DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Sashi Brown fired

They irony is this team would have been better off keeping McCown or Griffin. They're play doesn't look so bad in retrospect. McCown is playing well for the Jets.

I couldn't agree w/this more.

I wonder how much, if at all, it factored in that the 2018 draft is already considered by most to be weaker than the previous two years. It isn't the 2013 draft, but it's a weaker draft class than is typical. This is especially true on the QB front.

Matt Miller, for example, said that Rosen/Darnold/Allen are all ranked lower than he had Winston, Mariota, Goff and Wentz even though they all make his top 10 for the 2018 class.

I've noticed with Sashi fired, nobody is saying, "Browns have a great job opening because they've got the #1 pick and any GM can take X QB. This position will be in demand because they can build around him."

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of talent that should provide a bright future for this team, but I wonder if it played an influencing role if Sashi was wheeling and dealing a plethora of selection for a draft that is questionable. Around this time of year, the scouts first start reporting back with their preliminary evaluations from the CBF season.

While it is nice to have picks, I'd argue that 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017 have all been strong classes this decade.

Part of me wonders...if we end up with Dorsey...could we potentially end up with Alex Smith?

Could be possible. I think the bigger issue would be if Smith would be willing to come to Cleveland. He's struggling enough to achieve much with a fantastic team around him - a young team that needs more talent might worry him.

I would also suggest whom a Dorsey/Jackson combo might target...

Dorsey and Hue Jackson were both massive Patrick Mahomes buffs. In fact, there has been plenty of stories that Dorsey traded up to get Mahomes where he did because he knew Jackson and the Browns wanted him.

Based on reading a lot of Dorsey's comments about Mahomes, I think Dorsey and Mahomes would both want Darnold. Dorsey obsessively talked about Mahomes in regards to his toughness, high character & being loved by team mates and coaches for his own love of football, high energy and the clear physical talent.

That's Sam Darnold all over.

Some may say Baker Mayfield fits the description, but he lacks the elite physical traits. A big problem for him in the draft is going to be his arm strength and athleticism. Apparently he timed very poorly on some recent athletic tests and, if we're honest, his arm leaves a little to be desired - especially for a guy who would be expected to do great things at the end of the year in brutal Cleveland weather.

Rosen is the total opposite of being loved by coaches and team mates, and I wouldn't say toughness fits him either. His biggest strength, which is his pro-readiness, is the opposite of Pat Mahomes, yet that didn't scare Dorsey away.

But Darnold, he's got that mix. He's tough, gritty and highly praised for his character and leadership qualities. He's also got a tremendous physical skill set that could be even further elite when refined.

(Full disclosure, Darnold is currently my #1 QB, but the above stands regardless.)

Yet weren't you doing nothing more than speculating on many of these players "this early in their careers" yourself?

And who are "They"?

It appears from the evidence that "they" are the people who decide which people get hired and fired. Jimmy and Dee maybe?

Well, we will probably hire a DC that runs the damned 3-4 again then try to turn Myles Garrett into a fracking linebacker. That ALWAYS works out well for us. *snicker* So next year we get to install a new offense and a new defense. Cut most of the guys we have, tear it down to the studs AGAIN and start all over. AGAIN. Then wait two years or less and do it again. That plan never fails. lmao

I don't know who will be stupid enough to take the GM job but he will have one hell of a hard time finding anyone stupid enough to take the head coaching position. Cleveland is where careers come to DIE.

It's a very sad day again for Browns fans around the country. Keeping Hue is the worst news possible. The worst coach in the history of the NFL! It is foolish to think this guy can coach a championship team!!

I agree as well, but then you are telling your brand new GM he's not allowed to hire a coach. He's stuck with Hue and if Hue doesn't improve the team next year it will still get the new GM fired. That kind of ties the new GM's hands... If I was going to take over the GM spot in CLEVELAND, a place where careers come to DIE, I would certainly want to hire my own guy to give myself the best(granted very slim) chance to succeed. If we are going to hamstring the new GM then don't count on getting much of a candidate. This job is bad enough to start with. I like Hue, and want him to succeed. I also don't want to change DC's again. I think Greg Williams is a good coach and that this D will be even better in his second year. I REALLY don't want to go back to the 3-4 again and try to turn Myles Garrett into a damned linebacker. I just think a new GM coming HERE of all places is going to want to hire his own HC. We shall see I suppose. Either way it is yet another reset. New GM will want HIS players so a lot of these guys are gone...

