Browns taking measured, patient approach to free agency

You’re hosting a dinner party and you are cooking for a room full of food critics. You pore over your shopping list and you want to fill it with the best possible ingredients in the hopes of creating an enjoyable experience that will impress all involved. You need some produce and dairy, both of which are easy to find, but now you’re examining the case of meat in front of you and the pickings are slim. Unless you have access to a cow, you’re going to have to pick one of the selections in the case whether it’s perfect or not.

There are far too many comparisons to running and NFL franchise. Bill Parcells famously spoke of buying the ingredients as the chef. I oftentimes use gambling and poker as well. Regardless of your preferred metaphor, it’s all pretty useful in discussing NFL teams as they engage in personnel moves during the off-season.

When the Cleveland Browns signed Brian Hartline I was elated. I wasn’t overly interested in the fact that he was a former Buckeye, but he’s racked up over 1,000 yards twice in his career. On top of that, the Browns got him on a deal that was even cheaper than the one they signed Andrew Hawkins to a year prior. Hawkins was restricted and the Browns had to give him enough money to keep the Bengals at bay, so in a lot of ways it makes sense, but still. The Browns might have just found themselves one hell of a bargain side dish for the dinner party in getting Hartline for so little.

It’s an extremely difficult balance this time of year. It’s easy to forget what you know or what you’ve learned, especially as the Browns keep chasing respectability in the NFL. Yes, they have loads of cap space, but with each passing year of relative failure it becomes more and more difficult to manage that cap without doing something rash. The minute you forget that there’s a strict budget is the minute you just make things worse.

That’s where the Browns were in 2004. With ongoing negotiations to reduce Tim Couch’s salary and with Kelly Holcomb recovering from shoulder surgery, they gave Jeff Garcia $25 million over four years with the promise that he would be the starter. Couch would be released, Holcomb would play a bit and Luke McCown would go 0-4 as Butch Davis resigned and gave way to Terry Robiskie as an interim coach. Garcia was cut after just one year.

This doesn’t have a lot to do with 2015 where the Browns chose to sign Josh McCown and now have Brian Hartline. It has more to do with the singings the Browns haven’t been involved in so far this off-season. They stayed out of the Suh situation that saw him receive the richest deal in defender history. They didn’t consummate a deal with Jeremy Maclin, who reportedly received a gaudy $11 million per season to go to Kansas City. It’s easy to feel like the Browns are sitting out and not caring about getting better because the free agency market feels like a competition in and of itself.

Sometimes you lose by winning the headlines during free agency. Even when you make smart moves like the Browns did when they signed LeCharles Bentley, they ended up losing merely due to the high stakes. At that time, the Browns and Bentley both lost big with a six-year $36 million deal. There’s nobody to blame because it was largely just bad luck, but that’s all the more reason that you need to be careful to understand the game you’re playing as an NFL GM.

So even as it’s a bit frustrating to watch the Browns go through free agency not connecting with premier deals for giant names, just remember the smart deals that backfired too. This isn’t a knock on Bentley or Gary Baxter who was offered $30 mil over five years before tearing both knees at the same time on the same play. That’s more bad luck, but as they say, you make your own luck.

So far this off-season Ray Farmer seems to be very measured as he picks out the ingredients to his dinner party. He seems to be maximizing his chances to be lucky. Say what you want about Josh McCown (and I’ve said plenty) it’s a really low-risk maneuver for the team. Same with the signing of Brian Hartline.

Now, I’ll have to re-write this to some extent if the Browns do sign Darrelle Revis, but even that would only be what amounts to a one-year deal at the player’s request. It’s hard to argue with that kind of measured gamble. In the meantime I’ll try to be patient and hope that the Browns don’t lose track of the mission.