CLEVELAND: Browns owner Dee Haslam said she’s comfortable with the organization’s controversial decision to draft defensive tackle Caleb Brantley because of her faith in head of football operations Sashi Brown and the team’s player personnel department.
The franchise picked Brantley in the sixth round (No. 185 overall) on April 29 amid allegations he punched a woman in the face April 13 in Gainesville, Fla. Brantley hasn’t been formally charged in the misdemeanor battery investigation, with witnesses providing conflicting accounts of the incident and the state attorney’s office reviewing the case.
Brown has said the team is conducting its own investigation and will use the findings to decide whether to keep Brantley on the roster after the legal process plays out.
“We really trust our football organization,” Haslam said Tuesday after a groundbreaking ceremony for a new football field at John Adams High School, a project funded by her and husband Jimmy. “I’m sure you could feel that. Sashi and our personnel group have done an amazing job. So we just trust them and their decisions. So we’re excited to have Caleb on the team. We feel like he’s doing the right things to get better.”
Haslam, a member of the NFL’s conduct committee, was asked whether she’s concerned about bad publicity for the Browns stemming from the incident involving Brantley.
“At this point, we don’t know [how the legal process will unfold], so it’s really hard to say,” she replied. “But these are young men, and you do understand that we’re doing our best to build great men. So we hope surrounding him and doing the right things, he can become that great man. He has work to do. But we are confident that as an organization we’ll continue to work on that.”
Brantley declined to discuss the incident Friday during rookie minicamp but said he’s eager for resolution.
“I’m looking forward to the facts coming out and the truth about what happened that night,” he said. “But I can’t really speak on the legal situation, so we’ll leave it at that.”
Asked if Brown and the organization’s other football decision makers approached ownership for approval before picking Brantley, Haslam said, “No, we really trust our football personnel group to make these decisions, and they vet every situation very carefully. They do their research. We trusted that, and we have to trust in that. That’s the reason, as you can see, we’re doing a really good job building a good football team, and trusting our personnel group and Sashi is the way to do it.”
Brantley isn’t the only player with potential off-field concerns who joined the Browns this offseason. Free-agent acquisition Kenny Britt has a checkered past littered with arrests. First-round pick Jabrill Peppers submitted a diluted sample when he was drug tested at the NFL Scouting Combine and will begin his career in the first stage of the league’s substance-abuse program.
“Our football personnel group has done a lot of research on these players, have met with them, have talked to them,” Haslam said. “They have confidence that these young men — and they’re young men — are going to be able to be the football players and the men that we want them to be, or I don’t think they would have drafted them. So we have confidence in that group.”
Below are other highlights from the interview with Haslam.
• On stomaching a 1-15 record last season and staying the course with coach Hue Jackson and the front office:
“We put a plan in place,” Haslam said. “We knew last year was going to be painful. I don’t think any of us saw 1-15. That was extremely painful. But we put a plan in place. We’re following that plan. We’re very excited about where we are. We’re very excited about where we’re going. So that’s what we have to count on, and I think following the plan is the key to our success.
“This is our second full year together with Coach Jackson and Sashi and [vice president of player personnel] Andrew Berry and [chief strategy officer] Paul DePodesta. ... I think any organization when you’ve been together for a while, you just get better. We feel really confident ... and you could sense from our conversations that we’ve made a lot of progress and worked really well together.”
• On the 2017 draft class, including No. 1 overall pick Myles Garrett:
“I would have to say that this was a tremendous draft,” Haslam said. “We’re just really excited about where we are right now. We feel like last year was a good draft. We feel like this is a good draft. You just string them together, and you can build a really great team.
“[Garrett] is amazing. ... He’s a pretty awesome specimen of an athlete. So he’s great to be around. A really, really nice guy. I think he’ll do a lot for our organization.”
• On renovating Roye Kidd Stadium, James F. Rhodes Stadium and Bump Taylor Stadium before the 2016 prep football season with new fields at John Adams and John Marshall high schools scheduled to be completed in time for the 2017 season:
“We did the fields to fight chronic absenteeism, to get kids engaged in something, to do sports,” Haslam said. “Sports, music, art, they all help. But obviously sports fits what we do, and doing the athletic fields was the quickest thing we can do to make an impact.”
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ and on Facebook www.facebook.com/abj.sports.