Fixing the Mess Created by Football Guys Wasn't Going to be EasyEveryone wants to blame the current front office for the Browns mess, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
For the Cleveland Browns and their fans, the words losing and rebuilding have become an unfortunate and regular part of their vocabulary since the team returned to the shores of Lake Erie in 1999.
Your beloved Cleveland Browns are in the midst of their 17th losing season of 19 since returning to the league. Meanwhile if things keep up at the pace they currently are, they could be looking for their 10th head coach during that time period as well.
To make matters that much worse, the team is in the middle of one of the worst win-loss record stretches in NFL history. After going 1-15 in 2016 in year one of their latest rebuild, the team is sitting at 0-11 after their latest loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Yes fans, for those of you keeping track at home that’s 1-26 in the last 27 games of regular season football.
Losing is never easy, as Browns fans you already know this. But this time, the losing was supposed to be different as the organization embarked on what was supposed to be one of the biggest teardowns in league history—led by a baseball nerd and lawyer armed with their calculators, magical abacus and this shocking new approach called “analytics.”
If you are sensing a tad bit of sarcasm in that last paragraph, good—we are on the same page.
The Cleveland Browns approach to their latest rebuild in 2016 was instantly met with pushback and doubt across the league. Despite the fact that analytics are heavily involved in every front office across the league and have been for quite some time, the Browns approach without a “football guy” in charge of the organization made analytics suddenly this taboo subject people only wanted to criticize.
And criticize they have. From the very first trade down, to every expected trade down in every draft and eventually letting every single good player the team develops walk in free agency in the future, Sashi Brown and company have been painted the “bad guys” in this latest episode of As The Cleveland Browns Turn.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news to all of the “football guys” fans and baseball nerd and lawyer bashers out there, but Sashi and company aren’t the ones creating a mess. They are the ones attempting to clean up the massive mess left for them by all the football guys who came before them.
The Super Bowl Winning Coach and Former General ManagerThough we could take a walk down memory lane all the way back to 1999 and break down every single misstep by each regime that came before them, for this article six seasons will suffice—because that takes us to the beginning of the Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert era in Cleveland, and probably pushes the limit of your attention span as a reader.
Holmgren, owner of 40-plus years of experience as a “football guy” and multiple time Super Bowl Champion, came on board to lead this organization as Team President. For his General Manager, he chose a pretty well-qualified individual to take over the role in Heckert, who was the former Philadelphia Eagles GM and long-time scout and personnel man in the NFL.
These two were supposed to be the duo who finally dragged the Browns out of their losing grave and brought back winning football to Cleveland. Right away in their first draft, things looked as if they would go that way—as the team identified and drafted two eventual playmakers in Joe Haden and T.J. Ward in 2010.
After the selections of Haden and Ward, things did not go nearly as well in the rest of the second and third rounds of the draft, as they walked away with Montario Hardesty, Colt McCoy and Shawn Lauvao.
The rest of their first NFL Draft in Cleveland wasn’t very good, but for the sake of this article, my sanity and all of you going and Googling every single player drafted after the Browns picked in the 4th-7th rounds of the NFL Draft, we are sticking to the first three rounds since those are the ones expected to yield the most contributors.
In his first season, Heckert would also find a diamond in the rough in Peyton Hillis (if only for a short period of time) by moving on from former first-round pick, Brady Quinn, in a trade with Denver. Hillis would go on to rush for 1,177 yards and 11 touchdowns as the Browns feature back in 2010.
The result? A 5-11 record in 2010, the end of Jake Delhomme’s five-game stint as the Browns starting QB (and pretty much his career) and one epic rushing of McCoy into the starting QB position despite Holmgren swearing up and down it would not happen. But hey, at least Hillis would be the Madden cover athlete the following year!
Year two of the Holmgren-Heckert marriage in Cleveland for the 2011 season would see the team move on from Eric Mangini and usher in the Pat Shurmur and Dick Jauron era for the Browns. When it came to the offseason, the team would be transitioning to a West Coast offense and 4-3 base defense, so naturally change was expected—however, much of it did not come.
In free agency, they would add Seneca Wallace to their QB room with McCoy. In the draft, they would execute one of the most criticized (and that’s saying something) trades to date.
Slotted to pick No. 6 in the NFL Draft with easy access to the No. 1 wide receiver (Julio Jones) their team had been lacking, they decided to execute a major trade down with the Atlanta Falcons. They would acquire multiple selections over 2011 and 2012, before trading back up in round one from 27 to 21 for defensive tackle Phil Taylor. In round two, they took standout defensive end Jabaal Sheard and major disappointment at wide receiver, Greg Little. In an underrated move, Heckert would also acquire John Greco in a trade.
Taylor’s career with the Browns was up and down thanks to injuries, while Sheard was very impressive during his first three years with the team, racking up 21 sacks—with 15.5 of them coming in the first two seasons while at defensive end. Little? Well, I don’t think we even need to go there.
The result? 4-12 in the win-loss column, Hillis falling off the face of the earth thanks to a battle with the ever-pesky strep throat and an eventual exit in free agency following the season.
