Generous Cavs Fans, LeBron’s Hairline, and Reading Recommendations… While We’re Waiting
September 18, 2014“C” is for “Cookie”, Good Enough for Me
September 18, 2014We’ve already discussed Joe Banner’s Twitter account on these pages. Many still won’t even believe it’s the real deal, preferring to assume like many other accounts that @JoeBanner13 is a fake. Anyway, this morning Mr. Banner recounted what it was like one year ago today when he traded Trent Richardson to the Indianapolis Colts.
a year ago today spent much of the night on the phone, trying to finalize the Richardson deal. One of the hardest trades to finalize I did
— Joe Banner (@JoeBanner13) September 18, 2014
I’ll never try and tell you that Joe Banner isn’t a smart guy. He clearly is and he got a great many things correct. He might not have gotten anything more correct in his time with the Cleveland Browns than the trade of Trent Richardson. Even as the deal infuriated me, I’ve had to adjust that anger in hindsight and awkwardly redirect it to the fact that the Browns didn’t do any better than Willis McGahee after making the deal.
That sums up Joe Banner in so many ways in my mind. I don’t disagree with how smart and savvy he is. I just think that he’s also ruthless and his reputation for creating an undesirable working culture – whether real or not – has reverberations and is anything but warm and fuzzy.
After that, a fan decided to ask Joe Banner what he and his staff liked so much about Brian Hoyer.
@SirDomRapp Smart, competitive, tough, driven, all the key things u look for.
— Joe Banner (@JoeBanner13) September 18, 2014
It’s funny how many people seem to like Joe Banner significantly more now that he’s not in a position of power at the Browns. When I spoke to notorious Joe Banner fan Joe Lull on the podcast last night, I think I came up with the perfect solution. If I ever owned a professional football team, I’d hire Joe Banner as an outside (and probably off-site) consultant.
There’s just no doubting his smarts, but he’s probably better off as a guy who is telling you difficult things you might not want to hear… over the phone… hundreds of miles away. It’s really good to have a bad cop, but you don’t want him in charge and as your mouthpiece. It’s tough to stomach the truth and reality when it’s delivered so easily as Joe Banner seems to deliver it.
Check out the whole conversation with Joe Lull in case you missed it.
41 Comments
MY GOD THE BANNER BALLWASHING. MAKE IT STOP.
We’ve been through this:
* he punted 2013 (here are 29 posts on the subject. 29! that’s how his performance last year was.).
* THEN he fired the coaches of his designed-to-lose team.
He is nothing but despicable and unworthy of the ongoing rehab. Proof of his manipulative tendency are found on his cherry picked tweets about his record (have you seen any Leon McFadden tweets? where’s the josh mcdaniels and adam gase luv?). It’s all a jedi mind trick and proving effective on the weak minded.
Would love it if Chudzinski had a twitter account that could fire back but he’s both too classy and too employed-in-the-league for that.
MY GOD THE BANNER BALLWASHING. MAKE IT STOP.
We’ve been through this:
* he punted 2013 (here are 29 posts on the subject. 29! that’s how his performance last year was.).
* THEN he fired the coaches of his designed-to-lose team.
He is nothing but despicable and unworthy of the ongoing rehab. Proof of his manipulative tendency are found on his cherry picked tweets about his record (have you seen any Leon McFadden tweets? where’s the josh mcdaniels and adam gase luv?). It’s all a jedi mind trick and proving effective on the weak minded.
Would love it if Chudzinski had a twitter account that could fire back but he’s both too classy and too employed-in-the-league for that.
apologies for the double post.
Norv Turner isn’t too classy to offer a rebuttal. I would love for a reporter to ask him about it.
prediction: once the offensive and defensive rookies of the year emerge, joe banner will tweet that he was going to draft them.
