Cleveland Browns: 5 Ways Haslams can best help the team

1. Can the Haslams Avoid the Temptation to Choose the Quarterback?

The Haslams have always stepped up to the plate to write the checks to bring the best coaches and players to Cleveland. However, the team has been hurt when ownership becomes too involved in the process of acquiring and developing quarterbacks, especially when JH3 has had an active role in selecting the quarterback for the team.

The business about the homeless guy choosing the quarterback is not true, of course. That was just JH3 telling a funny story that the press ran with. However, though it is not precisely known who ordered whom to do what, there is an implication that JH3 was too emotionally involved with the process of drafting Johnny Manziel and installing him as the starter without full support from the organization.

As a result, the story goes, coach Mike Pettine was fired partly because he was not in favor of the plan. That also cost the team the services of  Brian Hoyer, a quarterback who had a lifetime winning record with the Browns who wanted to be here.

Did the Browns really run off a quarterback who went 10-6 for them?  Yes, they did! Let’s not do that again, please. Blame can be spread between ownership and the front office, but no one in the organization looked particularly good in that untidy affair.

Another flub came in trying to mediate the dispute between coach Hue Jackson and GM Sashi Brown in 2017. Brown traded away veteran quarterbacks Robert Griffin III and Josh McCown, leaving the job in the hands of DeShone Kizer, who was clearly not ready to be a starter.

Again, we do not know all the facts in the case, but from what we know,  Jackson apparently wanted his guy, A.J. McCarron, and a trade involving a second and third-round draft pick, was arranged to bring him over.

It’s one thing if it was totally the plan of general manager Sashi Brown, but ownership created tension between Jackson and Brown by allowing Jackson to come directly to ownership to complain. That decision-making process led to an awkward compromise that would have been a glaring error.

It was all the more foolish because McCarron was only on contract for half a season, and became a free agent thereafter. He could have been signed with no sacrifice of draft picks if the Browns could have waited until the off-season. Also how good do you think the quarterback is going to be with zero practice reps with the team and only a few weeks left in the year?

Fortunately, that trade was not completed due to a paperwork flub, because if it had been, then Nick Chubb might not have been a Cleveland Brown. One thing the franchise does not need is A. J. McCarron in place of Nick Chubb.

The owner should not be mediating disputes between the GM and the coach. The owner is the boss, the general manager manages, the coaches coach and the players play. Things get fouled up if these roles are confused.

In the specific case of Sashi Brown, it should have been his call which quarterbacks were kept on the roster. Although Brown’s decision to cut all of the veteran quarterbacks was probably a bad mistake, it only made things worse to influence a foolish trade.

Baker Mayfield is the team’s franchise quarterback until such time as John Dorsey and the new coach change their minds, so if there is a quarterback controversy, it will involve the second-string quarterback this off-season.

Hopefully, by now the Haslams have learned to trust Dorsey to acquire the right quarterbacks, and the coach has to be trusted to pick the right guy to be at the top of the depth chart.

If either screws it up, it does not help the situation for the ownership to impose their will on the team, even if they are correct.