After two years, everyone thought year three would finally be the year for Holmgren and Heckert. Locked and loaded with two first-round picks thanks to their trade down the previous season, the 2012 NFL Draft was going to be “the one” for the Browns leading duo. But you all know how this one went.
In the first round, the Browns selected Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden, while in rounds two and three they selected Mitchell Schwartz and John Hughes. Then a few weeks later they would make a move that would be one of their best, yet most controversial for the franchise as a whole in the future. They used a 2013 second-round pick to select troubled wide receiver, Josh Gordon.
The result? 5-11 in the win-loss column, while Gordon showed flashes of having potential to be one of the best receivers in the league in the coming years at just 21-years old. But at the end of the day, it was the beginning of a spiral for this organization under new owner Jimmy Haslam, as Holmgren and Heckert were let go along with the coaching staff.
The Prodigal Son ReturnsIn his first “real move” as the team’s owner, Haslam replaced his President and GM with Michael Lombardi in a highly criticized move by Browns fans thanks to moves he was part of as the team's Director of Pro Personnel in the early 1990s. Lombardi and company would hire head coaching unknown, Rod Chudzinski, as the team’s new head coach—followed by the additions of Norv Turner and Ray Horton as offensive and defensive coordinator.
In his lone season in charge of the franchise (more on that in a little bit), the 30-plus year “football guy” Lombardi would make some changes to the team’s roster. Out the door went fan favorites Josh Cribbs and Phil Dawson, meanwhile Lombardi spent big on linebacker Paul Kruger, defensive lineman Desmond Bryant and linebacker Quentin Groves to add to Horton’s new 3-4 defense.
The 2013 NFL Draft would also see more commitment to shoring up the defense, as with the team’s lone selections in the first three rounds they would take Barkevious Mingo and Leon McFadden. Their second-round selection was previously used to select Gordon, which was looking like a pretty good move right about now.
The result? 4-12 in the win-loss column, while Gordon took the next step in his assault on the league with Turner as his offensive coordinator. After serving a two-game suspension to begin the season, Gordon would take the league by storm, catching 87 passes for 1,646 yards and nine touchdowns in 14 games.
But at the end of the day it wasn’t enough, as trigger Jimmy struck by firing Lombardi and Chudzinski. This would cause Turner and Horton to move on to other teams as well.
The Backwards Hiring of Coach Before GMAfter cleaning house, Haslam decided to shake things up. He hired Mike Pettine as his new head coach in 2014, then fired Lombardi. Following this, he would elevate assistant GM Ray Farmer to GM of his franchise, and Joe Banner would “transition” out the door from the team’s front office.
And so would begin one of the oddest two-year spans for the Cleveland Browns.
To make this as painless as possible, I am going to wrap 2014 and 2015 into the same breakdown. Despite owning four first-round picks in two seasons, another “football guy” in Farmer failed to land one impact player by selecting Justin Gilbert, Johnny Manziel, Danny Shelton and Cam Erving.
Only Shelton remains on the roster of these four first round picks.
Farmer had much more success in the second and third rounds, finding Joel Bitonio, Christian Kirksey and Duke Johnson over his two seasons with the team. But he was not without his faults, as he used an early second round pick on Nate Orchard, traded up to select Terrance West and used a third rounder on Xavier Cooper.
In free agency, Farmer really made his “mark.”
Instead of addressing the wide receiver position prior to an impending suspension for Gordon in a loaded 2014 draft class, Farmer signed Miles Austin, Earl Bennett, Nate Burleson and Andrew Hawkins in free agency. He would also bring Donte Whitner “home,” sign Karlos Dansby, dish out a decent contract to running back Ben Tate and add Vince Young to the mix, though Young would never make the roster in 2014. Also, starting center Alex Mack would attempt to leave in free agency but the Browns matched the creative deal to keep him with the team—for now.
In 2015, he would again ignore the wide receiver position, opting to instead bring Brian Hartline “home” and dish out millions to the biggest waste of roster space ever, Dwayne Bowe. He would also bring in Tramon Williams from the Packers, Josh McCown from Tampa Bay and Randy Starks from Miami as “name” signings.
The results? 2014 would be the best season in a long, long time for the Browns as they finished 7-9 and had many thinking playoffs before losing five straight to end the season. But 2015 would be the beginning of the end, as young contributors like Jordan Cameron, Jabaal Sheard and Buster Skrine would leave in free agency and the team would finish 3-13 on the year.
Following the season, Farmer and company would be let go.
Make the Pain Stop, BobThree regimes of “football guys” over the course of six seasons and one trigger happy owner are the true culprits of the mess you see before you, not the media’s scapegoats the baseball nerd and the lawyer with an analytics hobby.
Six seasons of dysfunction, coaching changes, scheme changes and losing are what caused the few bright spots found through the draft and free agency (Ward, Sheard, Skrine, Mack, Benjamin and Gipson) to leave.
