Yep, still the Browns: Cleveland loses to Green Bay in OT, 27-21
December 10, 2017Report: Browns GM John Dorsey may want to hire his own head coach
December 11, 2017Happy Monday folks. Bode filled in for me on Friday, so I’m here on a Monday and I’m talking about the Browns.
First things first, I want to thank all those who support us via Patreon. It’s been one of the only things that kept this site afloat over the past 6-8 months financially. Don’t look now, but WFNY is headed for its 10th year of existence. It’s always been about you guys who read the site and because of Patreon it’s even more about you guys than ever before. I’m always trying to find ways to add value there, and it’s difficult, but you make a real difference. Thank you.
John Dorsey and the reason Sashi Brown is gone…
Now that Sashi Brown is gone, there will be constant chatter trying to wrap up his tenure with conclusions and comparisons. Is he gone because the old guard against analytics won their battle? Is he gone because Hue Jackson won a power struggle? Is he gone because Jimmy Haslam is the most impetuous and meddlesome owner since the elder Steinbrenner passed away? The problem with the world today is that we try and boil everything down to a truthful substrate, even though we all know how many ingredients were impactful along the way even if they evaporated during a hot boil. It’s not one thing. It’s everything.
I found myself defending Hue Jackson all weekend, and I don’t want to do that. Hue Jackson’s in-game management of the Cleveland Browns is maddening more often than not. His clock management and challenges are enough to give Browns fans heartburn. His uneven use of what few weapons he has will drive you insane. All that said, when it came down to the firing of Brown and hiring of Dorsey, I find myself defending Hue Jackson because regardless of any coach, it’s about the players and building a team. That was Sashi Brown’s responsibility and despite adding talent, he failed to build a team.
The Browns play damn hard for Hue Jackson, and I think that serves as a defense for his portion of the tear-it-down-to-the-studs equation. The fact is that Hue Jackson’s only win in his career with the Browns came late in the first season with Robert Griffin III at QB doing just enough to not lose the game. Even then, the Browns needed the Chargers to miss overtime by missing two game-tying field goals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b96V48KvTls
The Browns followed that up with a plan for the most important position in football that included nary a win among the candidates. I see a lot of fans blaming Hue Jackson for his handling of the quarterback situation, and I have problems as well. Still, I’m honest enough to admit that coming into a season with Brock Osweiler, Cody Kessler, DeShone Kizer, and Kevin Hogan is walking a tightrope with no net by a front office. I’m sure Hue Jackson liked the potential of DeShone Kizer, but he tried to hand that job to both Brock Osweiler and Cody Kessler before he was nearly forced to play the rookie.
I don’t want to re-litigate it all except to point out that maybe we’ve been thinking about Sashi Brown to John Dorsey all wrong. I know a lot of Cleveland fans want to compare it to Chris Grant and David Griffin, but maybe not in the way that we should. You know what the biggest difference between Chris Grant and David Griffin might have been? Griff was like a psychologist analyzing the mood of the team. He famously talked about the mentality of his team when he made the bold decision to dump David Blatt. Griff was interested in analytics, assets, and making the right moves for his team, but he seemed to focus on and get in tune with the team’s chemistry. I was reminded of this when I read Tony Grossi’s report of what John Dorsey was doing following the Browns’ gut-punching loss to the Packers on Sunday. Dorsey was sitting in the corner of the locker room observing his new team. He also spoke to a few players including DeShone Kizer.
New Browns GM John Dorsey said he wanted to spend next 4 weeks getting to know the locker room. He sat in a corner after latest loss and observed players' moods & actions.
— Tony Grossi (@TonyGrossi) December 10, 2017
That doesn’t mean John Dorsey is going to do a good job. It just means to me that I think he might be focused on the right things. It’s important to do some of the things that Sashi Brown did for the Browns. The defensive line was crushing Green Bay during the first half because of Larry Ogunjobi, and other unheralded draft picks with Danny Shelton and Emmanuel Ogbah missing time. In addition to drafting those players though, the job goes further, and I think this was Sashi Brown’s largest failing. He didn’t do enough to build a team and listen to his coaches to keep them on board.
We’ll never know all the details of the ins and outs of the Hue Jackson / Sashi Brown relationship, but safe to say that they weren’t on the same page. I know nobody wants to hear about Terrelle Pryor anymore, but Brown essentially traded him for Britt. Say what you want about Pryor’s year in Washington, that’s a guy that Hue Jackson knew how to use, and he lost him through no fault of his own after fostering a relationship with the man over the years.
