TankWatch: Cleveland Browns

A shrewd snakeoil salesman always knows when the jig is up.

Paul DePodesta could see that the 2025 Browns were boring deep into the earth’s mantle toward a new low, even for them. He had burned through a decade of benefit-of-the-doubt from Stockholm Syndrome-suffering Browns fans and the often-fawning media. He could hear the hecklers, as well as the whispers about the man behind the curtain. DePodesta knew that once the Browns burned through both Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders — the team’s desperate double-reverse flea-flicker Hail Mary effort to replace the quarter-billion-dollar imaginary-friend quarterback he traded their future for — he would no longer be able to sell his swindle.

And there, sitting on his LinkedIn page like a rube fresh off a turnip truck or a lonely, diamond-studded dowager, were the Colorado Rockies: a perennial doormat of a baseball franchise coming off a 119-loss season.

So DePodesta, the Duke and Dauphin of Moneyball, tied some bedsheets together and slipped out the back window of Browns headquarters before anyone could nab him.

“The Browns were good at planning for the future to win while DePodesta was here,” wrote Jason Lloyd in The Athletic. “They just rarely got around to the actual winning. It was like booking and planning elaborate Caribbean vacations but never taking them.”

No, Jason, that’s not quite correct. What DePodesta did was like investing money needed for food and roof repairs into cryptocurrency, then telling the family over a crackers-and-ketchup dinner that they were too stupid to understand his daring long-range vision.

DePodesta, the Browns’ former Chief Strategic Officer, was at least magnanimous enough to accept a tiny sliver of blame for the Deshaun Watson fiasco. Sort of. When cornered by the Rockies media about Watson in his introductory press conference, DePodesta said:

Here’s what I would say, and I truly believe this. I believe that most of the decisions, especially the big ones like that, are organizational decisions, right? I’m not a believer in the ‘King Scout’ situation where there is one guy who makes every call. The jobs are too complex, the decisions are too hard. They impact too many different things. So I always think these sort of collective decisions, it can be hard to get unanimous (opinions) on those types of things. Everyone who was a part of that? We all own that. We just do, that’s part of the deal.

What an absolute cheesedick. DePodesta sounds exactly like the “consultant” who comes to you, the assistant manager, and says: Replace all our desks with standing work stations and the coffee machine with inspirational posters. You can sign off on those decisions. I was never here.

That’s right dear friends: it’s time for a very special Ding! Dong! DePodesta’s Gone! Edition of TankWatch.

The Cleveland Browns Story So Far

DePodesta rose to prominence as the wingman for Billy Beane. Both were at the vanguard of a cabal of geek-chic Gen X’ers who dared to pose the Forbidden Question to baseball’s tobacco-masticating philosopher-yogis: What if Math Were Real?

Beane and his entourage introduced edgy innovations like long division to baseball’s stuck-in-the-19th-century flat-earthers. They applied strategic principles that Bill James readers and Strat-o-Matic players had been familiar with for decades. Mythmaking cool-guy author Michael Lewis came up with the “Moneyball” moniker for Beane’s mix of Baseball Digest, Economics 101 and the probability chapter in every freshman algebra textbook. The Moneyball gang almost accomplished something meaningful with the early-aughts Oakland A’s. Then they became movie characters and aspirational figures for sports-lovin’ math geeks everywhere.

DePodesta left Beane’s shirttail to bounce around major league baseball for a decade. How much success he enjoyed depends on where you draw the bullseyes. DePodesta mastered the art of accountability buffering: he was rarely a general manager, but some sort of Vice President of Keeping It Real whose fingerprints were never on any failures. His greatest skill has never been mathematics or market manipulation – he knows as much about economics as the dude from Edward Jones who cold-calls you every six months about opening a mutual fund – but reputation insulation.

