DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum The Plan

mac, these aren't family members the FO refuses to feed, they're pieces on a chessboard used to win. Letting Schwartz go was a mistake but not overpaying Pryor is good business.

Other than the value of the best offer TP has on the table right now, you mean.

First Sashi HIGH BALLED him Schwartz turned his nose at it. Use the entire story not just parts that fit your agenda.

Oh but they did put a value on it. More then any other team has. He thinks he can get more. That isn't the front office's fault.

...but Sashi didn't low-ball Pryor. They have the highest offer on the table.

Pryor SAID he wants to stay in Cleveland, and yet he's taking any meeting he can get.

Mac, this might be difficult for you to understand. But Pryor wants to get the most money he can.

So why hasn't he re-signed yet?

mac do you over pay on everything you buy?

What a mere $2 for a Coke no sir here's $5 it's worth it!

Actions speak louder than words. Zeit signed the best offer. Pryor didn't. As for your claim that the FO didn't value what Pryor said ... [1] none of us know the actual offers [2] Pryor's talk appears to be exactly that. All talk.

Browns have gone and signed a WR with virtually identical production for $8 mill per. I don't know for a fact but I'd bet a weeks salary that Pryor's offer was higher in total $$ and signing bonus. . . .

Last I heard, Joel Bitoni just signed a monster deal as did Jamie Collins. Can we really indicate the FO is cheap?

It has been reported multiple times our offer is the best one he has. Do you have anything to support something different?

That right there should have been enough to make u stop and change your mind .. *LOL* ...

I wouldn't know ... don't waste my time on the dude ..

We are guessing, but you are simply making 'stuff' up.

I'll take guessing over that.


ex. the FO is cheap. What is your take on the Bitonio extension, then? Either answer or do your little silence-until-you-think-people-have-forgotten thing.

It's okay Diam, logic makes much more sense once you grow up.

*LOL* ... one of the best lines ever ... INSTANT CLASSIC ...

We secured Collins, we secured Bitonio.. Either they have learned something or this was somehow part of a grander plan... regardless, what happened last year is over, can't go back and undo it. Need to move forward and get better and I think we have done that in the last couple days.

Now it makes sense.

Now they are not CHEAP they are SCARED Pryor will be to good!

Priceless...

Link showing that Pryor signed with another team please!



Link please!



Link please!

As your points get shot down, your fabrication level seems to go up.

He seems to forget that Sashi initially signed Pryor too.

Pryor was another team's castoff then

I hate being a bearer of bad news. Neither Sashi or the Browns drafted Pryor. Technically Pryor was a free agent sign as well. Since Sashi signed Pryor a second time beginning last season, difference between Pryor and Collins is maybe a half a season.

Just throwing this out. Perhaps mac just wants attention.

I know my dog, Dummy, when he feels he doesn't get enough attention, will grab something he knows he's not supposed to have (tv remote, home phone, cell phone, shoe, etc) and he'll parade it around you. In his mouth.

In an effort for: attention.

The best way for us to "get" the thing away from him, we've found out, is to ignore him.

I feel sorry for Dummy.

When you do ignore Dummy he just gets louder and louder though.

I am of course talking about the dog.

Browns' 'Moneyball' approach playing out and the results are, well, to be determined


It's still early, but the Browns are starting to see some positive results after their front-office restructuring
Jason La Canfora

26m ago • 6 min read

Welcome to the NFL, Paul DePodesta. That’s more like it.

A year after the Browns hired the accomplished baseball executive and pioneer of the “Moneyball” movement to head their analytics and strategic operations, and a year after yet another front-office restructuring that moved that strategy department on par with football operations, you can finally see some fruit of his labor in the NBA-style Brock Osweiler trade that the Browns hope is a precursor to an eventual trade for a starting quarterback like Jimmy Garoppolo (or possibly Kirk Cousins).

