We touched on it briefly yesterday but there’s still loads to unpack from Tony Grossi’s recent sit-down with Browns GM Tom Heckert so let’s get to it.
Starting with the question of whether the Browns franchise could ever recover from the loss of defensive end Jayme Mitchell, obtained from the Vikings for a seventh-round pick on October 6th. Mitchell, a free agent now, didn’t play a single down as a Cleveland Brown in 2010 and Grossi wanted to know why, despite acknowledging that Mitchell “never played in a 3-4 defense at any level” and opining that Mitchell “doesn’t have a body that would ever fit in that scheme.”
Per Grossi:
Heckert described this one as “bizarre.” . . .
“[Mitchell] was by far our best pass rusher and never got on the field, so I can’t answer that one,” Heckert said. “Eric watched him [on tape prior to the trade] and Eric liked him. So I don’t know what happened after that. He’s a nickel pass rusher on third down. We thought he could really rush the passer.”
How bizarre?
We knew it was bad, but was the Browns’ defensive line in such bad shape that a guy who could be had for a seventh round pick would immediately become “by far [the team's] best pass rusher”? Why would the Vikings let go of this gem for such a low price if he “could really rush the passer”? Even if Grossi is wrong to say Mitchell could never play in a 3-4 with his body type, how bizarre could it possibly be that a guy who was obtained for a seventh round pick and who never played a down in a 3-4 scheme wouldn’t end up seeing the field for Mangini’s Browns after joining the team in the middle of the season?
Heckert tells us that “Eric watched him on tape and liked him,” but it’s probably safe to assume that Mangini was too busy coaching to be digging through the scrap heap to find mid-season candidates to provide depth along the defensive line, and that Heckert is the one who showed him the tape on Mitchell.
So why wasn’t Heckert’s answer to Grossi here something like: “Shoot, Tony, with Kenyon [Coleman], Shaun [Rogers] and Robaire [Smith] all over the injury reports those first four weeks, we knew we were going to have to add some depth along the defensive line. Problem was, there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot out there. We all agreed that even though Mitchell had never played in a 3-4 and doesn’t really have the body type for it, we needed warm bodies and he looked decent enough for a seventh round pick, so we went for it. Sometimes guys have a hard time adjusting to a new system, especially with the complex schemes that Eric runs, but whatever Mitchell didn’t give us in games, he was at least at practice every day, and was available for game duty had the injuries along the defensive line gotten worse. Really no “mystery” (finger quotes) here, Tony. Sometimes you pick up a guy for a seventh-round pick and he doesn’t turn out to be an All-Star. It’s just life in the Big Boy’s League. Hurr, hurr.”
How isn’t that a really easy answer, and the best one under any possible circumstance? Instead, Heckert wants us to believe that Mitchell is the next Dwight Freeney. But if that’s the case, why isn’t Heckert quietly backing up to him with a dump truck of cash to sign him up to be a Brown? Why let the whole world know?
Bizarre.
Relatedly, but potentially better news for Browns fans, is that receivers Demetrius Williams, Jordan Norwood, and Carlton Mitchell are all signed through at least 2011, with Norwood a restricted free agent in 2012, and Mitchell signed through 2013. Like with the case of Jayme Mitchell, Grossi tackled the profound mystery of these three receivers having remained on the active roster in 2010 without having seen game action. Heckert explained:
“The guys we loaded up on are guys we kind of liked and those guys are still going to be here,” Heckert said. “Why we didn’t use them? That question I can’t answer.”
Mitchell was the Browns’ sixth round pick last April, unanimously considered “a project” when drafted; Norwood has zero NFL catches in his two-year career after starting with the Eagles, and Williams, now a five year vet, pulled in a total of 21 catches in his last two seasons with the perennially receiver-starved Ravens before joining the Browns. If it’s anything close to a mystery as to why these guys didn’t see the field in 2010, look for a breakout year from one or most of them in 2011, and don’t expect the Browns to draft A.J. Green with the #6 pick in April.
On to another clue for April, if the draft is as deep as folks say it is along the defensive line, maybe we shouldn’t be shocked if one of the top cornerbacks, Patrick Peterson or Prince Amukamara, is the Browns’ first round choice, because Heckert’s comments to Grossi strongly suggest that Eric Wright is a goner:
“We thought we had three really good corners. Eric Wright, whatever happened to him I have no idea. If Eric Wright would have played like he played the year before, we probably would have had one of top (groups of) three guys around. But Eric Wright didn’t play very well.”
It’s one way for Heckert to say “Eric Wright is not a good corner,” but we’re mystified ourselves by how Heckert could be so convinced as to make such a bold statement. While Wright ended up taking the brunt of the criticism from fans for early-season breakdowns in the secondary, it was easy to identify many of those breakdowns as caused by rookie safety (and Heckert draftee) T.J. Ward, whose work in pass coverage was a concern coming out of college. On many occasions last season, Ward avoided criticism because he wasn’t in the picture when he was supposed to be, and Wright took the goat horns for trying to cover up. After each of what were widely thought to be Wright’s worst games, the first ones against the Ravens and Bengals (where Anquan Boldin and Terrelle Owens each racked up jackpot fantasy stats), Mangini explained that there were several occasions in each game where Wright was supposed to have help from the safeties, but didn’t; An analysis by Doug Farrar of Football Outsiders backed this up, and Wright even politely tried to explain it to us himself when we got after him on Twitter during a preseason game.
