Head Coach Ranking

How Will the ‘New’ Cleveland Browns be Different from the ‘Old’ Browns?

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.

The GM and Head Coach of the Cleveland Browns Is Paul DePodesta

By HCR Staff | Jan. 14, 2020

Based on his track record, any objective observer would have to conclude that Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has failed Browns fans thus far. He’s cycled through team presidents, head coaches and general managers at a rate that, as far as we can tell, is unprecedented in NFL history.

Coming off another double digit loss season, Haslam has once again terminated people in all the key positions. But this time, he’s trying something radically different–he’s going to make his Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta the de facto head coach and general manager of the team. 

That’s right–DePodesta, who lives in San Diego, essentially will call all the on-field and off-field shots for the Browns. 

Yes, we know the Browns just announced former Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski as head coach, and they are interviewing GM candidates (Andrew Berry and George Paton are the most current names).

But DePodesta ran the head coach hiring process, and he’s running the GM hiring process. DePodesta also possesses the Chief Strategy Officer title, and that encompasses duties that typically are reserved for head coaches and GMs. 

Now we’re reading reports that Stefanski has to submit game plans for approval in advance to DePodesta, and that a DePodesta analytics staffer will be on the coaching headsets during games as well, and have access to the coaching staff.

This leads us to conclude that Haslam has allowed DePodesta to experiment with a system where the head coach and GM essentially are widgets to be manipulated by DePodesta as he sees fit. Stefanski and the future Browns GM simply will be empty vessels to carry out DePodesta’s orders. 

We don’t follow Major League Baseball closely, but what the Browns are trying appears to be the norm in baseball. So perhaps it could work in the NFL. We doubt it, but given the Browns’ recent spectacular failures, what’s the harm in trying this?