Lingering Items-Dead Money Edition

Roger Goodell must be pissed.  But then again so are a lot of agents.  In the annals of NFL free agency, which really aren’t all that far reaching anyway, this is easily the most pedestrian, indeed most boring, free agency period on record.  Put it this way, when the most exciting story in all of free agency starts and ends with a fax machine (a fax machine!), then it may be time to rethink the whole approach.

Goodell is pissed because in NFL World, there isn't supposed to be this kind of down period.  The whole point of creating a preseason, a regular season, a playoff season, a scouting combine, a free agency season, a draft season, and then off season workout season is precisely to advance the perception that the NFL is always in season.  The NFL Network is a 24-hour a day, seven day a week operation and it needs programming like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors needed humans.  The appetite is insatiable and yet all effort must be expended to quench it, sanity be damned.

But Goodell, in a rare act of self-sabotage, snuffed out any possibility of an active NFL free agency season when he put both the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, and by extension their impetuous, maniacal owners on the sidelines for acting all petulant and maniacal during 2010’s uncapped season.  By loading up salary in that year (and then getting nothing but dead money and no Super Bowls for the effort) despite the strong and probably illegally collusive suggestion that they not do that, the Redskins and Cowboys were fined millions in salary cap hits, effectively putting them out of business during this off season.  And a million player agents cried and the rest of the world paid attention to something else, like the wife of Florida Gulf Coast's basketball coach and Aaron Craft's hovering right foot.

Because the two biggest, free spending franchises have basically sat out free agency, agents are finding suckers in short supply.  Daniel Snyder and Jerry Jones usually use free agency as a way of measuring their manhood, at least since actual manhood measuring was outlawed by Paul Tagliabue at the 2004 Winter Meetings after an unfortunate incident involving a bottle of Captain Morgan and an electronic tape measure.  In their view, big always trumped quality and so they spent themselves silly so many times that they made George Steinbrenner look like an absolute model of restraint by comparison.

But without their participation this year, free agency has been boring with most teams following the example long established by Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots—let the market come to them.  Even now, the free agent market is still flush with inventory as one owner after another sees how far they can drive down the price of free agents.

Cleveland’s own Josh Cribbs may be the poster child for this year’s free agency class.  Not only has there been virtually no competition for his services, but the only team that’s even thinking about signing him, the Arizona Cardinals, said to check back in the next several weeks to see how that knee has heeled.  Meanwhile absolutely no other team has jumped into the fray.  It’s almost as if Cribbs couldn’t get signed if agreed to work for incentives only.

Behind Cribbs are literally dozens of other similarly situated free agents. Most of them aren’t brand names but some of them are.  They either are players that once were something but are old and/or banged up (you know, free agents that, if this were baseball, are exactly the kind favored by the Cleveland Indians) or younger players who for a variety of reasons didn’t pan out with their original teams.

In any case, this new found restraint within the NFL was brought about mostly, and perhaps unintentionally, by Goodell.  As a result, most teams are still in decent shape with respect to their salary caps while agents who were counting on big commissions to finance that new Porsche are finding that they may have to settle for a Nissan.

It's not what Goodell had in mind when he decided to punish Snyder and Jones for acting like Snyder and Jones.

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Something else, too, is happening this free agency season.  It's finally dawned on most owners and coaches that players are far more fungible than they originally thought.  Unless there’s an elite quarterback on the market, which happens about as often as players like Peyton Manning switch teams, free agency isn’t the place to cure what ails your franchise.  It’s the place to supplement your overall player acquisition strategy, not define it.

Let’s start with a few basics.

The conventional wisdom of NFL general managers is still that teams are best built through the draft.  But is that really still true?  Certainly it was in the days when free agency didn’t really exist, the days when a team signing, say, a Cribbs, would have to part with a couple of first round picks for that privilege.  Not coincidentally, the draft was 12 rounds, or nearly double what it is today.

What makes it less true today has been the growing importance of undrafted free agents.  There isn’t a NFL roster these days that doesn’t include at least 10 and sometimes as many as 13 or 14 undrafted free agents on its roster.  It’s those kinds of players that really are the backbone of the league because it’s on their backs that salary caps are managed.

A disproportionate amount of cap space is typically allocated to the quarterback position, unless you’re a team like Cleveland perpetually looking for a quarterback on whom to lavish too much money.  From there, a few skill players (including tough to find left tackles, for example) fill up another, smaller, but still disproportionate share of cap space.  Finally, the rest of the cap space is allocated among the 40 or so players, many of whom are either young, undrafted free agents (rookies, first or second year players) or aging veterans on cheap, one year deals.

What teams then do on an almost daily basis is assess their cap space by player and by that player’s overall value against the space his contract occupies.  When cap space exceeds value (as measured, generally, by a formula that takes into account the production of other similarly situated players in the league and their contracts) a player usually is asked to renegotiate.  Players that balk at the suggestion are cut.  In a few cases, generous soles like Tom Brady will voluntarily renegotiate a contract to something more cap friendly.  The bottom line though is the bottom line.  Teams live and die by their cap space.  Indeed there’s no one more important to a franchise than the cap specialist.

Because of the ever present black cloud that is the salary cap the NFL shrunk its draft in order to push more players onto the undrafted free agent market because it’s cheaper.  Such free agents rarely command any sort of bonus, they tend to sign relatively long, cap-friendly contracts, and they do all the dirty work, from carrying equipment to running down the field at break neck speed on special teams.  It’s also as cheap to cut those kinds of players as to keep them which is why so many are on the market every off season.

What this all says about NFL economics is that teams aren’t built through the draft nearly as much as they used to be.  Teams are really built through the draft and the free agency market that follows the draft.  Meanwhile the free agency season that precedes the draft, the one populated with veterans looking for a new home, is the place to plug holes n order to finalize your actual draft/post draft free agent strategy.

The Browns, for example, have spent the free agent season loading up on the defensive side of the ball.  They have needs at nearly every position but focusing at least on one side of the ball gives them a change to better manage the next two phases of their player acquisition strategy—the draft and post draft free agency.  That’s where the Browns will turn to offense so that when it’s all said and done the new regime, in relatively short order, will have put its mark on the franchise while simultaneously extricating it from the mistakes of the last regime.

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This isn’t to totally minimize the draft, by the way.  It’s still as important as it ever was to hit on players in the first three rounds.  Players drafted in those positions are far more likely to become the blue chip cornerstones of your franchise than players drafted later or signed as undrafted free agents.

Sure there are plenty of brand names in the NFL today who started as late round picks or undrafted free agents but not surprisingly the hit rate on them is far less.  You only need to look at the struggles of the Browns to understand how important the first few rounds really are.

Despite having almost unprecedented opportunities to improve through the draft, the Browns have mostly stayed in exactly the same place instead.  You could go year by year or simply map today’s hole-ridden roster against their draft position to see the unmistakable trend.  The Browns suck at the draft and have for more than a decade.  As it stands today they have exactly one cornerstone player, Joe Thomas, to show for their efforts.