We heard whispers at just how upset the coaching staff was about losing Demario Davis and Joe Haden for nothing as well. Even my compatriots at this website hate the idea that I still bring up Joe Haden’s name. The issue isn’t necessarily about Joe Haden on the field and what he can do to impress the guys at PFF. That’s not me taking a shot at analytics. I’m just saying that analytics are only a part of the equation. Analytics were good for someone like Justin Gilbert, right? He had size, speed and athletic measurables that never let anyone in the Ray Farmer Browns front office realize he was a turd. An overpriced Joe Haden or 28-year-old Demario Davis might not be factors in a version of the Browns that are challenging for the playoffs according to analytics and forward-looking plans built in spreadsheets. The truth is more complex. Those are real guys that the coaching staff wanted in their locker room. They’re not just buckets of stats like those two-dimensional Madden avatars with ratings on the decline in most athletic categories.
Despite their abilities or their career arcs, these are real humans that possess experiences and personalities and habits that are part of the chemistry of a team and its locker room. They also represent something to a coaching staff that is looking for signs of support and understanding as they go about an unenviable rebuilding process that sees the Browns consistently trading down for more picks. Sashi Brown didn’t do that.
David Griffin is the one who fired Blatt and maybe John Dorsey will have to fire Hue Jackson or beg Jimmy Haslam to fire him at some point. In the meantime, I expect John Dorsey to make the most of the Browns’ assets in the near-term and the long-term while focusing on creating a team rather than just a bunch of really nice prospects on an island of inexperience and doubt. And that’s why I continue to give Hue Jackson a bit more time. It’s not that I think he’s destined to be the next NFL rock star coach. I just look at this collection of talent, and the only “team” aspects I see are because Hue Jackson has somehow kept them from quitting on him.
My friends make beautiful music…
I’ve had Shawn Brewster on the podcast. He’s a great musician with a few different musical projects including Oldboy and Shawn and Shelby. He and Shelby put out a new song with a video, and it’s everything I love about music. It’s dark, brooding, has urgency, and nice vocals. I hope you like it as much as I do.
66 Comments
I don’t want to re-litigate either. I also like that the team hasn’t packed it in effort-wise. But that’s not enough in the NFL, and saying it’s mostly Sashi is not an argument to have kept Hue. He obviously is bad and not improving on in-game day decisions – the red-flag challenge was another classic, given that the defense was already ceding every pass of that length and the need to hoard every time out for his rookie QB.
You know they’re going to can Jackson. Aside from the x’s and o’s deficiencies, he is unable to convince these kids they can win anything. So we’ll watch the bandaid ripped off slowly instead doing it cleanly at the right time. And as for Sashi, Dorsey in the locker room is a nice symbol. But I don’t blame Sashi for talking Haslam into letting him try a new career at the highest level. Blame the dude who, in his clueless desperation, mistook that for cutting edge thinking.
Craig, I agree wholeheartedly with you about the importance of locker room chemistry. Sashi looks at players as data, not as personalities with good and bad individual traits and characteristics, such as leadership and having a positive or negative impact on teammates.
He never understood that his job was to acquire talent, not “assets,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. I give him zero credit for setting up Dorsey with a nice draft because he destroyed the team in the process – make that, The Process. Anybody can do that.
He was completely unqualified for this job, which as Harv said above, is the fault of the flailing Hasgrum. Look for him to hire a psychic next year.
I said earlier that Sashi was going to run his plan, without deviation, ignoring all suggestions, or input from ANYBODY, until he either succeeded, or was fired.
I have no doubt he torpedoed the McCarron trade, not because it was a bad trade talent-wise, but because it was in defense of The Process.
Sashi simply had ZERO people skills. Everyone was a number on a spreadsheet to him.
Somebody with his wheeler-dealer skills is good to have in the organization, but not running it.
I have no idea how anyone could watch this team over Hue Jackson’s tenure and have any defense for his coaching. The team plays hard? Great. They are well-paid professionals who (largely) take pride in what they do (I mean, Britt and Bowe…???). They are also undisciplined and frequently unable to execute the fundamentals, game in and game out. That’s not a talent issue, that’s a coaching issue. Failing to play to the strengths of your personnel is a coaching issue. Time management gaffes and poor use of replay challenges are coaching issues. I loved the Jackson hiring, and I have no idea who I would go out and get today to replace him. But I have zero confidence today that Hue Jackson is the answer going forward at the HC spot.
The one theme that keeps rearing its dysfunctional head is that the owner has repeatedly brought together two people who must work together to succeed who have no inherent affinity for one another, no connection, no history. They have been shotgun wedding’d together and unsurprisingly the results are less than ideal. And with the current situation of Dorsey and Hue he’s done the exact same thing, again. We think Dorsey has the authority to hire and fire but we’re not sure. Jimmuh endorsed Hue for the long term which would seem to imply that Dorsey may not have hire/fire authority or that he does, except when he doesn’t ‘cause, you know, Jimmy’ll know what’s best for the “process” and the team at the time when the pressure’s on and a critical, future altering decision is required. Dorsey may be a much better choice to build a team but what if Hue doesn’t see a team the way he does and Dorsey doesn’t have the actual authority to replace him without Jimmuh’s ok before he can actually act to execute a plan?
