.

The problem is, as your existing level of talent increases, it becomes harder and harder to find players better than your current roster.

I am of the opinion that the rookies we drafted, and the young guys we signed, are going to be an improvement, for the most part, over what we had. Will that improvement be a major jump? A middle jump? A small increase? That's what time will tell us. There are certainly arguments to be made when you go position by position, but, those arguments can't realistically be made at this point. And those arguments will change as the season progresses. The final decider on this draft will be at the end of the season when we can see if they indeed answered the question "Yes" or "No".

And if we can keep rolling that money into future seasons, then we will have a nice war chest ready when the right FAs is ready to put us over the top.

oh yes the FO is ready for prime time...

Spending all that money...does it equal wins in the 2016 season?

The people we let walk didn't equal wins when they were here, the FA's willing to sign here didn't equal wins. If you know you're trying to build through the draft spending money now just to remain a sub 500 team is ridiculous.

I'm sure if they thought they could buy their way into the playoffs with our cap space they would spend it. But does anyone actually believe that?

Sashi Brown said this on March 9, 2016...


... it is important for us to keep our own, I think it says something to the locker room when you reward guys that do it the right way and make sure that they understand that being here in Cleveland we want to build through the draft certainly but we also need to retain our guys when we get to free agency.

After saying this, the Harvard boys didn't sign any of those free agents Sashi referred to.

Now the Browns continue to lead the NFL in cap space with nearly $52 million, but could not find the cap space to re-sign any of the free agents Sashi said they valued.

...that makes zero sense!

What message does that send to the Browns locker room?

Mac I think the simplest way to sum this up, is that you have a difference of opinion on the plan. I realize you don't like giving up on a season, but that's the plan with building on Youth and the future. End of story.
you might disagree with the policy, but personally I think that Dashing and the front office has executed that plan beautifully

Young roster with a commitment to cutting out all the dead wood that wasn't performing or giving the required effort. If you were old and not performing significantly better than the younguns behind you ala krugger then you were goneski.

We have a ridiculous war cheat of draft picks and cap space. What the hell better way than to build a team from the gtound up.

Just like every other regime ... We have to hit on the draft picks and player eval ... So let's see how coleman, nassib, ogbah, and company look when playing and THEN offer an opinion on whether this FO is more or less likely than previous regimes to be successful in the draft

+1...exactly, get real evaluation of your young guys, see if they are worth keeping AND you've sent the message, produce or you are GONE...NFL has meaning....it should be a motivator...GO Browns!!!! PS, don't believe we've given up on season, just our young bucks against their older bucks....time will tell....GO Browns!!!

Mac, you're ignoring the part where he said "guys that do it the right way". The guys let go were 3-13. Do you think that's "the right way"?

...Please don't forget...THEY WANTED TO LEAVE...any, ANY, organization needs to get rid of anyone who doesn't want to grab an oar and row HARD....do you think our 14 draft picks will give max effort....I have no doubts....GO Browns!!!!
PS...example...Kruger or Nassib...take Nassib every time...want to and a future.

Not sure where to put this as the "cuts" thread is now locked. Anybody watch Elway's presser after cutting Sanchez and Hillman? He said they "are bringing in a veteran and he will be announced soon" as they are "working on it". Hmmm...I really hope it isn't McCown. I know the trade value for McCown by the FO is (apparently) set high but, I really think he brings far more to this team than just a viable #2 option. Cody, in particular, can learn so much from McCown this season.

This is tiring..

Broncos sign quarterback Austin Davis

lol

dallas wanted him too, but didn't offer his salary guaranteed

If the guys that were here were responsible for us being 3-13 then your statement would be on point but they weren't, and hopefully we both realize that simple truth.

I have said this repeatedly for years now building a NFL team that wins consistently is easy. Yes I said it, its easy.

You draft players, you retain those players as better talent becomes available you let those players go and you build with the good players you have. Over the course of the past 3 seasons we have let good solid football players go and replaced them with worse players and as a result we suck.

The better question is if we had of retained the good players we had on this roster 3 years ago would we be a better team then the one we have now?

