History Is Not On His Side

At this point it seems like a question of when and not if, as in when will Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam clean house once again?

There is simply  no way a knee-jerk owner like Haslam tolerates regression, right?  Well, that’s probably true.  Still the dilemma he faces is a tad challenging to resolve, assuming you’re willing to give Haslam some credit for not being a total reactionary.

The mental gymnastics Haslam must be going through since watching this supposedly better version of the Browns get embarrassed nearly every week havsto be exhausting.  Haslam can’t like what he sees any more than any fans like what they see.  But the strong evidence tells him and you that the key to long term success in the NFL (and most businesses, actually) is stability, particularly at the top.

So does he stay the course out of the need to create stability within the league’s most unstable franchise or does he once again turn over the apple cart in the name of finding something or someone who can turn it back upright and get it going in the right direction?  With great money comes great responsibility.  The only thing worth gambling on is that whatever decision he makes will be wrong because, Cleveland.

The NFL out of necessity and union rules, treats most players as fungible commodities, a balance that takes into account absolute value, value about or below the potential replacement and salary cap impacts when deciding in any given season which players stay and which go.  Indeed teams turn over 25-30% of their rosters each year. 

The team’s that can perform the evaluation tasks well do so with good management that stays in place from year to year.  The New England Patriots are the gold standard.  The teams that perform those tasks poorly often are unstable franchises who hire poor talent evaluators and mediocre coaches.  The Browns are that gold standard.

While Haslam should prize stability but that only matters when you have the right folks in place at the top.  The Browns don’t and never do.  Let’s look at the last 15 years for the clues.

 Randy Lerner seemed to face a housecleaning dilemma every year and history has more than proven that in every case he actually fostered regression by hanging on to coaches and general managers who clearly were not suited for the job.  His biggest fault was that he couldn’t tell the difference between a Cadillac and a Camry.  As long as he had someone driving him around I guess it didn’t matter.

Since the Browns returned in 1999 only one fired head coach of the Browns went on to be a head coach again.  That would be Romeo Crennel who, incidentally, still has the longest tenure as a Browns head coach in the 2.0 ERA.  Crennel was an awful head coach overseeing typically awful Browns personnel.  He won 6 games his first season, 4 his next.  He should have been fired then as it led to what came next.  Perhaps his major accomplishment was to win 10 games in his third season, which made it look like Lerner was a genius even though the Browns are one of the few teams in NFL history to have won 10 games and not make the playoffs.  More to the point though is that while the NFL is a bottom line league, those 10 wins were soft.  Fans and history will recall that the Browns had a historically easy schedule that entire season, a point that was proven the following season when a Browns team supposedly on the come sank back to Crennel’s set point of 4 wins.  He was fired and instead of being two years into a new regime and direction the Browns were set back by those same two years.

And while Crennel did find a head coaching job again, that shouldn’t alter Haslam’s view.  After getting fired by the Browns Crennel ended up in Kansas City as a defensive coordinator, a job for which he was uniquely qualified and successful.  He became head coach when the Chiefs fired Todd Haley.  Crennel continued into the next season as well, his only full year as a head coach the second time around.  He promptly won 4 games with a Kansas City team many also thought was on the come and was fired. (Indeed that Chiefs team was on the come.  Andy Reid stepped in the next year and promptly won 11 games with essentially the same personnel.)

After that you have Butch Davis who never got another head coaching gig in the NFL but did land in college at North Carolina and was fired as part of the stench of an extensive academic cheating scandal that led to the Browns ultimately drafting Greg Little, but that’s another failed story for another day.

Then there are the various general managers all with the same awful track record and not a one of them hired thereafter as a general manager anywhere else.  That list includes Dwight Clark, Butch Davis (served as his own GM), Phil Savage, George Kokinis (although he was a mere puppet for the subordinate that hired him, Eric Mangini, who also hasn’t worked again as a head coach), Tom Heckert, Mike Lombardi and now Ray Farmer.

The point here is that these aren’t just trends to be interpreted.  The Browns have an unblemished record of hiring awful general managers and head coaches and every time they held on to one or the other longer than they should have it set the franchise back even further.  Crennel is an obvious example but no bigger than Mike Holmgren holding on to Eric Mangini despite the fact that he literally couldn’t stand him.

So as Halsam finds himself on the precipice of having to figure out when housecleaning should commence, the history he need rely on is not that of the wonderfully ethereal concept of stability but that of a franchise he owns that has been 100% wrong for 16 straight years.

