The inability to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam to completely commit to a new approach over the long haul coupled with his affinity for half measures when making changes has resulted in a recent string of forced marriages that have created tension between the “football guys” and those who dabble in analytics.
Most recently, the football people and the numbers people had a tug of war regarding the next coach of the team, with G.M. John Dorsey’s contingent wanting Freddie Kitchens and Paul DePodesta’s people wanting Kevin Stefanski. Dorsey won.
The fact that Dorsey has been winning apparently has helped him warm up to the arrangement, although it wasn’t that way at first.
In his excellent look at the recent years of dysfunction in Cleveland, Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com writes that Dorsey initially was “skeptical” of DePodesta’s department.
"[Dorsey told an associate that he didn’t need ‘f--king nerds’ to tell him how to evaluate players,” Wickersham writes. “He’s since warmed up, sources say.”
It helps that Dorsey got the coach he wanted, and that the coach reports not to Haslam but to Dorsey. But the two competing strategies, presided over by an owner who doesn’t seem to ever know what he wants, means that the potential for turmoil will continue in Cleveland.