Why Are the Browns Winless Again

Scott R. Galvin-Us TODAY Sports

In all the computations and calculations that go into the Moneyball approach to sports, there is i simple multiplication dominion that trumps everything when it comes to using the arroyo in the NFL.

Multiply nix wins past anything and information technology equals null conviction in the procedure.

That'south the problem the 0-11 Cleveland Browns face as they come precariously shut to becoming simply the fourth team to go winless in the Super Bowl era. If the Browns, who have ii home games and a bye over the adjacent iii weeks, don't find a fashion to win a game this season, will that undermine what the team has tried to build this twelvemonth?

"There's no question that y'all worry about that," a team source said. "Just I don't remember that's happened. I don't think anybody has lost faith."

Whether you call it faith or conviction, NFL coaches volition tell you lot that once it'southward gone, it'due south nearly impossible to get dorsum.

"If players don't think a passenger vehicle tin can assist them win anymore, they tune you out," Tampa Bay defensive coordinator and former Atlanta head coach Mike Smith said. "You're not useful to them anymore."

Cleveland's performance this season is plenty to cause bug. But it comes on top of the team's adopting an outside-the-box approach to the sport that led to enough of dubiety, at least from a public perspective.

Executive VP of football operations, Sashi Dark-brown Joe Robbins/Getty Images

The Browns brought in head coach Hue Jackson, promoted Sashi Brown to executive vice president of football operations and hired Paul DePodesta to be the team's chief strategy officer. Neither Brownish nor DePodesta, who was a central figure in the development of the idea of Moneyball when he worked in baseball, had extensive experience in traditional football personnel evaluation. Rather, they were trained every bit a lawyer and economist, respectively.

While Moneyball concepts have been adopted throughout sports in contempo years, there has been a great deal of criticism of the approach. The Oakland A's, the team that introduced the concept to Major League Baseball, have never won anything of substance.

Now, in Cleveland, the short-term analysis of the situation is simple: It's failing.

Then again, it's not as if the more traditional approach to football has worked for the Browns either. In the past 14 years, counting this season, the Browns have produced xiii losing seasons, including 12 with at least 10 losses. There have been zero playoff appearances in a league where more than one-tertiary of the teams make the playoffs every twelvemonth.

"Aye, information technology sucks [to exist winless]," one Browns thespian said. "Just information technology's not like we've been kicking ass."

The Browns, who were once dubbed the "manufactory of sadness," have really been more of a factory of chaos since returning to the NFL in 1999 as an expansion team. During Cleveland's 14-year run of futility, the squad has had two owners, seven head coaches, 7 general managers and two executives hired specifically to oversee football operations (Mike Holmgren and Joe Imprint).

The constant alter has led to constant reshuffling of the roster to fit the needs of the next head coach. That comes on height of abject failures in player selection.

During a nine-year period from 2007 to 2015, the Browns selected 23 players in the first or second round of the NFL draft. Of those, merely six are notwithstanding with the squad, and three of those were drafted in 2015.

Three of those picks were quarterbacks who turned into colossal failures. Brady Quinn was taken in 2007 and lasted only three years. Brandon Weeden was drafted in 2012 and was released subsequently two seasons with the team. And in 2014, Johnny Manziel was taken in the offset circular and became the face of the team's failures with his embarrassing two-year run with the Browns.

That's the antithesis of how contending teams are traditionally built in the NFL.

"You accept to take people who are bought in to practise what you do and how you desire information technology to run," said New England omnibus Pecker Belichick, who cutting his teeth equally a head coach in Cleveland in the 1990s. "Those are the people who are the foundation of how the team is run."

Browns captain Joe Haden Joe Robbins/Getty Images

The Browns have veteran left tackle Joe Thomas, cornerback Joe Haden and a history of losing as their foundation right now. As three team sources said, that's a long way from what's needed.

"The talent is just non there however," one source said.

Which is why, those sources said, Jackson has been careful non to rip into players as the losses take piled up. Outside of Thomas, Haden, linebackers Jamie Collins and Chris Kirksey, defensive terminate Emmanuel Ogbah and wide receivers Terrelle Pryor and Corey Coleman, the Browns are scrambling to find starters to make the team a contender.

What the team does have is a truckload of draft picks. The squad drafted 14 players this yr, and 12 fabricated the roster. The team already has 2 first-round picks and two second-round picks for next twelvemonth.

But the deeper question for the Browns is whether the current regime of Brown, Jackson and DePodesta will be able to stay together to execute the plan information technology has put in place.

Ane old Browns player indicated things seemed to be changing for the better this season under Jackson.

"I felt like the winning spirit was making its way into Cleveland with those new coaches," said linebacker Barkevious Mingo, a 2013 first-round pick by the Browns who Cleveland traded to New England this year. Simply Mingo was also clear to signal out there was a long way to go, saying that going to New England was a "huge culture shock."

John Grieshop/Getty Images

The question is whether the culture the Browns are trying to install volition exist trusted if the season continues to go adrift. Will the players lose confidence in the coaches and forepart function, undermining the ability to compete?

Many people outside the organization have started to wonder. Last week, Brown had to assure the public that Jackson would remain as coach, per Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com. The mere idea that a coach could be fired after one season is head-scratching.

And so once again, that's exactly what the Browns did in 2013 when they fired Rob Chudzinski after one season.

"I hope not," a veteran histrion said. "Yous see this all the time in football. You lot run a play and it doesn't piece of work. Could have been a great telephone call, but it only didn't piece of work out. Somebody fell down running a route, somebody missed a block, something somewhere didn't execute properly.

"You don't go rid of the play; you lot practice it until it works."

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Source: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2676641-in-and-out-of-cleveland-there-is-still-faith-in-winless-browns

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