By 2015, so many cavemen had learned how to use cellphones that DePodesta had fallen behind baseball’s analytical leading edge. DePodesta found a new mark, however: Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, a man cruel and pernicious enough to bilk truckers out of fuel vouchers, yet stupid enough to get caught.

DePodesta posed as Gandalf the Geeky to Haslam and sold him watered-down Moneyball patent medicine which was essentially just proto-gooner logic about purposely giving up on life for a few years and declaring it a long-range resource-management victory. A generation of fans and writers who grew up playing far too many video games fell for the con just as hard as Haslam did.

The Browns went 1-31 over two seasons. DePodesta’s lieutenants and the sorts of opportunists and madmen who are attracted by “losing is our goal!” messaging like pickpockets to Times Square (Hue Jackson, Todd Haley) took the fall. Many benighted True Believers still believe that the Browns were on the right path in 2016-2017 and would have turned things around if they were allowed to go negative-3-and-19 in 2018, but with nine first-round picks in the 2045 draft.

DePodesta survived the late-2010s Browns purge by drawing an even longer dotted line on the org chart between himself and anyone who could be held responsible for a decision. The team recovered and became semi-respectable for a half-decade, with Baker Mayfield growing into a competent quarterback and Myles Garrett achieving superstardom. Then Haslam and DePodesta got bored and kicked the sandcastle over, tossing Mayfield in the recycling bin so they could spend a quarter-billion dollars and a warehouse full of draft capital on a sex offender with a B-tier franchise-quarterback dossier.

Yes, DePodesta’s fingers were all over the Deshaun trade. Only someone well-versed in Moneyball dogma could engineer such an anti-analytical deal, just as only an archbishop knows enough Latin to conduct a satanic mass. DePodesta could have earned media hosannas for quitting in a public huff two weeks after the trade if he had not endorsed it. Rest assured that DePodesta would not have even taken WE sometimes make mistakes quasi-blame if there weren’t damning receipts tucked away beneath a pile of fuel vouchers in a desk somewhere in Berea, Ohio.

DePodesta left utter desolation in his wake. The worst offensive roster in football. Nine figures in useless future cap debt. The Little Rascals taking turns at quarterback. And a pair of hamstrung disciples waiting for the ax to fall at general manager and head coach.

Leadership Structure

Andrew Berry, the even-keeled front-facing spokesman for the Browns’ Moneyball brand, spent the last six years building rosters around DePodesta/Haslam whims.

Berry has been working with minimal cap maneuverability and limited draft capital since 2022, and it shows. Berry needed a Rams-like slugging percentage on mid-to-late round picks to keep the Browns roster from slipping into oblivion. He’s more of a light-hitting utility infielder. It’s hard to even identify a “late-round steal” by Berry in the 2020s, even though late-round rookies often quickly earned a chance to prove themselves in the Browns’ depleted lineup.

Head coach Kevin Stefanski’s greatest career accomplishment was coaxing the 2023 Browns into the playoffs thanks to one of Joe Flacco’s hot flashes and a defense that led the league in many categories.

Stefanski is a sympathetic character but a blank slate as a head coach. It’s hard to claim a coach with a 5-22 record over the last two seasons is doing a fine job just because the roster hasn’t committed mass mutiny. Stefanski will probably be fired and tossed into the big-name offensive coordinator pool at the end of the season.

Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz is laying low, waiting for a pink slip and positioning himself for a cushy late-career gig as defensive majordomo for someone like Sean McVay.

Jimmy and Dee Haslam are rich doofuses who won’t be able to brush their own teeth without some Rasputin-like figure pouring pop philosophy into the gaping void in their souls. The Browns organization is now a fertile breeding ground for cranks, quacks and loafers with big reputations seeking a sinecure as a Team Kinda-Sorta President. Heck, the nest is still warm. Mike McCarthy’s ears must be wiggling.

Quarterback Situation

Dillon Gabriel is so tiny and frail that he makes Bryce Young look like Josh Allen. Gabriel is also so much like the young Kellen Moore – lefty, collegiate superstar, can-do personality, athletic traits of a junior varsity shortstop – that I fully expect him to be the head coach of the Saints in 2038.