Argue all you want for Brandon Weeden and Trent Richardson and maybe a few others, but until they actually perform like superstars they aren’t actually in that category.  Teams may pay on potential but games are won on performance and Weeden and Richardson both have to make significant improvement before they get simply lumped on the mile high pile of failed early round draft choices.

In other words, the Browns can improve by finding quality free agents but they can't take an incremental step forward without improving their early round drafting and not just intermittently but for the next several years.

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I started to write a column last week about how the Cleveland Browns’ brain trust decided not to take my advice and let the free agent market come to them.  But then I got the flu and lost interest.  The flu is better, my interest still lost.  Ultimately the Browns should have been market reactors not market makers but on the other hand they seem happy with who they signed.  They always do.

What did occur to me through the fog of the flu and the drugs meant to suppress its symptoms was that the Browns may be actually improving.  It’s less related to the guys they’ve signed and more related to those they haven’t.

Let’s talk about Phil Dawson for a moment.  Who doesn’t love Phil Dawson?  I’ll tell you who, Joe Banner.  I doubt it’s personal.  Banner looks at Dawson’s age, ignores his accomplishment, and consults a ream of statistics all of which tell him that 38 year old kickers are a lousy investment.  The fact that a Browns regime, any regime, is willing to make cold blooded decisions on players who are as beloved as Dawson might be a sign of progress, indeed improvement.  Forget about the players for the moment, another thing the Browns have to do to improve is take sentimentality out of the question and start making better business decisions.

Not to reopen old wounds, but let me do so for purposes of a small illustration.  Mike Holmgren, who knew the instant he was hired he didn’t like Eric Mangini, refused to make the right business decision and set Mangini adrift after one failed season.  For pure sentimentality’s sake, a “there but for the grace of God go I” calculation, Holmgren kept Mangini around for another year and then fired him for the offense of performing just as poorly in year two as year one.

That decision set the franchise back and not just a year but several.  The Browns acquired players and made all sorts of personnel moves during that year based on the schemes Mangini was running.  That blocked any progress on the schemes Holmgren and his crew wanted to run instead.  We can speculate on the players passed over during that lost year who could have been contributing now but that will just make me want to blow my brains out.  The point is that running a football team isn’t merely a year by year endeavor.  A franchise as lowly as the Browns can’t afford to take a year off like it did when Mangini was granted an additional year to show just how easy it is to win 4 games a year.

So in that sense watching Banner make no effort to sign Dawson is a sign of progress for the franchise.  That may seem counterintuitive when you consider that it was the 49ers, last season’s other Super Bowl participant, that signed Dawson.  But actually that it was the 49ers and not, say, the Kansas City Chiefs, actually makes my point.

The Browns have nearly as many holes on the roster as roster spots available. The 49ers need improvement on the margins.  They don’t have much cap space left or much need but certainly kicking was a need.  Getting Dawson on a one year deal takes care of the problem for now.  The Browns have more gaping needs and the cap space they have must be used to take care of those far bigger problems—like the rush defense, for instance, and the team’s overall depth at virtually every position.

There are more kickers available than jobs and even though Dawson signed cheaply (less, actually, than he made last season for the Browns), his age still counsels against him being anything more than a stop gap anyway.  The Browns need a longer term solution and, remember, better to release a year too early than a year too late.

That isn’t to say that whoever the Browns find to do the kicking next year will be more effective than Dawson was last season.  In all likelihood that will be impossible.  But all they need is someone relatively close and finding him won’t be that big of a problem.  Teams may suffer for a season with a kicker they don’t like but it’s not like a lack of kicking game tends to be a lingering problem for any team.  Again, supply outstrips demand.  A new kicker will emerge and at a cheaper price.

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The Browns’ complete lack of effort in re-signing Cribbs is much the same thing.  The willingness to move on from a player that did so much for the franchise is a sign that the Browns are progressing past sentimentality and toward the business of actually putting together a winning brand.

As for Cribbs, I predicted the interest in him would be muted but I’m a little surprise it’s been almost non-existent.  Maybe the recent knee surgery made teams nervous, but I doubt it.  In the first place, it was a simple clean up of a torn meniscus.  As knee injuries go it’s about the mildest.  Indeed if Cribbs’ agent is to be believed he’s already passed an Arizona Cardinals physical even coming off of knee surgery.

It’s not the knee but Cribbs’ age and effectiveness as measured against the cost of getting someone who can do the same thing, just more cheaply.  The kick return has been significantly diminished by the NFL and teams are not now going to pay much money for someone just to take a knee three or four times a game.  The punt returner is more valued these days and Cribbs was 7th in the league last year in average yards/return, but at his age, his injury history and his salary is he really the better choice than Travis Benjamin?  That’s the question Banner asked and we know how he answered.

Arizona seems to have interest in Cribbs but they told him to check back in 5 weeks.  Ostensibly they are concerned about his knee but I wonder.  The Cardinals are using cornerback Patrick Peterson to return punts and in his two years his average per return is actually a yard more than Cribbs’ career average.  That’s not significant certainly but it doesn’t suggest an area of need for the Cardinals, either.

What’s likely going on can be found in the words of Bruce Arians, their head coach.  According to Mary Kay Cabot’s story in the Plain Dealer last Thursday, Arians could hardly contain himself when thinking of all the possible ways he could use Cribbs.  The last time I heard a coach get all warm and runny about a muti-threat player was a year ago when Rex Ryan went all in, during the off season, on Tim Tebow.  Eventually he found out what the other teams already knew.  Tebow’s effectiveness is as a diversion and not a steady diet.  The same is true with Cribbs.  He’s not without skills on offense but even in his prime, which he’s now well past, he was never good enough to be a quality starter.  That isn’t going to change just because Arians is talking extemporaneously about a player he won’t even consider signing for another month.

I’m not suggesting that the Browns gained by losing either Cribbs or Dawson.  What I am suggesting though is that by not giving in to the sentimentality of resigning two players who helped keep this franchise afloat for the last several years Browns fans may actually have a reason to believe this front office knows what it’s doing.

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Long column this week but still a question to ponder:  James Harrison, like Cribbs, is still looking for a team.  Is this karma or just the inevitable outcome of a very soft free agent market?

Let's Not Be Aggressive

The considered word on the street is that the Cleveland Browns will be “aggressive” when free agency opens for real late Tuesday afternoon.

Well, thanks as usual to the working class journalists who brought you that pithy bit of analysis.  Left undefined though is what does it mean to be “aggressive” and it is that very definition that will be the difference between whether this team continues to occupy the 8th circle of Hell for another decade or finally graduates to a few lesser levels on its march toward real honest-to-goodness mediocrity.

The facts, such as they are, are straightforward.  The Browns are waaaaaaaaaaay under the salary cap, so much so in fact that it makes you wonder whether someone in the previous regime simply didn’t own a calculator.  By luck or design, though, this gives the Browns what the working class journalists like to call “flexibility.”  The Browns also do have plenty of roster openings or, as the working journalists like to call it, “needs.”  They also have a new owner flush with new money from a lucrative sponsorship deal and an abiding need to impress.  Mix this together and of course it must mean that the Browns will be “aggressive.”