It comes a year after basically taking a mulligan on the entire 2016 offseason. The Browns let quality players walk for no good reason, unable to get decent outside free agents to come to Cleveland. They traded down and lost out on a bonanza of blue-chip talent in the draft, including potential franchise quarterback Carson Wentz. They drafted like 15 players -- including five at one position -- somehow allowing them all to make the team and struggle to win a single game while rotating quarterbacks took turns getting maimed every week.

The Browns just might finally be on to something.

Last year’s apparent philosophy, which some in the NFL thought was akin to tanking given the exodus of talent, the gross lack of spending, the youth of the roster, and the dubious approach that they’d reap a bonanza of talent with all the compensatory picks they’ll accrue, felt desperate and arbitrary.

DePodesta was just getting his feet wet, was still bouncing around to analytics conferences in Boston with free agency imminent and, being ever pragmatic, it would invariably take some time for him to develop an NFL model with inefficiencies he might be able to exploit.

And while I would contend that paying $16 million for a second-round pick -- essentially what the Browns did taking on Osweiler’s albatross of a contract from Houston -- is quite steep, I applaud the effort and the thinking behind it. And I hope it spurs others in generally conservative NFL to see things in a different light.

Kudos to the Browns as well for wasting literally no time in trying to pay the trade forward, too, immediately calling around the league after landing Osweiler try to pawn off that contract, cash and a late-round pick for a 2018 third-round selection.


To recap, the Texans sent Osweiler (who has $16 million guaranteed left on the deal he signed with Houston a year ago) and a second-round pick to Cleveland for a fourth-round pick, ridding Houston of a player they badly wanted gone and putting them in position to land Tony Romo as his replacement. And then the Browns called teams to say they would trade Osweiler, would eat at least half of that $16 million owed to him, along with a late-round pick for a 2018 third-round pick.

I spoke to execs for several clubs who had conversations with the Browns and their replies about whether anyone would take Cleveland up on its offer spanned from “Get the [bleep] out of here,” to “No one will do their new trade … but I don’t blame them for trying.”

Nor do I. While $16 million is a steep, steep price to pay to jump up a couple of rounds, considering how little the Browns spent last year, and their difficulty in getting many top free agents to take their contract offers even when they eclipsed all other proposals on the market, and the fact their ever-failing owner Jimmy Haslam is under extreme heat to improve his product, well, if he’s willing to spend it, then good for them for doing it.

Once some executives had a chance to catch their breath on what went down during a rapid free-agency frenzy on Thursday, I was able to download them for their thoughts. Some of the more forward-thinking ones loved it and thought it was good for the game. “I like that trade for both teams,” as one put it. “But I think [the Browns] thinking they can trade him to someone else is idiotic. And the problem for them is -- just look at their draft last year -- you can have all the picks in the world but in the end you have to be good at evaluating football players, and not just trade value, to build a good football team. Otherwise, you go 1-15.”

Ouch. OK, so yeah, there still is a ton of work to be done.

A more old-school executive from a more conservative franchise offered the following: “I hate that trade. I hate it. That’s not a football trade.”

And yet another veteran executive believed the trade skirted the spirit of NFL regulations about in essence buying and/or selling draft picks/cap space. “How is that legal???” one texted me. “Teams are going to go berserk.”

I reached out to the NFL Management Council to see if there were any issues with the deal and none were raised to me in the reply, and both teams announced the deal which means it was approved. We’ll see if the league maneuvers to close potential loopholes in the future, but in the present, good on them for going for it, I say.


This actually isn’t that far removed from what he Eagles and Vikings did in the preseason after Teddy Bridgewater got hurt with Philly sending Sam Bradford to the Vikings -- despite having just paid him $13 million in bonuses off his recently signed new contract -- for what became a first- and fourth-round pick. Bradford is better than Osweiler -- hell, everyone except Ryan Fitzpatrick and maybe Blake Bortles was better than Osweiler last season -- but the concepts aren’t dissimilar. And if weak teams can find a way to attach value to having $100 million in cap space available that they couldn’t fill in eight offseasons, much less one, then so be it as well.

As to whether the Browns can get the ultimate payoff they so badly covet -- Garoppolo -- I still like their chances.

