Browns to interview Teryl Austin, Adam Gase, Doug Marrone for Head Coach opening this week
January 5, 2016The Cleveland Browns Quarterback Support Group
January 5, 2016Could Moneyball be coming to the Cleveland Browns?
According to New York Post baseball columnist Joel Sherman, longtime baseball executive Paul DePodesta is leaving the New York Mets to join the Cleveland Browns. Sherman reported that DePodesta’s title will be executive vice president, while ESPN’s Chris Mortensen described the position as chief strategy officer.
Either way, the Browns have made their first big hire as they reshape the front office.
I have learned Paul DePodesta leaving #Mets to run the NFL Cleveland Browns as executive VP, answerable only to team owner/pres.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) January 5, 2016
Browns making a unique hire and announcement: Paul DePodesta is leaving the baseball world to join Browns as Chief Strategy Officer.
— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) January 5, 2016
Per Mortensen, both DePodesta and Sashi Brown, who was recently put in charge of football operations, will report to team owner Jimmy Haslam. Both Brown and DePodesta are Harvard men; the former graduated from Harvard Law, while the latter played both baseball and football for the Crimson as an undergrad.
DePodesta and Sashi Brown, the new executive of football ops, will independently report to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, not to each other.
— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) January 5, 2016
DePodesta has spent the majority of his career in baseball. He got his start in 1996 with the Cleveland Indians, beginning as an advance scout and later as an assistant to general manager John Hart. He joined the Oakland Athletics in 1999 as an assistant to GM Billy Beane, and was a key figure in Michael Lewis’ seminal book on sabermetrics, Moneyball. Jonah Hill’s character in the film of the same name was based on DePodesta, though the name was changed as DePodesta did not want to be named in the movie.
In 2004, at the tender age of 31, DePodesta was named GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers made the playoffs in 2004 — and won their first playoff game in 16 years — but DePodesta was fired after the 2005 season by Dodgers owner Frank McCourt. McCourt wound up having the team seized by MLB and eventually sold it due to concerns (to put it gently) over the team’s finances.
DePodesta caught on with the San Diego Padres in June 2006 and was elevated to executive vice president in 2008. In November 2010 he was hired by the New York Mets as vice president of player development and scouting. He had previously worked with Mets GM Sandy Alderson in San Diego.
In short, success has followed DePodesta at every turn. The Indians of the 1990s were famously successful. The early-2000s Oakland A’s were on the cutting edge of contemporary sports analytics. He led the Dodgers to their first postseason appearance in eight years. The Padres were not quite as successful during DePodesta’s tenure, but one could argue that the turnaround of the Mets — who in 2015 made their first World Series appearance in 15 years — carries more weight.
In a 2013 article by Kevin Berger for Nautilus, DePodesta described how he came up with the Indians and what shaped his player analysis. At the time he leaned on his experience in football. Being hired by the Browns seems to bring it full circle.
It’s funny, in college, I hadn’t done any kind of real analysis of players. I played football in college and what I really wanted to do was be a football coach. When I was lucky to get an internship with Cleveland, I had no idea about what went on in a baseball front office. The one real job they gave was to chart the pitches of Major League games. I sat behind home plate and recorded every pitch in terms of type, location, and outcome. I was tasked with writing up a report that would go to our Major League coaches to say this is how opposing teams are trying to pitch our hitters, these are how different hitters are approaching our pitchers, these are our tendencies. It was as if I was scouting ourselves, to give us a sense of what our opponents were trying to do to us.
DePodesta also cites luck as an important factor. Understanding the number of players and variables that go into constructing a team, he says that he seeks to put his teams in positions to get lucky.
Failure is a huge part of our industry. The best players fail every day. It’s no different than a championship poker player or a card-counter at the blackjack table. They lose all the time, too, but they put themselves in a position to get lucky by using pot odds or having an idea what’s remaining in the shoe. Over time, they win, even though there are a lot of losses along the way. We try to do the same. We know we’re still going to be wrong often, but we’re at least trying to give ourselves positive odds.
This is certainly an outside the box hire by Jimmy Haslam. Like the blackjack players described above, the Browns have had plenty of losses along the way. Could the Browns turn into the next sports analytics success story? Like a three-true-outcomes hitter, they’re taking a big swing.
238 Comments
naw, everyone knew the true value of Ryan Pontbriand.
LMFAO !! … same here.
honestly the public analytical stuff on football is miniscule compared to the other sports. will be interesting if hires like this one make more information public.
sample sizes are just so tough in football, but interesting, yes.
tongue in cheek my good man.
Naw man, he’s big into logistics.
….er, UPS….i dunno one of the two.
https://youtu.be/i4YbFGcip4w
http://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/cache/3a/e2/3ae29be202cbf680741bbaafb228763b.png
Funny, I thought the same myself that they are making it as though Kelly would have to call them instead of vice versa.
Jimmah gets his man AND forces him to come crawling to him.
KNEEL BEFORE HAZLUM.
Works for Belichik and Saban.
