DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Browns hire Andrew Berry as GM and EVP of football operations

The pocket protectors should be limited to the O-line.

I don't get your reference.

The Cleveland Excels?

Guys like Joe Haden, M. Scwartz, T. Gipson, etc said to say "hi."

Schwartz isn't a good example. We offered him the most and he/his agent walked. I would have pulled the offer as well..

You can't come back after shopping the deal and expect to get the same deal. You just told me my offer was high.

If Andrew Berry is blamed for drafting the players that went 1-31 why is he also not credited for the players acquired when he held the same position under John Dorsey?

How dare you try and add another losing season to Andrew Berry's resume!

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that a completely inept and dysfunctional organization, such as the Eagles, would have jumped at the chance to hire Andrew Berry, aka, 'Mr. 1-31'.

On a more thoughtful note, appreciate the video, cfrs.

Subtle, but this was good.

Good Luck Andy ...

Thanks, Barn

No probs Otis ...

Some on here are of the opinion that "Dorsey's" drafts were terrible just like the 1-31 ones, so.... :-p


For me, firsthand experience with something holds a lot of weight. Our firsthand experience with Berry was 1-31. For better or worse, it's as simple as that. With the ongoing mystery of who was and wasn't actually responsible for those drafts, I choose to hold them all accountable. This also jives with the mantra of the time being (IIRC) "The Consensus". I might be getting my mantras and FOs mixed up. I'm sure you all understand the difficulty of keeping it all straight.

So for anyone that doesn't understand people like me poo-poo'ing our GM hire... that's it right there.


That said, I will do my best to remain optimistic. I'll definitely give him a chance. At least for the GM position, we won't have to wait long, as FA and the draft will be here before they know it.

I didn't know where to post this so I'll do it here. Naturally, as a Browns fan for over 50 years I hope all the changes are finally the right ones and make us winners. However, as I was speculating about the recent changes I thought about the games in the 2018 season against Oakland and the last game against Baltimore where the refs blew 2 calls on fumbles that cost us 2 wins. If we had those wins we would have won the division and made the playoffs. Our FO would have been hard pressed to make any changes after that especially if we won a playoff game. How much different things would have been for 2019 and right now if that happened.

Yeah, once you weigh your options your value drops. Hurt feelings is always a part of sound business decisions. That worked out so well.

Was the Schwartz debacle under LomBanner or Sashi?

Sashi.

Losing Schwartz was a disaster. He was (still is) a good offensive tackle who plays every game. Who needs one of those?

I vaguely want to say that it straddled the two.
The bad blood initiated under LomBanner and that prompted him to want out, but by the time Sashi came aboard he was committed to the idea of going to free agency... then Sashi played hardball with the contracts and wouldn't accept him back at the earlier offer (which was stupid).

Agreed. We haven't been able to replace him since he left. It's hard to replace any good player at any position but the O-line is the toughest because as we all know they play in unison. I guess our FO didn't realize that. On more than one occasion may I add.

Schwartz wanted to come back, it was Mack that was committed to leave. Mack engineered his way out by signing an offer sheet that was a shorter term deal, that forbade the team from placing any tags on him when it expired.

Schwartz had an offer from the Browns prior to the opening of the "legal tampering period". His brother had played for the Chiefs, and wanted his brother somewhere where he had a chance to win. During the legal tampering period, he went to KC (where his brother had played)

He listened to what they had to say, but his fiancee was from Cleveland, and he liked the area and his teammates. However, when the he came back, (IIRC while still in the legal tampering period) the Browns pulled their offer, and replaced it with a lower offer. Schwartz then decided to take KC's offer.

It looks like Mitchell's hurt feelings worked out well enough for him.

Some guys don't take it well when the fact that the NFL is a business rears its ugly head. Sashi didn't low-ball Schwartz, he offered market value. Markets change from the beginning of FA til the end. Schwartz had the chance to set the market, but decided to test it. Other OL got signed around the NFL and the market adjusted.

Schwartz signed on March 9, 2016 ..... the day free agency opened. There was no sudden market shift in the value of Tackles. Sashi played his games before free agency opened, and it cost him a Pro Bowl, All Pro Right Tackle.

The “best” part of that ...

Sashi said the PLAN was to keep and acquire YOUNG PLAYERS that could grow with us ... i think Schwartz was the perfect fit for that plan yet they closed the door on themselves ... makes u wonder just how smart the Harvard geeks really are ...

I'd bet that if Sashi could do it over, he'd do it differently.
I don't know if he was completely out of his depth or if it was just part of a learning curve that he got wrong at that time, but I sincerely doubt that this can be held up as an example of what to expect from the new crew.... except in that, yes, mistakes ARE going to happen. There's no way that they are going to get everything right all the time. To pretend, or expect, otherwise would be just plain insane.