It’s only natural that Eric Mangini and Rob Ryan would have asked more from Wright than anyone else in the Browns secondary in executing their complex schemes, and it’s also just science that Wright would have had a hard time holding down a unit that essentially started two rookies, especially when one of the rookies is a hard-gunning run-minded safety. This all goes double or more considering the Browns’ inability to generate any kind of consistent pass rush.
And making Heckert’s Wright-bashing even worse is both 1) how much better the defense looked (and how much better Wright himself was thought to be playing) as the season progressed and the rookies, naturally, improved (see games against the Saints, Patriots, and Jets); and 2) how much the Browns defense suffered when Wright went out to injury the week after the fateful Jets loss.
"Lil' help over top!"
". . ."
It was the week after the loss to the Jets when Wright was lost to injury in the first quarter in Jacksonville, after which quarterback David Garrard and tight end Marcedes Lewis had a second-half field day in the Jags 24-20 comeback win that was clinched by a 74-yard Maurice Jones-Drew romp through the Browns secondary.
Wright sat out the next week against Carolina where the Browns barely survived the aerial assault of rookie QB Jimmy Clausen and his 32nd-ranked Carolina offense. He then came back for limited action in the win against Miami and the two close losses to the Bills and Bengals before landing on the IR for the season’s final two games against Pittsburgh and Baltimore. While the defense admirably held the Ravens to 258 total yards, Roethlisberger and the Steelers had their way with the Browns through the air for 318 yards in a blowout.
Why would Heckert hang Wright out to dry given any or all of these facts? Why would Grossi bother to ask?
Why would Grossi want to waste time dwelling on a cornerback who might actually be decent, and who might actually be retained by the Browns, when he can focus on the midseason trade of a disgruntled running back whose new employers in Philly had as much use for as the 2010 Browns did (none)?
Remember, Heckert first told Grossi that “it wasn’t going to do the Browns a whole lot of good to keep [Jerome Harrison].” But goes on to add that “[the RB depth was] “good for a while” but that “once Eric wanted us to get rid of Jerome, that’s when it started [going bad].”
This prompted Grossi’s colleague at the PD, Bud Shaw, to ask, “why did the [Browns approve the trade]? To support their coach? A coach they didn’t believe was the right guy?”
And we still wonder why any of it matters today anyway if Heckert admits that “it wasn’t going to do the Browns a whole lot of good to keep Harrison.”
Remember back in October we put some time into making lists to help ourselves and Harrison make some sense of what he called at the time a “mind-boggling trade.” Here they are again, for reference:
List of 2010 Cleveland Browns running backs who’ve griped to the press about roles and carries:
1. Jerome Harrison
/end of list
List of 2010 Cleveland Browns running backs who average 4.6 yards per carry:
1. Peyton Hillis
/end of list
List of 2010 Cleveland Browns running backs who average 2.9 yards per carry:
1. Jerome Harrison
/end of list
List of 2010 Cleveland Browns running backs who’ve told the press that they aren’t really good at running with the football until the second half of football games:
1. Jerome Harrison
/end of list
List of Lerner-Era Cleveland Browns coaches who were never accused of not being good enough at “managing egos”:
1. Butch Davis
2. Romeo Crennel
/end of list
To think that Heckert could have avoided any of the pesky follow-up questions from Shaw simply by briefly referring to any or most of these lists.
However badly Grossi might have misled his subject or spun any of what he said, there’s enough plain nonsense from Heckert here (especially on Wright and Mitchell) that we’re actually starting to feel some real empathy for the beat writer. It’s entirely possible that absolute power really does corrupt absolutely, and that a decade of watching what happens to the men placed as executives in the vacuum of the Lerner family’s Browns would irreversibly alter anyone’s brain chemistry. Especially when the executives all get to escape with golden parachutes leaving the beat writer stuck in the vacuum for peanuts.*
It’s certainly consistent with a pattern that’s painfully easy to identify, and if Heckert’s comments to Grossi make you feel any better about any of it, we’d really love to hear from you.
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That’s all for today, other than a brief footnote to reiterate our belief that accidents can happen to break even the most unforgiving patterns, that our best hope was that Eric Mangini was just unique enough, his experience just strange enough, the Jets’ mistake just bad enough that Mangini might have been the guy to break the pattern in Brownstown. That all tends to get lost in a lot of the discussion here, as it goes.
Also, yeah, we haven’t even touched on Heckert’s comments on Shaun Rogers. Maybe later, but we’ll be back with something more fun tomorrow, thoughts on some good Browns news, etc. Hope everyone has a decent go of it in the meantime.
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*Also, none of this excuses the Pain Dealer for not having placed Grossi on a generous disability plan already, and finding another lamb to throw into the void. It’s simply torture what they’re doing, and it’s horrifying.
