Paul DePodesta: The Brain Behind the Browns Rebuild
MON APR. 3, 2017 link Paul DePodesta: The Brain Behind the Browns Rebuild Cleveland’s crafty chief strategy officer plays coy when pressed on how he plans to help the franchise return to relevancy. But here are a few clues into the Browns’ draft strategy. Plus items on Adrian Peterson visiting the Pats, the Raiders-London connection, an opening-night theory and more
PHOENIX — Paul DePodesta, the Cleveland Browns’ trump card on the rest of the NFL. Nice fellow. Harvard guy, and, to his credit, doesn’t intimidate you with his Ivy League brain. Fifteen months into the new job after two decades with five Major League Baseball teams. Nowhere to go but up. The Browns are in a three-year run with the most high draft picks of any team in football every year: nine in the first four rounds last year, nine in the first five rounds this year, seven in the first four rounds next year. DePodesta, Cleveland’s chief strategy officer, is the mover and the shaker and the Moneyballer in this show. Right?
I spent 40 minutes with DePodesta at the league meetings the other day. I don’t doubt his import to the organization and to the cause of rescuing the Browns from a life of awfulness.
But I still have no idea what he does.
“I think part of that maybe is intentional,” said DePodesta, 44, in shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on a folding chair in a garden at the classic old Arizona Biltmore Hotel. “I’m trying to think of the most succinct way to put it. I really focus on process as much as anything else: process for how we evaluate players, process for how we make decisions, process even for how we hire people internally, process for how we go about integrating our scouting reports with guys watching tape in the office. It is really about how we do the things we do. I think part of the reason they brought me in is because I am completely naive about the National Football League. I have no preconceived notions about how things ought to be done or how they have been done in the past, and I can look at it with a fresh set of eyes.”
“Is there an example you can give me?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” DePodesta said. “We are trying to develop things that ultimately will give us a competitive advantage and will get us back onto the landscape in terms of those competitive teams that are playing in January every year. So, I am hesitant to give away too much of what we’re trying to do. The other reason I think it’s hard is because it is really collective. We have a lot of people in our office who are very bright and have been around the game for a lot longer than I have, who had a lot of these ideas before I ever showed up.”
So if I can’t beat the specifics out of DePodesta—which, though I wouldn’t tell him, I actually like, because the last thing you want on your team is some baseball know-it-all coming in to tell the football guys how to win, and the second-to-last thing is then bragging about what you’re doing.
So let’s try something else. The one thing that’s obvious about the Cleveland approach—and it has to be a big part of the DePodesta way, seeing that he’s the strategy guy—is the compilation of draft choices. When he starts talking about that, clues start surfacing.
“We’ve looked ourselves in the mirror and said, ‘Do we think that we are actually superhuman when it comes to picking players?’ And we pretty easily answered that with a resounding no. So how are we going to increase our chances? We need to have more picks. So, if we have the same number of picks every year as everyone else, we don’t expect do better than anyone else.”
“Sounds like Jimmy Johnson’s philosophy,” I said. “You aware of that?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling.
“Had any conversations with him?” I said.
“I’ll keep that to myself. I’ll say this: I’m a big admirer of what he’s done.”
Thanks for providing the entire article. It gave us a lot more context to what Depo was talking about rather than just quotes that now appear to be an attempt to mislead.
“We’ve looked ourselves in the mirror and said, ‘Do we think that we are actually superhuman when it comes to picking players?’ And we pretty easily answered that with a resounding no. So how are we going to increase our chances? We need to have more picks. So, if we have the same number of picks every year as everyone else, we don’t expect do better than anyone else.”
It might work out better if the front office tried to strike a balance..improving the FO's ability to pick better players and having more draft picks than other teams.
If the Browns were better at judging football talent and had more draft picks, shouldn't that strategy produce better results on the field, sooner?
Why is this FO so against the idea of adding someone with a background in judging football talent, to the front office?
Is it about the egos in charge in the front office?
Is it about who will get credit if and when the Browns turn the corner?
Depodesta admits to being naive about the NFL and that his strategy of securing more picks is an attempt to increase the front office's chances of picking good players.
When I read this, I see a situation and opportunity to make Depo's strategy even better, by adding personnel who improve the FO's chances of hitting on draft picks.
