New Browns front office duo Sashi Brown and Paul DePodesta spoke to reporters today at an afternoon press conference, and while the session wasn’t exactly filled with headline-worthy nuggets, Brown and DePodesta made a few comments worth passing along. Here’s a round-up:
- The Browns are looking to fill a crucial spot in their front office, but that position won’t get a general manager title, according to Brown (Twitter link via Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal). The new addition to the front office will be the vice president of player personnel, and Cleveland intends to make a hire within about a week.
- Brown is confident that the team can attract top candidates for that VP of player personnel role, even though Brown will retain final say over the 53-man roster. However, he acknowledges that teams are reluctant to let their top personnel guys go at this time of year, with the draft coming up (Twitter links via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com).
- The Browns are in no hurry to make a decision on quarterback Johnny Manziel, but Brown says he’ll defer to Hue Jackson if the new head coach decides he doesn’t want Manziel (Twitter link via Jeff Schudel of The News-Herald).
- As for Josh Gordon, the Browns also won’t rush into any decision on the suspended wide receiver. If Gordon is reinstated, the team will sit down with him and see how he’s doing, Brown said today (Twitter link via Ulrich).
- Brown has met with left tackle Joe Thomas and indicated that he’ll “be a big piece of what we do moving forward” (Twitter link via Cabot). Thomas suggested at season’s end that he may ask to be traded if he wasn’t fond of the new head coaching hire and the franchise’s offseason direction.
- DePodesta downplayed the idea that the Browns will be employing any sort of radical analytics, suggesting that his approach is more about a mindset than an algorithm, and the ultimate goal is to make the best possible decision (Twitter links via Ulrich).