The Truth about Sashi Brown

[Mind Character]

**This is not a Hue thread (there's already a fire Hue thread(s) but one to examine aspects of the Sashi Brown, especially to shed light on neglected realities of decision made while he was a GM

There's a lot that's not brought up (good and bad).

------------------------------------

Most takes on Sashi are black or white, good or bad, dichotomous evaluations.

For me, it's possible to say Sashi Brown will go down as one of the greatest GMs impacting longterm sustainable winning and he was a better GM than most while also believing that we needed to upgrade in the GM dept or make Sashi the CEO and bring in a knowledgeable executive at all the depths/aspects of team/roster building.

A lot of things have gone unsaid and unaddressed about his tenure that should be given some light.

First....A few things to point out about Sashi Brown:

1, He was the greatest GM in recent football history at acquiring draft capital and cap space

2, He was the greatest GM in recent football history at being a press conference CEO and frontman for a major organization.

3. He was the greatest GM in recent football history at sticking to the plan and being disciplined and risk averse in decision making

4. He was the greatest GM in recent football history at using the power of experts/personnel employees consensus to drive decisions based in the wisdom of consensus.

5. One of the better GMs (w/ DePodesta as strategy officer) at creative trades (Jamie Collins, Osweiler Trade)

6. Had a good 2nd draft

With that said, it's possible to say all those things AND for it to be the correct move to fire him and replace him with a GM like John Dorsey more familiar with the numerous other dimensions of what it takes to build a winning NFL roster.

One of the major overlooked issues in his tenure was the decision to draft and/or rely on whatever consensus there was for Emmanuel Ogbah, Joe Schobert, and Carl Nassib, These selections showed that key decision makers and Sashi did not get that a critical aspect of roster building is drafting to the scheme and utilization plans of the coaches.

On no planet are Ogbah, Schobert, and Nassib 34 defense players. In fact, their selections forced Ray Horton (his issues in coaching aside) to run a 43 scheme (also not Shelton's best scheme). This caused confusion and cognitive burden on players going from scheme to scheme (In the same year, Ogbah played 5tech 34 DE. 34 OLB, and 43 DE).

While not a fatal error, a seasoned GM does not make those decisions and that those decisions were made at the time (they make sense now given we are in the 43), it did show a lack of knowledge in basic fundamentals of roster building

Beyond that there were the Free agents and QB decisions.

A GM has to have conviction and their own football expertise to stand on certain decisions even when in disagreement with Coaches in order to arrive at a collaborative correct decision. As much as has been made about Hue's opinions on the draft worthy QBs, you have to have a GM that doesn't just consensus build opinions and can make the critical decision in the heat of battle whether that be trading up for Goff when one's franchise QB is in one's sights, taking Wentz (although I was team Goff or trade down). or trading up from 12 to 9 to get Mahomes.

The free agency decisions were mostly atrocious (were they apart of the longterm plan of losing to win?) not to sign a veteran QB, boost the leadership profile of the team when the leadership void was created (Damario Davis and Joe Haden were impact leaders/voices on the team despite criticisms of their play), not investing in the Wide receiver position and thinking Ricardo Louis as a number 3 and Kenny Britt as a number 1/2 would get it done.

With the capital we have, we need to hit in FA and in the draft and a more knowledgeable decision maker was required. To be clear, I would have loved to keep Sashi as Team President/CEO in a position that could be the frontman of the franchise and use his intellect to facilitate thoughtful decisions while hiring a guy like John Dorsey as Head of Football Operations. A may have been too many cooks in the kitchen however and discouraged candidates like John Dorsey.

Ultimately, Sashi was a good GM, a human like all of us that has goods and bad aspects, led strong consensus driven decisions, was disciplined at sticking to the plan, had a good 2nd draft, but lacked the depth of knowledge required to successfully navigate key decisions in roster building.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

Cheese and rice I forgot how much you love to listen to your inner monologue....

Just say Sashi was the GOAT and be done with it and all the smart people will agree and the idiots will argue it.

[Mind Character]

17 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

Cheese and rice I forgot how much you love to listen to your inner monologue....

