By now, we've all heard about it. The "nonsense." The mixed messages. The choice of a high-ranking front office member to attend an MIT summit on the rise of analytics in the MLB when the NFL free agency period had only just gotten underway. The seemingly complete and utter lack of direction. By now, we all know that the Cleveland Browns, long the laughingstock of the NFL, are again looking like a rudderless franchise with a few too many new parts who don't yet know how to haggle on the NFL's open market and, therefore, piece together a competitive team.
But here's the thing - what if the personnel losses suffered and the lack of impact free agents signed are a good sign for the moribund Browns franchise? What if Cleveland, long the dumpster into which better NFL organizations tossed their mediocre, overpriced garbage, have finally figured out that winning the offseason doesn't mean winning at all?
"The Cleveland Browns fan base, they deserve better than that," former Browns safety Tashaun Gipson said recently. "They more than certainly deserve better than that. I'm always going to be rooting for them because they were the only team that took a chance on me but to answer that question I truly don't know what it's going to take to turn it around. But I know that it's just going to continue to be a revolving door if it doesn't get turned around year in and year out."
In the above quote, Gipson, who spent the past four seasons in Cleveland only to sign on with the Jacksonville Jaguars this month, was responding to a question regarding the Browns' decision not to dive head first into the murky free agency waters this offseason. But he might as well have been talking about the last two decades of the franchise's existence. Not since 2002 have the Browns reached the postseason and not since 1994 - 22 years ago - have they won a playoff game.
Save for the three seasons the Browns spent (mercifully) out of their misery from 1996-1998, they've been disappointing their fanbase to an extreme and almost unfathomable degree every year since the late 60's.
And yet, somehow, since Jimmy Haslam took over control of the franchise in 2012, it's been even worse. Not because the team's record is worse - at this point 7-9 probably looks about the same as 3-13 to Browns fans - but because under Haslam the team's annual demise has been marked not just by ineffectiveness, but by issues of idiocy, perpetrated by coaches, front office personnel and players alike, and a complete lack of culture, of even a sliver of a sane, let alone winning, mentality.
Inappropriate texting by a GM to the sidelines during a game? Check. A fourth coaching staff put in place by Haslam in the five years since he took over the franchise? Yep. And a once heralded player, former franchise quarterback Johnny Manziel, jettisoned after two years of mediocre play and more media reports regarding his off-field interests than on-field exploits? You bet.
via GIPHY
Put it all together and what do you have?
A franchise that sorely needed to not just make top to bottom changes, but alter the very makeup of the team and the front office as currently constructed. And maybe, just maybe, that was the thinking behind letting talented homegrown players like center Alex Mack, tackle Mitchell Schwartz, wide receiver Travis Benjamin and Gipson up and walk away only a few short months after cutting ties with Mike Pettine's coaching staff and Ray Farmer's front office cronies. And maybe there's more to that lack of free agency spending than just limiting self-inflicted wounds.
Those aforementioned players weren't just starters in Cleveland though - they were leaders in the Browns locker room. Maybe jettisoning them - because really, when a guy like Schwartz comes back and says he'll take the initial offer made to him by the team only for Sashi Brown and Co. to wipe their hands and say, "no thanks," there's not much else you can call it but an intentional parting of ways - was a two-fold decision-making process.
Schwartz, steady though he may be, is just a guy. Benjamin, fast and able to take the top off defenses, is one-dimensional and has excelled at the NFL level just once out of four tries. Gipson had a stellar 2013 season and followed that with a mediocre 2014 and an injury-plagued and mostly ineffective 2015.
All good players, all former Browns draft picks. Guys you want to keep, right? Only maybe good enough to stick around, maybe decent enough to get a second contract, isn't really good enough?
Really, Mack is the only head-scratcher of the bunch. Other than 2014, when he appeared in just 5 games, Mack has played a full slate of 16 every season since his draft year. He's smart, talented and versatile. He would have been a fantastic fit in new Browns head coach Hue Jackson's scheme.
But maybe letting him walk was about more than immediate value in 2016. Maybe the Browns know that they need to turn the page on what has, for so long, simply not worked. Out with the bad, too-accustomed-to-losing core, in with the young and ready to learn. And Mack, after some difficult dealings with the franchise, certainly seemed to have his heart set on moving on. And no one faults him for that.
Jackson, Brown and Paul DePodesta are surely aware of what the response has been to their inactivity, but they're also surely aware that searching for quick fixes to a problem that's been plaguing the franchise for over two decades simply wasn't going to yield the desired results. As it stands right now, the Browns have 10 picks in the 2016 NFL Draft, four of which come in the first 100 selections.
That's not just ammo to restock or retool or rebuild - that's ammunition to change the fundamental nature of the team.
And sure, the draft is a crapshoot and nothing is guaranteed with those picks, but for Browns fans, this much is true - next season does not matter. Not in the standings at least. The Browns' new brass doesn't want to just rip down the foundation of their house, they want to change the landscape on which the structure is built.
That will take time. Next season, 2016, will be about implementing Jackson's no-nonsense, business-first culture and, presumably, coaching up those 10 or so draft picks and whatever other undrafted free agents they pluck. And then and only then, if that first step of what is likely to be an arduous and plenty difficult process goes as planned, then Browns fans, you can worry yourself over free agency spending and quick fixes for roster holes that by that time, may have already been fixed.