But if we’re being honest here, and as always we must, then being “aggressive” is the last thing that this team needs to be at the moment for “aggressive” in this context carries negative connotations not positive ones.  Teams that are “aggressive” tend to overspend because they overvalue.  Far better, I think, for the Browns to defy the working class journalists.  I’d settle for “prudent” and be thrilled if they got to “smart.”  As it stands on the eve of free agency, I’m encouraged the Browns will be at least one and maybe both but will reserve celebrating because if fans in Cleveland know anything it’s that celebrating prematurely is our Achilles heel. (See Byner, Earnest.  See Ehlo, Craig)

What this free agency season really will be is a test of what kind of club president Joe Banner and what kind of general manager Mike Lombardi are going to be.  The early indication is that Banner, at least, will serve in the role of heartless bastard who will cut popular but overvalued veterans irrespective of what they’ve brought the franchise.  For what it’s worth, in football at least that’s a good thing.  If you want proof look at James Harrison in Pittsburgh and Anquan Boldin in Baltimore (though the Ravens haven’t yet cut Boldin, they simply asked him to take a 1/3 pay cut as his reward for leading them to the Super Bowl.)

Free agents tend to fall into 3 specific categories:  players completing their rookie contracts; players completing their post-rookie contracts; and players looking for their last contracts.  The latter are easily identified as those are your aging veterans angling for one final payday.  In that group goes the Browns own Phil Dawson and Josh Cribbs.  The Steelers Harrison is of the same ilk as well.

Generally speaking, these players are like that carton of milk in your refrigerator with the expiration date closing in.  They may not yet be spoiled but be forewarned, taking a drink might be fine but it might also get you a seat on the porcelain throne for the next several hours, too.  Teams taking these players do so either because they are desperate to look “aggressive” to a fan base that’s lost faith or because they think that overpaying for one or two is a calculated gamble that if it plays out will put them on the precipice of a Super Bowl.  For every one or so that works out there are 4 or 5 that don’t.  The odds aren’t great.

If the Browns jump into free agency quickly and announce a signing at 4:02 p.m. on Tuesday it will mean two things.  First, they were violating league rules by finalizing deals before the opening bell.  But it’s the Browns so I doubt no one will much care.  Second, and more importantly, they will have overvalued and overpaid because they thought some other team would try to steal from them.  It may look “aggressive” but it will end up poorly.

Teams that go fishing like this, particularly by paying any of the big guaranteed dollars and oddly long contracts that temporarily spread that money over several years are usually desperate teams trying to change their fans’ perception of them.  If Banner and Lombardi opt for this approach then you can pretty much write off Banner and Lombardi has saviors.  There almost is no way to make these kind of free agents work within a team like the Browns without causing even bigger headaches down the road.

Personally I’d like to see the Browns re-sign Dawson but I’m not going to bemoan the loss if they don’t.  Dawson is by any measure on the back end of an excellent career.  That means he’s expensive.  But kickers on the back end tend to develop consistency problems.  David Akers is Exhibit A.  Dawson may be good for another season, but anything more than a year by year contract for a kicker his age is just asking for a dead money problem in year 3 of that contract.  The surest way of losing that vaunted “flexibility” is by loading a team’s balance sheet with dead money for players long since out of the league.

Cribbs is similarly situation, a good career that’s winding down.  Yet Cribbs’ history doesn’t suggest he’s expensive.  Cribbs may ultimately get what looks like a long-term deal with another team but only as a means to spread the cap hit.  What’s more likely is a contract more backloaded than front in order to ease the inevitable cap hit that will come when he’s not invited by his new team to finish out his contract.

Cribbs simply doesn’t fit into the Browns going forward unless it is an extremely club friendly contract.  That means smallish guaranteed money and backloaded larger salaries that have no cap impact when he’s cut in another year or two.  Anything else would be a signal that Banner and Lombardi aren’t spending Jimmy Haslam’s money wisely.

It's not just the aging veterans that can get a team in trouble, either.  I'm worried that the Browns will be overbidding and hence overpaying free agents in either of the other two categories because they are desperate to look “aggressive.”

Far better for the Browns to run up the price on some other teams for players they don't really want and then use their discovered “flexibility” by being volume value players.  It's not like they have one or two slots to fill anyway.  This team needs bodies.
What free agency has really taught us is that the only way to find value players is in the same way that the New England Patriots have been finding value players for years.  That means taking your time, letting the desperate and the stupid spend themselves silly while the value market develops, which it always does.  The Patriots don’t tend to ever make a large headline in free agency and that’s something to be emulated not avoided.

The lesson in buying real estate, particularly your house, is the same lesson to be applied in free agency.  Don’t fall in love, with a house or a player.  There are always others on the market that will fill your needs and usually at a much better price.

The Browns’ so-called push into a higher level of analytics suggests that as a franchise they are tired of falling in love and overpaying only to find a leaky basement in a year or two.  That’s why it would be a surprise to me if the Browns were day one players in free agency.  That’s when all the worst deals tend to get made.  But then again I’m usually surprised by what the Browns do and like that aforesaid leak in the basement, the surprises usually are of the wrong kind.

Lingering Items--Advanced Analytics Edition

Josh Cribbs is one of those athletes that it’s both easy to like and dislike at exactly the same moment.  The liking part stems from the passion and work ethic he’s brought to a Cleveland Browns franchise that lacked both, from the management ranks on down.  The disliking part comes from the near constant disingenuous way he goes about making sure everyone knows how much passion and worth ethic he’s brought to a Cleveland Browns franchise that lacked both.

Cribbs has always been viewed as a local kid though he didn’t grow up in Cleveland.  He played quarterback at Kent State when they sucked (which until last season was always) and while his pure athleticism revealed him to be a unique player, he carried himself away from the field as a highly entitled big fish in a small pond and had got himself involved in some off field issues (marijuana) that caused many to question his character.

To his credit, Cribbs turned it around.  He made it to the NFL through the back door as one of the many undrafted free agents that teams sign in order to meet their salary cap obligations.  That he was signed by the Browns was a reflection of the simple fact that a quarterback at Kent State is never going to be on any team’s radar except the local one.

Cribbs has been as good of an addition to the Browns, in terms of overall contributions, as nearly any one whom the various iterations of the front office have brought in, via the draft or otherwise.  The list is incredibly short as to the number of Browns who have added more value for as long a period of time as Cribbs in the last 10 years.  Once you get past Joe Thomas and Phil Dawson, it’s pretty tough to figure out who slips in ahead of Cribbs.

That’s the good Cribbs. 

The bad Cribbs is the one who lacks self awareness, the one who bitches and moans constantly, the Cribbs who was on display this week caught, apparently, lying to the public about the state of negotiations now that he’s a free agent.

Cribbs has been taking his act to the local media to try and drum up grassroots support for re-signing with the team that’s likely to value him the most.  Nothing wrong with that.  But where it gets sticky is when he said that his agents are in talks with several other teams and numbers have been exchanged.  It simply wasn’t true.

