Browns hire Paul DePodesta???

I was originally going to do a podcast on this development, but the road office was a bit busy this evening, so the time delay turned it into a blog post.

The hole at the top of the Cleveland Browns that I wondered about after the firings of Mike Pettine and Ray Farmer and the resulting placement of Sashi Brown at the head of football operations was filled quickly.

The name was sending shockwaves throughout not just the NFL, but the sports world as the new head of the Cleveland Browns was Paul DePodesta of the New York METS.

Yes, the New York METS-who last I watched in October played baseball.
You know baseball-the little small round white seamed ball.

As opposed to football-the pointed-ended brown ball filled with air, which is what the Browns play.
DePodesta was a football player at Harvard (which is more than Sashi Brown) and is the newest chip thrown into the middle of the table under the heading of Analytics.
DePodesta holds the shiny new title of Chief Strategy Officer, which sounds more like something that should be held on the starship Enterprise and will be one of what the Browns call a four-pronged approach with Sashi Brown, Alec Scheiner, and the eventual head coach...

Now this certainly qualifies as out-of-the-box thinking for the Browns and I can certainly see the logic in avoiding what seems to be the same old decision-making Browns, but I'm still puzzled a bit.
I have real issues with Sashi Brown having the final say on a 53-man roster and I have been an advocate of getting rid of whatever it is that Alec Scheiner does since he screwed up the uniforms so badly, but DePodesta is such a catch that I'm willing to give this a chance.

Can this work?
Well, analytics certainly has its place and shouldn't be ignored, but my biggest concerns are these-
How much do they come into play when evaluating talent (draft especially) and can you get a head coach that buys in totally because a halfway effort isn't going to go well for anyone involved...

This (once again) smacks of the usual Browns thinking that they are the smartest guys in the room and are ahead of the curve.
The management structure that the Browns are using is not one filled with success, but considering what Brown's fans have suffered through, it's worth a try.

After all-can it gets much worse????
The answer is -Yes, it can-It's the Browns