On that subject, from what I have seen, the leaders appear to be:
O-ROY: Watkins, West, K.Benjamin
D-ROY: Barr, Shazier, Roby
Note: Hill or Hyde could burst through on O-ROY if Giovani or Gore ever get hurt. Both a G-to-H transition 🙂
I’m still happy he’s gone from the Browns, but he’s undeniably good to follow on twitter. 🙂
Like you said, not all good or bad. And one other thing to add (since I know Mike B. would be pissed if we didn’t give Joey B. his full due!)—while he can’t take credit for drafting our nice rookie crew, they did trade last year’s Shmarko Thomas for a 3rd this year which turned out pretty nice for us. The bonus is that Thomas doesn’t appear to be much for PITT, at least to this point.
Agree on Craig’s assessment that it was more of a overbearing/controling personality type and lack of people skills that did him in more than anything.
nahhh.. his record itself is not ‘smart.’
e.g. 1, we had the shortest d-backs in the league and he ignored ~ten 6’+ FA CBs and drafts 5-9 mcfadden. simply dumb and notice what pettine and farmer tended to with their first pick and again in the fourth round — long DBs.
e.g.2, your best player (sheard) is a rush OLB and you just signed [overpaid?] for a rush OLB so you go ahead and draft.. wait for it.. a project rush OLB! AND you turn down a first and second round offer for this superfluous project who shows little sign of panning out.
i can go all day with this. shamarko thomas trade? throw in colts trade in the fifth too –> we went to war with sean lauvao at guard backed up by ryan miller and he passed on ricky wagner. TWICE! but hey we got davone bess.
jamoris s. laughter.
Jim, is that you?!
if/when you see a @fakechud account pop up and reply to every single banner tweet with #bess or #mack or #kelly, that will be my must follow.
yeah, this is the old kanicki account. the family asked me to stop using the name and i was happy to oblige. was long overdue.. was kinda creepy using a real person’s name. (things to consider when picking a handle.. live and learn.)
I kind of already assumed that Mike B. = jimkanicki, but this solidified it.
agree on everything except the trade-outs. I don’t completely object to them seeing how the 2014 draft was that much better than the 2013 draft and we got better picks for waiting. increasing your odds there is a good thing.
however, when you do that and completely handcuff your coaching staff (limited FA too), then you cannot hang them out to dry when your depth gets depleted and the team falls apart. and, if you do hang them out to dry, then you cannot be surprised when other coaches are luke warm about even talking with you.
lol! I didn’t know this was JimKanicki yet! Hi Mike!
cripes. i should not have changed the avatar.
going back to war eagle..
aha. that explains the change. I think it’s a good change though.
Lets not forget forcing Chud to trot out Willis McGahee for 12 games. And trot is a kindly way to describe how McGahee moves these days. For me, that was inexcusable.
I am not so sure that McGahee wasn’t a Chud thing though. He is the one with ties to Willis.
no….no, no, no. the new avatar was the best part of the change!!!
you know that’s jerry sherk’s facemask circa mid-70s. (and again i’m hijacking..)
True. I should restate: my issue was less with having McGahee on the roster and more with having no depth beyond him. Like… none whatsoever. Maybe it’s just my memory, but I seem to recall some games when we were going with McG, Obgyn, and new guy off the street who probably can’t be counted on to block, run routes, etc. It just showed a surprising lack of planning.
It was like me week 10 in fantasy football. Crap. It’s ten minutes to kick off and I need a receiver. Waiver wire time.
yeah, Dion Lewis was counted on for too much and got hurt (and didn’t even make the team this year), Ogbannaya is not a FB, Edwin Baker is barely a NFL player, and Bobby Rainey probably had the most talent of any back we didn’t trade to Indy, but he isn’t exactly a stellar option either.
ILB, Safety, CB, OG, and WR are all other areas where they seemed to lack planning too. All areas brought up by fans in Jan/Feb, then in July, then played out during the season.
Did I mention how much I like having Farmer call the shots now?
oh no, the goofy tiger is back. boooo!!!
Agreed on both counts. YETTTTT, the optimist in me is still hopeful the Mingo rounds out into something worthwhile–likely a one-trick speed rushing specialist. I’ll take it I guess.
As for Kruger, it’s a small sample size, but dude looks night and day better this year. He’s getting consistent penetration, pressure, and disruption. At least he’s earning the paycheck so far.
oh yeah. RAINEY.
and as long as we’re on the who’d you overlook dealio;; coulda had keenan allen with the mcfadden pick.
will change if/when they fail to cover. might be awhile.
