DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Sashi Brown: Discuss Here

So Sashi was fired because a crappy coach conned a naive owner into firing a guy doing a good job?

Sometimes I don't think you guys even hear yourselves.

Which is the much more believable option. All his moves, like not signing older vets to long term deals and punting draft picks down the road to amass more future draft picks were meant to open up options in the future.

Which part of that doesn't sound believable? We've already established the crappy coach and naive owner parts.

How many teams sign older veterans to long term deals? Usually they cap those kind of signings to around 28 years old.

Which older vets did we sign where we were locked into huge amounts of cap space that we couldn't get out from under? Most of the contracts were structured in a way that we could release a guy and not have a ton of dead-money against our cap. That's why Dorsey has the kind of cap room he does today, and doesn't have to worry about any bloated albatross contracts taking up space on the roster.

That was my point. NFL teams don't do that. They don't sign older vets to long term, guaranteed contracts. That's not some great plan. That's common business practice in the NFL.

...he may have been a crappy coach, but he was a good con.

We didn't need to tear down any more. Time to use the draft capital that had been amassed. Clearly not Sashi's strong point.

What are you talking about? NFL teams get into bad contracts all the time: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2804231-the-worst-contract-on-every-nfl-roster

Heck, we got a free 2nd round pick by basically absorbing a Texans bad contract into our cap space..

Shut some critics up. Sashi helped.

Dorsey.

What Sashi did is the very definition of 'outside the box.' He did the things that a real GM would never do, because it's contrary to team building and would be professional suicide. But building isn't what Sashi was doing. He was dismantling a bad team and preparing it to be rebuilt. I could list the ways he did that, but you already have. My point remains that, while you see those moves as the hubris of a Harvard know-it-all who thought he could do better than a real football guy, I see it as him doing the nasty work himself, clearing the path for a real GM to do the rebuilding. My evidence is the 2 year conversion from worst GM job to best.

You have mentioned the bad QBs. Sashi passed several opportunities to draft a 'franchise QB.' That allowed Dorsey to come in and draft his QB, and now he's building a team around him with pieces of his choice, not left overs from a previous GM's build.

And it turned in to Nick Chubb. Worked out well for us.

NO. How so? Help me understand?

Again, you and a few others don't get it.


As I have said before, I am glad Dorsey is here for the rebuild.

I am glad we went through the tear down. Depo even said many can't stomach that.

My only beef is you and a few others act like Depo is some sort of simpleton who doesn't have a view of value.


I don't give a damn about Sashi. I hardly talk about the guy.

The trade down with Houston netted us their 1st round pick last year, the 4th overall, which we took Ward with. If we take Hooker at 12, we don't get that pick. Instead, we got Peppers and Ward. It doesn't always work out that way, but that trade was worth it.

I'll bet that nobody expected this thread to go a full page, much less more than one...

Way too funny...

https://youtu.be/n3mZqUfPsoQ

Who?

Sashi had one job.. Find a QB. He failed.

Here's what I say to Hue, Sashi, and ultimately Jimmy.

Are you sure that was his job? According to some he was supposed to screw it up on purpose! I mean if we didn't lose all the time we wouldn't have been able to dump players and draft like crap. And I mean if you actually draft good players you don't lose all the time, right?

Or was it Depo that drafted like crap?

I'm not sure they can make up their minds.

I've presented my case. I'm not going to continue going over the same things trying to convince you. As long as you continue to view Sashi as a GM, and to refuse to think 'outside the box' of conventional FB wisdom, you will never see that Sashi wasn't a screw up, he succeeded in what he was trying to do, attract the best available GM candidate.

Yeah, that was his job......

His job was to tear down a team that had a lot of high priced talent that wasn't producing anything in the win column.

That's one thing I've totally agreed with all along. He certainly knew how to tear down a team.

I don't know if anyone listens to the Thomahawk Show with Andrew Hawkins and Joe Thomas but they did a show last Friday after the free agency and trades. At one point they got to talking about Sashi Brown. Both agreed that his strategy was the best strategy for the team and their future but that it was also extremely hard for anybody on the team to go through. Joe commented that he had been through the other rebuilds but that he thought Brown's strategy was best, but especially hard on the veterans. So it was hard for players, but in the best interest of the team in the long run.