Shedeur Sanders is not a real quarterback. He’s a caricature by an Upright Citizens Brigade improv comic who doesn’t like sports very much about a quarterback like Shedeur Sanders. Shedeur resembles Johnny Manziel, but with soul-rotting entitlement in place of Manziel’s substance issues (and soul-rotting entitlement).

I cannot bring myself to write a pithy little sentence about Bailey Zappe.

Deshaun Watson, on the indefinite PUP list due to chronic cooties, will likely live the rest of his life in pampered comfort in some garish McMansion, surrounded by toadies, purchasing companionship and validation with his undeserved riches from the sort of people eager to cater to the wealthy and toxic, far from both the adulation and opportunities his fame would have offered and the simple pleasures of being a normal, non-piece-of-absolute-shit human being. I hope he lives under such circumstances until he’s 99 years old and children cross the street to avoid walking past his creepy ghoul house.

What’s Going Right

It’s a short list. But at least it’s a list:

• The Browns defense ranks fourth in DVOA through Week 11. The Browns defense upset the Packers almost single-handedly, though the Packers helped. The defense almost sparked an upset of the Ravens last Sunday.
• Myles Garrett leads the NFL with 15.0 sacks.
• Rookie linebacker Carson Schwesinger has been outstanding: 85 combined tackles, 1.5 sacks, 2 interceptions. Schwesinger is currently -220 to win Defensive Rookie of the Year.
• Several rookie offensive playmakers have shown promise under difficult circumstances. Quinshon Judkins has rushed for 620 yards, with solid performances in the Packers and Dolphins wins. Tight end Harold Fannin is 44-422-2. UDFA receiver Isaiah Bond flashed some potential early in the season, though he has not caught a pass since October 12th.

What’s Going Wrong

What hasn’t gone wrong?

• A cap situation that would make a bankruptcy lawyer order a double bourbon.
• A quarterback situation that combines multiple rings of hell.
• The line was the strength of the Browns offense since the Baker Mayfield era. But Jack Conklin is 31 years old and battling injuries. Wyatt Teller turns 31 on Friday and peaked circa 2021. Ethan Pocic is 30. Joel Bitonio is 34, and also peaked in 2021. And four different left tackles have started this year, none of them good. All four of the veteran linemen are free agents in 2026.
• The Browns special teams rank dead last in DVOA. They have allowed two punt return touchdowns and a kickoff return touchdown. UDFA Gage Lavardain averages 8.7 yards per punt return. With DeAndre Carter injured, kickoff returns are handled by committee. The kicker is Andre Szmyt, the cousin of that Green Lantern that looks like an alien housefly.

Building Blocks

Schwesinger, certainly. Fannin/Judkins/Bond, maybe. First-round defensive tackle Mason Graham has had his moments.

The Browns lacked first and second round picks in 2022 and 2023 and a first-rounder in 2024 due to the Deshaun trade and its aftershocks. Their best selections in the 2022 draft were cornerback Martin Emerson (out for the year with an Achilles injury) and rotation running back Jerome Ford. Their best selections in 2023 were either Cedric Tillman (16 catches this year) or mountain-sized tackle Dawand Jones (perpetual injury case). None of the players drafted in 2024 are making a significant contribution right now, for a team with starting jobs open everywhere.

So just about everyone who matters on the Browns roster is 30 or older. And there aren’t that many players who matter.

Future Assets

The Browns face $3.7 million in paper cap debt, with none of their starting offensive linemen under contract, for the 2026 season.

Assuming the Browns take their Deshaun medicine next year, they will have $123 million in cap space in 2027. Sounds awesome, right? Well, they will still be eating at least 27 million Deshaun dollars, plus the amortization of some of the old offensive linemen’s signing bonuses. The only players under contract for 2027 right now worth talking about are Garrett, Denzel Ward and this year’s rookies. That’s right, I said it: Jerry Jeudy is not worth talking about.