You have to understand that the longer players play together as a group the better they become, we never wait long enough for that to happen and we always suck as a result.

So is it simple you bet your ass it is....

He is saying letting the guys we did go when the team was 3-13 proves they weren't worth keeping. I am saying that we both know that the guys that were let go via FA weren't the reason we were 3-13. So his point if you will is stupid.

The guys we let go via FA over the course of the past 3 seasons are the reason we suck NOW, had we kept all of them or most of them we are a much better football team if you all can't see that then your blind on top of being ignorant.

You know Mac there is nothing new in my message. keep good players, get better players move on from those players as you improve on the talent. The team we had here 3 years ago could have won many games had we had a QB.

I don't believe in rebuilding I believe in building and thats another thing that is all wrong. Build add pieces play together over seasons and watch the team improve. Of course you have to have a basic understanding of what it takes to be good.

Keep hitting the reset button and keep sucking this is simple it truly is.

At this point I think will get better when Haslam is gone. He is the driver of this car and he keeps running into the guard rail he is an idiot, and believe me thats a kind a thing as i can say about the man.

JMHO

What is stupid, if you will, is absolving the core veterans of a 3-13 team of any responsibility for that failure. It is assuming they wanted to be back. It is assuming that they know what these veterans were like in the locker room and the type of leadership abilities they possessed. It is assuming they bought/will buy into a system. If we're starting over, we're starting over. I'm as sick of these rebuilds as the next guy.

That's BS. Of course everyone from the FO on down was to blame.



...and if you were able to read, you would see that I never said the players were solely responsible for the 3-13 record.

What is stupid is assuming we didn't try to sigh our players and not look at the possibility they simply wanted to leave.

But of course they wanted to leave, because losing is the Haslim calling card.

But those players have seen this rutterless ship change directions multiple times they want steadiness and a captain (Haslim) that understands that nothing happens over night.

A captain that understands you build on what you do have instead of ripping it apart every other year all while swearing its right this time.

You build on players like Mack, Swatz, Ward, Rubin, Skrine, etc, etc. That's how you get better and BUILD for the future. You sign these players up far in advance of their FA, because there isn't a good reason for them to stay otherwise. You understand these things because you know how to build a winner.

And yes as better talent becomes available you move on from these players. You don't ditch good young talent and spend more money on aging vet talent.

Watch next off season you will hear these folks talk about the need for veteran leadership, and once again jettison young talent in favor of over the hill vets because they haven't a clue as to how to build.

The circle of stupidity continues, at this point one could argue its unstoppable. Haslim is the problem call me when he is gone...

There are reasons why the Browns lead the NFL in cap space available (over $59.2 million)...this article explains some of the factors affecting the franchise.



Browns Fans Are Also Victims Of Pilot Flying J Fraud


Aug 31, 2016 1:04 PM UTC
LINK

If you were buying an NFL franchise like the Browns, why would you leave the seller 30% of the team for four years?

The simple answer: because $1 billion is too big a check for you to write all at once. You need that time to come up with the remaining $300 million.

And that’s how the Haslam group’s purchase from the Lerners is structured. That final check is due a few weeks from now, in October.

Since that 2012 deal closed, the source and engine of the Haslam fortune has been hit with huge unanticipated liabilities of its own doing. You’ve heard of the Pilot/Flying J rebate fraud scandal? Well, by now Jimmy Haslam III has certainly heard way too much about it.

The company has paid a $92 million civil penalty to the feds and another $85 million to settle a class action suit. Still pending are cases from victims who opted out of the class action. There are multimillions in continuing legal fees. So far ten people have pleaded guilty to charges related to fraud, and eight more ex-employees (including PFJ’s former president) are scheduled for federal criminal trial next year. Jimmy Haslam himself has been neither charged nor cleared.

So what does this have to do with football?

For one thing, it’s easy to see that Haslam intended to turn his attention to the Browns, but then got pulled back into the mess at the family business after the 2013 FBI raid of its Knoxville headquarters. He hired a successor CEO only to return a few months later to his “first love.”