No, I’m sorry but nothing’s better. Nothing’s changed. We are still the same woebegone fans at the mercy of an idiot owner who has no idea he’s an idiot owner.
Sashi is gone, so no need to gnash teeth. I am just reluctant to heap John Dorsey with all of the praise that he seems to be getting from Cleveland media. He cut Britt. Okay, sure. I would argue Britt could have been used better, and with a more competent coach, probably could have been a useful receiver. But I don’t know what was happening in the locker room, so I don’t know the toxic nature of Britt’s presence. I would only say that, based on the outcry of praise by Cleveland reporters for the cut, Britt seemed to only rub the media the wrong way (Daryl Ruiter clutching pearls about him swearing in the locker room, while pointing to Greg William’s colorful language as a breath of fresh air is just one example) and not his teammates and therefore was scapegoated.
I also do not give a pass to Hue because of the QB’s he has. There are a number of coaches this season who have won at least a few games with sub-par talent at QB. The Jets come to mind, but I am sure there are more. Hell even Green Bay is getting all they can out of Hundley. It is evident that Hue can’t tailor an offense to the strengths of his players and to hide their flaws. He is just button mashing at this point.
They won’t win next year with Hue here. I can see it now. “The front office is united on their pick of ‘name your QB here’ at number 1.” Hue will ruin the new QB with his awful play calling and game planning. He will try to bench the QB at some point. Then half way through the season, when we are 0-8 or 1-7 and the team is getting blown out again, Hue will send his little bird in the media to write about how Hue wanted the other Qb in the draft and that its not his fault that the one we drafted has not been successful. There, I just summarized the Browns 2018 season. Now you don’t have to watch.
hmmmm … i don’t think it’s any of these things … he was insubordinate . the interviews for new GM’s started right after the botched AJ McCarron deal.
everyone else is still here … Hue , Depodesta & Berry … so , in reality , THE PLAN is still very much in-place … just without Sashi.
when your boss tells you to do something , you do it.
Watching some of the Philly-SF game, very impressed by how the young 49ers play for their 31 year old newbie. And throwing up in my mouth watching Wentz dominate as a prototype franchise guy while remembering DePodesta’s idiotic statement, both his historically wrong analysis of the player and the immaturity of his decision to share it with the media. His hiring was designed, in part, to demonstrate the gravitas of The Process. His actions in those first few months make one wonder why we should care whether Haslam holds him to his contract.
hi RGB … good post … and right on. though he did set-up Dorsey real nice for next year … you gotta give him that.
hi HARV … i think “the dude” is doing everything he can to turn this thing around … whether it’s clueless desperation or not , he is trying. at least he is involved in the going-ons.
Kizer has been bad. But some of that badness is directly attributable to the way Hue calls a game.
Most teams in the league could have won with the QB play the Browns got out of Kizer yesterday.
If owner dude has no clue that’s not a positive thing. It results in putting lawyers in charge of personnel and roster building. Guessing Haslam feels burned about his NFL shotgun-wedding with Banner as the guy to be in charge. And when Banner proved toxic to every decent HC candidate, then fired Chud, Haslam was determined to be The Decider. The prob is that he doesn’t know football or the business of football, and now it’s now worse than the Randy Zone. At least Randy searched for someone to to make all his decisions. Haslam inserts himself, and lets the whisperers talk him into whatever. First Farmer, then Sashi.
Hi MARTY … yes , Sashi made some mistakes , but “zero credit” ??? … that’s harsh. Even Dorsey was quick to point-out that Sashi had the Browns set-up real nice this next off-season & it would be any GM’s dream to be set-up this nice.
Hi MARTY … yes , Sashi made some mistakes , but “zero credit” ??? … that’s harsh. Even Dorsey was quick to point-out that Sashi had the Browns set-up real nice this next off-season & it would be any GM’s dream to be set-up this nice.
Texts From Ray: Sashi Firing Edition. I”m waiting Kyle…
Texts From Ray: Sashi Firing Edition. I”m waiting Kyle…
i still can’t decide which is worse … a meddlesome owner or a do nothing owner.
i still can’t decide which is worse … a meddlesome owner or a do nothing owner.
Meddlesome. Not even close.
Meddlesome. Not even close.
hi CHRIS … how about an “involved” owner versus a do nothing owner ??
There’s nothing wrong with being involved. An owner can be involved, yet still rely on his well-selected experts. However, if the experts are neither well-selected nor relied upon… that’s a big problem. That’s Jimmy’s problem.