It's not done that way. You don't make the new guy come in a fire the coach. If whoever gets the job and they don't want to be saddled with Hue, they won't sign unless Haslam cleans the slate.

I think the fact he stated Hue will be back next year certainly limits the GM prospects. But something tells me they already know who the next GM is and that he's more than willing to work with Hue.

If not, it's a pretty silly statement to make.

I agree.

I don't find that odd. He knew he was going to make some changes.

Knowing Sashi didn’t have any experience (or much) I football, shouldn’t you have believed this beforehand?

Jimmy Haslam's Biggest Mistake Was Hiring Sashi Brown and Hue Jackson Together

https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/12/07/sashi-brown-fired-cleveland-browns-jimmy-haslam


Jimmy Haslam’s biggest mistake two years ago wasn’t making Sashi Brown captain of his personnel department. And it wasn’t hiring Hue Jackson to be his head coach.

We’re here today—with Brown out in Cleveland—because he hired them together.

The Browns are starting over again, for the fourth time in Haslam’s five years as owner, thanks to an inability to see the one thing that takes down more teams than anything else on a consistent basis. Cleveland’s football operation wasn’t aligned, the same reason it went sideways under the last two regimes, and this time, Haslam should’ve been able to see it coming all the way from Knoxville.

In Brown, the Browns brought aboard an analytically-driven, outside-the-box business-side-bred executive to put together the roster. In Jackson, they hired an old-school coach who’s spent 30 years teaching the game, and was wildly successful, over the four years previous to his arrival, working for one if the NFL’s most old-fashioned franchises, in Cincinnati.

Philosophically, scouting and coaching were inevitably going to butt heads. And a team can best overcome that if it’s in a position to win quickly, because winning has a way of pulling people together to work out their differences. But Cleveland was in shambles when Brown was elevated and Jackson was hired—and needed a full-on football facelift.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for problems to surface.

Two months in, Brown and the personnel staff drew a hard negotiating line (again, those numbers) and lost free agents Alex Mack, Mitchell Schwartz, Travis Benjamin, and Tashaun Gipson, among others, as a result. A month after that, the Browns traded down in the draft, and in many cases out into future drafts in an effort to amass capital. And therein, festered the problem.

The NFL’s version of The Process was underway, and through it there was very little question that EVP of football operations Sashi Brown was doing a bang-up job of building an asset warchest that would make Sam Hinkie blush. And the haul now looks great on paper, and may look even better a few years down the line. But in the end, he couldn’t swiftly enough give his coaches what they really wanted.

He couldn’t give them enough players quickly enough.


Privately, the results were what you’d expect—competitive coaches were unhappy with the state of the roster and the limited chance they were being given to win on a week-to-week basis—and animosity building as a result.

Drafting Myles Garrett, something the coaches wanted from the start, gave the two sides of the building one moment of compromise in 2017, but it was fleeting. And everything only worsened in October, when Brown failed to land one of the two quarterbacks that Jackson wanted—Jimmy Garoppolo and A.J. McCarron.

There was a perceived lack of aggression in pursuing Garoppolo—Cleveland wanted Garoppolo in the spring but was told he was unavailable, then sat on the sideline as he went to the Niners on Oct. 30. It was, even moreso, the way that the trade for McCarron, whom Jackson worked with in Cincinnati, was botched, leaving the coaches fuming.

All the while, Brown carried out his plan to build through the draft, by building up a huge margin-for-error with creative moves like dealing for Brock Osweiler’s contract and getting a second-round pick as a result. But the team was losing, and a coaching staff, which was skeptical of the analytics experiment and impatient with a slow process that left the roster with gaping holes, eventually had enough.

That’s not to exonerate anyone, but it’s clear that the greatest miscalculation was made by the man who matched two diametrically opposed philosophies in the two most important positions on the football side of his franchise.

