The Cleveland Browns’ failures have countless symptoms but only one cause. Jimmy Haslam bought the Browns seven years ago, and now is looking for his sixth general manager. Haslam fired GM John Dorsey on Tuesday, just two days after Haslam and Dorsey fired head coach Freddie Kitchens together. The next coach will be Haslam’s seventh in seven years (the longest-tenured coach in that time is Hue Jackson, who has the second-worst winning percentage in the league’s 100-year history). Relatedly, in that seven-year span the Browns have started 14 different quarterbacks and have the worst record in football.
Any business with that type of turnover will fail—even a billion-dollar one. The Browns just happen to be a business where failure does not lead to bankruptcy.
Haslam reportedly wanted to change the structure of the team’s front office, but couldn’t agree with Dorsey on the GM’s role in that structure, so the two parted ways. How did that happen? Dorsey reportedly lost a power struggle with chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta. DePodesta, a former baseball executive and once a key front office assistant for Billy Beane with the Oakland Athletics, is best known as the loose inspiration for Jonah Hill’s character in Moneyball. Haslam hired DePodesta as an adviser to general manager Sashi Brown in 2016. Together, Brown and DePodesta embarked on a Moneyball-like rebuild on par with the Philadelphia 76ers’ Trust the Process experiment under then–general manager Sam Hinkie. Brown told Haslam that that rebuild would take a four-year commitment.
”Don’t give me the [general manager] job if you’re going to blow it up,” Brown told Haslam, according to reporting by ESPN’s Seth Wickersham. “I don’t need to do this.”
Brown and DePodesta tore the roster to its bare bones. They ensured the team would get high draft picks with an awful roster and found creative ways to squeeze mid-round draft picks out of desperate teams. One of those creative moves was charging the Texans a 2018 second-round pick to take on the disaster contract of quarterback Brock Osweiler. That pick became Georgia running back Nick Chubb. But Brown wasn’t around by the time Chubb was drafted. The Browns went 0-16 in 2017 to cap a 1-31 stretch over two seasons, and Haslam fired Brown before the 0-16 season concluded and gave the keys to Dorsey.
“We are going to do whatever it takes to find a quarterback we need to be successful,” Haslam told reporters after hiring Dorsey. “Let me say one more thing: That will be John’s no. 1 priority.”
Gifted with a treasure chest of assets Brown had spent nearly two years acquiring, Dorsey drafted Baker Mayfield no. 1. Mayfield became Cleveland’s 30th quarterback in 21 years, and Browns fans hoped he would be the last for a long time. Dorsey was subsequently also expected to be the first Browns GM to stick around, especially after landing Mayfield, Ohio State cornerback Denzel Ward at no. 4, and Nick Chubb at no. 35.
Dorsey also had plenty of swings and misses. He gave up a first-round pick for Odell Beckham Jr., but the star wideout had little impact in 2019. Mayfield said earlier this month that Beckham was playing through a sports hernia that had been mishandled by team doctors. The Beckham trade looks worse after reports that Beckham has told other players on opposing teams to “come get me.”
Dorsey also whiffed on the rest of the 2018 draft after Mayfield, Ward, and Chubb. Dorsey drafted offensive lineman Austin Corbett with the first pick of the second round and was so confident in his ability that the GM dealt Pro Bowl guard Kevin Zeitler to the Giants for defensive end Olivier Vernon. Corbett failed to earn a starting spot, and the team dealt Corbett to the Rams for a future fifth-round pick at midseason. Corbett immediately became a starter for Los Angeles. The sequence left Cleveland’s blocking worse than when Dorsey started and burned the no. 33 pick. Dorsey also endorsed Kitchens for the head coaching job in the offseason, another disastrous move.
With Dorsey gone, his name is added to the growing graveyard of people who thought they could turn the Browns around. With Haslam’s peculiar leadership style, it seems unlikely that anyone can. When Haslam surprisingly fired Joe Banner and (former Ringer writer) Michael Lombardi in February 2014, the owner promoted Browns assistant GM Ray Farmer to the GM role without interviewing Farmer for the job, according to Wickersham. Farmer became the second-youngest GM in the NFL just two months before the 2014 draft. In that draft, Haslam pushed to select Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel over Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater because Haslam was rubbed the wrong way by Bridgewater’s handshake when the two had dinner.
Haslam’s leadership is suspect in his primary business too. Twenty of Haslam’s former employees at his company, Pilot Flying J, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted in a scheme that defrauded customers out of more than $50 million. Haslam’s company, which is America’s largest diesel fuel retailer, paid tens of millions of dollars in criminal penalties and civil settlements. Haslam was not charged in the scheme.
Last year, the Haslam family sold a stake in Pilot Flying J’s parent company to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for $2.8 billion. As part of the deal, Berkshire will increase its share in the company to 80 percent by 2023. Selling the family business was clearly in the best interest of Pilot Flying J. Perhaps Haslam could sell his football business too.
