There are plenty of conspiracy theories concerning Paul DePodesta and Jimmy Haslam of the Browns; some are believable and some not so much.
It really doesn’t take a conspiracy theory to explain why the Cleveland Browns had a 7-10 record last season. They were just not very good.
Nevertheless, there are two things that Dawg Pounds reeks of and one of them is conspiracy theories. Our favorite conspiracy theory is that the Browns’ losing ways were a result of co-owner Jimmy Haslam III and advisor Paul DePodesta crunching out nonsense calculations and then forcing them into coach Kevin Stefanski’s playbook.
This narrative comes from (among other places) “secret sources” of Tony Grossi in The Land on Demand, who claimed that DePodesta came up with a faulty pass-laden game plan for the frigid New Orleans game in minus-16 wind chill. DePodesta’s faulty analytics, it’s alleged, caused the Browns to rely too much on deep passes from Deshaun Watson.
People who understand the workings of a football organization best understand that analytics (we used to call them stats) is simply a tool. Scouting reports are a tool. Film study is a tool.
What’s wrong with using these tools to create game plans? Should the Browns go back to the 1930s and not use stats or look at the game film when creating game plans? Would that make the anti-analytics crowd happy? Should the Browns fire the scouts and use only the coach’s intuition to create game plans? Is that how Belichick does it?
A normal organization uses all the stats that it has available, uses scouting reports and film studies, and looks for interesting trends. That’s not a conspiracy. The idea that a numbers guy in San Diego is dictating game plans to the coaching staff with the support of an authoritarian owner (who is no longer the CEO of Haslam Sports Group, by the way) is a little far-fetched and likely to be the product of a disgruntled fired ex-employees fertile imagination. That’s why the sources are secret. If they were out in the open, we would all laugh at them.
Let’s address two major concerns about Stefanski’s supposedly unorthodox playcalling that some observers believe are overly influenced by math geeks.
So what about going for it on fourth down?
So what about going for it on fourth down instead of kicking the field goal inside the 10-yard line? Secret sources allege that ruthless Paul DePodesta is forcing the coaching staff to go for it on fourth down instead of taking the field goal, despite the fact that they know this is the wrong decision.
Look, analytics is present in every sport. In basketball, it took years for the geeks to convince the coaches, “three points are worth more than two.” The coaches kept whining, “yeah, but you miss threes more often.”
Okay, but sometimes you get the rebound, and when you make it, three points are worth more than two. Three points are worth more than two. Honest, we wouldn’t lie about something like that! Finally, people started to shoot three-pointers, and lo and behold they scored more points. Perhaps the game has room for players like Steph Curry after all. Now everybody does it.
In baseball, it took 50 years to quit listening to the old-school purists who wanted power hitters to sacrifice bunt to move a runner from first base to second base. It’s usually a dumb play and it costs runs rather than generating runs. Yes, sometimes it does work. But more often you give up a valuable out which could have been used to generate hits and long balls, purists be hanged.
Without going through mountains of data, one reason why going for it on fourth down and short yardage inside the 10 makes sense is that even if you miss, the other team has 90 yards plus to score and that is very difficult to do. The stats show that your team is still more likely to score even if you miss the first down and have to go on defense.
Sometimes, the other team will march down the field 65 yards or more and kick a field goal or score a touchdown, but the odds do not favor that. Field position does matter, so your team has a good chance of getting the ball back and making the next score. So if you have a reasonable fourth down play down by the goal line, seven points are more than three. And if you miss, you will probably get the ball back and score anyway. So go for it.
By the way, in case you didn’t notice, almost everybody in the league does this now, not just the team that employs Paul DePodesta. So the conspiracy theory just does not wash.
Four ground yards are no good and only seven yards matter
One of the screwiest rumors is that Paul DePodesta punched some numbers into his shiny new calculator and concluded that gains of four yards or less on the grounds have no value to a football team and that only gains of seven yards or more are beneficial.
That’s why the Browns attempted to use the deep ball versus New Orleans in freezing cold weather. Kevin Stefanski can be confident of keeping his job by adhering to the DePodesta game plan, according to one of Tony Grossi’s secret sources in The Land on Demand. The secret source, who purportedly worked in football operations claimed that “4-yard runs were of no value. Only runs of seven yards were of value. DePo came up with some magical score.”
In the Saints game, the facts are that the Browns aired it out with 31 pass attempts in that game versus 34 rush attempts. The Saints let Andy Dalton throw the ball only 15 times, and they ran the ball 39 times for 152 yards.
However, that was partly because Dalton split time with Wildcat quarterback Taysom Hill, who had a good game with nine rushes for 56 yards. If you discount quarterback runs, the Browns actually ran the ball more than the Saints, 31 to 30.
Just as a guess, the secret source might have been a fired assistant coach or intern associated with the running game, either a running backs coach or an offensive line coach or some such position. Since the secret source can only describe the stat as “magical” we can assume that he/she had not totally mastered the mathematical concepts. It seems that the source did not quite understand what DePodesta was communicating.