Six seasons of missing on players selected in the first three rounds of the draft are why in 2016 the “analytics guys” found themselves with a cupboard nearly bare in regard to young players with upside and the potential to be impact players in the future.
Only 8 of the 24 players selected in the first three founds of the drafts from 2010 – 2015 ended up being able to make a true impact on the team during their time here. Haden, Ward, Sheard, Schwartz, Gordon (Supplemental), Bitonio, Kirksey and Johnson. If you want to include Shelton and Taylor in here, you are more than welcome, but personally neither have lived up to their draft position.
Of that list of players, the only ones available from the list above for Brown and company to build around for the future (not including Thomas who was from the 2007 NFL Draft class) were a banged-up Haden, a suspended Gordon, Bitonio, Kirksey, Johnson and Schwartz. Haden’s injuries caught up to him and he was let go in 2017.
They rewarded both Bitonio and Kirksey with extensions, recognizing their importance to the team. The coaching staff refuses to give Johnson the ball despite him being a lightning rod every time he touches it, and it appears Gordon is finally gracing us with his presence this week.
That brings us to Schwartz, the right tackle everyone loved to hate until his final season with the team when everything “clicked.” His free agency was reportedly messy, and we will likely never know the details of what happened in the contract negotiations—so if you want to put that blame on Brown and the front office, go ahead.
But when you look up and down the roster Brown inherited in 2016, it was an absolute wasteland of failed draft picks needing to be moved on from (Manziel, Gilbert, Erving and more), and underperforming previous free agency investments (Bowe, Dansby, Hartline, Whitner, McCown, Hawkins, Gary Barnidge and eventually Williams).
No amount of free agency spending (a common complaint of fans) was going to fix what ailed the Browns roster, you watched millions upon millions of dollars in failed free agency signings during the previous six years fail to make an impact and walk out of town after padding their wallets during their stay in Cleveland.
So Brown and company followed the model which worked for Jimmy Johnson’s Dallas Cowboys and many other successful teams in NFL history—build through the draft. And it hasn’t been easy.
If you want to be mad about the team not taking one of these talented quarterbacks the past two seasons, I cannot fault you for that. Just know that the team’s QB guru head coach had more to do with that than any member of the front office, especially since the “earth moved beneath his feet” when Robert Griffin III worked out for the team, and they signed him instead of drafting Carson Wentz because of it.
The record does not show it, but using the same first three rounds of the draft model detailed in this article—you cannot possibly say the potential for impact talent isn’t there.
Corey Coleman, Emmanuel Ogbah, Myles Garrett, David Njoku and Larry Ogunjobi have shown the potential to be at a bare minimum solid players, with Ogbah and Garrett standing out as bookends on the line for years to come.
Carl Nassib and Shon Coleman have had their ups and downs, and specifically regarding Coleman—remember, you were trying to run Schwartz out of town until his final season here as well, so it may just be that developing as a right tackle in the NFL takes more than a season.
Jabrill Peppers and DeShone Kizer have struggled in a big way, but they are 22 and 21 respectively, and have a lot of time to learn and grow. In reality, the only pick you can likely write off is Cody Kessler at this point from the first three rounds of the last two drafts due to his limitations, the presence of Kizer and potential for another quarterback to be added in the 2017 NFL Draft.
After witnessing six regimes get little from 16 of their 24 picks in the first three rounds of the draft, it is pretty impressive how many people want to cast blame on the front office when at a minimum you can say 50 percent of their 10 picks in the first three rounds the last two seasons have shown something on the field less than two seasons (and in some cases less than one season) into their young careers.
Final Thought
Losing isn’t easy, and 1-25 is downright devastating and fanbase dividing. There is no way to sugarcoat the product fans have watched over the past two seasons on the field for the Cleveland Browns.
But when you really sit back and examine it (after reading nearly 3,000 words in this article), the mess you see today isn’t the fault of a baseball nerd and a lawyer with an analytics hobby. It is the culmination of failed drafts, failed free agency investments and young bright spots leaving after continuous organizational instability and upheaval from a trigger-happy owner with a backwards organizational and hiring structure in mind.
There was never going to be a quick fix, and this front office wasn’t interested in patching this thing up with a band-aid to go 3-13 and 4-12 for two years before Haslam eventually fired everyone and started over. They created a plan of building a roster through the draft, and that takes more than 26 games no matter how you look at it.
If the front office is let go, the success of the next front office will be in large part due to the assets in terms of young, developing players on this roster, the future draft assets Brown and company have accumulated during the first two seasons and one shrewd move to acquire the center of their linebacking corps and defense during the middle of a losing season in Jamie Collins.
At the end of the day, many will not be able to see past wins and losses—I get that. But when you head to Twitter to rip the analytics guys for the product on the field, just know it was six seasons of poor decisions by football guys that led to the roster you see before you. And a baseball nerd and his lawyer pal with an analytics hobby are trying to dig out using the model for long-term success in the NFL—building through the draft—that has been used by football guys and analytics guys alike for decades.
https://scout.com/nfl/browns/Article/Cle...-Easy-111277332
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