Just say Sashi was the GOAT and be done with it and all the smart people will agree and the idiots will argue it.

LOL

@LETSGOBROWNIES

"I'm Sorry But Due to The Unfreezing Process I have no Inner Monologue"

 

[candyman93]

I feel what really did him in was his awful free agency decisions.

[OttoGrahamsGhost]

I agree with candyman. We all knew he was not a football guy but a lawyer who is good with business decisions. 

Although I loved what sashi did for the team. He was set up for failure whether his plan worked or now. (I think it worked) I’m really seeing the issue here is an owner who is too caught up in the day to day ops of the team. Haslam wants to be a decision maker. 

Sashi didn’t have the right football people working for him.  That’s why he was fired.  But he could manipulate trades and the draft like no other GM before him. 

[Thomas5737]

I think being a "football guy" is overrated. It isn't like he didn't know or understand the game. He may not have breathed football his entire life but you don't really have to in his position. We don't know how his draft picks will turn out but we know he added a lot of future commodities while also adding a lot of additional picks in the current drafts. If Coleman, DeValve, Njoku, Shelton, Garrett, Ogbah, Shobert, Peppers end up being decent to good players he will have fared very well and the QB position would be his only big negative.

[Mind Character]

1 minute ago, Thomas5737 said:

I think being a "football guy" is overrated. It isn't like he didn't know or understand the game. He may not have breathed football his entire life but you don't really have to in his position. We don't know how his draft picks will turn out but we know he added a lot of future commodities while also adding a lot of additional picks in the current drafts. If Coleman, DeValve, Njoku, Shelton, Garrett, Ogbah, Shobert, Peppers end up being decent to good players he will have fared very well and the QB position would be his only big negative.

Agreed the football guy thing is tired cliche that is close-minded traditionalist sentiment and there's tons of "football guys" that are terrible.

However, it was clear that Sashi didn't have the full skill set, toolbox, or expertise at roster building....if he did how else could we explain the decision to draft Schobert, Ogbah, and Nassib for the 34 defense. UNLESS...the consensus of personnel expertise Sashi was pulling from also had poor judgment (i.e., Andrew Berry and Paul DePodesta).

Also, no sound GM (football guy or not) could think that the 3 of Ricardo Louis, Kenny Britt, and Corey Coleman were going help us accomplish a successful passing offense, especially given the rookie QB thing.

If so, it doesn't bode well for Berry but one has to see that they did apparently right the ship the second time around for the second draft.

[Kiwibrown]

In hindsight Sachi was a great GM imo. 

 

It it was the least confused front office we have ever had. He was the best GM we had at establishing true value of draft picks and players. 

 

He he was right about Pryors value. He was right about his draft strategy. He was right about the Philadelphia 1st round pick. 

 

He he had his share of mistakes but he admitted before he started he would make them. 

 

The biggest imo was kenny Britt followed by the qb room.

[mistakey]

kenny britt was cut after 12 games and his signing wil have no long term impact on the browns... how could that be his biggest mistake?
the biggest mistake he made was cutting Josh McCown and/or not getting a vet that could actually start the 2017 season.  thats why he's not here.

[bruceb]

2 hours ago, Mind Character said:

The free agency decisions were mostly atrocious (were they apart of the longterm plan of losing to win?) not to sign a veteran QB, boost the leadership profile of the team when the leadership void was created (Damario Davis and Joe Haden were impact leaders/voices on the team despite criticisms of their play), not investing in the Wide receiver position and thinking Ricardo Louis as a number 3 and Kenny Britt as a number 1/2 would get it done.

None of this would have been consistent with a plan to crash, burn and rise from the ashes loaded for bear.

Hueball could have lessened the blow with average coaching.

Instead, he went after Sashi to cover his own inadequacies.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

11 minutes ago, bruceb said:

None of this would have been consistent with a plan to crash, burn and rise from the ashes loaded for bear.

Hueball could have lessened the blow with average coaching.

Instead, he went after Sashi to cover his own inadequacies.

