Cleveland Browns: Does winning validate everything?

The Cleveland Browns have been criticized for their latest approach to rebuilding. But will winning validate everything they are doing?

It may have become a bit of a cliche over the years, thanks for former NFL head coach Herm Edwards, but you play to win the game.

That is true for every NFL team, in the immediate sense for teams like the New England Patriots or the Green Bay Packers, and in the long-term rebuilding sense of teams like the Cleveland Browns.

It can be hard at times, as a fan, to put up with yet another rebuilding project, as each previous rebuild was long on promises and short on results. It can be made more difficult when, as a fan of a team that hasn’t been known for winning in a long time, you express your opinions about what else is happening in the NFL.

We were reminded of this during draft weekend, when we made a mild comment on Twitter about Jeff Fisher, the exceedingly mediocre head coach of the Los Angeles Rams. We don’t remember the exact comment, but it referenced the fact that Fisher has only won more games than he’s lost six times in his 21-year head coaching career.

The Browns will succeed if they work smarter, hire the right coaches, draft the right players and find a little luck along the way.

A Steeler fan was quick to comment, in a nice way it should be noted, that a Browns fan should not be commenting on another team’s losing ways. The thinking being that if you follow a team that is not a winner, you can’t possibly have a valid opinion.

It is a strange way to look at it as a team’s winning percentage is just one in a long line of factors that fans have absolutely no control over. If true, it would also mean that if you happen to be a fan of a team that is a consistent winner, then you are automatically a “smarter fan.” While there is no doubt that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady know what they are doing in New England, spend a few minutes on a Patriots’ website and you quickly realize that knowledge does not carry over to the fan base.

That brief interaction on Twitter left us wondering if winning truly does validate every decision a team makes? Take the Denver Broncos, for example. Through a combination of a very good defense, a few breaks and everything coming together at the right time, the Broncos were able to win the Super Bowl this past season.

Heading into the year, Denver head coach Gary Kubiak had a career winning percentage of .488 in his previous eight seasons as a head coach, which inspires no one. But is he know suddenly a great coach because he has a Super Bowl title on his resume?

What about John Elway? It’s not hard to make a case the Elway has completely mismanaged the team’s quarterback situation following Peyton Manning’s retirement, leaving the defending champions with a quarterback room of Mark Sanchez and rookie Paxton Lynch. But are those decisions suddenly the correct ones because Elway now has a Lombardi trophy in his office?

It is a similar situation to the one playing out in Berea right now with the Browns front office. Executive vice president of football operations Sashi Brown and chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta have been openly mocked over the past few months because they are not longtime “football guys” and are taking a “different approach” to running the Browns.

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We’re not sure what that really means, though. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it is not as if other longtime “football guys” were just born that way. You only to look at Mike Lombardi, who is the very definition of a longtime football guy, and his trail of failures to realize that having someone like that in the front office is no guarantee of success.

If Brown and DePodesta do actually turn the Browns into winners it won’t be because they are embracing “analytics” (which have been a part of the NFL since at least Tom Landry was coaching in Dallas and probably as far back as Paul Brown in Cleveland) or taking a “moneyball approach” to the game. They will succeed because they work smarter, hire the right coaches, draft the right players, see those players avoid injury and find a little luck along the way.

And if they fail, it will be for the same reasons every regime has failed in Cleveland since 1999: because they didn’t draft the right players, hire the right coaches, and didn’t catch a break when they needed it.

It might not be a glamorous way to look at it, but it is a tried-and-true method for winning and the only one guaranteed to work.

Now all we need them to do is start winning to help validate our argument.

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