If there’s a glimmer of hope to be had here, John Dorsey’s name was the first to surface in the Browns’ looming GM search. And that has little to do with Dorsey’s credentials. It’s all about who he is.

As I understand it, Haslam has been working for over two weeks on a potential overhaul. At first, he was looking, with Brown, at the idea of adding a strong, old-school voice to help run the personnel side. Then, after some research, he made the decision to just pull the plug on Brown.

The fact that Dorsey’s name (and I’m told the Browns are looking at Dorsey hard now) is here is a tacit acknowledgement that Haslam sees what he should’ve two years ago—coaching and scouting have to be aligned. Dorsey is an old on-the-road scout, with a belief system that lines right up with Jackson’s. Short of the moonshot of landing Peyton Manning (he and Haslam are close), this one actually makes sense.

And it shouldn’t be lost either that this offseason will be about picking players, with the assets in place. Cleveland will likely have the first pick, and be in position to take a quarterback there, and that’s just part of a haul that includes five picks in the first two rounds, 12 in the first six rounds, and over $100 million in cap space.

It couldn’t be more obvious, looking at all of that, that there are a lot of big decisions coming for the Browns over the next six months.

But the biggest ones come now. Because if Cleveland can’t avoid the missteps it took two years ago, the rest—as people there know well by now—probably won’t matter.

Just my opinion - but I believe this decision was made the week after the bye-week and the botched trade for McCarron. . . . It may actually show that Haslam has learnt a little. Instead of a splashy knee jerk reaction at the time - he's hopefully been preparing and has a course of action in hand and a GM identified.

Diam I think you nailed it when you said there was discontent between the two after that episode. . . . I was hoping it wasn't that way. I'd have preferred to see another year of the same set up given a chance. . . You know - like we nearly ALL preached the last time there was a regime change. Give them more than 20 months to make it work. Good grief.

Well the only good thing in all of this - Cleveland on paper is a desirable spot for a GM worth his salt to come be apart of. Oodles of cap space, young talent (which might all be stellar but we have some real good pieces) and a hat full of draft picks. Without those carrots to entice somebody - I think we'd end up with another lemon in the job. We'll see - maybe Haslam will once again find a way to screw up one more hire.

I hope Hue stays and I hope he gets his OC ... I believe his comment today might be paving the way for that and swallowing his pride.

I said it before ... but .....

I could see us ...... in some weird and feverish dream ....... bringing in a new GM, and then trading Hue Jackson to Cincinnati for a draft pick.

I hope not, because I like Hue as a coach ..... but I could see it happen if the Bengals bump Lewis upstairs.

The prodigal son?

Good article.

I agree w/a lot of it. Earlier in the day I speculated [no facts] that the timing of the firing and announcing that Hue will be back in 2018 suggests that perhaps Dorsey is the guy and that he is good w/keeping Hue.

I also think that the Giants might be interested in Dorsey, thus the timing of firing Sashi.

I don't know if any of that is true and I have no proof. It just all makes sense to me.

I think that the Browns could come out of this very well if we hire Dorsey and keep Hue.

Think about it:

Sashi did a great job of acquiring picks and left us w/a ton of cap sapce. The trouble is that he wasn't very good at acquiring players.

In Dorsey, the Browns have a very good talent evaluator. We didn't have a that kind of guy in the building. Remember that Berry's prior job was scouting "pro" personnel, rather than college guys.

We also would have continuity. We won't have to change schemes on offense and defense. No wasted time on implementing new schemes and yet another overhaul of the roster.

I actually think that this could be great news for the Browns.

IMO it would be the best possible scenario.

I like the move. Change was needed. This team has not had a QB in 30 years. This guy missed on two very good ones who were sitting in their lap. I like the way the roster is being built, but the dumping of experienced players at a wholesale level was foolish.

Brown was the final say. I was willing to give this guy a chance, and liked the stockpiling of picks, but only to a certain point. Haden is the guy that baffled me. It would have been the first year in a while he would be fully healthy. He was a big part of the leadership and experience on this team. IMO, he would be helping this defense big time. Instead he was cut after all the offseason training was done. Looking back now, that was a huge blunder.

