Speaking of Analytics... Peter King Interviews DePo... A Long, Must Read...

Tour2ma

MMQB: The big baseball brain behind the Browns rebuild

Peter King/Sports Illustrated via MMQB Apr 3, 2017 at 9:12a ET

PHOENIX — Paul DePodesta, the Cleveland Browns’ trump card on the rest of
the NFL. Nice fellow. Harvard guy, and, to his credit, doesn’t intimidate you with his Ivy League brain. Fifteen months into the new job after two decades with five Major League Baseball teams. Nowhere to go but up. The Browns are in a three-year run with the most high draft picks of any team in football every year: nine in the first four rounds last year, nine in the first five rounds this year, seven in the first four rounds next year. DePodesta, Cleveland’s chief strategy officer, is the mover and the shaker and the Moneyballer in this show. Right?

I spent 40 minutes with DePodesta at the league meetings the other day. I don’t doubt his import to the organization and to the cause of rescuing the Browns from a life of awfulness.

But I still have no idea what he does.

If that's the case, then Peter wasn't paying attention. For what Peter missed and the rest, go to:

http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/cleveland-browns-paul-depodesta-nfl-draft-peter-king-040317

TexasAg1969

I finally got around to reading this and found this key element that I had questions about from last year.

From the article:

"I asked DePodesta why they’ve lost key players who they probably should have kept.

“Great question,” he said. “I’d say going back a year when we did have a handful of free agents and we allowed them all to sign elsewhere, that was a moment in time. That is not something that we want to do continuously. Again, that was a situation that we felt like we really do need to rebuild the foundation of this organization and it is almost like redoing a house, you need to rip down all the walls and get it down to the studs. Now, when you do that and you tear out all the walls and the floors and all you have left are the studs, you look at it and go, wow this looks terrible. We never want to go through this again and I think that is our attitude.

“Even as we got into the season last year, there was a monumental shift in our organizational evolution and it was when we traded for [New England linebacker] Jamie Collins. What we were trying to show everyone in our organization hopefully, and all our fans, was that that is now behind us and we are adding to this and building; this is not going to be about tearing it down all the time. This offseason we were able to re-sign Jamie, we were able to re-sign [guard] Joel Bitonio and we added free agents this year. We feel like we’ve got a handful of players that will be part of our core going forward, and our goal is to now build out that core and ultimately, when it comes time, retain it. It did come time right now, with guys like Bitonio and Jamie, we had to retain them and we did. And we will have more players that will be like that.”

gumby73

Oh I'd say some Stud's fell out also along their way. Named Schwartz, Robertson & Gipson. With one word "reboot"

TexasAg1969

So you're saying we may have also taken out a load bearing wall?

Tour2ma

@gumby73 said:
Oh I'd say some Stud's fell out also along their way. Named Schwartz, Robertson & Gipson. With one word "reboot"

Gipson? He still belongs in our misgivings list?

And while I loved Craig, I don't think we really missed him last year. Not sure he or Kirsey, if he was pushed outside, was our answer at LOLB even if either had a good chance of improving our play there.

hoorta

@texasag1969 said:
So you're saying we may have also taken out a load bearing wall?

Yeah, and we kept that rotted o-line support beam named Erving.

Goes to show if you're a first round pick, you get additional chances to prove beyond a doubt you suck.

Mudfly

@tour2ma said:

Gipson? He still belongs in our misgivings list?

And while I loved Craig, I don't think we really missed him last year. Not sure he or Kirsey, if he was pushed outside, was our answer at LOLB even if either had a good chance of improving our play there.

Id say this....a lot of the guys we let go, were not our future.....BUT, were better than the guys who replaced them.....simple. Gipson was better than Poyer....Whitner was better than Campbell......Gabe, Hawk and Hartline were better than Loius higgins payton.....Schwartz was better than Pasztor......Mack was better than Erving......etc

So....to understand....none of those guys who left were gonna be stars.....and most would be gone eventually.....but a few woulda coulda shoulda stayed and woulda coulda shoulda helped this team going forward.....

@hoorta said:

Yeah, and we kept that rotted o-line support beam named Erving.

Goes to show if you're a first round pick, you get additional chances to prove beyond a doubt you suck.

Absolutely.....and we woulda been pissed if we didnt give him a roll and see how it went.....

BUT.....on the other hand.....Hue stayed with him WAY too long......and, ideally, THEY should have seen how he played and prepared for his failure(which came fast and hard)

Tim Couch Pulls Out

@hoorta said:

Goes to show if you're a first round pick, you get additional chances to prove beyond a doubt you suck.

Well...yeah...