If I had more time, I could try to dig up financial details on all the executives and coaches Haslam has dispensed with one way or another. Mike Holmgren, Tom Heckert, Fred Nance, Pat Shurmur, Rob Chudzinski, Joe Banner, Mike Lombardi, Jon Sandusky, Ray Farmer, Morocco Brown, Bill Kuharich, Mike Pettine, Alec Sheiner. Dozens of [censored] lot of money to pay to make people go away.

To try to settle things down, Dee Haslam has taken a more active role in recent months, and her increased presence is among the most welcome aspects of the entire four-year reign of error.

The newest hired brass seem committed to an extreme value-driven youth movement that just so happens to require the least possible near-term cash outlay. Whether this strong frugality is a direct mandate of ownership or merely a convenient coincidence with what appears to be its most immediate need — preserving cash to safely make that $300 million payment — is a question for some skilled, investigative Browns journalist to illuminate. Hypothetically, of course.

Let’s set some circumstantial fiscal facts on the table.

When he fired Chud immediately after the 2013 season, Haslam went out of his way to mention the financial expense of doing so as a measure of his commitment to “get this right.” So he has been acting since at least that time with a degree of cost-consciousness (if not prudence).
In the very next draft, the Browns traded down from the fourth-overall pick (passing on Sammy Watkins and Khalil Mack) and made their first selection at number eight, where Justin Gilbert‘s rookie contract was $7.1 million cheaper than Watkins’.
The 2014 Browns had the second-most unspent cap space of any team, over $21 million. They rolled over a similar amount the next year as well.
The following homegrown starters have left for other teams in free agency after Cleveland proved unwilling or unable to re-sign them: Jabaal Sheard, T.J. Ward, Buster Skrine, Alex Mack, Mitchell Schwartz, Travis Benjamin, Tashaun Gipson, Ahtyba Rubin, Jordan Cameron, and Craig Robertson.
The Browns again traded out of a high first-round pick this year, moving from second overall to 15th. Their biggest free agent contract by far was with Robert Griffin III, signed for two years for between $6.75 and $22 million, depending on incentives, making him one of the cheaper starting quarterbacks in the league.
No matter which source you use, the Browns are in line to spend the very least of any team on its active players this year. Despite having the second-highest dead cap figure, they have more unspent room under the salary cap than any other team.
That’s partly because so many of their first-rounders have busted. It’s partly because they’ve cut or traded much more than a handful of veteran contributors in recent months. And it’s partly because they’ve made the decision to zip the wallets closed, hold off on re-signing players nearing the ends of their contracts, and amass future draft picks.
Long-suffering Browns fans must be forgiven if they aren’t in the mood for continued patience. This ain’t the expansion era. They’re not starting from ground zero. They’re crawling out from the epic crater beneath it.

Even if this Moneyball philosophy is successfully applied in the long run, even if they maneuver shrewdly and unearth undervalued gems, even if Hue ekes out a credible semblance of an NFL team from this raw roster, and even if the Haslams fork over that final check with no sweat, the truth behind it all seems inescapable.

The Browns haven’t just been inept or chronically mismanaged, though both are true. They are actively skimping on talent.

And so their fans, indirectly, can be added to the long list of fraud victims.

Time to set the record straight...Mitch Schwartz wanted to remain a Cleveland Brown.

Quote:

Schwartz wanted to return to Cleveland and wishes he could've stayed. His fiancee is from here, he purchased a house here and he's entrenched in the community.

link

Schwartz's agent shopped around during the 2 day period the NFL set up for that purpose...there was talk that the RT market would increase to the 8 to 10 million range, but it did not materialize.

During the 2nd day of the two day shopping period, Schwartz and his agent returned to Cleveland to accept the Browns previous offer...and the Browns pulled their contract offer to Schwartz.

I know Sushi said they did pull the offer and he made up some lame story about moving a different direction...

...they went in a different direction all right, Bailey could not beat out back up OL Pasztor and was moved to OG and is listed as 2nd team.

Regardless, Schwartz wanted to stay...the Browns didn't want him!

Here it is all wrapped up.
Pilot Flying J is Haslam's passion
The Browns are a hobby of his
Haslam knows he can put the worst product on
The field and the Browns fans blindly
Will continue to buy season tickets and tshirts
And etc etc
The Browns haven't had a owner passionate about putting
A winner on the field since Arthur Modell.
Things will turn around when a owner puts football 1st.