In an incredibly rare rebuke, Cribbs’ agents took to the media immediately to deny the claims their principal made, namely that they are talking with other teams.  If they were they’d be in violation of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement, a breach that would place Cribbs, the agents, and those unnamed teams in various levels of hot water.

For example, Cribbs could be prevented from signing with a team that negotiated with him before the league’s March 12 signing date.  His agents could be decertified by the union and thus lose, basically, their business.  The teams involved most assuredly would be severely fined and perhaps lose draft picks.  In short, the penalties for engaging in early discussions with free agents are so severe that there’s no question who’s telling the truth here and who is not.

That’s the problem with Cribbs.  He can’t stand the truth.  I suspect he’ll garner moderate interest on the free agent market but there isn’t any team that’s going to step up and overpay for his limited services.  And let’s be clear about that.  The type of service he can provide is limited, even if he doesn’t think he is.

Probably no other player in the league saw his value decrease as much as Cribbs’ when the NFL moved the line of scrimmage for kick offs forward, resulting in fewer return possibilities.  Cribbs noticed and bitched about it.  He also did more than that.  With free agency pending, Cribbs took it on himself to repeatedly field balls deep in the end zone only to find himself repeatedly getting tackled at the 15 yard line.  There were times, certainly, when he sparked the team with a good return, but mostly he struggled just to get to the 20 yard line because he was ceding 7 or 8 yards from the outset by fielding the ball so deep and then attempting to run it out.  It was selfish.

Cribbs is still very serviceable on the defensive side of a kick return unit but so are plenty of other younger, cheaper players.  His value as a pure punt returner isn’t especially high, either.  On offense, he brings very little to the table.  He’s at best a 3^rd or 4^th receiver, lacking both the blazing speed and the route running ability that a truly professional receiver has.  He’s nice to have around when you want to throw a gimmick at the defense but no offense can survive on that kind of diet.  That’s just the reality of the situation.

It’s a net positive to the Browns if they re-sign him, but that’s mostly for visibility and continuity.  They shouldn’t break the bank for him.  Indeed, they shouldn’t even make a dent.  Cribbs is on the back end of a very decent NFL career and no matter how ham-handedly he tries to manipulate the facts and the media, the Browns still represent the best opportunity for Cribbs.

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In a related story there was a brief item in one of the local papers that this new Browns regime is embracing a deeper level of analytics. That's nice. It only puts them about 10 years behind the New England Patriots.

Advanced analytics aren't quite the thing they are in baseball or even basketball but there's no question most NFL teams, the good ones anyway, are already on it. That's where it becomes difficult for a free agent like Cribbs. It's those analytics that reveal his shortcomings as a receiver and his selfishness as a returner. It's not that Cribbs doesn't have value. He does. But the algorithm that takes into account his performance will do likewise for the similarly situated and assign him a value. If/when Cribbs salary demands exceed the value assigned he'll find it difficult to find the appropriate match.

But none of this is a surprise to Cribbs or his agents. That's why when Cribbs was lying embellishing to the local media about negotiations with other teams he also slipped in the statement that he'd be willing to take a little pay cut to stay in Cleveland. The absolute truth is that Cribbs is in line for a pay cut irrespective of where he signs. Balancing the salary cap is among the most important activities a team's front office undertakes. If you want to understand why the Patriots have remained successful for so long despite a revolving cast look no further than the cold-blooded way they administer their salary cap. When a player's cost starts to exceed his value, he's gone.

When it comes to the Browns and Cribbs that's the calculus, or at least it should be. If Cribbs ends up re-signing it will be because he and his agents landed on a number that is consistent with how the team perceives his value. If he doesn't he'll be gone, looking for another team that he hopes values his services more highly. Good luck.

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There was an item the other day suggesting that the Oakland Raiders are looking to talk to Mike Holmgren about a front office position. I wonder what aspects of his performance in a similar role intrigues them most. Was it his indifferent approach? Was it the surly disposition? How about the overarching bad attitude? Maybe it was all the stellar personnel decisions he made.

I can't imagine the Raiders making a worse decision than hiring Holmgren except they are the same team that basically gave the Bengals a first rounder for Carson Palmer so anything's possible. I just wish it was the Baltimore Ravens or Pittsburgh Steelers and not the Raiders who were thinking of hiring Holmgren. That would be far more impactful for the Browns than almost any other decision they could make in the offseason.

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With the Browns front office now embracing a deeper level of analytics, this week's question to ponder: If this regime had been in charge of last year's draft, would Brandon Weeden's age have eliminated him from being a first round pick?

A Tribute to Bloated Excess

You have to hand it to the NFL. The annual meat market known as the Combine has started and it’s generating all the excitement that the NFL expected when it decided to invite noodnik reporters inside the ropes to watch anonymous-looking faux student athletes attempt to trade in on their three or four year commitment to do the minimum amount of academic work at various Division I schools while enhancing the athletic budgets of said schools so that they could then get on with their life’s work, a 3-4 year career in the NFL that starts with them getting drafted in the fifth or sixth round and ends with them as another Bill Belichick-inspired salary cap victim.

In a completely related story, the NFL revealed Thursday that it wants to overhaul the NFL’s offseason, essentially pushing everything back a month not because it is concerned about the players or safety or anything substantive like that but because it wants to ensure it has relevant events in each month of the offseason, part of the NFL’s quixotic quest to be as ubiquitous in March as it is in October. This is a problem of the NFL’s making, like most problems in the NFL, and as usual they are crafting their uniquely NFL resolution.
  
The problem with the NFL schedule right now, looking at it solely from the point of view of the branding experts the NFL hires to help run its business, is that the event the NFL manufactured out of the Combine now bumps into the event the NFL manufactured out of its once quaint championship game. Both events now dominate February and March is now a sleepy, dead month where free agency begins and teams work behind the scenes in the run up to the event the NFL manufactured out of the draft, which takes place in April.
 
You can well see the problem, right? It’s not just that free agency, which starts in March, doesn’t generate constant coverage, though ESPN tries its damndest to make it so. It’s more that it’s not a visual event. Local television crews are reduced to tracking incoming flights to see who might be visiting Berea and where they might be having dinner but that’s good for about 30 seconds, at best, and it’s all local. The NFL gets little buzz. And for good measure, if you think it’s boring to listen to Joe Banner drone on and on about renovations to the Berea complex, wait until you hear him drone on and on in March about free agents the team won’t actually sign and draft prospects that the team has no intention of pursuing. If you’re the aforesaid NFL branding expert, is that how you really want fans in Cleveland to view your product during March? How about New England where Belichick would rather have a colonoscopy than talk to the press, be it March or December?

Step one of course was to move the Super Bowl into February. If you think it seems nutsy to play football in February in New Orleans, wait until you get the unique thrill it is to play football outdoors in February in New Jersey. But pushing the Super Bowl into February helped distance the NFL’s annual tribute to excess from the more mundane and generally more compelling playoff games that serve as the preliminaries.

Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing can beat the Super Bowl as the most uniquely American event ever. It’s the reason the Taliban hate us. It’s a Las Vegas hotel buffet on steroids shoving pancakes deep fried in lard and coated in chocolate and powered sugar down our throats. There isn’t a story too small, too insignificant to merit a 10 minute piece on Sportscenter. It’s a place where Martha Stewart mingles breezily with Snoop Dog and the rest of us act like it’s normal despite the fact that in any other context Martha Stewart wouldn’t get within two states of bumping into Snoop Dog as he entertains sycophantic white kids from the ‘burbs with his clichéd admixture of marijuana and misogyny.

The Super Bowl is a celebration of almost everything the NFL aspires to be, assuming it aspires only to be a money printing operation. By the time the game is actually played, most people are tuned in not for the action on the field but for the commercials in between.

The Super Bowl may have grown somewhat organically from humble roots to bloated excess but don’t think for a moment that the NFL would change a thing about it, from the staid entertainment (Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band serving as such a glaring exception that I no longer believe that they actually performed but that I imagined it, Bobby Ewing style, as the real entertainment, Styx, ran through an even more overwrought version of The Grand Illusion) to the 12 hour pre games, to the fireworks and the smoke and the National Anthem and the nip slips and, oh yea, the game. Even this year’s blackout actually seems to have been contrived to revitalize a game that was on life support at that very moment.

So, yea, the Super Bowl gets February and all the post game analysis should spill into the few weeks thereafter, that’s the theory anyway. But when the NFL branding experts pushed the Super Bowl into February its glow, which by their calculations should linger for about 18 days thereafter, was getting snuffed out by the Combine, which those same branding experts advised should likewise become an event.

That’s the sole reason, I think, that the NFL Network was invented in the first place. In its early days it offered exactly nothing of any interest to any fan anywhere. That’s still mostly true, actually. But then the branding experts hit on an idea, a perfectly wonderful awful idea. Cover the Combine. And boy do they. From the 40 yard dash to the squat thrust to the cones and to whatever other activity some Torquemada wannabe NFL assistant devised to simultaneously test and embarrass a college kid. What I’m waiting for is for the NFL to broadcast the Wonderlic test administered verbally and with real-time scoring. “What did George Washington say when he crossed the Delaware?” “Poop poop pe doop, poop poop pe doop.”

And let’s just say it and get it over with. The Combine is stupid. If it once had some usefulness it doesn’t any longer. The best prospects shit all over it by refusing to participate, a small and final act of defiance before those prospects fall under the iron fist of the NFL and the increasing fines it administers for virtually any act of noncompliance. At best it serves only to confirm what each team’s scouting department already knows and if it didn’t exist it wouldn’t matter. Teams still bring in all the prospects they want after the Combine ends to do exactly the same thing, confirm what they already know.

But the Combine does serve a larger purpose. Its phony substantive bend, and the reporters who blindly follow the narrative, make it seem as though something is happening. That in turn generates column inches and video reports on every imaginable outlet in the service of the NFL’s ultimate goal, brand awareness. It literally dominates all football talk in February; I mean all football talk once the Super Bowl is in the rear view mirror. Because there’s no turning back on the Combine, mainly because the NFL never turns back on anything, ever, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, it was only a matter of time before it got a full month all to itself. And that will happen when the NFL gets its way, which eventually it will, with the union and revamp the calendar so that the Combine is in March and the draft moves to May. That will make April the dead month of free agency and prospect probing.

I’d like to think that the NFL would cede April to baseball as it’s season opens, but I know better. I’ve been covering this hapless group for far too long already. Somewhere in a conference room on Madison Avenue some branding expert is focus grouping an idea for a Free Agency Bazaar that runs from April 4th through April 21st on Miami’s South Beach. when it happens remember you heard it here first and that now I own the copyright.

Posted with Blogsy

Lingering Items--Ownership Edition

There’s no real playbook for how exactly one goes about the business of actually owning a professional sports team except, of course, the requirement that you have or have access to plenty of money.  But once secured, the day to day job of owning a team is mostly a blank canvas.  Jimmy Haslam, the now-conflicted owner of the Cleveland Browns, apparently is still early on in feeling his way through the process and fans here are worried.

As you’ll recall Haslam gave up the CEO job at His Pilot Flying J truck stop empire in favor of doing whatever it is that owners of professional sports teams do.  In the few months he’s actually owned the Browns, that included quite a bit of activity.  He finessed Mike Holmgren out of town, he fired a general manager and hired another, he fired a coach and hired another, he met with city leaders and then, for good measure, he secured a nice little annuity for his team by selling the naming rights to its stadium for a 20 year term.  It was certainly more than 6 days of work.

But having crossed off those tasks from the mental list of “to dos” that he keeps, Haslam started to realize that there wasn’t much left for him to do at the moment particularly if he was going to allow the people he hired to run his football business to actually do their jobs.

So Haslam decided to push out the executive he just hired from Pepsico to run Pilot Flying J by giving him a different role and took back his old job of CEO.  It was kind of a ballsy move, actually, the kind we’re not used to seeing here in Cleveland.  Holmgren for example couldn’t muster the courage to fire Eric Mangini and put himself in as head coach when that was all he really wanted to do.  Indeed the Holmgren example is instructive.

One of the reasons Holmgren ended up being a lousy whatever the hell he was stemmed from his inability to see himself as anything other than a coach.  He lacked the guts to take the job himself when that would have served both him and the fans far better than hiring Pat Shurmur.  Holmgren thus dithered in a role he was ill suited to play, grew bored quickly and mailed in his job performance, figuratively and literally.  In that sense and with that as a data point, maybe it is good that Haslam went back to what makes him happy.

But Haslam better become more sensitive to the fan base he serves.  Fans here don’t like finding out from the local newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee that he’s had a change of heart about how he spends his day.  They wanted to hear it first hand and didn’t.  Haslam owed this courtesy to the Cleveland fans he expects to support his now hobby and not to the citizens of Knoxville who were just getting to know the new guy at Pilot Flying J.

As to the move itself, Haslam is adamant that nothing has changed regarding his commitment to the team, telling the Plain Dealer that “I don’t think anyone would question our passion, effort, intensity or devotion to the Cleveland Browns and, candidly, to Northeast Ohio.  Our family has a tremendous investment, and we want to win as bad as anybody does up there and we’re going to do whatever it takes to win.”

Not a bad rejoinder to those who would question his commitment but it would have been more effective if he had not referred to the fans as “anybody..up there.”  It probably would have been the opportune time to start referencing the collective “we” and not remind everyone that depending on the route you take, there’s one possibly two states between where his team plays and where his real passion lies.

This is where we get into the whole “how exactly does one actually go about being an owner?” discussion.

In Cleveland the last two owners have had no other job beyond owning the team and I don’t think anyone would hold either up as a model owner or a model for Haslam to emulate.  Art Modell didn’t adapt to the idle time well so he tinkered and tinkered with the team, convinced himself that he knew as much about football as anyone on the planet, and set in motion a decades long course of losing everything he built because of it.  Randy Lerner on the other hand had an immense capacity for being bored perhaps the difference from Modell being the fact that at least Modell at one time in his life actually held a job.  Lerner was like the Hugh Grant character in About a Boy, dividing each day into increments of frivolity in order to make his spectacularly inane existence manageable.