Dude. Goofy tiger? I’m in full agreement with Mike that it’s one of the best logos in sports. And this is coming from someone who tends not to like anything ESS-EE-CEE related
I hear Mussolini was a great guy before the whole dictatorship thing started too. I am not going to say power corrupts, but it is much easier to be a nice, introspective fellow when you don’t have any.
it’s an animal wearing a sailor hat with eyes that looks like he was hanging out with Josh Gordon’s buddies and Chris Perez’s dog. yes, I’ll go with goofy.
I think of banner kind of like scaffolding on a building that is being redone. It’s ugly but necessary to get the initial work done. Once you don’t need the scaffolding, you get rid of it since it’s probably more of a liability.
Banner was probably very helpful getting Haslam “up to speed” as an NFL owner in the early portion of the haslam era.
Problem was, he overstayed his usefulness and was well on his way to doing very serious long term damage to a very fragile neophyte front office. We can only thank heaven that Haslam finally saw Joe for what he was and sent him packing before it was too late.
Can you imagine if banner was able to somehow consolidate his position in the organization and keep Haslams ear on football stuff? We’d be punting this year too! Banner would be talking about how things are really gonna take off in 2016 or maybe even 2017 (with a new head coach, of course). We’d actually be begging Lerner to buy back the team.
BTW Mike B. your recent post imagining your podcast interview was, as usual, spot on and is a must read. I hope the plug is OK.
http://jimkanicki.com/2014/08/29/prep-notes-for-joe-banners-next-podcast/
2013 RBs by rush attempts
Willis McGahee – 138
OBGYN – 49
Edwin Baker – 43
Trent Richardson – 31
Fozzy Whittaker – 28
i liked a lot of his moves, the issue was his personality and reputation were so toxic that none of the best coaching candidates wanted to work with him. and he hired Lombardi – which made this all worse.
Had he not hired Lombardi he might of had a chance. well, i wont hold any grudges, best of luck to him.
yeah, Rainey only had 13 carries (2.6YPC), but it is on the coaching staff a bit there to not recognize the few things he did well (whereas he was 3.9YPC in TB – not great, but obviously better).
also, I would take any of our current RBs over any of those guys. amazing the 1 year turnaround at RB.
yeah but his expression says, ‘i know it’s a sailor hat, what of it.’ also we’re not only gonna beat bama but after the game we gonna take their cheerleaders out for a nutritious meal.’ and all with sort of a tan stewie vide.)
my philosophy is any team that beats Nick Saban cannot be all bad.
That tiger makes me hungry for Frosted Flakes.
Sammy….oh Sammy, Sammy Sammy.
What could have been.
There’s nothing quite like consistent penetration.
Thank you, Mike, some of the Banner love makes me feel like I’ve dropped into a parallel universe where Banner now controls the media.
You are correct on the details of incompetence you offer. May I suggest something bigger picture: a savvy cap guy executive gets canned in Philly after losing a power battle to the football guy Andy Reid. He gets an amazing offer here to shake his Philly demons and be Grand Poobah of Everything, the guy who makes all the calls, whether directly or indirectly, from coaches to personnel. So, like Mangini, he hires a sycophant as GM and makes sure no one but inexperienced owner would fire him. And, like Mangini, he’s bound to get lucky with maybe one or two of many moves (Armonty Bryant, Hoyer) but the rest is a hubris-soaked and predictable disaster of a guy taking on duties way beyond his expertise. Just like Mangini. No coach with options wants to work for him, no good player with options wants to be squeezed at the negotiation table by him. Meanwhile, the professed “most impatient man in this building” does something rarely done in the NFL: just tosses a whole season in the name of gathering higher future draft choices and cap space.
Chris Grant left the Cavs in great shape for future moves. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make him a competent GM other than it makes Banner an underappreciated executive here. The truth is he did a remarkable amount of damage to the psyche of the org in the brief time he was here, and would have done more had he stayed. I’ll fight his attempted rehabilitation like you fight Modell’s.
Buffalonians are beside themselves with joy.