Sashi was always going to be the sacrificial lamb for a designed and executed TANK job. The reason we traded out of high picks was because they weren’t high enough. We needed superstars and we were tanking until we got them. Drafting guys like Corey Coleman and Jabrill Pepper only proved this point further…..mid round picks have a high bust rate.

I genuinely believe that Hue was IN on the tank all along but when he couldn’t control his own coaching staff they knew he was out.

Sashi didn’t “do” much other than let the analytics guys tank and take the blame for it. I’m sure he was well compensated and will go back to being a lawyer with some diversity on his resume. This was a purposeful tank and it worked perfectly.

Love Sashi. They should bring him back.

Will never say anything bad about Sashi, he set us up to be the best team in the NFL for at least the next 10 years

Rocket science at its finest.

And this is where (IMO) Sashi excelled - getting us in the direction for long term success. Unfortunately, team ownership couldn't withstand the stress until Sashi's plan began to bear fruit...

They basically said the same thing I've been saying, they even used the same 'blank canvas' metaphor. Thanks cle23.

Yeah, thank God Haslam knew going into this process that Dorsey would be sitting there unemployed two years later. He must have consulted a psychic.

I mean we all know that's the easy part. That's why everyone who has been here has blown top draft picks and we didn't have a QB for almost 20 years.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. And Dorsey being available at just the right time was luck. Not a part of some grand plan.

Of course Haslam couldn't know who was going to be available 2 years in, but what was obvious was that nobody with any reputation for ability was going to take the job. We were going to get 1) a failed GM looking for another chance, or 2) someone untested and unproven who wasn't hired by better club. There was no way in H E double hockey sticks that someone with the abilities or credentials of Dorsey would ever consider the job. But 2 years later the job sold itself, because Sashi made the job attractive. Dorsey just happened to be available, and yes Haslam and the Browns were lucky that he was.

I just wonder if you can name three GM's in all of football who could rebuild this team in less than two years the way Dorsey has? Even with the assets at hand.

Sure there's 32 GM's in the NFL and some of them are decent. But how many have actually taken a team from rags to riches in less than two years? I certainly can't think of any.

Timing is everything and the timing had more to do with our turnaround than any plan.

I completely agree with most everything you just said. My point remains that Dorsey would never have considered the job had Sashi not turned the job from the least attractive GM job in the NFL to the most attractive job. And that it was not accidental, it was what Sashi was trying to do.

And I'll remain with my point that it was 100% luck that Dorsey just so happened to be available at the perfect time. And that there isn't a chance in hell any other GM in the NFL could have pulled off what Dorsey has.

I would also like to point out something else. People said that Hue should have won some games in 2017. Many said at least a hand full of games. That would have put the Giants and Colts ahead of us in the 2018 draft. We both know the Colts would not have drafted a QB. But would the Giants have drafted Mayfield instead of Barkley if he was still on the board?

Should we be thanking Hue for Mayfield because Hue sucked so bad? I mean if we're going to hand out a participation trophy to Sashi for sucking so bad and reaching for reasons to reward his sucktitude, shouldn't we do the same for Hue?



Food for thought.

We are in complete agreement on this, and have been all along.

Where we disagree, and apparently will never agree, is in what Sashi was trying to do.

I believe he was trying to build the GM job. He did that by accumulating picks and salary cap space, by clearing the roster of burdensome contracts, and by avoiding drafting centerpiece players who might not fit with a new GM's plan. Most of these moves were counter to what a GM would have done. He turned the Browns GM job into a blank canvas with all the tools necessary for a GM to build his team. I don't believe he could have accomplished this by accident, he had to actively try.

That the team played so badly as to get the #1 pick was in part luck (bad or good depending on your point of view), but also could be because Hue would have had to be at least aware of the plan, if not actively participating by trying to lose games, without being obvious or losing the team. That could be why he started last season as HC in spite of all the losing.

Everything worked out perfectly; the GM job was the best available when the best possible candidate came along. Part luck, but there is an old saying, luck favors the prepared.

So no credit for Hue sucking so bad we were able to draft Mayfield at #1?