Don’t get me started on Herb Brooks. “My recruiting key — I looked for PEOPLE first, athletes second. I wanted people with a sound value system as you cannot buy values. You’re only as good as your values. I learned early on that you do not put greatness into people…but somehow try to pull it out.”
Man-crushing a bit? And rightfully so.
We take you now live to said Wacky Football Machine working on draft selections:
http://orig08.deviantart.net/36fb/f/2012/070/8/2/blue_ball_machine_by_andreadionne-d4sg8sa.gif
THEY ATTENDED BUT FORGOT THEIR CALCULATORS….DOOM.
Really good article/explanation:
http://nflspinzone.com/2016/01/05/cleveland-browns-embracing-analytics/
Analytics play a BIGGER role in a capped league. Moneyball was about leveling the playing field for an organization that didn’t have money to spend, so money for them must be spent wisely (as you would have to do in a capped league). They identified key metrics, identified players that hit those metrics and were cheap. As a result, they competed pretty well with teams having significantly larger bankrolls. Now imagine thse bigger bankroll teams trying to compete with the A’s if they had to have the same cap. Do you think they would do as well? Are the Yankees still the Yannkees if they can’t outspend anyone?
I could swear that thing is making widgets.
I think Marrone is a bit of an outlier here. Sure, this would be his second job, but the last team he coached was 10-6, and he left on his own accord. It’s not like he was run out of town, he had the opportunity to leave due to an ownership change so he did.
I think it’s a perfectly valid approach and actually think it can be very effective when it works. It seems like coaches like that need some serious buy-in from the front office and time to develop a roster composed of a certain type of player.
I’m hoping he thinks the guys he hired are smarter than everyone else?
I think I found Cam Erving! (The tree in the lower center, slightly to the left.)
Yeah I’m very interested to know what the heck happened there. I wonder if the new ownership let him know they would be hiring their own coach and he did the right thing to help his own career by not firing back at the new ownership in the media. Probably a stretch, but that’s how my brain makes sense of it.
I liked the new uniforms before they were cool.
Wish I could upvote this more. Thoughtful, informed decisions is what this is about (presumably). I believe it’s getting confused with “finding the magical formula that guarantees wins.” It’s not. It’s not even about making the right decisions as much as it is about making rational, logical decisions with the information available.
So, if we can agree that making rational, logical decisions with the information available is desirable, then wouldn’t it follow that with more pertinent information available, we could improve our odds to make the right decision?
This presumes the scouts will continue doing things the way they always did them. I’m not sure there isn’t more give and take here. Specifically, that the scouts will be feeding the information machine with the information they get, but the information machine will also be partially guiding what information they seek.
did you hear the announcers talking about how Bill Walsh always preferred guys who grew up with nothing because they NEEDED football while the others just wanted to play?
There are people here actively stating “WE PREFER THE BROWNS DEAL FROM A POSITION OF __LESS__ INFORMATION. WE WANT LESS ANALYSIS.”
In addition: “consistency” has been the buzzword around here for over a decade. All of these personnel decisions suggest that this organization is planning for the long-term.
First off, you don’t talk a successful, up-and-coming executive out of a (relatively) more stable industry to take a job in the Not For Long League without making him some serious commitments (both in terms of the time he’ll be afforded to implement changes and compensation).
Second, an analytical approach will most likely place high value on draft pick and less on overpaid veterans.It’s an approach that by it’s very nature requires time and patience. Never say never with Haslam, but this isn’t the sort of plan you scuttle after two bad seasons.
Oh, and another thing: people blasted Lerner as an absentee owner. They did the same when Haslam stepped back from the Browns to take care of the investigation of Flying J. Now that he’s setting it up so he’ll be coordinate and oversee the entire operation, people are complaining. Why? For once, we may finally have a franchise that’s on the same page and guided by a single vision.
I once watched a bad movie on DVD therefor I no longer watch DVDs. Only VHS for me! What?
Uh… you mean nerds? Hipsters won’t follow football.
Agree on all points.
My God, if we cut all our bad players do we get a special expansion draft? Cause we won’t reach 53 any other way LOL
People don’t just stream their movies now?
(MKC abacus moment there)
🙂
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/idgi.gif
I have that same belt buckle.
I’ve heard a lot of people saying this recently, but I haven’t really heard anyone describe what a football person is. Is is someone who played football? Does it matter the level they played football at (high school, college, pro etc.)? Do they have to work for a professional team for a certain amount of time? I don’t know, its just a buzzword term that seems to be coming up a lot lately that doesn’t seem to be defined well.
my main point is you have to crawl before you walk, they cant even crawl and now theyre trying to run the 100 meter dash
I asked aloud a couple times over the last few weeks if we might be in a better situation if we’d kept Chud + Norv/Ray… and you can’t say for certain, but it feels like we would be. That felt like the better staff. Chud felt more ready for that role and it set the defense back to change schemes for what seemed like that 15th time in 15 years.
Feels like Banner pushed the eject button on Chud and then when Haslam found that Banner couldn’t deliver the TOP COACH that he likely promised, that’s when Haslam hit the eject button on Banner + Mikey L. That’s me reading between the lines a bit, but it feels pretty plausible.
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