The NFL free agency got officially underway Wednesday. The Cleveland Browns did not. In a continuing trend, the Browns did not do anything to buck the current cycle that has continued to plague the team especially in recent years.
Sashi Brown is in charge of leading this new wave of doing things and was looking into a stats based approach. What his stats left out is that they need to resign key players if they want to win. In my opinion, the Browns just lost four of their top eight players on a three win team.
My breakdown of their top ten would be 1.) Joe Thomas 2.) Joe Haden 3.) Alex Mack 4.) Tashaun Gipson 5.) Joel Bitonio 6.) Mitchell Schwartz 7.) Josh Gordon 8.) Travis Benjamin 9.) Gary Barnidge 10.) Duke Johnson
How do you justify letting half of your top players walk away? That goes for various reasons. The first is how do you expect to improve when you’re not bringing guys back? The Browns have done it time and time again. Last year was a failed example of it. Let’s take a look at key players that left and their replacement.
CB Buster Skrine 4 years 25 million 56 tackles 7 pass deflections 1 INT
CB Tramon Williams 3 years 21 million 69 tackles 10 pass deflections 1 INT
OLB Jabaal Sheard 2 years 11 million 37 tackles 8 sacks 4 forced fumbles
OLB Nate Orchard 2nd round pick 36 tackles 3 sacks 1 forced fumble
DT Athyba Rubin 1 year 3 million 36 tackles 2 sacks
DT Danny Shelton 1st round pick 19 tackles
TE Jordan Cameron 2 years 15 million 35 catches 386 yards 3 TD
TE Rob Housler 1 year 2 million 1 catch 6 yards
These are just some of the examples of the Browns whiffs from last season. This doesn’t include TJ Ward leaving for Donte Whitner or Karlos Dansby over D’Qwell Jackson.
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