I suspect that most owners in the NFL have some outside business interests that keep them busy during the down days of the NFL, meaning mid February through mid July, but on the other hand Haslam is now one of the very few owners in the NFL who has a completely separate full time job as CEO of a pretty good sized company.  That role requires him to satisfy a whole host of constituents, not the least of which are family members with sizeable stakes in said company.  In other words, Haslam as CEO requires a fair amount of attention to that task.

Does that mean Haslam is destined to become another crappy owner of the Browns?  Not necessarily but there is pause, isn’t there?  By default, Haslam won’t assimilate very quickly if at all in the local community.  In that regard, his “up there” comment is very telling.  Then there is the elephant in the room that no one is talking about—the management team he put in place to run the Browns in his absence.  Fans seem relatively sold on Joe Banner as, I guess, club president or whatever he’s calling himself, but are less so on Mike Lombardi who, whatever his title might be, is the guy populating the team with free agents and draft picks.

Haslam as absentee-owner (and a house in Bratenhal that he says he’ll occupy once or twice a week in season doesn’t make him resident) could work but at the very least the jump he made back to the family business was too soon.  Fans have not had an opportunity to get comfortable with the team Haslam put in place and given all of the other similar teams put in place before them there’s a pretty good chance that fans will never get comfortable with them.

I think Haslam owed it to the fans to stay the course he set out, basically promised, when he became owner.  It was a bit of a bait and switch and is now another reason for fans to think that this isn’t going to work out any better than anything else that’s been tried. The fans may not be right, indeed they usually aren't, but it's up to Haslam to prove them wrong and right now he hasn't made much of an effort to do that.

**

Speaking of owners, the Cleveland Indians’ Larry and Paul Dolan are putting together a nice little offseason for themselves.  When they set out to rectify the chief criticism of them it should be noted.  And so it is that the Dolans have pumped an additional $20+ million into the payroll and hired an actual, honest-to-gosh successful manager for this upcoming season in an effort to rebuild fan faith and recapture fan enthusiasm.

For what it’s worth, it’s hard to tell really whether either of the Dolans are otherwise gainfully employed outside of their duties as owners.  They have investments certainly and other businesses but neither are acting as CEOs of other on-going concerns.  Has that helped or hurt the Indians, hard to say.  But I think the fact that they live locally assuage any concerns about their commitment to the town or team.  The concern with them has always been their financial wherewithal and their generally self-fulfilling prophesy way of running a team they purposely labeled small market so that they could justify running it in small market ways.

The Dolans haven’t become the Steinbrenners but no one expected them to.  But for the first time in years they have decided that reinvestment was needed, the growing number of empty seats around Progressive Field being a serious clue.

There’s no way of knowing at the moment whether the Terry Francono, Michael Bourn or Nick Swisher moves will bear fruit except in the Cleveland-curse sort of way that we know nothing ever works out like it should.  But rightful credit is due to the Dolans and to general manager Chris Antonetti for doing something.  They had to.  If the offseason had consisted simply of bringing in a washed up Jason Giambi and a weak armed Daisuke Matsuzaka, and we’ve had exactly those kinds of offseason in each of the last 10 years, then fans would have blown their brains out.  To put a sharper point on it, fans would have stayed away in even bigger numbers than last season and the Dolans would find themselves struggling to meet the modest attendance totals of the Indians circa any year prior to the move to what is now Progressive Field.

At this point there isn’t any question that the Indians are an improved team from the mess that was last season but just how improved is the real question.  Perhaps the biggest question though is whether this is a one year cash infusion or part of a multi year plan to actually reinvest in the franchise and get it back to where it can actually compete.

Where the Dolans have failed the fans in the past has been in not building on a previous season’s success.  That they have finally reinvested in the team is great and is applauded but it must be part of an overall attitude change and not a one time event or the alienation from the fans they feared for this year will simply be delayed by a year.

**

This all brings us to the last owner in town, Dan Gilbert.  He’s closest, perhaps, to the model that Haslam seems to be adopting.  Gilbert is a Detroit person through and through but what he’s done to overcome the perception as an out of towner has been to move some of his business operations to Cleveland.  Jimmy, are you listening?

The other thing though is that Gilbert, in the various enterprises he has going including the new casino, is perhaps the most distracted owner in town.  Has that negatively impacted the Cavaliers?  Hard to say and the reason it’s hard to say is that the NBA is by far the toughest league in which to build a team back up from the bottom.

The NBA’s history is irrefutable at this point.  Once a team sinks to the bottom it’s at least a decade before it’s competitive again and that’s assuming competent management.  You can try to accelerate the timetable but it’s rarely been done.  The salary cap and the draft lottery combine in a unique way to keep bad teams down for as long as possible.  The Cavs seem on track in that regard.

The reason Gilbert seethed when LeBron James left had everything to do with the financial impact it would have on Gilbert’s empire knowing this history.  With James out of the mix, the Cavs overnight became a bottom tier team with all of the bottom tier  perks that come with that status such as empty seats and decreasing revenues.  If the Cavs were a stand alone enterprise that would be one thing.  But the residual impact of those empty seats spills over to concessions and, more particularly, to a difficulty attracting casual gamblers to the Horseshoe Casino.  A full Quickens Loan Arena for 40+ winter nights a year translates to a lot of lost money at the gaming tables and slots.

Would the Cavs be further along if Gilbert were focused entirely on the Cavs?  Again, hard to say.  Gilbert, like Haslam, believes in hiring professionals to run the business while providing oversight that hardly requires a 24/7 level of concentration.  So Gilbert’s success, like Haslam’s, will depend fully on whether the general managers they have on hand are up to the challenge.

**
A popular question floating around this past week, given the Indians' moves, has been which local team is closest to the playoffs? The better question and this week's question to ponder is which local team is the furthest?

Lingering Items--Losers Edition

As compelling as Sunday’s Super Bowl ended up being, I never lost the sense, not even for a moment, that I'd be conflicted No matter who ever would end up winning. Would it be Baltimore, the city that played a desperate doddering old man like Art Modell like a Spanish guitar as they stole what wasn’t theirs because someone stole what was, or the San Francisco 49ers a team led by a former Michigan quarterback?