Ze. Ro. Cred. It.
It takes no talent or brains whatsoever to trade down and take a pass on impact players in order to get less talented players, or to trade current picks for future picks while your team swirls down the porcelain receptacle. Sashi wasn’t as bad as Farmer, but he was clueless as to how to stock a roster.
Clue. Less.
okay , so at this moment . Sashi has to live with the 1-28 & his name gets drug through the mud … it looks bad now. but the man will be grinning ear-to-ear come 2019 & beyond … watch.
“Despite being fired, I’m quite pleased to see what my successor has accomplished!”… said no one ever.
Right. Trading your picks for future picks can be done with your pocket trade machine. Ask Philly if they’d give back Wentz for the players/picks the Browns turned that into. Someone played a clip of Sashi’s initial 2016 presser, where he said his primary job was to identify the franchise QB. Deserving of a laugh track.
is he smiling now at Wentz? At Watson? At Jimmy G? Unless he’s delusional enough to think, against the evidence of his track record, that he would have turned his assets into impact players, or that no one else was clever enough to trade down, there’s precious little reason for him to claim ownership of any bright future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvdFPsG_T6g
Forgive my random comparison here:
Sashi Brown was like the platoon in Saving Private Ryan, when they came on a German anti-aircraft battery. The boys wanted to just dip around and leave the lethal machine guns (finding a franchise QB) for another day. Tom Hanks’ character said the objective is to Win the War (build a team that can win). Private Ryan was the future draft assets, this tantalizing thing on the horizon.
You’re going to lose some skirmishes and get bloodied either way, but you can’t lose sight of the goal. Sashi failed to communicate this vision to his Customers.
WHen you are Sashi and want to try something that’s never been done before, your level of execution needs to be much higher than the industry norm. He clearly had a poor idea how bad the historic losing would sour his boss and customer’s confidence in his ability. The botching of Wentz, and the all-time bad WR evaluation were two glaring BOTCHES that distorted how everybody would perceive his competence to rebuild the team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fByRLOM8WQw
Would Washington give back RGIII for their picks?
I think that’s what Dan said, or did he edit his post?
“He clearly had a poor idea how bad the historic losing would sour his boss and customer’s confidence in his ability.”
I would say he didn’t care.
The execution of The Process does not account for, nor does it care about, the acknowledgement of the thoughts, concerns, or feelings of others.
Lesson: Building a team that can win gets your medic killed? Charging that machine gun was a leadership error.
i am the only delusional one … but his track record is better than his predecessors & here’s a guy who wasn’t even a “football guy” !! and you can’t convince me that he would’ve botched this next off-season , because it will never happen … so , we’ll never know for sure
$ 100 million dollars in cap-space & TWO 1st round picks & THREE 2nd round picks … Dorsey doesn’t have to do a lick of tearing down , unless you count Britt … all he has to do is build it back up … Sashi did the dirty work & Dorsey will get the glory.
I’m all-in on Dorsey & think this is the most exciting hire since 1999.
in all seriousness , is the QB Sashi’s responsibility or Hue’s ?? …
hi MR. C … from what i understand , Dorsey , Hue & Depodesta all answer to Haslam … so , I would think it’s Haslam’s call on Hue … not sure if this is the way it should be … it seems like most HC’s answer to the GM / President.
Green Bay did that yesterday and in several other games since Rogers was injured. Hundley has similar skills to Kizer but McCarthy’s coached him well.
I had no idea why Hue allowed his DC to call prevent defense to start the fourth quarter. I could feel the game slipping away then.
Depodesta answers to Haslam … Dorsey can’t fire him.
Dorsey’s the Haslam Whisperer now. If he says DP is gone, get a body bag.
you may be right … i personally think Hue & Depodesta should be answering to the GM , but this is the Browns.
I was agreeing with him…more of a tl;dr.
You were not excited about the Holmgren hiring? I do not get excited about player acquisitions, coaching hires, anything. These have blown up in our faces before, and I will start getting excited when we start winning again.
They’d have to sign him off the scrap heap first. THEN they could give him back for the picks.
good post , DAN …
hi NATE … yes , i was probably more than excited when Holmgren was hired … thanks for putting my feet back on the ground … but you know they won’t stay there for long.
+1 for the Kill-Sashi Kid.
Dearl lord…that pic. Looks like somebody baked John Dorsey in the sun for far too long.
Sashi would around yelling “We found Rienne” while panzer tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Ave.
Must be cool to have not cared and then be fired and see your work vision blown up.
I wish we could know what % of abysmal plays is from Kizer audibles. I know the % that is Hue’s fault is too high, but deep down I think Kizer is the biggest factor in his own demise. Sigh.