Cleveland Browns: Investigating the Front Office

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Aug 28, 2014; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, left, and general manager Ray Farmer talk before a game against the Chicago Bears at FirstEnergy Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ron Schwane-USA TODAY Sports

The so-called show picks, the first round picks, tend to allow for the most uninformed opinions. Just tune into a local sports station around the time of the draft. Every random fan has a strong opinion on the team’s first round pick and the second round and beyond are rarely, if ever discussed. I do not believe the front office in Berea is any different currently.

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From owner Jimmy Haslam, to others including President Alec Scheiner, can bring an incredibly strong opinion to the war room. Just like the random guy on the radio, they are not qualified to make the decision and need to worry about their actual designated roles. Any potential influence they might have is dangerous and can lead to disaster.

As much as Haslam and others not qualified to make these types of decisions need to stop trying, it is Farmer’s job to ignore them. The Browns under Farmer have been far more successful in the rounds of the draft and free agency where real scouting gets the job done and the people who don’t know anything, get out of the way. Farmer needs to trust the scouting department he established to do their jobs so he can do his.

I believe some of this is just a matter of Farmer needing to man up and take control. When it comes right down to it, the buck stops with him and while Haslam may allow him to keep the job for a while for mistakes he helped him make, at some point Haslam will get rid of him to cover for his own failures. Many fans already believe Farmer is the one responsible for everything with the first round picks. Plenty are hoping he will be fired. I don’t want him to be fired if he can trust himself and his staff, so if he is going to be wrong, he might as well be wrong on his terms.

With that in mind, in a job where people are hired to be fired, Farmer might as well go down doing it his way. There are only so many opportunities to be in the big chair when it comes to the draft and allowing anyone unqualified to make such a choice is begging to fail. Beyond getting input from the coaching staff as far as what they need players to be able to do, Farmer needs to trust the guys he hired. If Farmer is unable to do that, he is not the right guy for the job and may already have regrets of picking the wrong player because he allowed unqualified influence to push him in that direction.

I believe Jimmy Haslam has to get out of the way and let the guys he hired do their jobs. While he claims to have learned from his self-proclaimed ‘rookie mistakes’, there is little to suggest that has actually happened. While the football side of the organization, from the coaching staff to the locker room appears to be in order and on the same page, the business side feels like a free for all.

The President of Business Operations was hired to run the business operations. Scheiner might be a huge football fan and think he has something to offer in the war room, but he has no business being part of the decision making process as it relates to talent acquisition. Farmer has no business trying to have an influence on stadium renovations or trying to get involved in coaching, which is what led to him getting him suspended and is further evidence of front office employees getting involved in roles they were not hired to do. Just like a cornerback needs to focus on his job and not try to do the job of the defensive tackle, needless and unqualified crossover does nothing but cause problems and lead to organizational disarray, which is what has been a problem since the Browns came back in 1999.

These are not rookie mistakes anymore and frankly, they never really were. Haslam should have plenty of knowledge of how ownership works, as he was a minority owner in the Steelers before he was with the Browns – one of the best examples of stability and trusting people to do their assigned jobs in the league. Haslam simply decided he was too smart and has played the part of an insecure, meddling owner, since he got the Browns, treating it like a new toy.

Unless Haslam is willing to change what he is doing in how he owns and operates the team, I believe firing Ray Farmer, is a completely useless exercise. Farmer can be the fall guy now, but the word will be out on how the Browns are run, limit the pool of candidates who would want the job significantly as good candidates will want to avoid being in a situation where they are unable to perform their role without having a bunch of amateurs try to talk them into bad decisions. Haslam is just replacing one puppet for another, hoping he is able to stumble into the right move and catch lightning in a bottle so he can pat himself on the back for a job luckily done.

Next: Let the front office do its job

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