By HCR Staff | Jan. 27, 2020

Under Jimmy Haslam’s ownership, the Cleveland Browns have had so many iterations that it’s been hard to keep up. But now that the dust has settled with the hiring of (another) GM Andrew Berry, it looks like from a personnel standpoint, the ‘new’ Browns are essentially the same as the ‘old’ Browns.

Haslam, of course, remains involved.

Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta also remains in his post…even though the recent strategy was a failure. DePodesta managed somehow to escape responsibility for that.

And Berry returns to the Browns; he was there during Hue Jackson’s tenure.

The only person missing from the ‘old’ Browns is former GM Sashi Brown.

The Browns have a talented roster; there’s enough objective evidence of that. How it is managed by Kevin Stefanski remains to be seen. 

But the biggest improvement for the Browns in their operations is that the tension between the ‘football’ guys and ‘analytics’ guys will disappear. The analytics guys have won the internal battle for Haslam’s heart.

Now the Browns can move forward with an aligned vision, and internally, there doesn’t have to be any time spent managing differing philosophies within the building. All efforts now can be spent implementing an analytics-based approach.

Will this produce a better win-loss record? That remains to be seen, but the organization should at least be more efficient. Efficiency generally leads to better results, but there’s no guarantee. 

But there at least is consensus now in Cleveland, and if there isn’t success, the fault isn’t going to lie in blaming personality differences.