John Dorsey is rightfully the toast of Cleveland right now, but some success of the Cleveland Browns is due to the previous administration
Although General Manager John Dorsey is rightfully the toast of Cleveland right now, much credit for the 2019 success of the Cleveland Browns is also due to the previous administration of Sashi Brown. Brown took over a poor Cleveland Browns team and promised to deliver a contender by an analytics-based approach to manipulate the NFL draft in his favor and playing ‘Moneyball’ with the salary cap.
The 2018 squad shows promise that the dream will come true as the roster is now filled with young and improving players, and the coffers are charged up with salary cap space galore. However, the process nearly destroyed the team.
During Brown’s tenure, the team went 1-27. Worse, most of his draft choices not panning out and he managed to not provide coach Hue Jackson with an experienced veteran quarterback that he could be comfortable with. In particular, some of his moves were so destructive to the team that it became impossible for the team to coexist with its GM.
Hence, Brown was fired and it was left to John Dorsey to wisely utilize draft choices, trades, and free agency to bring Baker Mayfield, Denzel Ward, Nick Chubb, and Genard Avery to the team as well as veterans E. J. Gaines, T. J. Carrie, Damarious Randall, Terrance Mitchell, Breshad Perriman and Greg Robinson.
The Browns would never call what they did “tanking” in that the players on the field were always trying to win the game. However, it is clear that the Browns front office removed talent from the roster in order to qualify for top draft picks and also create a favorable salary cap structure. They created an environment that encouraged losing and lots of it.
Sashi Brown’s plan
First of all, Brown, assisted by Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta and others, admitted that the Browns were not as good as other NFL teams in the area of talent evaluation and scouting. In fact, they were clearly worse than other teams, as they consistently drafted poor talents like Johnny Manziel, Justin Gilbert, Trent Richardson, Barkevious Mingo, Brandon Weeden, and Brady Quinn.
The Browns also admitted to themselves that they could not attract free agents to the team as effectively as other teams. Teams like the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers create a “Winner’s Discount,” whereas losing teams like the Browns must pay a “Loser’s Tax.” In other words, a player typically commands a substantial pay raise to decide to play in Cleveland. Players like Jamie Collins and Kevin Zeitler were significantly overpaid to leave winning teams and sign with the Browns.
Based on these inescapable truths, the only way to build the team is by having more draft picks than other teams, and by having more salary cap reserve to allow them to outspend their competition. In this way, a winning team can be built after a three or four year rebuilding period.
How they stockpiled picks
The rebuilding is accomplished by the football version of ‘Moneyball’” That is moves are made on the basis of mathematical calculation and value assessment, not by gut feel. Draft picks, players and wins can be compared using the same valuation theory used by Harvard economists to evaluate the true value of corporations.
mportant parts of the process were worked out years ago by the Dallas Cowboys who assigned “Schramm Points” to draft picks to compare them. The index is set with a mid-first-round draft pick worth 1000 points. The first overall pick is worth three times as much, and the last pick in the first round is worth only 590 points. Modern analytics strategists ask whether those sharp differentials in value are warranted given that your scouting is imperfect, and if so that means that the Schramm values at the top of the first round are over-valued.
An important question is how to evaluate the trade of future resources for present resources. As a whole, the NFL generally assumes that future years are not very important. This is certainly a gross error. For example in 2007 the Browns traded a 2nd round 36th overall pick (540 Schramm points) plus a 2008 first round (let’s assume that it would have been estimated at mid first round or 1000 points), and in return the Cowboys gave a first round pick, 22nd overall used to draft Brady Quinn (780 Schramm points). For this move to come out even, you have to downgrade the 2008 first round pick to 240 points instead of 1000, a discount factor of 76% for a one year delay in draft value.
Needless to say, the Browns’ trade for Quinn was enough to make an analytics expert gag. How can you afford to lose 76 percent of an immensely valuable resource? Phil Savage and the Browns were grinning from ear to ear, believing that the 2008 draft could be given away cheaply. But reality set in when the 2008 draft rolled around, and they realized that they really did want to have a first-round draft choice.
The Cowboys, on the other hand, wound up immensely pleased with the deal. More than likely, a rebuilding team should be willing to give up a draft pick this year in order to move up in next year’s draft and gain an extra pick. This explains why the Browns were willing to trade the second overall pick in 2016 (who turned out to be Carson Wentz) and then take that haul and trade back again. In terms of Schramm points, over three years the Browns received picks scored at 4790 points (3 number 1’s, 1 number 2’s, 4 number 3’s, 2 number 4’s and a number 5).
The Browns gave up the second overall pick and a number 4 (1874 points). The trade was a fantastic potential haul for the Browns, but was ruined by Brown’s horrific selection of Corey Coleman.
