Jimmy Haslam's interference in the ill-conceived pursuit of Deshaun Watson is proof that dysfunction has returned and replaced COVID in Browns headquarters.
Browns must be proactive in cleaning up the stinking mess left by the ill-conceived pursuit of Deshaun Watson
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland.
Take a deep breath. Exhale. And listen up. The Browns’ chaotic situation at quarterback is easily fixable.
But they must be proactive and take these steps:
1. Cut the rhetoric and pretense that you’ll bring Baker Mayfield back.
Whatever scintilla of hope left of him being able to lead this football team was undermined by your ill-conceived, cockamamie and incredibly dumb pursuit of Deshaun Watson.
Your dysfunctional approach to replacing Mayfield has resulted only in making him a sympathetic figure with your polarized and very confused fan base.
After Mayfield alienated his teammates with repeatedly dismal play and then refused to play in the 17th game, I didn’t think it was possible for Mayfield to be cast as a victim. But your misguided strategy and disingenuousness in public and private comments about Mayfield have given him legitimate reason to say, “I’m outta here.”
In truth, Mayfield did you a favor by big-timing local media and dialing up ESPN’s Adam Schefter to publicize his desire to be traded. Now you can trade him anywhere, including the NFL gulag in Detroit, where Mayfield-advocate John Dorsey presides as an executive consultant, instead of shepherding him to a premier destination like you did for Odell Beckham Jr.
And when it’s over, you can stand up and say, “Baker wanted out,” like Seattle did with Seahawks franchise-icon Russell Wilson.
Don’t even pretend to hold Mayfield’s trade demand against him. This isn’t a No. 3 tight end or running back asking out. This was your starting quarterback – past tense intended. He can not function if he doesn’t want to be here.
You wanted Mayfield out before he asked out. So don’t hold it against him that he beat you to the punch in stating it publicly.
2. If you haven’t talked to the 49ers about a trade for Jimmy Garoppolo or to the Falcons about Matt Ryan, hope that it’s not too late.
These are your best options. If your pro personnel department hasn’t come to that conclusion, you need to make a change there.
Ryan will only be available if Watson chooses the Falcons over the Saints as his new team. That decision would also open up the Saints as a potential trade partner for Mayfield. So once again, Watson holds the future of the Browns’ quarterback position in his hands – even after eliminating them in this ridiculous sweepstakes for his services.
To put the future of the Browns in the hands of Deshaun Watson is deplorable. You’ve now done that twice, and you must deal with it.
Be proactive in acquiring your next quarterback. He will be a two-year fix to take you to the next young hopeful.
Garoppolo and Ryan are imperfect long-term solutions, but they are ideal bridges to buy you two years to identify the future franchise quarterback.
Garoppolo and Ryan are both capable of taking the Browns to the playoffs, even the division title. They are both infinitely more accomplished than Mayfield.
Not realizing this at the onset of the transaction season was an incredible failure of evaluation, analytics and common sense.
The Deshaun Watson debacle
All along, I gave the Browns way too much credit.
I thought their infatuation with Watson was hatched in the offices of GM Andrew Berry, coach Kevin Stefanski and chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta.
I figured if these smart men concluded that Watson was the best quarterback to take the Browns to the necessary level to compete with AFC powers Kansas City, Buffalo, and yes, Cincinnati, along with emerging threats from the Chargers, Broncos and Raiders, much less division rivals Baltimore and Pittsburgh, I trusted their evaluation and also had faith that they had a logical Plan B, even a Plan C, if the Watson overture failed.
I was wrong. Very wrong.
The Watson courtship reeks of Jimmy Haslam doing his Frank Langella imitation from the under-rated, prescient motion picture Draft Day. In the key scene, Langella, playing fictitious Browns owner Anthony Molina, implores Kevin Costner, aka GM Sonny Weaver, “Sonny, make a splash.” Molina wanted Weaver to draft hotshot quarterback Bo Callahan for all the wrong reasons.
In the movie, Weaver ultimately defies the wishes of the clueless owner and finally scoffs at him, “You hired me to do a job. Let me do my job.”
Shame on Berry and DePodesta, and Stefanski, for not doing the same.
They could not possibly have seen the wisdom of going all-in for Watson, a quarterback with elite traits but also several negative factors that couldn’t nearly justify the enormous cost of draft capital and young players in trade, much less the public backlash from documented allegations of perverted sexual misconduct.
How could Berry and Stefanski not understand that Watson was a native of the South, born in Atlanta, starring at Clemson, SC, and then as a pro in Houston, protected under a retractable roof?
Watson hated playing in Cleveland in 2020 when a November thunderstorm forced the teams to evacuate the field for 25 minutes before the game. In the game, 60 mph winds limited Watson to zero points until 5 minutes left in the fourth quarter.
How on Earth did they expect Watson to waive his no-trade clause to make Cleveland and AFC North football his home against competition from Atlanta, New Orleans and Carolina?
How could Stefanski not see that Watson, who likes to throw the ball 40 times a game, was not the right fit to execute his methodical, ground-oriented, play-action passing game in a tough, physical division amid inclement conditions during the playoff run in December?
How could a Browns high-ranking official tell ESPN’s Chris Mortensen that the Browns needed “an adult” at quarterback and then enthusiastically pursue a man accused by 22 massage therapists of sexual misconduct and assault?
How could Browns co-owner Dee Haslam, a member of the NFL personal conduct committee, who wants to be considered more than the wife of the team owner, sign off on acquiring a quarterback facing such serious allegations? If Dee Haslam can’t stand up to someone of Deshaun Watson’s questionable character, then what exactly does she stand for?
A terrible plan
The offseason priority to replace Mayfield was totally justified. The coach and the locker room obviously lost confidence in him. His immaturity and his insatiable desire to cash in on his brand through marketing endorsements undermined his ability to lead.
The proper strategy would have been to pursue more suitable – and less expensive – options such as Garoppolo, Ryan, and Derek Carr.
The “all-in” effort to replace Mayfield with Watson was so egregiously wrong, it raises the specter that dysfunction again has infiltrated the building renamed CrossCountry Mortgage Campus.
An NFL team executive volunteered to me that the organization had made positive strides in the first two years of the Berry-Stefanski regime partly because COVID protocols had kept Haslam from frequenting the building. Now that those protocols have been lifted, Haslam is back to interfering with his football men.
DePodesta, too, deserves blame. In a sidebar interview at Stefanski’s introductory press conference in 2020, DePodesta explained his mysterious “strategic” role in the organization.
“I think my role first and foremost is to not only help us create but also implement [our] shared vision,” he said. “And then, ultimately make sure that we stick to it. Really relentlessly. That’s really my role. So I look at all the processes within a football operation – hiring someone, how we do scouting, how we look at our numbers – I dig into all those processes and make sure they align with our vision and that we all as a group continue to stay aligned and on the same page.”
He failed badly by allowing Haslam to ramrod Watson as the No. 1 priority at quarterback.
It’s now up to DePodesta and Berry to clean up this stinkin’ mess.