I’ve already and repeatedly chronicled general manager Ray Farmer’s shortcomings.  His talent evaluation skills and philosophies are so misguided and inept, the results on the field can fairly be said to be inevitable.  Holding on to him is worse than holding on to Phil Savage and on par with holding on to Dwight Clark.   And yet to place all the blame on Farmer is to ignore Pettine’s massive shortcomings as a head coach. Those, too, are becoming more pronounced as the weeks roll by and here the parallels with Crennel are eerie.

In a sense, the first four games of the season, played against teams of similar caliber, provided a nice experiment where you can control certain variables to determine where the problems really exist. The debacle against the Jets, for example, highlighted the difference a coach can make on a bad team.  The Jets were a mess last season, similar to the Browns.  Yet week one the Jets, without any significant upgrades in personnel, came out well prepared and more than ready to play.  The Browns looked like they had just entered the second week of training camp and were essentially pushed around the field.  The game set a tone for both teams.  You wouldn’t be wrong to note that one of the hallmarks of Crennel’s teams each week were their lack of preparation.  There seemed to be little sense of a game plan or even a general direction.  To lose the number of games Crennel has consistently lost in his head coaching career takes the near perfect convergence of awful talent and coaching.

Switch over to Sunday’s loss to the middling San Diego Chargers.  So much of that loss stems from exactly what Pettine doesn’t bring to this team.  If Pettine is really as hard-nosed as we’ve been told, then his biggest failing comes from not instilling a similar mindset in his team.  That’s not his biggest failing.

As a side note “hard-nosed” is one of those grand football euphemisms, like “blue collar,” that’s supposed to conjure up an image of a team that relies less on smarts and more on brawn and work ethic to get the task of winning accomplished.  It’s a meaningless euphemism.  Less talented teams can and sometimes do succeed by the sheer force of their work ethic and tenacity.  But that’s rarely true in the NFL where personnel is remarkably similar team to team.  Put it this way and maybe exclude Cleveland in this sentence but if players at that level weren’t supremely talented, mentally, physically and emotionally, they would have never made it to the NFL in the first place.

Now what isn’t a euphemism at all and where teams often do reflect their head coach is in discipline and attention to detail.  One of the reasons Crennel took so long to become a head coach and then failed was his inability to bring the necessary attention and detail to the big picture.  Strong-willed miscreants like Braylon Edwards ran all over Crennel and it spilled onto the playing field in the form of one dismal penalty-laden performance after another.  The Browns’ failures in Crennel’s last season can most fairly be said to stem directly from Crennel’s loose grip on the reins of his team.

Pettine’s teams lack the kind of discipline those supposedly connote the hard-nosed team.  In Pettine’s year and a half tenure his teams have ranked near the top in the number of penalties per game, according to the website www.NFLPenalties.com  This ranking doesn’t even factor in penalties committed, only those accepted by the opposition. 

After 4 games the Browns are averaging nearly 9 penalties a game.   What’s as interesting is that the Browns also have one of the highest ratio of pre-snap penalties to overall penalties in the league under Pettine (and, frankly, basically every other coach before Pettine in the Browns 2.0 era).  That speaks to a revolving door of quarterbacks certainly and differing pre snap cadences.  But it also speaks to a lack of talent as its often overmatched offensive linemen seek to get a jump on their defensive counterparts.

Laying all of this at Pettine’s feet probably isn’t fair.  Much blame goes to the guy who employs him and supplied him with the players, and that would be Farmer. His handiwork was well on display against the Raiders a few weeks back.  That game showed the value of good drafting.  Amari Cooper and Derek Carr were excellent draft picks, particularly when compared to Johnny Manziel and Justin Gilbert.  The Browns could have had either or both and chose neither.  Farmer didn’t like Carr and seemingly hates all receivers.  That’s in essence why the Browns are still the Browns.

Pettine and Farmer are on borrowed time as it is.  Haslam may very well have already decided to clean house and now is just wrestling with whether it should be in season or the day after the season ends. Timing is tricky and keep in mind that midseason replacements kind of feel good for a minute but also tend to piss off season ticket holders who, in Cleveland anyway, like to hold on to the illusion that these games matter at least until the 9^th or 10^th game of the season.

It’s also possible that Haslam really is wrestling with another kind of dilemma.  He knows that if he holds on to Farmer and Pettine he’ll be trying to defy history that is absolute.  On the other hand, if he respects that history he runs head first into another absolute: he has no chance of getting the next decisions right, either. Ultimately, that’s probably what’s keeping him up most nights, the notion that buying the Browns may have been the dumbest idea he’s had since he set up a bonus program for the sales force at Pilot Flying J.

