DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum A New Course

If they hire Vrabel who is one excellent defensive mind I am sure to accept
He would tell Hasben to do a Michael Jackson ( just beat it).
That said if we lose out Hasben is going to lose huge money .
Jones is injured so you definitely need to draft his replacement

Obviously, this team is going in the wrong direction. It's aging at key positions and has a host of under performers. Add in some injuries and you have a major issue. So, what are the Browns to do? Well, they obviously need some new players and could trade some but considering all the dead money Berry has generated, even trading some of these guys carries a cost that will affect the Browns for years.

Some of those key players with dead money that's out of sight:

Watson____________$200,676,578
Garrett_____________$56,385,115
Ward______________ $54,494,000
Bitonio_____________$23,490,000
Teller______________$28,288,600
Conklin____________$25,972,583
Njoku______________$30,805,000
Tomlinson__________$23,403,000
Chubb______________$6,050,000 (Free Agent in 2025)
Jeudy_____________$41,000,000
Wills______________$16,004,408 (Free Agent in 2025)
Newsome__________$17,433,422
Okoronkwo_________$10,310,000
Owusu-Koramoah____$20,517,291
Thornhill___________$11,736,000
Delpit_____________$22,035,000
16 players = $588,600,997

There're still other players but these are the big dogs (outside of Chubb). Keep in mind, this is money that should have been paid in previous years and/or is guaranteed. Just an FYI, these 16 players dead money is more than the NFL cap limit for the entire team in 2023 and 2024 combined. Sooner or later, the Browns will have to account for all this delayed cap. Cutting a player or trading them prior to June 1 triggers the dead money to be due immediately and applied to the cap. Example would be: Trading Njoku for draft picks before the draft would trigger a 2025 cap hit of $30,805,000 to the Browns cap. Reshaping the team will become extremely difficult if a number of these players are on their way out of Cleveland. All this dead money is Berry's and the Browns responsibility no matter what they do with the player.

In case you wondered, Chubb and Wills dead money will be due in 2025 if they sign new contracts with another team through free agency. That's $22,054,408 or 48.7% of the 2024 cap space the Browns currently have available. That will also take away from the proposed 2025 cap availability which currently listed at a negative $11,906,070 changing it to a negative $33,960,478 before the Browns make a single move.

What else could an owner do when his franchise is falling apart and none of his executives seem to know how to turn this around?

Can any of you say with a straight face say that you have faith in Berry and that you think he knows what he’s doing?

Stefanski seems to have lost part of his locker room. Normally in such circumstances there’s no way back. What to do except fire him?

Without accountability nothing will change. Even if it’s unfair in some cases changes must be made. Right now these leadership is killing this organization and all season ticket holders and loyal long time fans are ultimately the ones who’s paying the price.

Berry needs to go. He failed miserably. He took a gold mine of draft picks and salary cap, along with some talent already on the team and squandered it all.....and now we are in complete cap hell. Others played a part, but he's the one whose signature is on all of these dealings, especially the Watson fiasco. He said he did his due diligence with that one, and a lot of us believed him. What else does he need to do to get fired? He's the Hue Jackson of GM's. Farmer or Kokinis would be an upgrade.

A five-month odyssey.

j/c

There will be some change. What, I don't know.

As a season ticket holder I get questionnaires from the team. Twice over the last couple of months I have filled them out. On both one of the questions was to see if I was going to keep my season tickets. In the past that question might be asked once over the 3-4 usual questionnaires per season.

That tells me the team is worried about the season ticket base. I would expect them to make some sort of move to fire up that base. I think they understand that the status quo is no longer an option.

It could be as soon as this week. The short week against the Steelers means a long week heading in to the next game. The stadium will be full of Steelers fans on Thursday night. If we lose that game in some sort of waxing, Friday could be the day the axe comes out. If you listen close enough you can hear it being sharpened on the grind stone.

I don't look forward to that, but the writing is on the wall. Will it be Berry? Stefanski? Both?

Stay tuned.