I have no problem giving Depodesta credit for establishing a successful strategy...but what I don't get is why anyone would not attempt to improve upon that strategy. Not wanting to add FO personnel who have a background in football just doesn't make sense.
It might work out better if the front office tried to strike a balance..improving the FO's ability to pick better players and having more draft picks than other teams.
If the Browns were better at judging football talent and had more draft picks, shouldn't that strategy produce better results on the field, sooner?
They have only had ONE Draft they need a tad bit more time.
The article continued...it was covered by an ad...hate those ads.
Jimmy Johnson coached the Cowboys from 1989 to 1993. He had a heavy influence on the draft under owner Jerry Jones. By the time Johnson figured out how vital volume of picks was, the Cowboys began to own the draft. See how familiar this looks: • Dallas, 1991-1993 — Top four rounds of the draft: NFL-high 23 picks. • Cleveland, 2016-2018 (as of today) — Top four rounds of the draft: NFL-high 22 picks.
Yes, Johnson has spoken with the Browns. He just won’t say about what. But it’s no deep, dark mystery. Just as acquiring all these picks wasn’t deep and dark. The Browns in 2016 traded the second pick in the draft down to Philadelphia’s eighth slot in the round, and then again to Tennessee at 15. That netted Cleveland seven picks over multiple drafts in the first four rounds. “That’s good,” Johnson said from Florida on Friday. “There’s strength in numbers. I always wanted to have more picks in the middle rounds and at the end, because you can build a good team with the role players you get in the third, fourth and fifth rounds. With the Browns now, with all those picks, really, you’re one free-agent class and one draft from being a contender.
“But I’ll tell you, here’s the danger of having so many picks: You think, ‘We’ve got so many picks, let’s move up and take that guy with a little risk.’ You think you’ve got so many picks and you can afford to waste them on guys. I never looked at it that way. You have to look at every pick like it’s the only one you’ve got. Like I’ve told Bill Belichick, ‘You don’t have to use ’em this year. Bank ’em. Trade ’em.’ He knows. One time he told me he had a good team, and he had some extra picks, and he was afraid the guy they’d take might not be good enough to make his team. Fine. You don’t like what’s there? You can always find someone to take your four this year for a three next year. Like I said, bank ’em.”
What Johnson and the Cowboys were so good at was hitting on some of the late ones—and that’s due to the fact that they could afford to err because of the multiple picks. The Cowboys hit on Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith with first-round picks in 1989 and 1990, back when the draft was 12 rounds long, and in 1991 got Leon Lett in the seventh round and cornerback Larry Brown, a future Super Bowl MVP, in the 12th. “In college I was my own recruiting coordinator at Oklahoma State,” Johnson said. “That helped me later on, because Oklahoma was the top program in the state, and so I didn’t just get the best guys; I had to look for some of the hidden guys. So when you’ve got all these picks, and a lot of them come down the line, you’d better know players.”
There’s the pressure on Cleveland. With 31 competitive front offices, the Browns had better have a cadre of scouts DePodesta and GM Sashi Brown and VP of player personnel Andrew Berry can trust. Said DePodesta: “We don’t get any points or win any games for having the most picks. We need to turn that into talent. It’s part of the reason we are so excited for this April. I think our team will look fundamentally different in May than it does right now.”
It very likely will. But this Browns administration cannot afford to have a B-minus draft. “Cleveland doesn’t have to build their team all this year,” said Johnson. “But after three years, they better have a contender. If they’re not a contender after three years, someone ought to be fired. Simple as that.”
Paul DePodesta: The Brain Behind the Browns Rebuild
Cleveland’s crafty chief strategy officer plays coy when pressed on how he plans to help the franchise return to relevancy. But here are a few clues into the Browns’ draft plans. Plus items on Adrian Peterson visiting the Pats, the Raiders-London connection, an opening-night theory and more
PHOENIX — Paul DePodesta, the Cleveland Browns’ trump card on the rest of the NFL. Nice fellow. Harvard guy, and, to his credit, doesn’t intimidate you with his Ivy League brain. Fifteen months into the new job after two decades with five Major League Baseball teams. Nowhere to go but up. The Browns are in a three-year run with the most high draft picks of any team in football every year: nine in the first four rounds last year, nine in the first five rounds this year, seven in the first four rounds next year. DePodesta, Cleveland’s chief strategy officer, is the mover and the shaker and the Moneyballer in this show. Right?
