Browns off season moves?

I feel like I'm in the minority but I like what we have been up to. Disclaimer put on your orange colored glasses:

  • Retained some of our more talented players in Tashaun Gipson at a second round tender as well as Craig Robertson. If anyone tries to sign them away we will most certainly match any non insane offers. We also tendered Johnson Bademosi and Ismaaly Kitchen who are both relatively solid players, Basemosi a good punt/kick gunner and our special teams captain and Kitchen a solid depth guy for our D line.

  • Signed guys who had been released already in Hartline and McCown so they don't count against compensatory picks we may get next year.

  • Trimmed the fat. Fans here, not me personally, would have liked to have retained Buster Skrine but its pretty clear we didn't want to keep him for the contract the Jets gave him. Jabaal Sheard, while one of my favorite players, has been playing out of position since his second year in the league. We switched from a 4-3 to a 3-4 under Chud and have remained that way. Jabaal is a much better 4-3 defensive end than a 3-4 OLB, but he will be missed. Athyba Rubin will probably not be retained and honestly good, he wants to be paid and was a detriment to our run defense last year despite having been solid for us for a long time. Jordan Cameron is out. He is a playmaker no doubt about it and we have apparently taken another run at re-signing him. There are a lot of amateur neurologists on here who will say he is a concussion away from being a vegetable, which may or may not be true. Despite his concussion history there are a lot of other reasons we should probably let him walk. He turned down a pretty good offer from us before free agency started and there have been rumors he wants to play back home in California. He has been injured most of his career with us in some way be it concussions or his lingering shoulder issues. I personally hope we can replace him with a) someone who buys into what Pettine and Farmer are building b) doesn't tie up a ton of our cap space c) can block. Letting these guys add to the posibility of us getting some decent compensatory picks next year.

  • We are currently pursuing if rumors are to be believed : Cecil Shorts WR, Parrish Cox CB, Brandon Browner CB, Charles Clay TE

Which leads us to this recent acquisition of Thad Lewis. I know a lot of users here want to jerk each other off and comment "MISSING PIECE" "SO BROWNS" and all that bullshit but this seems like a pretty clear signal that our QB group is now set. We're not fucking around in the draft and moving up for one of the top two (although who knows what happens if Mariota falls to 12). Were going into camp with Manziel, Shaw, McCown, and Thad. Thad and Shaw compete for the third/practice squad role. Johnny and McCown compete in a very uninspiring quarterback competition. Basically, my idea of what the plan may be is this, we let Kevin O'Connell, McCown and Defelippo try to qb guru Johnny into a serviceable starting quarterback. If that fails we are fucked anyway and we get stop gap McCown and possibly another very high pick next year.

I mean here's the thing though, this is really kind of our only option really if we are truly building towards something. You don't get good quarterbacks in free agency. You hardly ever get them through trades. We don't have a top tier pick for Mariota or Winston this year and we'd be fools to sell the farm for either of them when we have other bigger needs that can be filled with our first round picks this year and the next. Basically Johnny works out, we manage to retard proof the team for McCown and he can Trent Dilfer this team into the playoffs next year, you know, or bust.

On top of all of this, although we are one of the teams with a lot of cap space, why should we spend it unless we aren't finding guys who fit into our system at the right price? I mean let's get this straight we could do very well in the draft and one of the QB situations above could play out and maybe we make the playoffs but were not going to go from mediocre to contending next year. Why should we start tying up all of our cap in the next few years into huge contracts of superstars when we don't have a QB that can put this team into serious contention? A lot of (smart teams) have played it like this for a long time. Build through the draft, retain your own homegrown, buy-into-your-system talent in free agency, accumulate compensatory picks, and taking a page out of Ozzie Newsome's book, wait for teams to cut players you want after OTAs and training camp so you can sign them cheap. If that's what we're going for sure it's boring and sure it doesn't bring a lot of hope for the immediate future but it's different than anything we've tried since 1999.

/r/nfl Thread