The Cleveland Browns kicked the crap on Thursday: four years after Sashi Brown took over the team as Vice President and just one year after being appointed Managing Director and leading a new strategy, he was thrown out of the door. It is the end of an alleged power struggle with head coach Hue Jackson – and once again the franchise is in a bad light. There are still many questions, but also an impression: The Browns may have made another bitter mistake. An assessment by SPOX editor Adrian Franke.
The Browns are bad. Of course the Browns are bad. Not in a Cleveland is bad every year, no. Rather in the “There’s a plan”track.
Tanking – that is, deliberately losing to secure high draft picks – is a difficult task in the NFL. The league is extremely fast-moving from year to year and even the one or other number 1 pick doesn’t mean that everything is going to change for the better. This is partly due to the available player material, but also to the decisions of the respective teams.
No franchise and no fan base knows that better than Cleveland. The Browns have had nine seasons with four or less victories since their return in 1999, and the current season can be added as number ten. Many mistakes were made, but in the past two years, after Paul DePodesta was hired as a strategy boss and Brown was promoted to managing director, there seemed to be a plan behind the loss for the first time. A long-term, radical plan. A trial, as the NBA fan would say.
With the dismissal of Sashi Brown, Cleveland is now throwing this plan overboard in the worst case scenario. Once again it would mean more stagnation and a secure place in the lower third of the league.
DePodesta and Brown have completely renovated this cadre. In the Free Agency, top performers were let go to collect the Compensatory Picks now allowed for trades. Above all, however, players were handed in who, until the rebuild was completed and the plan is on the next level, would probably all have had their zenith long ago.
This brought Cleveland large salary cap surpluses, which the team now takes with them from year to year so that they can invest when the time is right. At the same time, the second pillar was built: the draft. The Browns started to trade aggressive picks and collect additional ammunition.
The draft, which one should never forget, is to a not negligible degree also a gambling game. In spite of all the money and all the time spent on talent evaluation, there are high or prominent prospects year after year which, after a few years, no longer want to have a team. The strategy of collecting lots of picks guaranteed Cleveland to a certain extent more lottery tickets. More chances to find quality for the rebuild in the first two to three rounds each.
This strategy has already borne fruit. Players such as Emmanuel Ogbah, David Njoku, Corey Coleman, Shon Coleman and Larry Ogunjobi may or may already be important supporters on their rookie contract. Getting Myles Garrett with the number 1 pick this year instead of trading the pick shows that it wasn’t a blind one-way strategy.
And of course, the franchise quarterback has to come at some point. However, to cite this as a point of criticism is at least difficult, if one looks at the quarterbacks in the draft of the past years. Wentz (who Hue Jackson didn’t want to do at number 2, by the way), Goff and Watson looked good this year – but they did so in almost ideal circumstances regarding coaching, scheme and quality of the players around them.
They don’t exist in Cleveland yet, not least because Jackson’s scheme hardly supports his rookie quarterback – not to mention his handling of Kizer.
All in all, I remembered a sentence in Brown’s farewell statement:
“We have set out to rebuild the Browns to achieve long-term, sustainable success. We were convinced of our approach and aggressive, partly unorthodox. “We’ve made dramatic changes and put together a basis on which to build titles.”
“Long-term, sustainable success” are the magic words here. It was the long-term, the right path Cleveland had taken with Brown and DePodesta. A rebuild based on the idea of building up a young, developable team that can be improved selectively in the Free Agency, for which draft and financial capital was created. This is the way to long-term success.
And so you just have to see the statements of team owner Jimmy Haslam with gnashing teeth:”We informed Sashi today that we are going in a new direction. The draft and offseason 2018 are paramount to our franchise, we need to make sure we maximize our chances of success with our picks and in the Free Agency.”
The Browns have two first and three second round picks in 2018, because the strategy of DePodesta and Brown led them to it. They have the offensive line, the draft ammunition and increasingly the weapons to create the best possible situation for a rookie quarterback. Something Cleveland hasn’t seen in a long time. Now would have been the time to stick to the plan and pursue it.
Instead, Haslam’s statement suggests that he suddenly doesn’t want to continue building up. That the second season in a row with possibly only one or no victory has driven him to a short reaction. Investing in the upcoming Free Agency and quickly building up an average team instead of long-term success. Once again, a hopeful, far-sighted, planned trial in Cleveland would go down the drain.
There may be differences of opinion here. Some say that a rebuild must begin with a quarterback. But that’s not the point at the moment: the Brown’s had a plan that was more promising than anything the franchise had done in the 15 years before. After two years, he was probably swept off the table with a hand stroke.
Browns fans can now once again only hope that the dismissal was due to personal differences. Jackson and Brown are said not to have spoken with each other for weeks on end, as it were, and there were various internal disputes. Only: is it going to be better with an external newcomer for all the qualities that John Dorsey brings with him in the team leadership? Especially since Dorsey probably has a final say in the squad.
It almost seems as if Cleveland has now wanted to get a scout GM to harvest the fruits that Sashi Brown’s strategy has planted. However, this is not a long-term strategy – in this case, quality and authority would have been the solution for the scouting team without endangering its strategy.
From a purely sporting point of view, Cleveland’s team is better than the balance sheet says. Jackson’s hobby horses – the offense and especially the run game as well as the development of the quarterback – are persistent problem areas in which he repeatedly made mistakes and did not give any arguments as to why he should be entrusted with another young quarterback after the next draft. On the contrary. When the decision has really been made between Jackson and Brown: for sporting reasons, there is little to speak for the head coach.
Browns fans must therefore hope that the road will be followed and that Cleveland will not now march into the old-fashioned trails that bad teams have been following for years. Then Sashi Brown could be right about one of his last statements in his statement:
“The Browns have not yet achieved the turnaround we wanted for the franchise and the best fans of the NFL, who deserve it more than any other fan camp in the sport in general. I know this turnaround is coming.”