We aren't in cap hell...yet and maybe never will be...however...that's not because Berry is some sort of cap-savant. It's because our owner has an unlimited open checkbook.

Berry's use of Jimmy's money has been unremarkable at best...and shown incompetence at worst.

I feel a change is needed. The front office took a huge gamble bringing in Watson and his baggage. His character put a stain on the team that his performance could not overcome. This fiasco probably set us back a few years. When bad decisions are made someone needs to pay. Even with Watson out of the picture this team is playing very poor against a softer teams. It's very difficult to watch them this year.

You must not have been paying attention when he was signed. People were so convinced watson was the answer they were crawling out of the woodwork making excuses for him. Everything from claiming all of these massage therapists, even the licensed ones, were nothing but hookers to all 26 women were lying and somehow watson was the only beacon of truth.

Only now that people are convinced he isn't the answer are more people coming around to giving a damn about his character and his victims.

This is inaccurate at best. Most people here were upset about his baggage, some claimed they were done watching the team.

Literally no one called "all massage therapists hookers", no one.

The gamble with Watson had little to due with his off field issues and more to do with on field performance and could he get back to that level. If he did the off field issues would be a footnote, winning cures a lot of ills, as it is he hasn't shown much on the field and the off field part has been amplified.

He has run the team - into the ground. HE is responsible for ALL of this because of HIS decisions. AB and KS will be sacrificed but in the end the changes NEED to be higher in the organization. A complete re-staffing of the organization with EXPERIENCED FOOTBALL people is the way out of this mess over a 2-3 year period. It's going to be rough but it MUST be done. Anything less is just basically putting lipstick on a pig. It will change nothing. And if this is the direction of the franchise, it is my sincere hope that SEASON TICKET HOLDERS VOTE NO on renewing their seats. HIRE EXPERIENCED FOOTBALL PEOPLE JIMMY! Please. SMH

Agreed - it does NOT address the REAL problem within the organization. Haslam NEEDS to figure it out and fast.

I see you weren't paying attention at the time either. Very few called watson out and many were making excuses for his behavior by victim blaming. Including some saying they were hookers. Some saying it was nothing but a cash grab and that they were all lying. I know because I was one of the few calling him out from the very beginning.

But you are right that people cared more about winning than what he did to those women. It's a sign of the times we live in.

No one said that Berry couldn't generate cap by kicking the can down the road again, hell - he has the biggest dead money bucket in the league.

Nice article even if it does mean the Browns have to defer another 71M plus to have operating capital next season. Without it, even with the carryover of over 45M, The Browns are 30M over the cap with the players they have coming back - how's this team working out?

Really, he suggests restructuring Watson again! The Browns still owe over 200M of the original 240M to the cap - how's these first 3 years worked out? This guy wants to defer more money, the Browns will never be able to dump this trash - you have to be kidding me!

Conklin will be 31 and hasn't played in 2-years basically and the author says to restructure his deal - that's almost as crazy as the Watson saga.

Wards concussion history warrants extreme caution in delaying his cost IMHO.

Teller is going to be 31 and has missed 4 games already this season. Why would the Browns want to delay his costs considering his age and the fact that his PFF grade has dropped him from a top 3 guard to currently 61st? Another interesting fact, restructuring Teller in 2025 would net the Browns an estimated whopping 1.8M in cap savings. Did this guy really check his cap savings.

Here's the deferred cap estimate by player listed in the post above:

Watson - 42M
Newsome - 12M
Conklin - 11M
Ward - 10M
Pocic - 3M
Teller - 1.8M
Tomilinson - 1.0M

Think about it, how many of these guys should actually be on the Browns next year, much less restructured!

''You must not have been paying attention when he was signed. People were so convinced Watson was the answer they were crawling out of the woodwork making excuses for him.''
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Probably the largest signing in Browns history, you bet I was paying attention. Sports fans are incredibly loyal to their teams and trust that management have done their diligent homework. Once the deal is done it's done. No going back.
Excuses, rumors, hear say, following the questionable contract often come out to make things look less bad and fan base feel some hope. I still love my Browns but we need a change.