I spent 40 minutes with DePodesta at the league meetings the other day. I don’t doubt his import to the organization and to the cause of rescuing the Browns from a life of awfulness.
But I still have no idea what he does.
“I think part of that maybe is intentional,” said DePodesta, 44, in shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on a folding chair in a garden at the classic old Arizona Biltmore Hotel. “I’m trying to think of the most succinct way to put it. I really focus on process as much as anything else: process for how we evaluate players, process for how we make decisions, process even for how we hire people internally, process for how we go about integrating our scouting reports with guys watching tape in the office. It is really about how we do the things we do. I think part of the reason they brought me in is because I am completely naive about the National Football League. I have no preconceived notions about how things ought to be done or how they have been done in the past, and I can look at it with a fresh set of eyes.”
“Is there an example you can give me?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” DePodesta said. “We are trying to develop things that ultimately will give us a competitive advantage and will get us back onto the landscape in terms of those competitive teams that are playing in January every year. So, I am hesitant to give away too much of what we’re trying to do. The other reason I think it’s hard is because it is really collective. We have a lot of people in our office who are very bright and have been around the game for a lot longer than I have, who had a lot of these ideas before I ever showed up.”
So I can’t draw the specifics out of DePodesta—which, though I wouldn’t tell him, I actually like, because the last thing you want on your team is some baseball know-it-all coming in to tell the football guys how to win, and the second-to-last thing is then bragging about what you’re doing.
Let’s try something else, then. The one thing that’s obvious about the Cleveland approach—and it has to be a big part of the DePodesta way, seeing that he’s the strategy guy—is the accumulation of draft choices. When he starts talking about that, clues start surfacing.
“We’ve looked ourselves in the mirror and said, ‘Do we think that we are actually superhuman when it comes to picking players?’ And we pretty easily answered that with a resounding no. So how are we going to increase our chances? We need to have more picks. So, if we have the same number of picks every year as everyone else, we don’t expect do better than anyone else.”
“Sounds like Jimmy Johnson’s philosophy,” I said. “You aware of that?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling.
“Had any conversations with him?” I said.
“I’ll keep that to myself. I’ll say this: I’m a big admirer of what he’s done.”
Jimmy Johnson coached the Cowboys from 1989 to 1993. He had a heavy influence on the draft under owner Jerry Jones. By the time Johnson figured out how vital volume of picks was, the Cowboys began to own the draft. See how familiar this looks:
• Dallas, 1991-1993 — Top four rounds of the draft: NFL-high 23 picks.
• Cleveland, 2016-2018 (as of today) — Top four rounds of the draft: NFL-high 22 picks.
Yes, Johnson has spoken with the Browns. He just won’t say about what.
But it’s no deep, dark mystery. Just as acquiring all these picks wasn’t deep and dark. The Browns in 2016 traded the second pick in the draft down to Philadelphia’s eighth slot in the round, and then again to Tennessee at 15. That netted Cleveland seven picks over multiple drafts in the first four rounds.
“That’s good,” Johnson said from Florida on Friday. “There’s strength in numbers. I always wanted to have more picks in the middle rounds and at the end, because you can build a good team with the role players you get in the third, fourth and fifth rounds. With the Browns now, with all those picks, really, you’re one free-agent class and one draft from being a contender.
“But I’ll tell you, here’s the danger of having so many picks: You think, ‘We’ve got so many picks, let’s move up and take that guy with a little risk.’ You think you’ve got so many picks and you can afford to waste them on guys. I never looked at it that way. You have to look at every pick like it’s the only one you’ve got. Like I’ve told Bill Belichick, ‘You don’t have to use ’em this year. Bank ’em. Trade ’em.’ He knows. One time he told me he had a good team, and he had some extra picks, and he was afraid the guy they’d take might not be good enough to make his team. Fine. You don’t like what’s there? You can always find someone to take your four this year for a three next year. Like I said, bank ’em.”
