Tag: Browns scouting department

Browns make several new hires and promotions in the front office and scouting staff

The Cleveland Browns make several hires and promotions in the front office and scouting staff

Throw out your old Cleveland Browns front office org chart. Thursday saw several changes to the management and scouting staff under GM Andrew Berry.

The Browns hired seven new people into the football operations staff and also promoted or added new titles to 13 returning members, most of them on the scouting staff.

Among the new hires are a couple of expected names. Catherine Raiche is the new Assistant GM and Vice President of Football Operations. She comes from the Philadelphia Eagles and is the highest-ranking female in any NFL front office. Another ex-Eagles staffer, Shawn Heinlein, comes with Raiche to Cleveland. Heinlein is the new Southwest area scout for the Browns, a capacity he’s held with other teams for over 20 years.

The other new hires:

Hajriz Aliu – Scouting assistant

Chris Buford – National scout

Ryan Conway – Scouting assistant

Jimmy Raye – Senior Executive advisor

Cyrus Wolford – Scouting assistant

You might recognize Raye’s name. He has over 20 years of front office experience, including a stint as the Assistant GM of the Houston Texans when they drafted Deshaun Watson in 2017.

The shuffle of the existing employees includes promotions for seven members of the scouting department. In their new capacities:

Adam Al-Khayyal – Director of pro scouting

Zack Ayers – National scout

Josh Cox – West Coast area scout

Sam DeLuca – Assistant director of pro scouting

Matt Donahoe – Southeast area scout

Joe Dever – Mid-Atlantic scout

Max Paulus – Director of college scouting

Former Lions GM Bob Quinn moves from senior assistant to senior personnel/coaching executive, while Joy Tapajcik moves into the role of player personnel and football operations process manager. Shane Normandeau moves from scouting assistant to Football Operations coordinator.

Tyler Hamblin takes over as the director of Football Operations, moving up from the role inherited by Normandeau. Glenn Cook added Assistant GM to his title of VP of Player Personnel, while Callum Mahoney jumps into the role of salary cap and contract analyst.

Browns part ways with area scout Jimmy Noel

Noel covered the Northeast region for the Browns

As often happens in the aftermath of an NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns have made a change to the scouting department. Area scout Jimmy Noel is no longer with the team, per Neal Stratton of Inside The League.

Noel no longer appears on the team’s website as part of the scouting department.

Noel came to Cleveland with then-GM John Dorsey, following Dorsey from Kansas City to the Browns. He has covered the northeast region for the team for the last three seasons. College football fans might recall Noel as a starting defensive back for the Boston College Eagles in 2010-2012.

The week after the NFL draft every year winds up being rife with turnover in the scouting departments, even for successful teams like the Browns.

Report: Browns hire their 1st female scout, Kathleen Wood

Report: Browns hire their 1st female scout, Kathleen Wood, a former Senior Bowl scout and private investigator

The new Browns front office led by GM Andrew Berry continues to make bold choices in the hiring process. Per a report from Yahoo Sports, the Browns have hired Kathleen Wood to the scouting department.

Wood has an interesting resume. She spent 2019 as an area scout for the Senior Bowl, scouring the Southeast region for prospects for the annual All-Star game. Wood has some NFL scouting experience, working as an intern for the Bills and Eagles before joining the Senior Bowl.

Beyond that, it gets really interesting. Wood was a private investigator who built a practice that lasted over 15 years. She left that behind to pursue her dream of scouting football.

Wood joins Callie Brownson as females on the Browns staff under Berry. Brownson is the team’s chief of staff for rookie head coach Kevin Stefanski.

Browns hire former WR Rod Streater to the scouting department

Browns hire former WR Rod Streater to the scouting department after a year as an intern

Rod Streater has shed the intern label from his title and is now a full-fledged member of the Cleveland Browns scouting staff. The Browns have hired Streater as a scouting assistant for the 2020 season.

Streater worked for the Browns as a scouting intern in 2019. He played for the Browns as a wide receiver in 2018 before suffering a major neck injury that ended his playing career. Streater played six seasons in the NFL, primarily with the Oakland Raiders. The 32-year-old is a Temple product.

Streater joins a revamped scouting department that also recently moved Glenn Cook into the VP of Player Personnel role under GM Andrew Berry.

Browns promote Glenn Cook to VP of Player Personnel

Browns promote Glenn Cook to VP of Player Personnel, replacing Alonzo Highsmith

The Cleveland Browns promoted Glenn Cook up the personnel ladder within the team’s front office. Cook, who has been been the Assistant Director of Pro Scouting, will now assume the role of VP of Player Personnel.

The promotion effectively replaces Alonzo Highsmith, who was not retained by new GM Andrew Berry. Cook has been with the Browns since 2016. Like his predecessor, he joined the Browns after working with the Green Bay Packers and played college football at Miami.

He’s worked as a pro scout as well as an advance scout, focused more on the Browns’ opponents than the collegiate scouting realm.

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Report: Browns hiring Packers scout Charles Walls as national scout

Report: Browns hiring Packers scout Charles Walls as national scout

Reports from various Green Bay sources, including one from Jim Owczarski of Packers News, indicate the Cleveland Browns are poaching away Charles Walls from the Green Bay Packers’ scouting department. Walls will serve as a national scout for the Browns.

The move is a promotion for Walls, putting him in charge of a broader set of players than an area scout.

Walls has covered the Southwest region as an area scout since 2017. He has worked with the Packers since 2013, serving as a scouting intern and the team’s NFL Scouting Combine scout before heading out on the road. He also has some college coaching experience following the end of his playing career at Old Dominion, where Walls was part of the school’s first-ever football team in the late 2000s.

He joins the new front office staff under GM Andrew Berry. It’s fairly common for new regimes to make changes to the scouting department. Interestingly, Walls had strong ties to the former Browns regime headed by GM John Dorsey and VPs Eliot Wolf and Alonzo Highsmith, all of whom had extensive Packers backgrounds.

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