At least the Browns have two first-round picks in 2026 thanks to the draft-day trade that sent Travis Hunter to the Jaguars.

Rebuilding Plan

Brace yourself. This plan is ugly.

Swallow the Deshaun pill. Deshaun Watson will cost the Browns just over $80 million in what amounts to dead cap space in 2026.

Any new Browns showrunner will be tempted to convert Deshaun’s $46-million base salary into a bonus to ease the short-term pain. But if the Browns punt on the 2026 season by paying down their Deshaun debt, they will only need to choke down about $27 million in 2027. Then they will finally be free. Except for another $23 million in 2028, but that’s chump change.

Might as well stick with Stefanski and Berry. It’s going to take a year to claw out of cap debt and another year to assemble even an expansion-caliber roster. Better to task the current braintrust with getting the Browns through nuclear winter than to bring in newcomers with goofy ideas on how to accelerate the process.

Might as well stick with Gabriel and Shedeur. The 2026 quarterback draft class is meh. The Browns may have five new starters (or 2-3 new starters and 2-3 over-the-hill returnees) on their offensive line next year. This is no environment for a first-round prospect.

Gabriel will try his hardest. There’s still a 1% chance that Shedeur discovers that the world is not his personal bouncy-house. Both have no choice but to work cheap-cheap-cheap for the next two years.

If the Browns do seek a full-sized adult for the quarterback room, they should bargain-hunt for someone like Spencer Rattler who can provide effort and baseline competitiveness. But this rebuilding plan requires the Browns to take a year off from their quarterback search for debt-management purposeses.

Set Garrett Free. Appeasing Garrett with a backloaded megadeal last offseason was a mistake which compounded the Browns’ previous mistakes.

Garrett should be converted into future draft capital next offseason. Yes, that will cause an even greater dead-money problem. Do you want to solve the problem in two years, or go the Saints route for the next half-decade?

Trade back in 2026. The Browns should seek 2027 and 2028 draft capital. They could turn next year’s two first-round picks into, say, one late pick in the first round and a whole bouquet of early-round picks once most of Deshaun’s compensation is off the books.

Wait … these sound like DePodesta tactics! Ironic, isn’t it? DePodesta was so incompetent that he created a problem that can only be solved using a variation of his surrender-on-purpose incompetence!

That’s why it makes sense to keep Berry, Stefanski and the Moneyball Sailor Scouts around. The last thing the Browns need is for Mike McCarthy to show up wearing his Pro Football Focus analytics merit badge and start talking about what he could do with Ty Simpson. The Browns need a real three year plan. Letting the incumbents eat one or two of those years will be doing the next regime a huge favor.

Bottom Line

The Browns won’t be rebuilding in 2026. They will be prebuilding. The cannot even clear the land until the forest fire burns out. It’s depressing, even by Browns standards.

You may have noticed a faint whiff of vitriol in my assessment of DePodesta. Jealousy, perhaps, about a man nearly my age who blazed a trail from mathematics/tabletop-gaming lore into sports/media superstardom and genius cred?

Perhaps. But I started seeing through DePodesta’s grift back in 2016, when many peers/friends were still congratulating him for the Brock Osweiler trade. (He signed a bad quarterback on purpose! Genius!). DePodesta turned analytics principles and methods that many of us took very seriously into a long con. He made NFL analytics look and sound silly. I felt embarrassed and ashamed to be lumped into the same category as a charlatan dilettante. And I hated being the naysayer crank in the congregation for all those years.

Well no, not really: I LOVE being a naysayer crank. But it’s tiring.

DePodesta is now baseball’s problem again. His Browns legacy? Three more years of planning for that Caribbean vacation. Maybe now that he’s gone, the Browns will actually set foot on that sunny beach someday.