Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: The Browns are at a crossroads. They entered 2019 as the AFC North favorite before stumbling to a 6-10 season, making lots of preseason predictions look dumb (especially mine). They cleaned house in the offseason, ending up in the same place they’ve found themselves in regularly: starting over.
This makes Andrew Berry, a well-thought-of executive in the NFL, who happens to be the youngest general manager in the history of the sport, one of the most interesting people in the league at the moment. Running the Browns has never been particularly easy—since Phil Savage’s four-year tenure as general manager ended in 2008, the team has fired six general managers, and none made it more than three years. There have been eight head coaches in that time span. Two teams in the AFC North, Pittsburgh and Baltimore, have had the same coach in that time frame, and no other divisional team has had more than one GM change. These sorts of stops and starts have made it challenging to build a coherent roster over time. Continuity has been, to put it lightly, not much of a strength in Cleveland.
Berry, who was hired in January, shortly before his 33rd birthday, joins another young, rising star in Cleveland, new 38-year-old head coach Kevin Stefanski, to help steady the franchise. The last time the Browns played a full season without a coach or general manager change was when head coach Romeo Crennel and Savage stayed together from 2005 to 2008.
There’s optimism around the league about the new regime, but it might not be a quick retooling. The Browns lost 38-6 on Sunday against the defending AFC North champion Baltimore Ravens. Lamar Jackson has a habit of making almost every team look bad, so an upcoming two-game stretch against the Bengals and the Washington Football Team will probably be more indicative of how the Browns’ 2020 season will go. Cleveland is at a crossroads. Again.
I talked to Berry last week before the opener against the Ravens. I wanted to know what his philosophy would be, especially after the analytics-heavy regime of previous GM Sashi Brown, and the analytics-light regime of Berry’s predecessor John Dorsey. (Berry worked under both in Cleveland before departing for Philadelphia in 2019.) He thought, probably correctly, that my question is simply the wrong way of looking at things.
“So many people ask, ‘How much are you going to use analytics vs. scouting?’ Really, you’re just using data to make decisions. That comes in different shapes and sizes depending on the question you’re answering, that can change,” Berry said. He used an example, referencing that I used to work for The Wall Street Journal, from the business world. “Imagine, if you’re a company, you’re making a $20 million investment decision. Don’t you want as much good data as possible? Not all data is good, but that comes from a number of different avenues. If you’re on Wall Street, some of that comes from experience and your history as a trader in that space, and some comes from market analysis and the research you did. You put it all together. I don’t know that it’s dissimilar to any industry or any other sports. If you’re going to sign a player to a $50 million contract, you will consider on-field performance to how that position is valued in the sports, to how you can expect a player with that history to age to medical risks. That all goes into the final evaluation of a player.”
He continued: “Many times people think there’s a hard-and-fast rule about ‘OK, this is the percentage of scouting, traditional coaching, box score, and analytics’ and I just think that’s the wrong way to think about it.”
So, basically, the answer to whether he’ll use tape or analytics to make decisions on players is yes.
Berry’s immediate task is to work with the Browns team as it’s currently constructed. They do not have the same massive expectations that the 2019 team did, and they made improvements in the offseason, switching out Freddie Kitchens for Stefanski and helping out the offensive line by signing tackle Jack Conklin and drafting tackle Jedrick Wills in the first round. It will be a particularly important year for quarterback Baker Mayfield, who regressed significantly in 2019 after breaking the rookie touchdown passing record the year prior. Mayfield was given weapons like wide receivers Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry, but the offense has yet to find its footing. The jury is very much out on whether Mayfield and Beckham will develop a productive partnership: The star wideout snagged three passes for 22 yards in Sunday’s loss.
When I asked Berry how he built the team, he was clear: “We’re going to be QB-centric because it’s the most important position in our sport and you could argue perhaps in all sports,” Berry explains, saying the most important job of any front office is to find a quarterback, and once you have that quarterback, to support him. “So obviously, [supporting the quarterback] was a major emphasis for building the roster. We believe in today’s football that the passing game on both sides of the ball has the biggest impact on wins and losses … so we are going to use some of our most significant resources in things that support the quarterback and things that influence the passing game.”
