mongo Posted February 6, 2014 Report Share Posted February 6, 2014 For the record: We host: AFCNorth, Jacksonville, Tennessee, Atlanta, Carolina, Denver We Travel to: AFCNorth, Indianapolis, Houston, New Orleans, Tampa, New England Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bubba Posted February 7, 2014 Report Share Posted February 7, 2014 ESPN - Chiefs release CB Dunta Robinson, 31, after 1 season; signed 3-year, $13.75M deal on March 8, 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Tigre Posted February 8, 2014 Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 Jump on that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orange 'n Black Posted February 8, 2014 Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 Jump on that one. No way... He's a horrible tackler, best known for launching himself at Desean Jackson and concussing the both of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Tigre Posted February 8, 2014 Report Share Posted February 8, 2014 Yeah, never mind. KC fans hate him too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengals1181 Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 @AdamSchefter Browns promoted Ray Farmer to GM, have let go of Michael Lombardi and Joe Banner transition out of organization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akiliMVP Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 @AdamSchefter Browns promoted Ray Farmer to GM, have let go of Michael Lombardi and Joe Banner transition out of organization. Their owner is insane Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|kennethmw| Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Their owner is insane No shit! I guess they truly deserve the title of "The Mistake on the Lake", don't they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted February 11, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Their owner is insane Yes, he is. @AdamSchefter Browns promoted Ray Farmer to GM, have let go of Michael Lombardi and Joe Banner transition out of organization. "Transistion" is a racist code word for "fired" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alleycat Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Alex Mack, here we come!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Alex Mack, here we come!!! :lol: You were joking, right? :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alleycat Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Yes and no. I don't see how any player with a ticket out of there would stay. Place has turned into a nut factory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldcat Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Yes and no. I don't see how any player with a ticket out of there would stay. Place has turned into a nut factory. I suppose firing Lombardi marks the end of the media fawning over the team... And now Joe Banner is angry...you won't like him when he is angry... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orange 'n Black Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 This is probably a good move for the Browns. Their fans HATED Lombardi and Banner. Lombardi is a stooge and a terrible personnel guy, and Banner is way better known for being a cap wizard than personnel manager. He's also a grade A asshole by all accounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldcat Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 This is probably a good move for the Browns. Their fans HATED Lombardi and Banner. Lombardi is a stooge and a terrible personnel guy, and Banner is way better known for being a cap wizard than personnel manager. He's also a grade A asshole by all accounts. Perhaps they should have fired those two before gutting the coaching staff, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted February 11, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Perhaps they should have fired those two before gutting the coaching staff, though. Are you kidding? The new guys should not be saddled by the off season coaching changes that have occurred. It gives the new guys the ability to fire the new coach after one year and proclaim, "He wasn't my guy." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fluhartz Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 This is probably a good move for the Browns. Their fans HATED Lombardi and Banner. Lombardi is a stooge and a terrible personnel guy, and Banner is way better known for being a cap wizard than personnel manager. He's also a grade A asshole by all accounts. their fans hate everyone. They love Phil Savage and then hated him.. Holmgren was going to save the world and then they hated him... on and on and on... Good.. I hope this shit continues for eternity..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted February 11, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 their fans hate everyone. They love Phil Savage and then hated him.. Holmgren was going to save the world and then they hated him... on and on and on... Good.. I hope this shit continues for eternity..... I love their continuity. They are continuously rebuilding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldcat Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Are you kidding? The new guys should not be saddled by the off season coaching changes that have occurred. It gives the new guys the ability to fire the new coach after one year and proclaim, "He wasn't my guy." If you were going to fire the management for being worthless, why let them hire a new staff that the new management might not like? Especially when that search turned out to be such a joke. And it isn't like Cleveland needs excuses to fire its coaches at any time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldcat Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 their fans hate everyone. They love Phil Savage and then hated him.. Holmgren was going to save the world and then they hated him... on and on and on... Good.. I hope this shit continues for eternity..... It will be hard to think that Ray Farmer is anyone's savior. I suppose they will go directly to hating him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|SF2| Posted February 11, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 If you were going to fire the management for being worthless, why let them hire a new staff that the new management might not like? Especially when that search turned out to be such a joke. And it isn't like Cleveland needs excuses to fire its coaches at any time. My response was obviously sarcasm. The fact that the search was a joke and the brain trust decided they needed a coach now instead of waiting a week and possibly getting a good coordinator is funny enough (although whoever they may have had in mind may have said "FUCK NO!" already). It will be hard to think that Ray Farmer is anyone's savior. I suppose they will go directly to hating him. The fans already threw trash on his lawn just to keep their skillz up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orange 'n Black Posted February 11, 2014 Report Share Posted February 11, 2014 Here's an article about the Cleveland front office fiasco from some Browns website. No direct link to preserve the sanctity of Go-Bengals. We reported on February 4th that Mike Lombardi was rumored to be on his way out as Browns GM, we ran into a lot of flak and rebuttals. Truth be told, I had heard these rumors starting back around the same time Chud was fired, but