In the end, I rooted, and hard, for the 49ers because the Ohio State connections outweighed or at least cancelled out the Michigan influence. Mostly, though I rooted for San Francisco because Ray Lewis is a douche.
Let’s be clear on this point. I didn’t actually care who won and I wasn’t even so much rooting against Lewis and his team winning as much as I was just so sick of everything Ray Lewis that as usual he made it easy to pick against his team.
The convenient lazy postscript is that Lewis ended up being one of a handful of players who compiled a storied career and ended up going out on top. Know this much. Lewis had a storied career and Lewis' last game resulted in a Super Bowl victory for his team. But that will never mean that Lewis leaves as a winner. If there was one shining moment in an otherwise dismal outcome for the team I wanted it was watching Lewis get pushed around like the paperweight he’d become. Believe me when I tell you this, there isn’t one person in the Baltimore Ravens organization, from owner Steve Bisciotti to Ozzie Newsome to the ball boys (who may or may not be led by Eric Mangini as he tries to resurrect a career he sabotaged) who if you got a few Scotches in them wouldn’t admit that he’s glad Lewis and the circus are leaving town.
At best Lewis a distraction. At most he’s a shadow presence who played long past his expiration date. The problem is that the team couldn’t afford to bench Lewis because as the self-appointed heart and soul of the team Lewis put himself (cleverly, I’ll give him that) in a no-touch position. So now John Harbaugh and company no longer have to concern themselves with the Ray Lewis problem. They can actually put someone in there that is competent.
Lewis evokes that visceral reaction in everyone not associated with the Baltimore franchise. Watching the game and all its festivities made me realize once again what an insufferable prick Lewis really is. From the bizarre pre-game interview he gave to Shannon Sharpe, and interview in which he said that he can't be the guy people think (i.e. an accessory to double murder) because God wouldn't allow him to do so much good if he was such a bad guy, to the heavy eye black makeup that passed useful about two exits ago, Lewis is not the embodiment of what the NFL should be pushing forward but a sad, pathetic example of what the NFL has become, a sport that rails against bad actors publicly but rewards them privately.
Lewis is a poser and there are a whole generation of posers just in the NFL that got their start because they saw Mr. Ray act like an asshole while the cameras rolled during the pre-game huddle that essentially featured Lewis chanting incoherently while seemingly whipping himself into a reality-camera induced frenzy. It was always just an act.
But being a poser is hardly an egregious sin these days. In his case, save it for the abject phoniness that is all things Lewis. In his later years he became a self-described man of Christ who seems to have missed a few of the lessons along the way, busy as he was siring six illegitimate children with four different women. Then there was that whole little incident Lewis tries to so blithely shush away involving a double murder. There are plenty of articles around the internets about it so no need to recap it except to note that Lewis eventually plea bargained his involvement down to obstruction of justice, weirdly escaping prison, and then paid hefty private settlements to the families of the two slain men. No one accused Lewis of actually sticking the knife in the two victims with whom he and his posse fought but he was there, his white blood stained suit mysteriously disappeared and there was blood in his limousine. No wonder he settled.
Lewis is likely a Hall of Famer, probably first ballot. He certainly has an impressive playing resume from his early days and he’s been living off that for at least the last 5 years, probably longer. But he probably did enough in his first 10 years to warrant his enshrinement mainly because when it comes to getting elected to the Hall of Fame it’s one thing to be involved in double murder and obstruction of justice aren't nearly the barriers to entry as moving a franchise has proven to be.

**

Speaking of vainglorious jackasses that moved franchises, it was good to see that the Hall of Fame electors chose to kick Art Modell’s candidacy to the curb once again. I suspect you won’t see Art reconsidered until the senior committee lets him in a decade or two from now as an overlooked great of the game.

As with Lewis there’s no need to recount all of Art’s transgressions to make the point about why he doesn’t deserve football’s ultimate honor, not now not ever. That’s what the internets are for. But the fact that the Baltimore media keep pushing his candidacy is both appalling and a marker for why sports journalism has become a nearly worthless endeavor.

Bill Simmons, writing on his Grantland website, gave a startling confessional about the dichotomy between writing what he really feels and writing what is politically correct. It’s what’s kept him from calling out in more forceful terms the cheaters that overwhelm all our sports and instead marveling in their artificially enhanced endeavors. And as Simmons notes, he’s not alone. There’s a whole profession dedicated to doing pretty much the same thing so as to not risk its access.

It’s that same mentality that pushes the sycophantic writers in Baltimore to keep pushing Modell for the Hall of Fame. It keeps them on the inside. That they have to change facts isn't even an issue. Fox News has built an entire network on the concept that facts are debatable. Besides, they don’t want to deal in facts so much as appease an audience that doesn’t want to hear anything negative about the scumbag that screwed an entire city. I have no doubt that these same hacks using the exact same motivation would lead the charge to deny Bob Irsay enshrinement into the Hall of Fame if he was ever a serious candidate. Irsay bad, Modell good.
Guys like Modell don’t deserve to be held up as paragons of virtue. He was anything but. His life at best was a set of competing narratives. There was the good/funny Art, the guy who supported charities and such when the cameras rolled and there was a fundraiser to attend. There was the bad/deceitful Art that lied about moving the Browns and screwed his business partners. The Hall of Fame isn’t for the good/funny kind who donate to charity. Ray Lewis can lay claim to charitable works but I can guarantee you that no one will feel a need to base the decision to put him in the Hall of Fame simply because he found a way to shield income by establishing a Foundation that gave some money to some kids in need. It’s what Lewis accomplished on the field that will make or break his candidacy and so it is with Modell as well. Modell was a loser of the first order in Cleveland. All he did was run off good coaches, make one bad football decision after another, screw the city that flowed millions his way, robbed the fans of a team they blindly supported his follies, all while compiling a record that never did result in a Super Bowl victory until he moved the franchise and for once put it in the hands of those far more competent. The day that qualifies for a bust in the main wing of the Hall of Fame is the day they should shut it down permanently.
**
As it does every year about this time, well, for the last 42 years anyway, the Browns latest bunch of brass is regrouping and trying to figure out how to close the gap between themselves and this year’s Super Bowl champ.
They have their work cut out for them.
On defense I hesitate to say but say anyway that the teams aren’t all that far apart. The Browns have no one who could quite match Ngata, either in temperament or accomplishment, or Ed Reed. And while those are two are a very big presence, the rest of Baltimore’s defense was shaky at best. You could see that on Sunday, particularly when Haloti Ngata left the game.
It’s offense where the Browns have miles to go before they sleep, miles to go before they sleep. Joe Flacco was shaky this past season and then suddenly the switch went on. He played well the last month of the season but really you could actually see the difference starting with the second half of the New England playoff game. Flacco was struggling and so were the Ravens. Then Flacco put it together, his passes suddenly got crisp and he became a real leader. That carried into the Super Bowl. It helps that the Ravens offensive line is solid as are their running backs and receivers but ultimately Flaccos was the difference.
Contrast that with the Browns and you can easily understand why owner Jimmy Haslam already announced that Brandon Wheeden will face competition. Haslam learned early on that this is a quarterback-centric league and the sooner the Browns find a good one who isn't a 30-year-old sophomore the sooner they'll really begin to close the gap.
**
With the news this past week that Travis Hafner wrestled a million or so dollars out of the Yankees despite an irrefutable track record that says he won't play in even half of the games, this week's question to ponder is who will have a better record at season's end, the Indians or the Yankees.

Posted with Blogsy

Lingering Items--A Banner Edition

There are any number of ways to look at the upcoming Super Bowl and the local and national media won't tire of trying to tell you what that should be.  But really if you're a Browns fan is there any other context than to look at the participants and use them as a benchmark for how far your team has to go? Didn't think so.

