Tag: Sashi Brown

Former Browns QB coach reveals ex-GM Sashi Brown wanted Trubisky over Mahomes and Watson

It’s the first true confirmation of the long-speculated rumors about Sashi and Trubisky

Buried deep in a first-person recounting of the Buffalo Bills and that team’s ongoing quarterback travails, the Cleveland Browns also catch some flak for their own internal QB decision-making processes.

Tim Graham of The Athletic reported an interview with ex-Bills GM Buddy Nix and former Buffalo QB coach David Lee that broke down several bad decisions made on the QB front in western New York. It gets interesting for the Browns when Lee moves to Cleveland in 2017 as the team’s QB coach under then-head coach Hue Jackson.

Lee goes on the record to blame then-GM Sashi Brown as the reason why the Browns did not land either Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson with their second first-round selection in that draft. After acknowledging that everyone was in lock-step on drafting Myles Garrett No. 1 overall, Lee has this to say about the QB decision in that vaunted 2017 draft,

“Hue and I were in total agreement,” Lee said. “We loved Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, and we would have been thrilled to death with either.”

Why didn’t the Browns pull the trigger?

“Sashi wanted (Mitchell) Trubisky and to accumulate picks rather than see the player that was right in front of him. When we made that trade with Houston for the 12th pick,” Lee sighed, “I just said, ‘Where am I?’ ”

Talk of Brown preferring Trubisky to Mahomes and Watson dates back to that draft. Lee’s on-the-record citation is the first confirmation from someone inside the organization of that assertion.

Trubisky wound up being the No. 2 overall selection after the Chicago Bears traded up one spot to land the North Carolina QB. The Browns traded the No. 12 overall pick to Houston so the Texans could select Watson, a 2-time Pro Bowler and one of the game’s brightest young stars. The Browns landed Notre Dame’s DeShone Kizer in the second round. After leading Cleveland to a winless 2017, he’s now out of the league.

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Breer: Andrew Berry following the Eagles model, not Sashi Brown’s

Albert Breer noted in this week’s MMQB that Browns GM Andrew Berry is following the Eagles model, not Sashi Brown’s. And he’s 100% right.

It’s a very common notion, particularly amongst the gadfly media catering to the browbeaten, to inextricably link new Browns GM Andrew Berry with former GM Sashi Brown. Berry rose through the ranks under Brown, the team’s head personnel man from 2016-2017 and shares the academic, analytics-based background, so it’s an easy connection to make.

But as Albert Breer smartly notes in the latest installment of MMQB on Sports Illustrated, it’s simply not reality. Instead of following in his old boss’s misguided footsteps, Berry is marching down the path plotted by his 2019 team, the Philadelphia Eagles.

It’s something many in the Browns-centric media have been trying to convince a (rightfully) hardened and skeptical fan base for months. The recent moves in the front office confirm that Berry is walking away from Brown’s model, and it’s something Breer highlights in his column,

The new structure is, in fact, one reason why so many of the guys Berry worked with previously had to go—former assistant GM Eliot Wolf and VP of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith would have had to take de facto demotions to make it work. As the Eagles have it, the scouting department is set up in two silos. One is headed up by a VP of player personnel (Andy Weidl), the other by a VP of football operations (Berry’s old role). The former basically leads scouting, the latter everything else (analytics, etc.) In that structure, there was no room for an assistant GM like Wolf, and Highsmith likely would’ve had to be re-assigned to allow for Berry to have his own guy as scouting head (remember, Highsmith was hired over the top of Berry by GM John Dorsey)

Brown’s Browns had a definite bureaucratic kitchen slant to them, with a lot of cooks putting their own flavors into every single dish. It produced a lot of mismanaged, foul-tasting concoctions that would have set Gordon Ramsay into a profane tizzy. That’s not Berry’s way, something that was very evident from how he handled the scouting combine, free agency and the draft.

It’s not a guarantee that Berry’s path will succeed. But emulating a Super Bowl champion franchise is much smarter than leaning on the ways of a system that produced an 0-16 campaign and several regrettable personnel choices.

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Browns have been well ahead of the curve in hiring minorities

The Browns have had 3 men of color as head coaches and 3 other African-Americans running the team

The NFL continues to try and promote minority hiring among its 32 member clubs. The latest attempt at expanding upon the “Rooney Rule” is a proposal that will provide draft incentives for teams to hire and retain minorities in coaching and front office positions.

Voting on this proposal will come soon, and it’s a divisive issue that creates many unpleasant conversation tentacles and debates. Hiring people of color in positions of power in a league where people of color make up over two-thirds of the players seems like a natural concept, but it hasn’t worked out that way in most places.

Cleveland has largely been one of the few exceptions. The Browns have been one of the most aggressively progressive organizations in hiring African-American men to prominent decision-making roles.

Take new GM Andrew Berry. He’s the third African-American hired to run the Browns front office (in one title or another) in the last decade, following Sashi Brown and Ray Farmer. Cleveland’s longest-tenured head coach 1999 is Romeo Crennel, hired in 2005 and lasting four full seasons. Hue Jackson — hired by Brown — got 2.5 seasons as the head coach. Terry Robiskie even had a brief run as an interim coach. The Browns are one of the very few NFL organizations that have had multiple people of color as both head coaches and general managers.

 

And because of that, even describing …

And because of that, even describing his role can seem vague and nebulous. When it comes to the Wizards in particular, the bottom-line is that general manager Tommy Sheppard makes the basketball decisions while Brown and his staff do whatever they can to help make those decisions better reasoned and informed. “I provide Tommy and [head coach Scott Brooks] and [assistant GM] Brett Greenberg and the rest of that staff as much support as we can through a player development and engagement function. Also, team operation as well and then certainly on the research and strategy side. They really could operate on their own if they absolutely needed to. We’re here to supplement and enhance,” Brown said.

Much of what Brown will do to lift …

Much of what Brown will do to lift Monumental Basketball’s teams is still in the works, he says. The Wizards, for instance, have made strides with analytics including with the hiring of assistant coach Dean Oliver. But more can be done both for them and the other franchises. Brown said there are plans to build out a more robust analytics operation for the defending-champion Mystics. “Having data be part of the information that we consider when we are making these really important decisions and complex decisions, is I think a wise practice and something we fully embrace from Ted Leonsis and his partnership group all the way on down,” Brown said.