didn't have enough evidence or multiple sources to confirm, so we let it simmer for a while. Patiently, we let the evidence build and more sources leak out and confirm what we had been hearing. Today, obviously, it came to a head, as in a bombshell (to those who don't follow us, anyhow) Jimmy Haslam announced the firing of Michael Lombardi and the gradual withdrawl from operations of Joe Banner. Additionally, he announced that Ray Farmer was being promoted as the new GM, something else we mentioned as a very real probability. While it might seem sudden and disheveling to many, this has been in the works for a long, long time. Let's take a walk through the past then, and see how we got here. The groundwork for all of this actually happened as part of the deal that allowed Jimmy Haslam to purchase the Cleveland Browns. As part of the deal (a non-public part of the deal, mind you), Jimmy was required by the NFL to take on Joe Banner as CEO of the franchise. This was presented by the League as a way to help Haslam transition into ownership, and give the League a voice in the Browns consistently struggling front office. Banner actually saw to the inclusion and eventual hiring of Lombardi before Chud was hired, though Lombardi was announced after Chud, to ideally help lessen the inevitable criticism over bringing Lombardi back to the Browns. Sources close to the situation then told us that Haslam was not thrilled about having Banner and Lombardi essentially forced on him, but not wanting to make enemies out of friends, he accepted the deal and bought the team. Shortly after the purchase was announced, as you all remember, Jimmy H ran into his still on-going legal issues. This left most of the power and day to day control of the organization in the hands of Banner and Lombardi. Which, from sources in Berea, they ran a very secretive, power centric office. They alienated workers, created a borderline hostile environment, and shucked accountability for mistakes, such as the failure in last years draft and free agency. They played fast and loose with Chud, one day accusing him of failing to support players, other days demanding that he cut players (Greg Little, Shawn Laovao) to set an example. The longer this went on, the more the rumors started to leak of trouble in Berea. The Banner/Lombardi regime, however, continued to sell the story of a friendly, excited work place to the likes of Mary Kay and other beat reporters, who gladly gobbled up the stories of hope and happiness. The truth, however, would not stay hidden forever. As the season went on, it became more and more apparent that Lombardi had failed utterly in free agency and the draft the previous year, and we began to see a gradual shift where Ray Farmer had more and more sway in the personnel department. Eventually, before seasons end, Haslam had set Farmer up as the de facto head of personnel, as we saw with Farmer being the sole Browns executive present at any collegiate games and major events toward the end of the regular season and after. After Chud was fired, we heard that Lombardi was next to go. The longer the situation in Berea dragged on, the less Lombardi was included in areas where you'd normally expect to see a GM. This withdrawl was sold as Lombardi not being the face of the franchise, but investigative fans were already looking beneath the surface to see why Lombardi had suddenly vanished from the public's eye. The "straw that broke the camel's back", I'm told, was the push that Lombardi made for Josh McDaniels. We reported early that McDaniels was all but hired as the Browns next head coach, as our source close to Lombardi said that Lombardi had worked out the particulars behind the scenes before Chud was even fired. When McDaniels turned the job down, it was the last black eye that Jimmy Haslam was prepared to take due to his CEO and GM. Haslam took over the head coach search himself, and was extremely impressed by Mike Pettine. As we know, Pettine was later hired by Haslam. That takes us up to last week, when we first reported what we could from our investigation into the rumors around Lombardi, as our source (per Shawn) said a move was likely to happen before the draft, and another independent source from Concede put the "Firing Timeline" as before the Combine. We called out that this article written by the often wrong Mary Kay Cabot was conveniently posted the day after we broke the rumors. At this point, Haslam had already maneuvered a replacement for Lombardi (in Ray Farmer) and hand picked his own head coach (Pettine). It was at this point that Haslam decided to liquidate Joe Banner's position, and restructure the Browns so that the GM and Coach both had a direct line to his office, and so that he would personally oversee the day to day operations of the organization. In probably the most Godfather/Game of Thrones narrative you could imagine for a football franchise, you can see how this entire tale of backdoor dealings, power struggles and behind the scenes maneuvers has led us to today, when Haslam gave the word and seized complete control of his organization. Where will this all end up? Too early to say, and I'd be lying if I said I had some clairvoyance to that end. But, I can't help but feel like the good guys won this round. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zins30 Posted February 14, 2014 Report Share Posted February 14, 2014 Mack and Ward now in Browns' future? February, 12, 2014 By Nic Reiner | ESPN.com The Cleveland Browns' front office shakeup continued yesterday when Ray Farmer was promoted to general manager and Alec Scheiner was scheduled to be transitioning into a true president role, thus replacing previous GM Mike Lombardi and CEO Joe Banner, respectively. How does this influence key free agent situations like that of safety T.J. Ward and Pro Bowl center Alex Mack? "Move with #Browns may mean there’s hope for (D'Qwell) Jackson, Alex Mack, T.J. Ward. New approach means new thinking," reported ESPN Browns reporter Pat McManamon. Echoing this sentiment, NFL.com's Ian Rapoport reported that the Browns now have a much better chance at retaining Mack, though he will still test free agency. Rapoport said that Mack was likely gone before because of "bad feelings built up over uncertainty and lack of contract progress." Finally, Rapoport speculates that there's strong likelihood the Browns will franchise tag T.J. Ward this offseason. Both Mack and Ward will be top free agents at their respective positions. There's still a chance they go elsewhere but the road to keeping them seems more smooth now for the Browns. This news comes on the heels of the reports that the Browns and Pro Bowl cornerback Joe Haden are working on securing a long-term contract and that receiver Greg Little now could be returning to Cleveland, as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldcat Posted February 14, 2014 Report Share Posted February 14, 2014 Jackson signed a 5 year deal in 2012 from what I read. Why is he in the mix for contract squabbling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky151 Posted February 15, 2014 Report Share Posted February 15, 2014 Jackson signed a 5 year deal in 2012 from what I read. Why is he in the mix for contract squabbling? He's overpaid and I think they want him to take a paycut. Greg Little will be lucky to get a decent offer from anyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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