I agree. Not to mention that the GM and the Head Coach are at the top of football operations. Nobody carries more sway over what we see on the field than those two.

Tisk Tisk...nobody ever though his play would be this bad. That is the reason people have changed their minds. Not the 26 women.

Yet much of their message has now turned to his baggage and how could this FO have not seen that when they signed him. But I agree that when they thought he would be the Savior it meant nothing to some. Now they they know he won't be it suddenly means something.

...because Berry said that they did their due diligence and researched the situation extensively, and was very confident that he made the right decision. A lot of us (including myself) were foolish enough to believe him. For all we knew at the time, there was no real evidence .... just a bunch of hearsay and accusations by a shyster lawyer named Buzbee or something like that. We trusted what Berry told us. He signed the deal, now he needs to pay the price. His decisions as gm have produced the team we have today. It's unbelievable how he's squandered the awesome situation he walked in to when he was hired.

That makes perfect sense if you refuse to consider that nobody said anything even after the settlements. And you mentioned yet another excuse in your response. The claim that Buzzbee is a "shyster lawyer". That one was used a lot too, yet now that everything is settled, just like then there's no reason to honestly believe he is a shyster unless you happened to believe he was trying to con someone by defending dishonest clients and trying to con watson out of his money. Which was also a part of the "shyster lawyer" argument at the time.

Yes. It's purely coincidental that most waited until over three years after the events and watson has failed like a chump before they have started making a big deal out of it. It's as if they suddenly had an epiphany. Timing is everything.

The probability that all 26+ women are all lying is statistically impossible.
Our Ivy League graduated GM should definitely know that and if he didn’t he’s not qualified to be an executive for such a big organization as the Cleveland Browns.

And just think, they're supposed to be experts in analytics. Those odds were astronomical.

BINGO! We have a winner!

Yet he was never convicted in a court of law. He was tried in the court of public opinion which is wrong. He did not work out as the Browns starting QB. They swung and missed. They had to take a chance. Baker wasn't working out either. They saw the Bengals pass them and had to make a move. I applaud the move because they tried to win. They went for it. So many franchises don't make the big move. At least they tried. I want to see what they do from here. How do they turn this around in the off season. This roster is not horrible overall.

The same old defense whenever a man is accused of sexual abuse. The conviction rate of all cases reported to the police is less than 5%.

According to multiple studies more than 75% of all sexual abuses are never reported to the police.
Most of those who’re victims to DV don’t even tell their nearest friends or family.



And btw a well respected senior judge made a written statement about Watson’s character and that she didn’t believe in his story.

Another lying woman that you don’t trust or what’s the excuse this time?

Indeed. I believed in the plan/ruse. Haslam's incompetence and desperation has covered up the failures of Berry and has allowed him to play fast and loose with contracts that will haunt the Browns for years to come. It's been Monopoly money.

Duffin (glass half-full guy) takes many liberties and makes several assumptions, all while returning much of the same losing team. Take your medicine, suffer two terrible season (which will happen either way) and begin to clear the books.

Here is delusion...

What that judge declared, and she is the only person to have been privy to all the evidence, was way more damning than what you just summarised ... She was unequivocal.

Trying to defend Berry at this point with the contracts we are locked into and the talent we have to show for it is hard to understand.

When I read these posts I find myself asking...What is it that Berry has done well as a GM?

The good ol' boys club is still alive and well. 26 women? "Yeah, well he wasn't convicted of anything."

No matter how obvious it is denial is always around.

And the lame excuse of "at least they tried." So have many that failed miserably. As if all 32 NFL teams aren't trying. You're either a success at your job or you're not. Berry hasn't been.

Well, look at his draft pics, trades, free agent acquisitions and cap situation. Do we have more elite players on the team, more talent in general, and a favorable salary cap situation from when he took over? He took the valuable assets he was handed and squandered them to the point where it has developed into the current disaster that is the Cleveland Browns. His signature is on all of those decisions.