Table 1 was downloaded from http://walterfootball.com/draftchart.php
Managing the Salary Cap
Sashi and the Browns also had radical ideas on how to manipulate the salary cap. Their concept was to create the ability to massively outspend the rest of the league in year 4 and 5 of the rebuilding program, but this required underspending in years 1 and 2 and to a lesser extent in year 3.
Brown and DePodesta realized that expensive veteran players actually work against the goal of team building. Because the salary cap rules permit teams to save money for the future, money spent in 2016 would not be available for 2019 when the team would actually try to win it all. Hence, any veteran that did not appear to have the potential to contribute to the 2019 Browns (i.e., three years ahead) would be cut. In addition, the Browns would not sign multiyear contracts with veterans older than about age 27. Hence guys with moderately high salaries, like Paul Kruger, Karlos Dansby, Tramon Williams, Josh McCown, Desmond Bryant, Donte Whitner, Gary Barnidge and Joe Haden were cut.
Other veterans were allowed to leave in free agency even they might have been interested in staying. Losing stalwart right tackle Mitchell Schwartz was a disastrous move, but if your goal was to draft Myles Garrett first overall, it was a pretty good move because with no offense a 1-15 record resulted.
More from Dawg Pound Daily
- 2023 NFL Mock Draft: Browns make surprise move for left tackle
- Browns: David Bell was excellent against man coverage as a rookie
- Former Browns wideout Josh Gordon shines in XFL debut
- Cleveland Browns: 3 Running backs who can replace Kareem Hunt
- Cleveland Browns lose QB Coach Drew Petzing
A particularly interesting case was Brock Osweiler. In this case, the Houston Texans realized that they no longer wanted Osweiler to be the first string quarterback, but they were committed to spending $16 million in salary for 2017. The Browns agreed to assume the $16 million salary cap charge, but in exchange, the Texans had to give the Browns a second-round draft pick. One way to look at the trade is the Texans gained the ability to pay a free agent $4 Million dollars a year for four years of a free agent (or whatever they want to total $16 Million), while the Browns made a commitment to a future second-round draft pick for four years.
The net effect for the Browns was to transfer on-field assets from the 2017 team to the 2018 team. Even though the money was taken away from what could have been used to sign players for 2017, the return, in the form of draft pick Nick Chubb, didn’t occur until 2018. The reduced level of on-field talent contributed to the Browns’ poor performance and their ability to draft at the first overall position in 2018 to select Baker Mayfield.
The 2017 team paid only $106 million in salaries to players who actually took the field, the second lowest total in the NFL. $48 Million was spent on players who were not on the field, including Osweiler as the biggest expense. The contributed strongly to 0-16.
The key to the trade should have been Osweiler, if he could have either played for the Browns or been traded for something tangible. Instead, the Browns just cast him aside and paid his salary so that he could sign as a bargain free agent to be the backup quarterback for the Denver Broncos. If you are getting the idea that Sashi Brown was not all that interested in winning football games in 2017, you are probably correct.
While the 2017 team had one of the lowest outlays for salaries of players on the field, the 2018 squad was supposed to turn things around, and hopefully enough to impress free agents and their agents to the extent that they would be willing again to sign with the Browns without demanding extra financial inducement to come to Cleveland. The 2019 and 2020 roster was intended to be one of the highest paid in the league, as salary cap space created in 2016 and 2017 would finally be used to overspend.
Where he went wrong
What Sashi did wrong was to go too far. In particular, some of his moves had the primary effect of weakening the 2016 and 2017 teams without generating much salary cap savings, which caused the Browns to become radioactive to players around the league and especially their agents.
The Joe Haden case was pivotal. The team did not save much money by cutting him, because a lot of his money was guaranteed. Sashi cut him anyway, and as a result, the team still had to pay $7 Million in 2017 against the cap. This $7 Million discount made it possible for the otherwise cap-strapped Steelers to sign Haden. No team would ever allow a star player to go to their arch rival, never mind paying most of his salary in order to allow him to do so.
Essentially the Browns gave $7 Million to their archrival in order to save $4 Million of cap space. They saved more money for the Steelers than for themselves! No Cleveland fan is going to be excited by saving a relatively small amount of salary cap if it means bolstering the already dangerous Steelers to make them one of the best teams in the NFL. Even worse, it signaled to players agents that a long-term deal with the Browns was a bad idea.
Another Sashi move which had the primary effect of weakening the team in a key area to ensure a bottom-5 finish was to deliberately rid the team of veteran quarterbacks. Josh McCown, Robert Griffin III nor Brock Osweiler were retained for 2017. As mentioned, once the Browns agreed to assume Osweiler’s contract, they were committed to pay his salary, so no cost savings occurred by getting rid of him. Moreover, Hue Jackson apparently did not have confidence in either Cody Kessler or Kevin Hogan. Hence the disastrous decision to start DeShone Kizer was made. That was another key step towards a 0-16 season.