I agree 100%, word for word.

[Kiwibrown]

1 hour ago, mistakey said:

kenny britt was cut after 12 games and his signing wil have no long term impact on the browns... how could that be his biggest mistake?
the biggest mistake he made was cutting Josh McCown and/or not getting a vet that could actually start the 2017 season.  thats why he's not here.

Biggest mistake as an evaluator of talent. 

I agree if we had McCown or even RG3 we would of been winning games.

[Mind Character]

2 hours ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

I agree 100%, word for word.

If you had to quantify it based on percentages what percent blame is the players, head coach and coaches, and player acquisitioner (not easy to do)?

My sense is that Most say the blame is like 85% Hue; 5% talent acquisitioner, 5% players because "they're talented and saying they're not is a lie"; and. 5% other coaches.

Of course, coaching plays a role but for this team what is the right way to answer the age old football question (that I really don't have an answer for) of where does the line of bad coaching stop and the line of bad players' play begin.

At the end of the season, the takeaway for most is Hue has to be fired and he's the worst coach in NFL history.

The focus really hasn't been the players are talented but inexperience makes them terrible. It's been the coaching is awful and terrible and we have the talent to win.

I've heard stuff like this is 6 or 7 win team with better coaching. RBS did a poll and people thought this was a 7 to 8 win team if the coaches were better.

I just can't understand how so many really believe that. It's nuts to me.

And my confusion always is...Are the passing game struggles of Kenny Britt, Rashard Higgins, Corey Coleman, Ricardo Louis, rookie Deshone Kizer, and rookie David Njoku MOSTLY attributable to Hue and/or Al Saunders and/or Greg Seamon or is it the players.

I always ask myself not about Belichick but what would the majority  of NFL coaches accomplish with this team (Ron Rivera, Mike Mccarthy, John Fox, Harbuagh, etc...)

And my answer to that is that even the good ones might have at best won 1-3 games.

I'm cool with the Hue is trash stuff but it always puzzles me how it's so simple as to just say Hueball...and not Hueball and the players are garbage/rookies or something like that.

I get the playcalling things or not putting players in the best positions, but I have vivid memories of this season and so many of the big moments were Britt or Ricardo drops, or Kizer/Hogan redzone picks, or near redzone inaccurate picks, or fumbles, or rookie QB sneaks or missing a wide open Crowell out of the backfield or a wide open Njoku down the seam.

If I had to put a percentage on it I'd say the issues are 30% Hue and Coaches; 40 % Talent Acquisitioner; 30% Players

Which is actually an interesting exercise b/c my percentage that I just came up clearly explain why my beliefs are in the minuscule minority.

 

[candyman93]

I don’t think the players get enough blame to be honest. I’ve seen teams like the Colts and Jets get better effort and results from “no name” guys. It’s just easier to blame “the bosses” because that’s what we probably do at our jobs so we can relate.

[buno67]

Colts and Jets have a better coaching staff. Those coaches are able to take players, the no name guys and actually coach them up to produce plays and even put them in proper positions.

Hue truly was the cancer to this team. Listening to a reporter on the Bull and Fox show on my way home from work. This national guy talked about in all the film he watched of the Browns and the offense and how Hue used Kizer, he said it was the most head scratching thing to him. Hue would literally give Kizer the most difficult plays to run and passing concepts that asked for Kizer to make the toughest reads for a freaking rookie QB. He said with play calls, play designs, it can give QBs the easiest reads pre-snap but that you rarely saw that from Hue. Hue was asking Kizer to make the tough reads with deep to intermediate type routes. Which he said is a bad recipe for disaster because that leads to picks. Hue gave Kizer the toughest passing concepts for making reads and would yell at him and bench him and not properly coach him up or simplify or change the schemes to help kizer out. I believe that cause McCown was running the same plays that Kizer has run this year and McCown looked pretty awful . Awful enough that hue wanted him as a coach and not a QB. McCown leaves and goes to the Jets and plays likes one of the top15 QBs in the league. 

The picking order for blame goes

1. Coaching
2. GM
3. Roster