Browns owner Jimmy Haslam is not oblivious to his team’s status as a laughingstock of the NFL.
How could he be?
Since Haslam bought the Browns from Randy Lerner for $1.05 billion in 2012, he has fired three head coaches, three general managers, two presidents and a CEO. The absence of stability and continuity breeds chaos.
Now men without traditional football backgrounds sit atop the franchise’s latest power structure and plan to push the use analytics in football to an unprecedented level. People throughout the league are rolling their eyes.
Oh, and the team with 24 starting quarterbacks since 1999 is in the midst of a 13-year playoff drought and hasn’t posted a winning season since 2007. It went 3-13 last season.
“Until we start winning, people are going to make fun of you,” Haslam said Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings in Boca Raton, Fla. “So it’s our job to get the right people in place to hopefully turn this thing around like we all want to see, and we’re cautiously optimistic we’ve done that.”
Ten days after Haslam fired General Manager Ray Farmer and coach Mike Pettine on Jan. 3, he executed what many considered a coup by hiring former Oakland Raiders coach and Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson as Pettine’s successor.
But he also raised eyebrows by turning to three Harvard University graduates to lead an unconventional front office.
Sashi Brown was promoted from legal counsel, contract negotiator and salary-cap guru to head of football operations and given control of the 53-man roster. Longtime Major League Baseball executive and noted analytics expert Paul DePodesta was hired as chief strategy officer. And former Indianapolis Colts pro scouting coordinator Andrew Berry was added as vice president of player personnel despite limited experience in college scouting.
“We haven’t played anybody, we haven’t gone through a draft, and so we’re all realistic about it, but we feel great about the people we’ve put together,” Haslam said.
Not everyone shares the optimism.
Two weeks ago during MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, DePodesta revealed he heard officials from other NFL teams talking trash about the Browns and their approach while standing in line last month at the Indianapolis airport after the NFL Scouting Combine.
The Browns gave their critics more ammunition when they let four starters — three-time Pro Bowl center Alex Mack, 30, former Pro Bowl free safety Tashaun Gipson, 25, right tackle Mitchell Schwartz, 26, and receiver Travis Benjamin, 26 — flee when free agency began March 9.
“We all knew they were good players,” DePodesta said Monday. “We want to get to that point where we have enough of a critical mass of our core guys that it makes sense to retain them all. ... That day, I think we all felt like, this is going to be our hardest day, and if we can get past this, then it’s looking up from here, which is good. I think we’ll be in a position going forward to go retain a lot of those guys.”
Still, the exodus was characterized locally and nationally as a rough start for the new regime.
“We had a plan in place, and I think you have to look at those situations individually,” Haslam said. “[They’re] good players who made good contributions to the organization, but we have a plan in place, and we’re not going to panic and knee jerk over things.”
The Browns plan to build through the draft, but a key component of the strategy is retaining good players drafted by the team.
Last month at the combine, Brown said “it is important for us to keep our own.” Then the four starters got away, leaving him lamenting a failure to re-sign them before his promotion.
“The perception would be [the Browns] said something that they’re not living up to,” Brown said Monday. “Ideally, we would have gotten these guys signed earlier. We just didn’t. As we look forward to the system we’ll build, where we’ll invest, how we’ll invest, I think all that will unfold moving forward.”
The team has lost all six of its unrestricted free agents: the four starters, special-teams ace Johnson Bademosi and part-time starting inside linebacker Craig Robertson.
It has added reclamation-project quarterback Robert Griffin III, 26, linebackers Demario Davis, 27, and Justin Tuggle, 26, free safety Rahim Moore, 26, and offensive lineman Alvin Bailey, 24. Davis was the lone full-time starter last year and even he was demoted into less playing time.
This offseason, the Browns also have cut starting defensive lineman Randy Starks, 32, part-time starting tight end Jim Dray, 29, and starting inside linebacker Karlos Dansby, 34, along with two colossal disappointments — quarterback Johnny Manziel, 23, and receiver Dwayne Bowe, 31.
“We’re not necessarily taking it all the way down to the studs or a scorched-earth policy for anybody who’s over 30,” Brown said. “But we are going to build it kind of methodically.”
A major rebuild is underway, even though Jackson prefers the term “reboot.”
“Rebuilding says that you’re totally junking everything and starting over, and that’s not what we’re doing,” Jackson said Tuesday. “I think we’re rebooting and we’re recharging because there’s still Joe Thomases on our football team, there’s Danny Sheltons on our football team, there’s Joe Hadens on our football team. So those guys aren’t rebuilding.
“And I think if we can get the right pieces on our team, you never know what this team could be. I know the expectation is low, and deservedly so. I get it, but at the same time, I don’t think anybody in our organization is built like that. We like to win, and we want to do everything we can to do that.”
Jackson’s point is valid because the right quarterback could expedite a turnaround. It would be sizable leap of faith to expect Griffin to reverse the fortunes of his career and the Browns, but he’ll likely receive a shot as a bridge starter after joining the team Thursday on a two-year, $15 million deal. The franchise could still pick one of the draft’s top-rated quarterbacks — California’s Jared Goff or North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz — second overall April 28, but rookies usually take lumps before achieving success on a consistent basis.
And Haslam has acknowledged people probably won’t stop laughing at the Browns overnight.
“I think it’s multiple years,” he said of rebuilding. “On the other hand, we have a very competitive head coach who wants to win every game. But the key theme to take away is that we feel really good about the group we have in place. They’re working together extremely well, and we’re going to be very patient with them and give them time to develop the plan we put together.”
Browns fans have heard that before, but patience has often eluded Haslam.
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ and on Facebook www.facebook.com/abj.sports.