So much for alignment

Well, it sure looks as if Paul DePodesta swings the biggest hammer in the Browns’ Ivory Tower.

The club’s chief strategy officer got his way when Kevin Stefanski was named head coach recently. And now it’s a virtual lock Andrew Berry, another DePodesta choice, will become the new general manager.

It hasn’t happened officially yet, but it will almost assuredly eventuate now that George Paton, Stefanski’s choice for the post, took himself out of the running Friday.

The Minnesota Vikings assistant general manager reportedly had problems with the structure of the club’s power structure. That’s probably because the Browns uniquely require the head coach and CSO report to owner Jimmy Haslam.

Most National Football League teams conventionally require the head coach to report to only the general manager.

Another possibility – a guess based solely on reason – might have been Paton’s unease working as much with DePodesta, the analytics dude, as with Stefanski, the football dude. Most NFL general managers work autonomously when it comes to football matters.

When his name first showed up as one of the candidates, Paton became the apparent front-runner to succeed John Dorsey as GM because of his close relationship with Stefanski for many years in Minnesota.

Ever since the disaster that was the 2019 season ended, Haslam has preached alignment. Mentioned it at least a dozen times in his mea culpa end-of-the-season news conference.

He wanted everyone pulling in the same direction. Pairing the new coach and general manager was going to the perfect alignment (Haslam’s word) to that end. Some people actually believed him.

A perfect alignment would have been Stefanski and Paton, who worked together in Minnesota for more than a decade. It was going to be the perfect comfort level for both men. 

It was widely believed Paton would get the job after traveling to Berea for a second interview last Wednesday. Second interviews are rare and generally wind up in a hire.

But the silence that emanated from 76 Lou Groza Blvd. the last few days after the latest interview triggered a few doubts. Why would it take more than a day, perhaps even the day after his second interview, to name Paton to the post? The longer that silence lingered, the more doubt it built up.

And then Paton removed that doubt himself. That had to bother Stefanski, who was supposed to wield a lot of influence with the final verdict. Now he has to work with a relative stranger.

Paton must have found out that doing it the Cleveland Browns way with the power structure was anathema to the rest of the league and wanted no part of it. No part of the dysfunction, that is.

It is clearly a significant step backward for the Browns, unless there is a backchannel move no one knows about, to name Berry, the Browns’ former director of player personnel for four years, to the top spot.

The 32-year-old Berry, who moved on after the 2018 season and served as vice president of football operations for the Philadelphia Eagles last season, was Sashi Brown’s football guide in two disastrous college drafts in 2016 and 2017.

Paton was a solid football man in the Minnesota front office with a solid background in the annual college football draft. Berry, who has a background in economics and computer science, was never associated with success in the football realm with the Browns.

His eventual appointment to the role, however, will give the club an Ivy League look and feel among those who count in the new Haslam alignment. Berry and DePodesta are Harvard graduates and Stefanski, who can’t be thrilled with the latest moves, graduated from Pennsylvania.

As Freddie Kitchens would say, “Whoop-de-doo!”