Browns fire Sashi Brown, Keep Hue Jackson

Photo Credit: John Kuntz: Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Cleveland Browns made my Thursday but raised a few questions on a day where they could have made at least a little public relations, if not personnel advancement.
Sashi Brown was fired from his role as head of football operations, but Hue Jackson will return as head coach for the 2018 season.

Hue Jackson's hiring was applauded by me, but he has been a disappointment in Cleveland.
Odd play calls,strange personnel decisions, and awful clock management have marked Jackson's two years.
I can understand giving Jackson another year since his roster has been so weak, but his performance has been so bad, I could see firing him as well.
Jackson will likely have a short leash in 2018.

The firing of Sashi Brown was one that I strongly agree with.
Brown was never qualified to run a football personnel department and the various maneuvering that has resulted in just one win in two years can mostly be laid at his feet.
Brown's rigid decision to stick to a plan even when given opportunities to keep players outside his box (notably Mitchell Schwartz and Terrelle Pryor) in free agency, signings of players such as Kenny Britt to large guaranteed contracts and his questionable use of numbers to evaluate college talent sent the Browns careening deeper down a hole that was deep to start with.

I was not in favor of Sashi Brown being hired from day one and not because I was against his plan.
Teams in all sports have executed plans that saw teams tear franchises down to the floorboards and attempt to build them back up and Brown shouldn't be ridiculed for that.
What he should be was for the lack of talent that he selected to make his plan work.
Other Browns regimes have mastered the trade down method as they attempted to emulate the building plans of the New England Patriots among so many, but Brown took it to an extreme, passing on elite level talent in order to select quantities of mid-level talent.
Many Browns slaughter Brown for the trades that saw the team bypass Carson Wentz in 2016 and DeShaun Watson in 2017 and rightfully so, but there are other mistakes that show the limitations of Brown's evaluation of talent.
The Browns had tons of cap space and yes, Joe Haden and Demario Davis were overpaid for their production, but both would have helped this team and to give them away (Haden released, Davis traded for Calvin Pryor, who eventually was released) for nothing when the team could have afforded them was nonsensical.

I generally don't destroy teams for passing one guy for another, mainly because positional need does come into play and if you need a cornerback, it's hard to criticize years later for not taking a tackle, but the exception to that rule is when you miss on a player that turns out to be a star at a position that you chose another player over that player.
An example of this was when Brown's front office selected in the first round, wide receiver Baylor's Corey Coleman, who has struggled with drops and staying healthy over Ohio State's Michael Thomas, who has become a star in his two years in New Orleans after the Saints being a second-round selection.
That isn't excusable because that comes down to talent evaluation and that is where the vaunted 'analytics' came up short.
It wasn't the battle plan, it was the generals executing that battle plan.
Brown's defenders claim that his drafts were so strong because so many players are on the team, but keep in mind they are a one win in a two-year team.
Only Emanuel Ogbah and Joe Schobert have shown anything more than average production from the 2016 draft and the 2017 draft has been better with Myles Garrett and the rare trade up for David Njoku, but even then the overdrafting of the tweener Jabrill Peppers has been a miss thus far and missing on Desmond King in favor of Howard Wilson (Injured in camp, to be fair) loomed large in the 2017 draft.

In the end, Sashi Brown seemed to be a nice guy that was simply miscast in a job that he was unsuited for and never should have been hired for to begin with.
I'm not sure who I blame more- Brown for wanting the job or Jimmy Haslam for thinking Brown was the right man for the job.

Back later with the boxing challenge and some words on the man that will be replacing Sashi Brown in charge of football operations for the Browns.