BEREA: The vicious cycle has got to stop.
I’m not talking about the Browns’ parade of quarterbacks that now stands at 26 starters since 1999 without a franchise leader in sight. That will consume Northeast Ohio until the April 27-29 NFL Draft.
I’m talking about the Browns being a farm team for the rest of the league.
An organization that has done its best to botch the draft and make a mockery of the system set up to promote parity has another fatal flaw. Once the Browns find and develop talent, even those discovered as rookie free agents, they allow those players to walk in free agency.
Four- and five-year veterans should become the core of the team for several more years. Instead they go on to start elsewhere.
It happened last March when center Alex Mack (Falcons), right tackle Mitchell Schwartz (Chiefs), receiver Travis Benjamin (Chargers) and free safety Tashaun Gipson (Jaguars) escaped on the first day of free agency.
They joined the likes of defensive end Jabaal Sheard (Patriots), strong safety T.J. Ward (Broncos), defensive tackle Ahtyba Rubin (Seahawks) and cornerback Buster Skrine (New York Jets) and for fans the most painful of all, kicker Phil Dawson (49ers).
All of those were starters in 2016. Four of the nine made the playoffs.
Now the Browns find themselves facing the same decision with receiver Terrelle Pryor and linebacker Jamie Collins, acquired in trade from the Patriots on Oct. 31.
Team priorities
After Sunday’s overtime loss in Pittsburgh left the Browns 1-15, owner Jimmy Haslam identified three priorities for the offseason, and the first was re-signing key players.
The question is whether Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown, Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta and Vice President of Player Personnel Andrew Berry will follow through on that pledge.
Can they wrap up deals with Collins and Pryor before the start of free agency on March 9? Will they get into a bidding war and overpay? Brown said during a news conference Monday in regard to the pair that he would like to avoid the use of the franchise tag.
Or will they make a liar of Haslam and create even more holes on a roster filled with them?
Brown hedged on the issue even though the Browns have money to spend, rolling over their league-high $49.3 million in salary cap space for use in 2017.
“I wouldn’t get into predicting the future on those things. They are hard to work through,” Brown said. “I’m not going to comment on contract negotiations and plans beyond what Jimmy said yesterday. These guys are priorities for us and we’ll get to work on re-signing them.”
Joe Thomas weighs in
That might not sound promising to left tackle Joe Thomas, who said Monday that one of the Browns’ biggest mistakes in his 10-year tenure is not identifying talented players early in their careers and extending their contracts before they get to free agency.
Because he makes his home in Cleveland year-round, Thomas said he has spent lots of time picking the brains of the current front office, especially Brown. Thomas said his ideas on how to build a team “align pretty closely” with this regime.
While Thomas realizes constant turnover of coaches and personnel executives has contributed to the problem, he doesn’t agree with fans who say, “We were 1-15 with them, we can be 1-15 without them.”
“If you want to be better than 1-15 you have to keep your good players,” Thomas said. “You can’t keep getting rid of good players and think you’re going to get better. Anybody with a brain can figure that out.
“The way we have to improve [is] re-sign our good young players, add players in free agency and continue to draft well. But the draft is not an immediate fix.”
Thomas thinks because draft picks mature at different rates, they need three years before they can be evaluated. He said years three through seven are their “sweet spot.”
Thomas had never considered the farm-team scenario, but said if the Browns had re-signed all their good players from the past eight drafts at a discount before their deals were up “we’d be a darned good team.”
“You could go down the line and list probably 15 guys that are good starters for other teams and some of them are Pro Bowlers,” Thomas said.
A new culture
Brown said “you never love” developing players that go on and are successful elsewhere. He talked of building a culture where players want to stay, which might have kept players like Mack and Schwartz in Berea. Because of the draft misses, there aren’t a whole lot of Browns who could be in line for extensions, although linebacker Chris Kirksey comes to mind.
But when the first tenet for the offseason out of Haslam’s mouth was “we gotta re-sign our key players,” that implied the Browns are going to make a serious effort to keep Pryor and Collins, that they are going to stop letting talent walk out the door. Part of this rebuilding project is correcting the sins of the past.
We’ll know by March 9 if the Browns realize that.
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.