As a wise man once said, “The Browns is the Browns.”
Even after the departure of chief strategy officer Paul DiPodesta (whose strategies rarely bore fruit in the form of on-field success), the Browns remain obsessed with data. To a fault.
But, no, they’re not dysfunctional. They just function differently from the other 31 teams.
Appearing on Friday’s edition of The Rich Eisen Show, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network explained that the Browns continue to put an excessive focus on transforming the subjective into the objective.
“The Browns’ search process, which they have run a number of times, is unlike any other in the NFL,” Pelissero told Eisen. “And it plays to certain types of candidates. They are a data-driven operation in Cleveland. And so they spend an extraordinary amount of time gathering data on their coaching candidates. You’re talking about taking a personality test. You’re talking about writing an essay. You’re talking about completing homework assignments going into both the first and the second rounds of interviews. It plays toward the types of candidates that they have in the mix. Which is very, very smart people in a lot of cases that just often happen to be tall, thin guys who came from Ivy League schools, though that’s certainly not a requirement. That’s the type of candidate generally that is going to fit into a data-driven environment.”
Eisen was flabbergasted. “There’s a written test? Really? Like they want you to write an essay. ‘This is why I want to be the coach of the Cleveland Browns’?”
“Questionnaires, a multi-part essay, and a personality test,” Pelissero said. “And then additional homework assignments if you get through the first round to get into the second round.”
It was implied that former Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel opted to withdraw from consideration based on this uniquely cumbersome process. (That said, he went to Yale.) Jesse Minter also withdrew, but he was on the brink of getting the job in Baltimore.
The ultimate question is whether the process leads to the right coach, whose job will ultimately have less to do with crunching numbers and more to do with making real connections with professional athletes. Teaching them. Motivating them. Pushing them to collectively achieve more than the sum of the individual parts would otherwise suggest.
Yes, there’s a place for analytics and data. But it can’t hijack the process. And it can’t impose a burden on candidates that dramatically exceeds the usual process. When that happens, coaches with options will opt to go elsewhere.
Look at Minter. If the Browns job was viewed as highly desirable, he would have chased it in lieu of taking the job in Baltimore. Which means that, in the end, the Browns will hire someone that no one else currently wants to hire.
Which is more than enough reason for them to reconsider one of the various failed strategies that DiPodesta devised.