For in truth, the only point of the NFL, indeed all sports really, is to find a way to get to the top of the mountain.   When you're a team like the Browns that can't ever seem to exit base camp, all you can do at this time of year is to watch the better climbers do what they do best and figure out how to be one of them when you grow up.

The Browns journey over the last decade plus  has been quixotic, to say the least.  To say the most it's been one big cluster after another and while we've dissected all the reasons why until we're as sick as sick can be, the fact remains that neither the patient nor those who care about it most (that's you, the fans) has gotten any better.  This is the narrative that we all know so well, including now owner Jimmy Haslam and his right hand hatchet man Joe Banner.

Haslam has made no great missteps since he bought into the Billionaire Boys Club known as the NFL unless you count his almost blinding trust of Banner.  This isn't a screed about Banner, however, just a cautionary note that while Haslam's methodology is sound it success still hinges on the execution by people.  Banner has enough of a resume to warrant some level of trust but right now the fans are a little queasy placing their faith in the guy who just placed his fate in the combined talents of Rob Chudzinski and Mike Lombardi.

At first I was confused because I assumed that the Browns and Banner were thinking of the guy who played Mike Lombardi in the TV show Rescue Me as their new personnel guy.  Sure that Lombardi was confused about his sexuality but he was a helluva fireman and always had Tommy's back.  So that had to count for something.  Then someone told me it wasn't that Mike Lombardi but the recycled nut job who helped run Bernie Kosar out of town.  That didn't exactly clear things up until I remembered that this is Cleveland and nothing smells as fresh as a repainted house.  So yea, it made as much sense as the Cavs blind faith in Byron Scott.

The trepidation about the actual Mike Lombardi (and Chudzinski) is well earned, sure, but at what point do the fans just sit back and let it all be?  There have been seemingly far more competent hires in the Browns' recent past and yet not a single damn one of them worked out. I suppose then just on the basis of that rare combination of dumb luck and contrarian thinking there's every reason to hope that this can work.

I know more about why Chudzinski hasn't yet been a head coach (young, paying his dues) then the reasons why Lombardi's been on the sidelines for the last 5 years giving curbside opinions into open microphones instead of showering his brilliance on some other wanting franchise.   Maybe the right situation didn't materialize.  Maybe he liked the non pressured life of a pundit.  Maybe no one until Banner trusted him enough to make personnel decisions for real.  So Lombardi enters the fray here in Cleveland with a cloud hanging over him, which is nothing new for virtually and Cleveland sports hire, and an upcoming draft that will either make other teams look stupid for ignoring his acumen for so long or confirm Browns' fans worst fears.

But hell, let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt for now and treat it as if there's a choice. Let's remember that in most circles outside of Cleveland a recommendation, particularly a glowing one, by Bill Belichick, is highly valued.  That doesn't have to be good enough here mainly because Browns fans would be nervous if Belichick up and quit the Patriots and came back to coach Cleveland instead.  But there's really no way of knowing how Lombardi will perform until he does.  Besides let's stop acting as if something terrible will happen if Lombardi does turn out to be the devil.  This franchise through all its losing has proven to be remarkably resilient and the fans remarkably forgiving as it waits for some sort of oracle who probably never will arrive.

**

Are you finding the budding feud between Banner and his childhood buddy and former boss, Eagles owner Jeff Lurie delightfully perverse? I know I am. When Banner and Haslam escaped Arizona without doing something really stupid like making a flavor-of-the-month, always-chokes-when-the-pressure's-greatest, no NFL experience, getting-out-of-Dodge-before-the-NCAA-can-saddle-up guy like Chip Kelly the highest paid head coach in the NFL, they did so because Kelly was vascillating. An attention whore at heart but as decisive as a 6-year-old in Dylan's Candy Shop, Kelly wasn't coming across as all-in. While flirting with Haslam he also was making goo-goo eyes at Lurie and secretly texting his love to Phil Knight. So the Browns' contingent left and Kelly went back to Oregon, a classic case of overplaying a truly lucky hand.

But when the Eagles couldn't find a suitable date they called back Kelly and he proved he isn't always as stupid as he's been and jumped. A press conference was held and all sorts of cutesy pointed barbs were hurled toward banner by Lurie and the next thing you know a rivalry has taken hold. Gosh I hope not.

I'm all for circling the wagons around the locals and protecting them from the invaders but really, what's the point?  Lurie is an idiot. He ran a perfectly successful coach out of town in favor of a perfectly enigmatic question mark.  Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't but why get all grouchy about it? It's not as if the Browns and the Eagles are tethered by their division. They aren't even in the same conference. Chip Kelly could go on to be the next Bill Belichick and Rob Chudzinski could go on to become the next Chris Palmer and it still wouldn't make me question the decision to leave Kelly standing on the tarmac of Sky Harbor airport picking at his scabs. Kelly is a shady character and the Browns always will be better off without him.

On the other hand if Banner engages the fight by bringing in a washed up Michael Vick in order to try and prove a point, then I will start to worry mostly because what's business will have turned personal and that's just one more distraction this franchise doesn't need.

**

Norv Turner was officially introduced to the media by way of a press conference with his new boss earlier this week and all attention turned to the “Brandon Weeden Question.”  Basically, is Weeden the guy or not?

The early verdict is that it’s too soon to tell.  Chudzinski and Turner say they have to look at some more film, talk to Weeden, etc ad nauseum.  But if Brandon Weeden doesn't fit the offense that,Chudzinski and Turner have in mind, well, doesn't that just figure?  Weeden was a risk pick based on age alone. He needed to impress immediately because of his age and instead ended up as one of the worst quarterbacks in the league, a player who had some early downs, some mid season ups and some end of season disasters.  He played like a typical rookie, assuming that rookie was 10 years younger.

Weren’t fans told that Weeden’s age was an advantage?  Whatever extra maturity he brings didn’t particularly translate on the field and so now what Turner and Chudzinski face is a 30 year old second year quarterback.

Will Weeden develop isn't as much the question as will he develop in enough time? That's the question Turner, Chudzinski and Lombardi will debate in one form or another for the next several months. It's the most important personnel question they face and the one they can least afford to screw up.

That said what's the effective alternative? Is there someone coming out in this year's draft that makes the Weeden question a no-brainier?   Hardly. Throw in Weeden's contract, a contract that reflects his actual draft position instead of where he was projected, and you immediately get the sense that no matter how many hours the Browns' current brain trust debates the matter, no matter how much film they watch, no matter how many times they take in vain the names of the previous Browns' brain trust who put them in this position, Weeden will be back under center or in the shotgun come next year's season opener.  Call it the Travis Hafner syndrome—too much contract to dump.

In other words, pray that Banner and Lombardi do the right thing and resign Phil Dawson. I see lots of stalled out drives in the Browns’ future.

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Getting back to Kelly, he's the subject of this week's question to ponder:  What's the over/under on how long he'll stay in the NFL?