Lingering Items--Business Edition

Times are tough everywhere. It seems like twice a day there is a story about one employer or another laying off workers by the hundreds, sometimes by the thousands. But if you’re former Cleveland Browns’ president Carmen Policy, it means waiting out a soft economy in a $15 million estate in the heart of Napa Valley.

According to a story in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, the estate is surrounding by grape vines for Policy’s winery which is housed at another location. This luxury comes, if not directly, then as near as a straight line as is possible, from the generosity of the Lerner family. Policy was a minority owner and club president for Al Lerner when he bought the Cleveland franchise back to life. When Policy ultimately was too distracted to really do the team much good, he was bought out at a handsome premium, especially given the fact that he essentially had no money of his own in the team in the first place, and given a first class ticket to Napa. All in all, a nice and expensive consolation prize for doing more harm than good.

I thought about the contrast between Policy and the 12 or so workers that got laid off this week from the Browns. While they may have been given some severance pay, the likelihood that they were treated like Policy, or Butch Davis, or Phil Savage, or Romeo Crennel, is pretty remote. Indeed, for a fraction of the price that any of the foregoing received for their spectacular failures, all the laid off could still be employed today.

But when it comes to this franchise at this point in its existence, connecting dots isn’t a core competency.

When the layoffs occurred, the Browns, in almost knee-jerk fashion, blamed the economy. Worth asking, though, is exactly which part of the economy is to blame?

This past season, every Browns’ game was a sell out. For reasons that apparently have nothing to do with performance, the season ticket base remains relatively high. They still sell their share of swag and $4 hot dogs and $8 beers. The riches continue to flow to them like they do to every other team from the league’s lucrative media contracts signed before this economic downturn. In other words, to the extent that any industry can be immune from the problems plaguing its customers, it’s the NFL.

But the other part of the story, the one not readily discussed by the team, is the significant hit they’ve taken in so-called luxury revenue for the last several seasons. While they won’t admit it publicly, the Browns are having trouble renting out their loges. Corporate Cleveland, which is counted on heavily for support, isn’t responding to this team in nearly the same numbers as it did when the Browns first returned. Some of that is the economy certainly. Some of it is also the simple fact that when client entertainment dollars are limited there better entertainment values in the city at the moment. Choices are getting made and increasingly it’s at the expense of the Browns. This hit to the Browns’ bottom line is real.

While Cleveland’s economy can be blamed—you don’t have to have an M.B.A. to know, for example, that when a Pittsburgh bank takes over your city’s biggest bank there will be repercussions locally—the suggestion from Browns’ camp that this is what led directly to the layoffs is pure spin worthy of Policy. The Browns have literally burned through so many millions over the last several years papering over their failures that they no longer have as big a cushion to weather a sinking economy.

In truth, the downturn in luxury revenue has been years in the making, even when the economy was better. It’s stems from one indisputable fact—the Browns have been a lousy team. When they returned, everyone wanted a piece, irrespective of the results. But as the losses and the years have piled up and the mismanagement has become the dominant story line, there is no longer much cachet to owning a loge at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Clients are far more likely to want to see LeBron at the Q than Brady on the lakefront. When the Browns are out of contention by their third home game, companies have trouble giving the tickets away. The value in owning a loge is tough to measure anyway, but when you literally have to beg people to use it, it’s pretty clear that it has about as much value as a Lou Camille rookie card.

Welcome to the actual business of running a professional franchise. Wins do matter. Having an excited and energized base does matter. Having a product that people want to spend money on does matter.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that Browns’ owner Randy Lerner is “a good businessman” I could buy a team in the English Premier League. But the assumption that Lerner is some kind of master businessman is based solely on the fact that he happens to be rich, which is based solely on the fact that he had the good luck to be Al Lerner’s son.

Randy Lerner is a gentleman. He’s earnest almost to a fault in his quest to improve this franchise’s lot. He means well. But none of that has made him much of a business man. Indeed, all Randy has done since inheriting the business empire that his father built was to sell it. He then turned around and bought a soccer team. Ok, he likes his toys and maybe, just maybe, that toy will make him some money. But focusing just on his business acumen when it comes to the Browns, the evidence is mounting that he needs help, significant help.

The Policy debacle and buyout cost this franchise millions but it can’t be laid at Randy’s feet. Pretty much everything else can. When Butch Davis quit on this team, it was just months after Lerner had given him a two-year contract extension that he hadn’t earned. Lerner also had elevated him even further in the organization’s hierarchy, all on the strength of a 5-11 season. In total, Davis voluntarily left a positon he was unqualified to hold with three years and some $12 million left to be earned. For reasons that were never explained, Lerner nevertheless paid off Davis as if he had been fired. It was a nice gesture and completely unnecessary. But if that’s how Lerner wants to spend his money, so be it, unless you’re one of the recently laid off I guess.

