Personnel executives Alonzo Highsmith and Eliot Wolf have followed John Dorsey out the Browns' door. (Cleveland Browns)
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
MIAMI BEACH, FL
Bizarre at best and insane at worst, the Browns continued their full march into a second era of football-by-analytics by sweeping out their most experienced football evaluators.
The crumbled John Dorsey Era has given way to the Revenge of the Nerds.
Gone is Eliot Wolf, assistant GM.
Gone is Alonzo Highsmith, vice president of player personnel.
Gone is Steve Malin, director of college scouting.
That’s a combined 51 years of NFL personnel experience wiped out in one business day by Andrew Berry on his second day on the job as general manager and executive vice president of football operations.
All three were appointed to their positions by Dorsey in 2018. They and Dorsey were responsible for the players that produced a record of 13-18-1 over the 2018-19 seasons.
Not great, to be sure, but better than any two-year stretch in the eight years of the Jimmy Haslam family ownership.
It was the best two-year mark since the Browns went 14-18 in 2007-08.
But the young Harvard guys taking over, led by Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta and Berry, figure they can do better.
None of the moves was surprising, given that Dorsey’s football operations department clashed with the analytics side of the building.
But the haste at which Berry and DePodesta disposed of Dorsey’s lieutenants say a lot. Most NFL teams hold their talent evaluators through May even after a regime change.
A source said it was important for Berry to be “respectful, open, honest and straightforward with all involved.”
Wolf could have stayed in a reduced capacity, said the source. But like Dorsey, Wolf could see the future – and it involves more algorithms and spreadsheets and less traditional, feet-on-the-ground scouting.
The irony of Wolf’s parting is that he was considered a hot candidate for the regular GM role by Haslam in one of the owner’s four previous regime blow-ups. But Wolf held on to his assistant role in Green Bay hoping he would succeed Ted Thompson as Packers GM. When the Packers went in another direction, that’s when Wolf rejoined Dorsey in Cleveland.
They never thought the relationship would be so short-lived. Wolf’s father, Ron, a Pro Football Hall of Fame executive who re-established the Packers as an NFL elite franchise in the 1990s, actually relocated to Cleveland to be with his grandchildren and watch the Browns prosper under the Dorsey regime.
Ron Wolf had a scathing rebuke of the direction the Browns are heading.
He told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen that teams that rely heavily on analytics are “out of control.”
“When something goes wrong, who takes responsibility? Their answer: ‘Well that’s what the data told us.’ What a crock. That’s what got ’em 1-31.”
That, of course, was the Browns’ record in 2016-17 when they last made football decisions dictated by analytics under DePodesta, former executive VP Sashi Brown and Berry.
The coach, of course, was Hue Jackson, who never embraced the data-driven philosophy. The Browns hope things change under new coach Kevin Stefanski.
"I wanted to go in a different direction because my philosophy on football is different from theirs,'' Highsmith wrote in a text to ESPN’s Josina Anderson.
There will be more fallout, possibly after the draft, as Berry digs in and considers replacement scouts for those hired by Dorsey.
Coordinator updates: A source confirmed that Stefanski has hired Alex Van Pelt and will give him the title of offensive coordinator.
Van Pelt, 49, is a former NFL quarterback with three teams who has 12 years experience as an NFL offensive assistant. He was quarterbacks coach the last two seasons with the Bengals, and also held that position with the Packers, Buccaneers and Bills. He was also Buffalo offensive coordinator in 2009.
On the defensive side, San Francisco defensive secondary coach and pass game coordinator Joe Woods all but confirmed he will join Stefanski as Browns defensive coordinator after the Super Bowl.
Woods’ contract expires after the 49ers play the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 54.