“[Rebuilding a team] is like redoing a house—you need to rip down all the walls and get it down to the studs,” DePodesta says. “When you do that, you look at it and go, wow this looks terrible. We never want to go through this again and I think that is our attitude.”
What Johnson and the Cowboys were so good at was hitting on some of the late ones—and that’s due to the fact that they could afford to err because of the multiple picks. The Cowboys hit on Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith with first-round picks in 1989 and 1990, back when the draft was 12 rounds long, and in 1991 got Leon Lett in the seventh round and cornerback Larry Brown, a future Super Bowl MVP, in the 12th. “In college I was my own recruiting coordinator at Oklahoma State,” Johnson said. “That helped me later on, because Oklahoma was the top program in the state, and so I didn’t just get the best guys; I had to look for some of the hidden guys. So when you’ve got all these picks, and a lot of them come down the line, you’d better know players.”
There’s the pressure on Cleveland. With 31 competitive front offices, the Browns had better have a cadre of scouts DePodesta and GM Sashi Brown and VP of player personnel Andrew Berry can trust. Said DePodesta: “We don’t get any points or win any games for having the most picks. We need to turn that into talent. It’s part of the reason we are so excited for this April. I think our team will look fundamentally different in May than it does right now.”
It very likely will. But this Browns administration cannot afford to have a B-minus draft. “Cleveland doesn’t have to build their team all this year,” said Johnson. “But after three years, they better have a contender. If they’re not a contender after three years, someone ought to be fired. Simple as that.”
The one thing that bugs me about Cleveland is the loss of too many players they’ve developed. Center Alex Mack and wideout Taylor Gabriel left in 2016 and were keys on Atlanta’s NFC title team. A good right tackle, Mitchell Schwartz, left in free agency a year ago in his prime, at 26, for Kansas City. This year the Browns lost a potential star wide receiver, Terrelle Pryor, after transitioning him from quarterback; they couldn’t bridge a contract dispute, and he signed in Washington.
That’s four holes Cleveland didn’t need to have. At some point—like, now—the Browns won’t be able to justify losing good players on the road to contending. I asked DePodesta why they’ve lost key players whom they probably should have kept.
“Great question,” he said. “I’d say going back a year when we did have a handful of free agents and we allowed them all to sign elsewhere, that was a moment in time. That is not something that we want to do continuously. Again, that was a situation that we felt like we really do need to rebuild the foundation of this organization, and it is almost like redoing a house—you need to rip down all the walls and get it down to the studs. Now, when you do that and you tear out all the walls and the floors and all you have left are the studs, you look at it and go, wow this looks terrible. We never want to go through this again, and I think that is our attitude.
“Even as we got into the season last year, there was a monumental shift in our organizational evolution, and it was when we traded for [New England linebacker] Jamie Collins. What we were trying to show everyone in our organization hopefully, and all our fans, was that that is now behind us and we are adding to this and building; this is not going to be about tearing it down all the time. This offseason we were able to re-sign Jamie, we were able to re-sign [guard] Joel Bitonio, and we added free agents this year. We feel like we’ve got a handful of players that will be part of our core going forward, and our goal is to now build out that core and ultimately, when it comes time, retain it. It did come time right now, with guys like Bitonio and Jamie, we had to retain them and we did. And we will have more players that will be like that.”
“What translates between baseball and football?” I wondered.
“I’ve actually been struck by how many similarities there are,” DePodesta said. “I have been through similar rebuilding exercises, but I think baseball is different especially because of that minor-league system, where you can see the wave building through the minor leagues. Whether baseball or football, we’re tasked in front offices with making decisions under uncertainty. How do you corral that uncertainty in a way to make more consistently better decisions? That’s very similar. I remember last year, during the free agency period, sitting in a room with a bunch of our scouts, and we were talking about these players, and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t have a 20-year library of players in my head like I did in baseball, so there’s not a whole lot I can contribute to the nuance of this conversation.’ But these are the exact same conversations I have been having for the last 20 years. You try to build a winning culture and bring a group of people together in a short period of time and work them toward a common goal. The competitiveness on a week-to-week basis is the same. The impact of things like injuries is the same. But I still had more to learn about baseball, so that gives you an idea of how far down the learning curve I am with football.”