Fast forward to last spring when Lerner gave lengthy, multi-million dollar extensions to both Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel that neither had likewise earned. Both still had two seasons remaining on their contracts. A good businessman may have given both a pat on the back and said “good job” and let’s talk about what we can accomplish next season. Not Lerner.

In the case of Savage, at the time he was fired he had four years remaining on a contract that paid him approximately $2.7 million a year. Crennel had three years remaining on a contract that was paying him about $ 4 million a season. And let’s not forget that at the time Crennel got his extension, offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski received an extension through 2011 as did Mel Tucker, who had been promoted to defensive coordinator. The figures on those contracts weren’t reported, but most coordinators make at least $1 million a year, some double that. Thus assume that combined the two had $6 million left on their contracts when they were fired.

If you’re doing the math at home, that means that when Lerner cleaned house recently, he was still on the hook for around $25-30 million. But it’s also safe to assume that it won’t cost Lerner quite that much. in each case a financial settlement was or will be worked out in recognition that each is likely to find another job. Still, by even the most conservative estimates, the purge cost Lerner $15 million, minimum, and likely far more. Throw in the $12 million he paid Davis and in just the last few years Lerner has essentially given away upwards of $30 million of his money to former employees that have failed him.

Layered on all of this, of course, is the hit to the luxury revenue that the team has taken because of all of its on-field failures, pretty much all of which can be traced from Policy straight through to Crennel. If all this makes Lerner a good businessman, it’s chilling to think what would constitute his being a bad businessman.

Meanwhile, a variety of low-paid front office types hit the streets in response. Maybe it was the economy that’s to blame, but not the economy you and I are experiencing but the one the Lerners heaped on themselves.

**

Speaking of Policy, the story about his life in Napa is fascinating. But of all the revelations, this one stood out:

“Upstairs is the Policy’s private domain, where a small guest room houses a crib for their grandchildren. On another patio, the outdoor shower (which former 49ers wide receiver Dwight Clark calls ‘sexy’) has windows that can be shuttered for privacy or opened to the expansive views.”

What strikes you as more unusual; the fact that Policy and Clark are still so close that Clark showers at Policy’s house or the fact that Clark is taking showers on an outdoor patio and in the vicinity of where where Policy’s grandchildren are napping? To me, the whole thing seems, what’s the word I’m looking for here, oh yea, “creepy.”

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A few words about Dante Lavelli.

His loss will certainly be a public relations lost for the Browns. Lavelli had been one of the most visible and best representatives of the Browns in the community and embodied everything that’s ever been right with this franchise.

Lavelli, almost more than any other Browns’ alum, had the perfect pedigree. He grew up locally (Hudson), played his college ball in Columbus for the Buckeyes and played his entire pro career in Cleveland. His first four seasons were played in the All American Football Conference and his last seven in the NFL. He was inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1975.

Lavelli was a constant presence in the community on behalf of the Browns. He was never anything less than gracious and accommodating. He loved to sign autographs and even as his health was failing in recent years, he always took the time to write neatly on whatever article was given to him to sign “Dante ‘Gluefingers’ Lavelli, HOF ’75.” He also liked to remind people that the NFL should have counted his accomplishments in the AAFC as part of his NFL career. He wasn’t bitter about it, just correct.

One of Lavelli’s favorite hobbies was golf. He played in nearly every golf outing sponsored by the Browns or the Hall of Fame, year after year. I had the privilege of playing golf with Gluefingers on a few occasions in some of those outings and ran into him at least twice a year over the last 10 years or so. Because he met so many people, he usually just gave them nicknames. To him I was “Lefty” because I play golf left-handed. You couldn’t find a more pleasant playing partner or a more competitive one. Gluefingers wanted to win. The last time I saw him was in the fall at a golf outing fundraiser for the Hall of Fame Foundation. Looking more frail than he ever had, he still played as much as he could, which meant he’d contribute as best as he could to the scramble with some chipping and putting. To the surprise of no one, Gluefingers’ group won, naturally.

I think about Lavelli often in the context of wondering why a player like Braylon Edwards isn’t better. I suspect Lavelli often wondered the same thing.

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As new Browns’ headquarters starts looking more and more like that of the New York Jets, this week’s question to ponder: “If Eric Mangini hires another assistant and nobody cares did the hiring ever really happen?”