If you’ve ever watched Moneyball, you might remember the moment of inspiration. The A’s have just lost Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon. Their GM Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) is desperate. Enter Paul DePodesta, brilliant, awkward, and analytically inclined. He points out undervalued players like Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford. Suddenly, the A’s are winning again. Cue the montage, cue the triumph of data over instinct.
But hold on. The movie leaves something out.
The A’s also had three Cy Young-level starters: Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, and Barry Zito. They had Gold Glove third baseman Eric Chavez. They had MVP Miguel Tejada. That’s not a bunch of misfit toys. That’s a core. It wasn’t just math that built that team it was scouting, development, and traditional baseball infrastructure. Paul DePodesta’s analytics helped. But they weren’t everything.
Fast forward to Cleveland. DePodesta, now the Browns’ Chief Strategy Officer since 2016, was hired by owner Jimmy Haslam to bring a Moneyball-style approach to the NFL. And while Haslam has cycled through GMs and head coaches at dizzying speed, DePodesta has remained. He’s the constant in a sea of churn. That should tell you something about his influence.
The question is: has that influence been good?
DePodesta’s Browns have become infamous for zigging when others zag. They’ve drafted injured players high. They’ve targeted undersized defenders who were “value” picks—meaning cheaper. They’ve drafted cornerbacks and safeties who flash athletic metrics but fail to hold up over a brutal NFL season. They’ve taken chances on players most teams wouldn’t touch, like Deshaun Watson, who cost three first-round picks and the largest guaranteed contract in NFL history.
DePodesta was reportedly a major advocate of that move. The theory? Franchise quarterbacks at 27 years old are never available so when they are, you do whatever it takes.
But again, a question nags: If he’s so valuable, why was Houston willing to trade him? The Texans—who knew Watson’s habits, health, and psychology better than anyone and had decided to move on. The Browns saw market inefficiency. Maybe it was just an iceberg, and they bought the Titanic.
This isn’t baseball. Baseball is a sequence of isolated, measurable events: pitch, swing, hit, out. The sample sizes are huge - hundreds of at-bats, thousands of pitches. That’s ideal terrain for analytics.
Football? Much messier.
The number of plays in a season is relatively small. The variables are massive: weather, health, scheme, teammates, matchups, mental preparation. There’s less statistical stability. A player might be brilliant for four weeks and invisible for the next eight. That’s why NFL front offices still lean heavily on experience, tape, and context.
But in Cleveland, analytics became the system, not just a tool within it. And that may be the root of the Browns’ continued inconsistency. They've ignored long-held truths of the game like the idea that defensive tackles must anchor the run. Or that linebackers need durability as much as speed. Or that locker room chemistry, character, and leadership matter more than spreadsheet projections.
Yes, the “football guys” don’t always get it right either. But there’s a reason certain traits recur among great players. There are physical thresholds that history shows must be met. You can’t consistently win in the NFL with a soft middle or brittle safeties. You can't build a championship culture if the face of your franchise is a lightning rod for controversy and mistrust.
Analytics can sharpen a decision when it’s close. But when analytics drive every decision—ignoring tape, history, and intangibles the result is what Browns fans have lived through: expensive mistakes, fragile teams, and flashes of promise followed by thuds of reality.
Football is not baseball. And Cleveland is not Oakland. You can’t moneyball your way to a Super Bowl if you don’t respect the brutal, physical, emotionally complex reality of the NFL.
Jimmy Haslam wanted to outsmart the league. Ten years in, the smarter question might be: Is it time to start building a football team the way winning football teams do?
Until that question gets answered, the answer to whether the Browns are in good hands is… not yet.