Thanks Mac... conforms what I have been thinking... we screwed the pooch in the Schwartz deal...

This falls into what I believe is the FO's biggest problem.... they seem to shoot, ready, aim in some of their decision making.

That said the Schwartz camp can not be completely absolved from some of the guilt here, they did shop our deal, gambling on getting a better one and failed in that regard.

Of the four FA that walked... Mack was not the fault of the FO, they made fair offer and Mack went elsewhere, he had one foot out the door from two years ago and that was the failing of a previous regime not this one. Gipson was also misplayed by others an I can not lay that on Sashi's doorstep either.

Nonetheless Schwartz is a black eye that should have been avoided.

The worm was passionate about fielding a winner and he was also passionate about making money... he was smart enough to know the two went hand in hand in Cleveland.

IMO Haslam is smart enough to know that if he puts a winner on the field it would be tantamount to having a money printing press.

He wants to put a winner our there he has just made horrific decisions on who he has put in place to execute that plan (Which includes he being part of the decision making process)... maybe.... MAYBE this time he has it right.

We have a few major problems:

We have changed coaching staffs like crazy. We have had 4 coaching staffs since the final week of the 2012 season. (Shurmur, Chud, Pettine, Jackson) We have had 4 GMs over roughly that same time frame. (Heckert, Lombardi, Farmer, Brown)

We have changed schemes, from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4 ..... and offensive schemes that have ranged from various forms of the WCO, to ones that attack more down the field. We draft players (Sheard, for example) who no longer fit the schemes we run the following year.

Many players who become free agents have played for several head coaches over their time in Cleveland. They can never lock into one system, and thus, their development over the 1st 4 years of their careers is slowed dramatically. So, when their contracts are up, they want to leave, and the front office hasn't seen enough to give them a big deal to entice them to stay. (in, at least, many cases) We have had so many players leave who are very, very good players ..... but they are "role players plus" .....not great players, not top 5% at their positions, but they are the kind of players that good teams need.

I remember, early on in the Browns reboot, most of our players that left here also left the NFL. Sure we had guys like David Patten, who went on to play key roles on very good teams ..... but most were just gone.

Now we see very good teams grabbing our free agents and trading for our players. The Chiefs grabbed Schwartz. The Pats grabbed Sheard and Mingo. The list goes on.

Now I get why we are doing this version of tear down. Actually I agree with it. We lack(ed) impact players, and we can't plug in situational guys as well as well established teams can/do. We look at above average situational guy (like Sheard) as starters .... and when they prove to be lacking in that regard, we get rid of them. In so many cases, we drafted guys to fill roles for one coach, in one scheme, and then tossed that coach after a single year. Certain players may have had loyalty to a previous coach, and so seeing that coach tossed after a single year could have negatively impacted players.

This team has screwed up in so many ways that it is absolutely revolting. I don't think that Flying J has anything to do with it, and I absolutely believe that both Lerner and Haslam both wanted a winner ..... but they have never been patient enough to let a team build and develop. Watch ... if we don't win enough this year,and Haslam isn't happy with where we are at, he will try to get an experienced head coach, and bring in a bunch of veterans, instead of allowing youth to develop. Wash/ Rinse. Repeat.

I hope that Haslam has enough intelligence to see that his pattern of firing coaches every year just doesn't work. I don't hold out a huge amount of hope for that though.

The Browns, a source said, felt that Gilmore didn't engage with their original offer, believed to be about $7 million a year, and opted to test the waters.

But when Gilmore went back, the original deal was no longer there. The Browns thought Schwartz was gone when he didn't engage with the original offer, and moved on. They would've taken him for less, but not the $7 million. Kansas City's offer was the best one remaining.


The Browns did want him he and his agent got greedy and lost money if he want to stay he could have and made more money!

http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.ssf/2016/03/browns_sashi_brown_mitchell_sc.html

Thanks Vambo...that is setting the record straight.

For most posters, it will. Not all, but most.