There’s one simple thing about football, though: The quarterback’s more important than any player on a baseball team. Alex Smith isn’t as good at football as Clayton Kershaw is at baseball, but Smith’s more important to the success of the Chiefs than Kershaw is to the Dodgers.
You don’t win without a good quarterback, and the Browns don’t have a good one, and this year is a tough year for quarterbacks because there’s no sure thing. It’s the continued black cloud over this franchise. Here they are, owning the draft, with the first, 12th and 33rd overall picks, and there’s no Andrew Luck coming in, and probably not anyone close. I believe the similarly needy 49ers may well wait until the 2018 off-season, in either free agency or the draft, to sell souls for a quarterback. It may not be a bad idea for the Browns to do the same, seeing that 2018 is likely to have a better crop of passers—and it could include vets Jimmy Garoppolo and maybe Kirk Cousins.
But in that QB-in-2018 scenario, the Browns would go two straight off-seasons of this new regime without acquiring the quarterback of the future. In the Jimmy Johnson motif, year three would then be a pressure cooker of all pressure cookers.
So there’s nothing easy, and nothing altogether familiar, about this job for DePodesta. Not like his baseball life. By the way, the five teams DePodesta worked for in baseball—Cleveland, Oakland, the Dodgers, San Diego and the Mets—open their baseball seasons today. So I wondered if after the 1-15 Browns season DePodesta has the slightest pang of regret about leaving baseball. “No,” he said. “I absolutely loved my time in baseball, but I am really, really enjoying this challenge.”
He told a story about when the Indians reached the World Series in 1997, when the Browns were two years from being reborn. He said downtown was celebratory after the team won the pennant. “I remember someone saying, ‘This is wild, but you have no idea what this would be had it been the Browns.’ And that always stuck with me.”
If DePodesta ever rides in a Browns championship parade, it won’t be Jonah Hill who plays him in the next movie. There might be a line to play him, led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper.
“I think part of that maybe is intentional,” said DePodesta, 44, in shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on a folding chair in a garden at the classic old Arizona Biltmore Hotel. “I’m trying to think of the most succinct way to put it. I really focus on process as much as anything else: process for how we evaluate players, process for how we make decisions, process even for how we hire people internally, process for how we go about integrating our scouting reports with guys watching tape in the office. It is really about how we do the things we do. I think part of the reason they brought me in is because I am completely naive about the National Football League. I have no preconceived notions about how things ought to be done or how they have been done in the past, and I can look at it with a fresh set of eyes.”
Here's what I posted on December 22nd:
Quote:
He is a football novice, but like I said earlier, how involved is he with the football?
DePodesta's largest area of effectiveness is his ability to analyze systems and see what needs to be improved upon, what needs to stay as is, what needs to go, and what is missing.
We feel like we’ve got a handful of players that will be part of our core going forward
A handful, as in like, five? FIVE?! WTF? I hope he was simply misspeaking, because if they've only got five core players at this point, they really have their heads up their collective patooties. They better have at least five on the O & D lines alone.
"I am undeterred and I am undaunted." --Kevin Stefanski
"Big hairy American winning machines." --Baker Mayfield
“I think part of that maybe is intentional,” said DePodesta, 44, in shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on a folding chair in a garden at the classic old Arizona Biltmore Hotel. “I’m trying to think of the most succinct way to put it. I really focus on process as much as anything else: process for how we evaluate players, process for how we make decisions, process even for how we hire people internally, process for how we go about integrating our scouting reports with guys watching tape in the office. It is really about how we do the things we do. I think part of the reason they brought me in is because I am completely naive about the National Football League. I have no preconceived notions about how things ought to be done or how they have been done in the past, and I can look at it with a fresh set of eyes.”
...
If I could ask Paul anything, man to man, no BS - it would be... after one year in, what tweaks have you made to your process(es) from one year going into year two?
The one thing that bugs me about Cleveland is the loss of too many players they’ve developed. Center Alex Mack and wideout Taylor Gabriel left in 2016 and were keys on Atlanta’s NFC title team. A good right tackle, Mitchell Schwartz, left in free agency a year ago in his prime, at 26, for Kansas City. This year the Browns lost a potential star wide receiver, Terrelle Pryor, after transitioning him from quarterback; they couldn’t bridge a contract dispute, and he signed in Washington.