He continued: “That’s not to say our roster is complete or finished. We know we have strengths and weaknesses, but our no. 1 priority this offseason was to create an environment that would allow the quarterback position to have success.” When Berry mentions passing on both sides of the ball, he means moves like spending a second-round pick on LSU safety Grant Delpit, who was ruled out for the year in training camp with an Achilles tendon tear.
“We know we have strengths and weaknesses, but our number one priority this offseason was to create an environment that would allow the quarterback position to have success.” — Andrew Berry
Mayfield, the first pick in 2018, has one more year on his rookie deal, then a fifth-year team option. Does that change the Browns’ team-building timeline? Berry said that he’s obviously heard and seen the narrative that rookie contracts—that can typically save teams about $20 million at the quarterback position—are the be-all end-all of team building. “I would push back on that. I think you can build a strong team and a strong roster when your quarterback is at market value. Now, our job is to both have a foot in the future and a foot in the present, from a roster-planning standpoint, specifically with how we use our cap dollars. That’s something we’ve certainly done. But I think we have, and will continue to position ourselves, to be competitive regardless of whether our quarterback is on a rookie deal or a second contract.”
Berry said he wouldn’t discuss contracts when I asked what the threshold would be for sitting down to negotiate with Mayfield on a second deal. In general, he said, the expectations are simple: “Get better every day. Refine your craft. He’s a very talented guy and he’s proven he can perform at a very high level in the NFL. The rest will take care of itself. To me it’s as simple as that. Get better every day. Continue to develop a relationship with the coaching staff, take the teaching and everything will take care of itself.”
How did Berry, a former scout, get to the GM’s office at 32? The answer starts with a football education that touched on so many different areas that Berry felt well prepared for one of the more complicated roles in the sport. The Harvard graduate worked for Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Philadelphia before getting the top job with the Browns. He worked under Bill Polian, Ryan Grigson, Sashi Brown, John Dorsey, and Howie Roseman. “I worked for general managers with much different philosophies and they exposed me to a lot of different things in football operations. I think a lot of times people think a general manager is a chief scout and it’s so much broader than that,” Berry said. “I was able to broaden my horizons pretty quickly. Yeah, I was doing pro and college scouting, but I had also had exposure to contract management, and research strategy, or player development or a lot of the other functions that touch the team. I felt like now that I’ve taken this seat, given the different challenges you face that are not just scouting-focused, I really felt like that gave me a really good foundation to transition into the job.”
He continued: “I worked for one general manager [Polian] who is in the Hall of Fame, Howie is probably on his way, you look at how unique Sashi’s approach was, and then two scouts’ scouts in Ryan and John, I feel like that really gave me a breadth of exposure to philosophies that certainly help me in my job today.”
When he worked under Grigson in Indianapolis, for instance, Grigson told him there was some work for him on the contract management side as well. “It was probably the best thing for me,” Berry said. Grigson is now a senior football adviser with the Browns. Berry’s football education should serve him well during an unpredictable Browns season, particularly in a division with two playoff contenders in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, which is rebuilding around no. 1 pick Joe Burrow. The Bengals play the Browns on Thursday night, a game that will probably go a long way in setting expectations for the 2020 Cleveland team. Losing to Jackson, as the Browns did in Week 1, is almost a formality for a normal NFL team at this point. The Bengals game is something different.
“My advice to anyone who wants to become a general manager in any sport is to get exposure to as much as you can. Maybe I’m a bit biased in that regard, but there are so many things that go into a team that if you can get exposure to as much in football operations, experience in different situations your organization is going through, I think that’s really valuable. I actually think—yes, you have to have a major, so to speak—but breadth is really important,” Berry explains. He said his major was scouting and that he had “a bunch of minors.” There’s an old anecdote Steve Martin tells about something Johnny Carson whispered in his ear once about getting a laugh: “You’ll use everything you ever knew.” This is true in football, too. Berry will now use everything he ever knew.