Andrew Berry this week during his break week press availability referred to Paul DePodesta as his "thought partner".
Good work if you can get it. Get paid 7 figures to work remote and do nothing more than encourage all your colleagues to question conventional NFL wisdom.
Result: Be wrong far more than right, rinse, repeat!
The following analysis is tricky, because one of DePodesta's Guardrails he established before the brilliant 1-31 run he led, is "alignment" and "secrecy" which in addition to maintaining harmony, cushion him from accountability because nobody outside of Berea knows who decided what.
But I will take a stab at this anyways:
DePo STRATEGY: Go after Deshaun Watson at any price because 27 year old franchise QB's rarely come available.
Result: What Mr. DePodesta's recommendation on Deshaun Watson failed to weigh is that maybe, just maybe the Houston Texans are not idiots. The reason they were willing to give up on a franchise QB is that they had 4 years to get to know Mr. Watson and knew his flaws. Maybe that last 4-12 Watson put up, had a lot more to do with him than NFL folks realize. Hats off to Houston for not letting the world know just how bad it was.
DePo STRATEGY: Age is important, no wait age is not important.
Result: The Browns have gone from the youngest roster in the NFL to one of the oldest. Losing is a constant.
DePo STRATEGY: Build your roster and use Free Agents less and less, no wait, use Free Agents more and more.
Result: The above strategy was abandoned after another DePodesta strategy failed. That would be use cheap defensive tackles because NFL defenses only need to defend against the pass. Once teams ran all over the Browns in 2022, Jim Schwartz came in, turned the defense around but to get Schwartz to sign on they had to promise to abandon DePo's loony idea that small, young and cheap DT's are good enough. Hence a new found love of free agents was embraced.
DePo STRATEGY: Have a coordinator pipeline.
Result: Fire Mike Priefer to punish and incentivize Kevin Stefanski into learning how to be a CEO Coach. Hire Bubba Ventrone who I presume was on some list of future head coaches that the Browns analytics department keeps. So far so good. Ventrone's special teams have given up 4 touchdowns in less than 2 seasons while Priefer's special teams gave up 1 TD in 4 seasons. Wonderful! Meanwhile Ventrone has started to spread venom in his organization by not being in alignment. How, by questioning the toughness of the Browns roster.
Oops Paul, Bubba seems to need an alignment check in addition to needing help figuring out how to do his job.