However, we can discuss the conundrum that the entire NFL is facing: What is the right mix of run versus pass plays in general, and specifically for the Cleveland Browns?
Purists like to run, run, run all the time like the 1964 Browns. However, some things have changed. The 1964 Browns threw 19 interceptions (5.7%) and had a completion percentage of 52.6%, which was pretty good back then. They fumbled 15 times, including six by quarterbacks. They had 435 rushes versus 344 passes.
So they ran a lot and didn’t turn the ball over when they did run. When they passed, they often turned the ball over and half the time didn’t make any yards. And they were World Champions.
The 2022 Browns played 17 games instead of 14, and they threw only 12 INTs and their percentage was only 2.2% versus 5.7% for their 1964 counterparts. Their completion percentage was 62.0% versus 52.6%. Plus, the pass interference calls so ridiculously favor the offense that it is not even funny.
Needless to say, the 2022 Browns made 6.9 yards per pass attempt and 4.7 yards per rush attempt. They had 15 fumbles, seven by quarterbacks. If we attribute quarterback fumbles to the passing game, they had 19 total turnovers versus eight for the running game.
Thus, the Browns still have an advantage in the run game and that’s why they continue to run the ball with Nick Chubb.
However, some teams limit their interceptions to under 10 per season. In that case, the analytics guys might very well want to know, “why are we running the ball at all if we are making seven yards per pass attempt versus four yards per rush attempt? Seven is more than four!”
One valid answer is, you still have to run the ball some of the time to keep the defense honest. The defense will shut you down if you are too one-dimensional. But it is certainly true that pass-happy offenses can thrive in today’s NFL. If you can have your druthers, you would druther pass than run today. That might be translated into some form of statistical analysis which might get a traditionalist run-oriented coach riled up. That seems to be what happened.
Now, what about the run-first offense? If you do not have a star quarterback, you can still win with a premier running game and top defense and special teams. However, the running game does not make up for an underperforming defense and mediocre special team’s play. The Browns found that out last season.
Trying to build an offense on big-play passing is not a conspiracy. It’s common sense in today’s NFL. However, one reason why the Browns’ ownership is challenged from time to time is that they have been associated with meddling in the past. Remember the Johnny Manziel debacle?
Haslam wanted Johnny Football on the Browns
One reason not everyone believes the Browns’ upper management claims of non-interference with the coaching staff is they have been guilty in the past. One of the most famous instances of ownership meddling was in the Johnny Manziel affair.
To be fair, it’s not the case that all the experts hated Manziel from the get-go. Some writers were calling for him to be drafted first overall. There were rumors that the Browns had him ranked highly early on, though former Browns President Joe Banner (who, by the way, is an absolutely brilliant guy, well worth reading) says that off-the-field concerns caused them to take him off the board altogether by the time Banner left the organization.
Never was a quarterback so loved by an owner as Johnny Manziel was loved by Jimmy Haslam III. Most observers believe that JH3 overrode the recommendations of his scouting department and bypassed Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo in favor of Johnny Manziel. Manziel was the son of a prominent oil man, and so was owner Jimmy Haslam. There couldn’t be a better match. Haslam loved Manziel like a son.
In his rookie year, Manziel sat on the bench while Brian Hoyer led the team to a 7-4 start. After three straight losses, we believe that JH3 ordered coach Mike Pettine to bench Hoyer while the Browns were still in contention. Nobody could possibly believe that this was a sound football move, as Manziel was simply not ready. It had to be a decision directed by ownership. Manziel went 0-2 and locked in a 7-9 losing season.
The following year, he had some impressive games but the team believed that he had relapsed into a pattern of excessive alcohol and alleged drug use.
No matter. Jimmy Haslam enabled him and protected him from discipline. The theory was that since quarterbacks like Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, and Brett Favre were hearty partiers and still performed at a high level, perhaps young Manziel would be able to follow their example.
Unfortunately, not everyone is able to balance the dual lives of a party boy and an NFL football player. Manziel won two starts and threw for 372 yards versus Pittsburgh. Eventually, however, he soon disappeared into a haze of smoke and alcohol.
The net effect, however, was to establish Haslam’s reputation as a meddling owner. To a large extent, that fiasco fed into the proper decision to make Dee Haslam the CEO of Haslam Sports Group rather than Jimmy. Dee, for her part, has sought to clearly define the roles of each position in the Browns’ hierarchy and limit the extent to which ownership can influence the operations of the team.
Still, once an organization loses its credibility, it takes a long time to rebuild confidence in it, and for that reason, it’s understandable if the Browns are the subject of conspiracy theories from time to time. Nevertheless, no, this corner does not believe that JH3 and DePo are dictating game plans to the coaching staff. We do believe wholeheartedly in UFOs and Bigfoot, however, and hope that the Browns select a few extra-terrestrial mutants in the upcoming NFL draft.
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