That’s four holes Cleveland didn’t need to have. At some point—like, now—the Browns won’t be able to justify losing good players on the road to contending. I asked DePodesta why they’ve lost key players whom they probably should have kept.
Depodesta's response to Peter Kings question...
Quote:
“Great question,” he said. “I’d say going back a year when we did have a handful of free agents and we allowed them all to sign elsewhere, that was a moment in time. That is not something that we want to do continuously. Again, that was a situation that we felt like we really do need to rebuild the foundation of this organization, and it is almost like redoing a house—you need to rip down all the walls and get it down to the studs. Now, when you do that and you tear out all the walls and the floors and all you have left are the studs, you look at it and go, wow this looks terrible. We never want to go through this again, and I think that is our attitude.
Imagine that..here we are April 3, 2017 and Peter King is asking the same questions that I'm criticized for asking!
Anyone who knows a lick about football is just like Peter King and other Browns fans who recognize a Browns screw up when they see a big one like the 4 examples King sited.
Depodesta's did not answer the question but did admit, the franchise "allowed" them to walk rather than signing them. Depo goes on to say, "that was a moment in time" and it "not something we want to do continuously".
The 4 free agent cases that Peter King named cover last season and "again" this season...I would define that as 2 seasons in row or "continuously" under Depodesta and Sashi Brown's time running our front office.
Then Depo goes into his redoing a house comparison, talking about tearing it down to the studs. I think most would agree that Depodesta and Sashi Brown did a helluva job tearing down the franchise in just one year, responsible for the worst season in franchise history.
IMO, there is no way the front office can screw up their first 5 picks (1,12,33,52,65). The glaring needs for the Browns are obvious and the talent will be there during there when the Browns make their first 5 picks. Hopefully they will be able to add more quality depth with the remaining 6 picks.
Jimmy Johnson summed it up for the Browns with his comments in a PFT article posted today...
Quote:
“Cleveland doesn’t have to build their team all this year,” Johnson said. “But after three years, they better have a contender. If they’re not a contender after three years, someone ought to be fired. Simple as that.”
General thought. I haven't read this thread for about 3 weeks, but , I think I agree with Mac, and the other side has a point too.
People have seen the "Jersey" with a couple dozen quarterbacks names on it, adding all the one's the Browns have had start since 1999, but sometime, when, if the Browns start winning, they will have to have some kind of group that sticks together.
What would that Jersey look like if it had the Browns Wide Receivers on it. Or Nose Tackles. Or Tight Ends. Or Runningbacks. Since 99' the teams' had 1/3rd as much roster turnover as a Convenience Store.
It wouldn't hurt, to figure out who they want. Latest case,.. I'll bring up... because Jimmy Haslem, "did" own the team already, ... Why did they sign Robert Griffeth the 3rd, if they aren't willing to stick with him this offseason?
Surely there's a lot I don't know, maybe there's an injury or personality's incompatible.
I get Mac's point. And, by NO Logic, can other poster argue that Ter.Pryor wasn't a Brown, he was the top WR, last year if I'm not mistaken, and it doesn't matter if he came from sacking groceries like Kurt Warner did, .. you didn't secure that he came back. Just like Rabbit, Travis Benjamin, Just like safety Tashaun Gipson. Sheard, Dqwell Jackson, it continues
Sure, it's a different era, there's free agency, let it go, don't cry over spilled milk, but the Browns, don't re-sign their own... more than their share of the times.
Not to mention, Johnny Football, wigging out off the field. Missed seasons by Josh Gordon, and 2 years without Kellon Winslow Jr. What Luck we have!
Can Deshaun Watson play better for the Browns, than Baker Mayfield would have? ... Now the Games count.
Add the hindsight to your list: Find causes for past failures in processes and eliminating these practices, correcting them, or improving them. Stop digging the hole you are in; do not repeat the same lapse of judgment or use the false assumptions again that resulted in a poor decision. That requires objectivity, so the NFL 'blind spot' mentioned is vital. But I see real need for some input in the pipeline for best judge of NFL horseflesh before a decision, trade, or draft are finalized. We need that IMO. Badly.