As for Hue, IMO, he is a good coach. The way these players are buying into his program speaks volumes. A coach that can hold together a team as young as this one, with little to none, quality veteran experience, and keep them interested and playing with pride and determination, is a quality, I believe that is hard to come by.

I agree with a poster from above, who stated, Hue is well respected, and I think many candidates would be happy to keep him. The results we are seeing on the field is due to a weak roster, not the coaching. The assistants Hue has are some very high quality coach's with very good success in their careers.

This is a good move by Haslam. I can't believe how many people think Hue should have been the guy to go. A quality GM taking over the completion of the rebuild is a very good idea. The draft assets, and cap space available, and the foundation that is in place, could make this guys life very easy. I would venture to say that there probably quite a few guys who would love the chance to walk into this situation.

Keeping the coach would be a great thing for the players, many who are going to be in the same system going into they're third year. This is where continuity could be built.

Well, it was reported that Lewis desperately wanted Hue to succeed him when he retired to the front office. (and most articles I read implied that the time frame was a few years from the time Hue was hired by the Browns)

YTown, I think we keep Hue and hire Dorsey. I think that this would be a great move.

i currently feel that giving jackson one more year (with talent and time) is the right approach

Has a coach ever survived that situation long term? As soon as things go wrong Hue Jackson will be thrown straight under the bus.

I don't think experience means much in a game. If this guy we are looking at is any good, why is he unemployed? Why isn't he still with KC?

I wish the environment was such that Sahi and Hue could get along, but from my view, Hue was selfish, and he gained Jimmy's ear..we will see. I don't think Hue will ever see a 9 win season. He is a good O coordinator, that's it. He's Buddy Ryan, Norv Turner, name any other you want.

Somebody is going to walk in to a pretty good situation Sashi orchestrated. I hope Hue can coach as a head coach, but I doubt it.

I agree. He panicked. He was more worried about his record.


Hue, you will never have a winning record based on what you have done.

I have thought about it.


I think you are wrong. It's not so much about Sahi. I never like his name. It's about Hue. Hue! He is a snake in the grass.


He didn't have anyone below him to blame, so he went higher.



I really hope you are right, but at this point I doubt it.

I knew you would disagree. LOL........that is no surprise.

So, while you bitch and moan, I am celebrating the future of the Browns.

The meeting a few weeks ago was very telling. Haslam called a meeting where he invited players/team leaders and Hue. Sashi was not invited. That said it all.

I had a hunch Hue would be coming back. However, I am sure he will be given a short leash and needs to prove he can win. But, I am also sure Haslam will give him greater say in his 53 and maybe even the draft than Sashi ever gave him so he can prove he can win.

We don't always agree Vers, but I do agree with you here. I am glad we went this direction too and kept Hue.

I wonder who put this video together?

Think about the 3 players they interviewed:

McCourty: signed by Sashi this year.

Tretter: same as above.

Bitonio: received big contract from Sashi during the off season.

LMAO.............gee, that isn't biased reporting?

And none of the guys seemed very shook up by it.

Look, the players are in Hue's corner. They play hard for him and respect him.

The right guy got canned and no amount of twisting reality is going to change that.

People understandably focus on the QB whiffs that Sashi made, but draft 1 they missed BIG TIME on WRs and they drafted more of them than any other position. So far our only true #1 is Gordon taken by Banner/Lombardi. Coleman can be a great target too if he can stay healthy. But, in LA he couldn't catch one even with their lockdown corner on JG. All the other WRs they brought in have been dreadful and all wasted picks (not to mention the FA Britt and Bowe signings). Yes, I know Bowe was signed by Farmer but...Sashi was in the house and may have been privy to that deal.

All of them except maybe Kessler.

LOL......

I agree... if that is what ends up happening. That's a BIG 'if'.

I think it's far more likely that the new GM either cans Hue off the bat and brings in his guy, or "Mangini's" Hue (gives him a year before firing him just for show). Both are bad, but the latter is the worse because it stretches out this re-reboot one year longer.

I've watched this team too long to take the optimistic outlook.