These and other similar deals greatly weakened Brown’s credibility, and had he remained with the team in the 2018 off-season, it might have killed major free agent deals. If you remember the debacle of 2014, in which six or seven head coach candidates turned the Browns down, the 2018 off-season might have been even worse, although this time it might have involved players rather than head coaching candidates.
Another problem was that Brown was just not a good judge of talent and could not draft. You can be really great at math and statistics, but there is still a human element to talent evaluation and scouting that cannot be replaced by analytics. One of the most inexplicably bad decisions occurred in the 2016 draft when he selected four wide receivers from one of the weakest drafts for the position in recent memory.
Analytics is supposed to be a value-based approach which favors maximizing talent rather than drafting to satisfy positional needs. Simply put, you are supposed to draft the “best player available” rather than drafting for position, especially when your team is weak and needs help anywhere it can get it.
Corey Coleman, Jordan Payton, Ricardo Louis, and Rashard Higgins were not impact players, although Higgins is a valued possession receiver. To create roster space for this bunch, the Browns had to cut Taylor Gabriel, a valuable No. 3 receiver, to create roster space. Gabriel is a good-but-not-great receiver, but he had more yards in the past three years than all four of these weak draft picks combined. Needless to say, that is a pathetic performance. After working hard to accumulate draft picks, you can’t turn around and waste them.
Brown evidently failed to account for the true negative impact of his questionable football moves. Namely, if you prematurely cut the contracts of players who can still play, it has a tangible impact on the future cost of players. It probably increases the dollar amount by which the team would have to pay free agents to sign with the Browns. For example, many observers including Bill Barnwell of ESPN estimated the Browns had to pay Jamie Collins and Kevin Zeitler a significant premium to get them to come to Cleveland, probably in the range of 30 percent. The moral issue also increases the probability that good players like Jason McCourty and Danny Shelton will request to be traded. Those effects needed to be included in Sashi Brown’s (now Paul DePodesta’s) spreadsheet.
DPD reached out to Dusty Gwinn of Mad Dog Sports for comment on the effect of front office malfunctions on the “loser’s tax.” As a player’s agent, Gwinn was reluctant to confirm the numbers used by Barnwell, but admitted, “I would suspect there is some truth to that position and the best path to a championship ring is always alluring.”
Had the Steelers gone to the Super Bowl with Haden, the humiliation might have been too much to bear. It could have literally destroyed the team, by creating a mutiny among the players and making free agent signings much more difficult.
As it was, 0-16 was a disaster but the Browns were able to climb out of it as the Haslams finally came to their senses and fired Sashi Brown and then hiring John Dorsey and finally drafting the right quarterback in Baker Mayfield. That probably restores some confidence that the Browns have a future, and there could even be a wide receiver willing to sign with the Browns.
The most positive consequence of going 1-31 was that the Browns had the first pick in the draft both years, allowing them to draft Myles Garrett and Baker Mayfield. Dorsey chose Mayfield on the basis of Mayfield’s unusual ability to make decisions very quickly, resulting in one of the quickest releases in the NFL.
Sashi Brown probably would have relied more on measurables such as height, weight 40-yard dash, and stats. Although we can’t know for certain until Brown writes his memoirs, it may be speculated that he had bought into the hype surrounding Sam Darnold from the time he was recruited by USC in 2016, where he was one of the most impressive freshman quarterbacks ever in terms of his size, arm strength, and accuracy. At any rate, Brown was going to take his chances on a franchise quarterback in the 2018 draft, but he never made it that far.
Modifying Brown’s methods
Sashi Brown was a bit like the deranged doctor who likes to brag about his successful medical treatment while omitting the fact that the patient died.
Yet, Brown had a role model a few years earlier on how to build for the future and yet not abandon the present. In 2012, his former boss, Joe Banner realized that Trent Richardson was not going to live up to his draft status and prevailed upon the Browns to trade Richardson for a first-round draft pick from the Indianapolis Colts.
Thus, Banner also transferred resources from the present to the future, but in addition, the Browns replaced Richardson for one year by signing veteran Willis McGahee. Banner was still criticized for the deal, but in that instance, they did not abandon the idea of having a credible team. Perhaps this should have suggested a better approach for Brown. Go on a diet, yes. But do not completely cut off food and water, okay?