"Every responsibility implies opportunity, and every opportunity implies responsibility." Otis Allen Glazebrook, 1880
But I see real need for some input in the pipeline for best judge of NFL horseflesh before a decision, trade, or draft are finalized. We need that IMO. Badly.
We've had one draft and two free agency periods. We can't judge the draft yet because it has only been one season. One free agent period was a disaster (and it seems like that might have been intentional) and the other was pretty good.
We have a ton of scouts who have been working in football for a long time. They have a job for a reason. Give the front office the best information possible and let them make the best decision.
A full year in the making: Browns making most of every second leading up to draft
Paul DePodesta: 'I think the whole thing has slowed down for us'
The Browns, armed again with the most draft picks of any NFL team, are 24 days out from a potentially pivotal night in Philadelphia.
It’ll indeed be the culmination of a year’s worth of collaboration led by executive vice president of football operations Sashi Brown, head coach Hue Jackson, chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta and vice president of player personnel Andrew Berry.
And compared to last year, when the new-look front office and coaching staffs embarked on what was something of a “sprint” toward the finish, the Browns are prepared for whatever the next three weeks might hold.
“I mean last year, by the time we all got together it was basically February and we were going into our draft meetings,” DePodesta said last week at the NFL’s Annual Meeting in Phoenix. “I think literally the first week Andrew Berry was on the job was our draft meetings. We were putting the board together and we were off to the Combine immediately thereafter. And then it was free agency and then it was the draft.”
The Browns ultimately added 14 new members, including wide receiver Corey Coleman and defensive end/linebacker Emmanuel Ogbah. It all made for a youth-laden team forced to grow up on the fly during a 1-15 season. In that time, Cleveland’s front office has appreciated the luxury of time and squeezed every drop of it while working to add top-level talent to the roster.
“It was almost that whatever was happening on the calendar immediately in front of us is what we were confronting at the moment,” DePodesta said, “as opposed to having a chance to sit back and really plan for something that was going to happen in the future and that's what we’ve had the opportunity to do this year.”
Browns owner Jimmy Haslam added: “The difference in having everybody together first of all during a season and then starting literally on January 2nd and everybody having worked together and known each other is substantial.”
The Browns, who fortified their offensive line in free agency, are now poised to add more talent to the roster. They own the first,12th and five of the top 65 picks in the draft.
“I think the whole thing has slowed down for us. Last year was everything’s rushing at us and we have to make these decisions now,” DePodesta said. “And now it’s more we can't wait for the draft to get there because we’re prepared and excited with what we might be able to do.”
Wait! Is this yet another article from a Brown's site?
Because it sure sounds like one w/whiny excuses. It's the same BS we have heard over and over and over every time they make a switch. In fact, this article is eerily similar to the BS when Farmer was in his second year.
Hey Haslam.........quit firing people and you won't be in such a predicament.
Wait! Is this yet another article from a Brown's site?
Because it sure sounds like one w/whiny excuses. It's the same BS we have heard over and over and over every time they make a switch. In fact, this article is eerily similar to the BS when Farmer was in his second year.
Hey Haslam.........quit firing people and you won't be in such a predicament.
No Vambo...........I am saying that you deliberately try and deceive people by posting biased articles w/out mentioning the fact that the reporter is paid by the Browns.
But again.......I'm not sure, so if I am wrong.....please let me know that it isn't a Brown's site.
See, I have to resort to such qualifications, because Memphis and Jester called me out the last time I questioned how legit an article was and that trend has occurred time after time after time..............so, I need to make sure who is writing the article. I won't assume anything.
No Vambo...........I am saying that you deliberately try and deceive people by posting biased articles w/out mentioning the fact that the reporter is paid by the Browns.
But again.......I'm not sure, so if I am wrong.....please let me know that it isn't a Brown's site.
See, I have to resort to such qualifications, because Memphis and Jester called me out the last time I questioned how legit an article was and that trend has occurred time after time after time..............so, I need to make sure who is writing the article. I won't assume anything.
If you want to know who wrote the article click the link and look dear lord.
I supplied the link how is that " deliberately try and deceive people "?
Vers I take it for granted the other posters on this board can click on the link look at the article and author and decide for themselves how they feel about it.
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