I don't know if he was trying to be the savvy negotiator, or if he perhaps suspected that Schwartz's agent was only coming back to us to try to get more money from KC, or if he was just simply stupid and thought that sort of hard deadline was a reasonable approach.... either way, it's the sort of thing that Experience has a way of making go away.

I’d hope he wouldn’t do it again ... that would mean the Harvard degree.may not be all its cracked up to be ... *L* ....

I said it about McCarthy ... past performance is not an indicator of future results .... i live on a 2 way street unlike many on here .... so that works both ways ...

Depo and Andy both have 4 more years under their belts .... and once the thief decided to hand our future off to depo and we fired KJ ... hiring Andy & Kev is no bigger risk than hiring anyone else out there ...

That is a good point. All hires and draft picks carry a degree of risk.

Or maybe those in charge simply made a bad business decision. I mean how did that all work out for us?

It was a failure by the front office not to re-sign Mitchell Schwartz. He is among the most valuable offensive linemen in the league. Keep him on your team. There is no excuse for letting him walk.

We still offered Schwartz the most money. It's not like Sashi didn't put a high value on him.

Hopefully as a former player Berry can handle the egos better.

Did I like the result of Schwartz leaving? No. We can't make every player stay, though. Paying the Browns tax on every player to get them to stay will never be sustainable.

Until we can change that conception that people deserve more to play here, we'll have to do better in the draft.

And you are what your posts say.

You panic

Your record is broken. It's repeating the same sort of nonsense over and over right now. You might have to make sure the player is on a level surface and reset the needle.

If you don't stick to a plan, it has no chance to work.

When you plan to rebuild by drafting and developing talent, but the abominable coach that you didn't want manages to somehow make every player you draft worse than before they joined the team, it's not going to work well. If you stick a hand grenade in a perfectly sound building, it doesn't matter how well written the blueprints were. Hue was a hand grenade.

Truth, right there. I was gonna post much the same thing but you said it for me.

I will first wish him Good Luck!
Then say at 32 he's a Pup in the business world for a position this high.
He appears to have a better background than anyone else we've seen here in a long while even for one so young. Scout through to GM.
Plus he was a baller though college so he knows the game,
Knows the town.
A different crew surrounding him now, and he wasn't the boss then, so what happened here before is not really applicable.
Well it is I guess but only as it applies to him learning from those mistakes.
Anyway GOOD LUCK!

The Browns GM (Farmer) was fired in Jan 2016. Sashi as EVP 'won' the job of dealing with Farmer's complete incompetence. (Note that Berry's title includes GM AND EVP...unlike Sashi's singular EVP title.)

The failure here was to have the lawyer decide the value of a darn good RT. Sashi was a newbie trying not to be taken advantage of...and screwed the pooch.

JD was an experienced GM and supposedly a great talent evaluator ...he willingly and under no pressure and completely within the confines of his job description...traded away our All-Pro RG (who was safely under contract) and ultimately provided our 6' sophomore QB with Eric Kush up the gut.

Sashi threw himself under the bus to prevent Hue's power play to land AJ McCarron - and saved valuable draft capital (for the next guy).

JD flexed his muscles to anoint Freddie as HC.

Sashi bought the 2nd Rd pick that netted Nick Chubb...in a move unprecedented in the NFL. Risking scorn and ridicule.

JD stated that "those guys that were here before didn't get real football players"...endearing himself to McCourty (among others) that led to McCourty's trade for a 7th Rd pick. Then proceeded to do the typical new GM thang and get rid of 'not-my-guy' players that were contributors-but-not-stars...and replaced them with bodies.

We need Berry to be better than the last two guys who held his current titles. I just hope his moves are more about the betterment of the team and less about feeding his own ego. In that regard/measurement, I hope he's more Sashi-like than JD-like.

Note: I'm more comfortable with Berry than either Sashi (as de-facto GM) or JD (as actual GM). In the end, Sashi did the job he was supposed to do (tear it down and gather assets for the future)....while JD burned through those assets and failed to deliver the overall talent, success and culture that he was hired to deliver.

Didn’t know u were a sashiette ... wow ... I’m shocked ...

I don't really care to get into the JD vs Sashi debate at this point. All I'll say is that neither had time to implement what they were trying to accomplish. Sashi was saddled with Hue, but then so was Dorsey for the first of his two seasons here.

The team was playing some good football down the stretch of the 2018 season. Never underestimate the effect of good coaching. I wonder what the 2019 team could have been with some continuity there, but the Kitchens hire backfired spectacularly and Dorsey is out of a job. It is what it is.

Peen said we should let it go. I wonder where he's at now?