More from Browns News
- 2023 NFL Mock Draft: Browns make surprise move for left tackle
- Browns: David Bell was excellent against man coverage as a rookie
- Former Browns wideout Josh Gordon shines in XFL debut
- Cleveland Browns: 3 Running backs who can replace Kareem Hunt
- Cleveland Browns lose QB Coach Drew Petzing
Analytics is not an excuse for a ruthless single-minded approach. In optimization theory, you do not have to limit yourself to a single goal, such as, i.e., to win the Super Bowl at all costs. You can mathematically frame multiple goals such that, say, 90 percent of your goal is to win the Super Bowl in four years, but you also want to spend some of your resources to win now. You also have to realize that deliberately understaffing the offensive line is going to get your quarterback killed, as evidenced by the 2016 team that resulted in a broken collarbone (RG3), broken shoulder blade (McCown), injured ankle (Whitehurst), concussion (Kessler, twice).
The GM and the owner need to set the team goals carefully. The salary cap is probably the largest single issue. If you cut the expenditures on players on the field as severely as the Browns did there will be huge repercussions. The analytics model has to estimate the effect of these moves on the cost of future free agents. If you systematically terminate contracts early (say, Dansby, Tramon Williams, Kruger, McCown, RG3, etc), future free agents are going to become harder to sign and the asking price will inevitably increase.
That has to be managed more carefully. If the “loser’s tax” effect were to have been more accurately and quantitatively modeled, likely the Browns would not have made many of these moves and they could have avoided winless seasons while still creating salary cap carryover.
Analytics or not, the proposed salary cap moves have to make at least some football sense. If you do decide to make a difficult cut in order to reduce the salary structure of the team, there needs to be some compensating move. Some portion of the money saved from these salary cap moves should be directed to sign players for the short term to hold things together.
The Browns are lucky to have recovered from 1-31. If some other team tanks to that degree in the future, there is a very good chance that they will be playing in London or Mexico City.
Tankology 102 — The Oakland Raiders
Tankology has not died with Sashi Brown but will continue to be practiced in one form or another by NFL teams as part of their rebuilding process.
The 2018 Oakland Raiders, to cite one example, seem to be employing methods similar to Brown’s. When Jon Gruden returned to the Raiders, he found himself at the helm of a team with a bloated salary cap structure.
He resolved the problem by trading Khalil Mack to Chicago in exchange for draft choices. He also cut several high priced veterans just as Brown did. Oakland did not finish 0-16 and is drafting fourth rather than first overall. But they have three (count ‘em) draft picks in Round 1 this year. The Raiders are now in the top three actual salary cap space is concerned, along with the Jets and Bills, and should be well positioned for a rebuild in 2019. We’ll see if they can select players wisely or not.
Tankology, Analytics, the Browns and the future
Perhaps the best General Manager would be someone who could create value by trading draft picks like Sashi Brown, but draft like John Dorsey. The Browns might actually be able to have the best of both worlds, given that the Browns have retained analytics expert Paul De Podesta on staff.
Interestingly, Brown was fired not because his trades were bad, but because his draft picks were terrible. Dorsey was fired by Kansas City because they hated his trading of draft picks. Namely, they questioned the value of quarterbacks Alex Smith, and Patrick Mahomes. In retrospect, those were great deals for Kansas City, but fans were calling for Dorsey’s head at the time those deals were made.
Still, much of Brown’s methodology for rebuilding was viable if a bit distasteful. Rebuilding teams should trade back in the early rounds; refrain from offering big free agent contracts and long-term commitments; cut players on the current roster if they are deemed unlikely to contribute in Years 4 and 5 of the rebuild. Future GMs will study what Brown did, but will probably be more careful to consider the full consequences of cutting a starting caliber player. Although it’s the fastest path to creating cap space, the disproportionate impact on the team must also be considered.
In particular, it is a total disgrace in the NFL to go 0-16, and for some franchises, the damage might be severe enough to force the sale of the team, or God forbid, moving the franchise to another city.
A rebuilding franchise has to impose some restraint on how far it will allow active salaries (i.e., the money paid to players who actually suit up and play on Sunday) to fall. The GM ought not to sabotage the Coach, even if it results in obtaining the first overall pick of the draft. Not only is that a shameful strategy, but losing is a hard habit to break, and it may be presumptuous to think that you can just shut off the desire to win and then turn it back on again.
Brown could argue that, in the end, the Browns wound up with Baker Mayfield and that justifies all the pain and heartache to get there. That point could be debated endlessly. This writer doubts whether Brown had the evaluation skills to select Baker over several other very talented quarterbacks in the 2018 draft, but that is just a subjective opinion. Let us just say that the Browns are fortunate to have a player of Mayfield’s ability on the team.
In any case, now that other teams in the NFL have had the opportunity to watch how the Browns did it, there are bound to be copycats, who will use similar methods to rebuild their teams. Hence, Sashi Brown’s impact will be felt in the NFL for a long time, both good and bad. He deserves credit for many of the moves that led to Baker Mayfield and Myles Garrett coming to Cleveland.
Still, let’s not do this again, shall we? Future rebuilding efforts around the league are going to employ Brown’s techniques, but probably in a way that shows greater respect to the desire to win each game.