The Patriots -- and those carrying their messaging for them -- doth protest too much for a back-up quarterback to the greatest quarterback in NFL history who actually seems to be getting better each year, and not worse. Given all the second- and third-round picks the Browns have, in addition to first-round picks in the top 12, Bill Belichick could hold out for an array of picks like, say, two second-round picks this year and next, plus a third, and the Browns would still not be depleted.

DePodesta and Belichick think very much alike, both are rooting heavily in an economist approach to pro sports, and the Browns and Patriots have already done plenty of business together in recent years. Neither team would have to do a thing until just before the draft and a trade could still come together. No one is better than Belichick at playing hardball and then ultimately squeezing for more than he could have hoped for (he would parlay some of these picks into a trade for Saints receiver Brandin Cooks, for instance, who he really likes and still have plenty left over to move up and down the draft board the next few years).

And no team is now better equipped to withstand parting with such a draft-pick haul as the Browns. Even if the Browns don’t end up landing an established quarterback from the move, I support their ambition. And even if they end up simply cutting Osweiler, I get where they’re coming from. Let’s see what else DePodesta can do.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/br...be-determined/

Dummy the dog isn't dumb. And I'm talking about my dog.

I'll be honest with an unpopular opinion here....

I'm more than willing to see the Browns go 1-15 again in 2017 to draft Darnold. He is the next Manning/Luck franchise guy.

Seriously. We've been this bad for this long, I can deal with one more bad year. Put this kid behind center in 2018 and we're a contender for the next 10 years. I believe he's THAT good.

He won't make it past the first pick. No way any other team would trade out of #1. Our only shot at getting him is to have the first pick next year too.

Is that a not-negative post from LaCanfora?

I'm not really sure what to do...

That is not true. I have posted an article that refutes w/quotes from the main participants that totally blows what you are saying out of the water. And, I have posted it several times.

No matter who is right, it's probably time to forget Mack.

At this point I don't see what it really matters.

JMO

I've seen the article and read it. And I guess it comes down to what you believe. This year we could post articles with Pryor proclaiming his love of the Browns and wanting to play for Hue.... but who here would believe that versus Pryor was just saying the right thing. I don't blame Mack or Pryor or any player marketing themselves. It's a business and players are cut the instant teams deem them surplus. But it also means you have to take what they say with a large grain of salt. jmo

I thought there were quotes from Haslam and Sashi in there?

j/c

I noticed when looking at our '17 draft picks that we've kept the #1 pick in each round except for round 7.

I like the strategy of getting the #1 pick to start each day of the draft. That wasn't by accident given the number of trades we've made.

Missed your question before now ... I am sure there were quotes from the FO. I think you and I disagree on how literally we should take what anyone - including Sashi, Jimmy and company - says to the media. I think that it's not possible and not in the Browns best interest to mean as "gospel" everything that they say to the media. Not only do I expect Sashi and Co to say things to deliberately mislead in the Browns best interest in some cases .... But I also expect them to mislead in order to cover up dirty laundry - either their own, players, or other employees within the organization. It doesn't really bother me as I think all teams do it and it's expected.

Regarding Mack, Schwartz Pryor and company ... I honestly think the FO could release some information that would put them in a good light compared to the player and the agent ... I also think they mis-represent some of the facts to imply that they did a better job than they did.

Just look at the statement last year when Sashi or Hue or Podesta said something about not rating Wentz as a top 20 prospect or a top 10 prospect ... whatever it was. I think that was a moment of truth, but it hurt them. All they needed to say that Wentz was in the mix if they had stayed at #2, but the team decided the potential value of the trade for the Browns, based on all the team needs, was greater than taking the one very good player..... something like that. You tell the truth, just not the whole truth, and you don't give too much away. As it is it looks like they grossly erred on evaluating Wentz which raises questions, and I think Hue was the only NFL HC at Wentz pro day??? Not a great look.

Unless I am missing something, having the first pick in each round came from being the worst team in the NFL.