New Browns GM Andrew Berry Hits The Ground Running

Under the Cleveland Browns ownership of Jimmy and Dee Haslam, only the names change. The results do not. For the most part, it’s the revolving door of head coaches, and dismal – at times, humiliating – won-loss records of the team that draws the most ridicule.

Equally plentiful, however, has been the conga line of failed general managers who have marched into town, tried to turn the franchise around, but were gone after a year or two, due either to poor performance or the Haslams’ infamous impatience. Sometimes both.

Since buying the team from Randy Lerner for $1 billion in 2012, the Haslams have plowed through a handful of general managers. The current office holder, Andrew Berry, is the Browns’ sixth general manager in the nine years of the Haslams’ ownership. The first, Tom Heckert, was inherited by the Haslams, and was one of the first to go.

Heckert was followed by Mike Lombardi (2013), Ray Farmer (2014), Sashi Brown (2016), and John Dorsey (2017), each of whom tried their hand at orchestrating an organizational U-turn. None did.

The latest, the youngest, and the most immediately active, is Berry, who, just two months after his hiring, went roaring into his first day in the free agent negotiating period on Monday, and came away with three players, whose contracts are potentially worth a combined $102 million, of which $58 million is guaranteed.

Tight end Austin Hooper (four years, $42 million), offensive tackle Jack Conklin (three years, $42 million), and quarterback Case Keenum (three years, $18 million) are the three new additions that have tails in the Dawg Pound wagging.

Hooper and Conklin address two major needs on the roster, and Keenum is being brought in to chaperone quarterback Baker Mayfield through his crucial third season, after his first two were, respectively, sensational and deplorable.

The trio of signings, which will become official at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, are the product of the first trip onto the NFL dance floor for the 32-year-old Berry, the youngest general manager in NFL history. More big decisions remain, but an NFL general manager only has one first day of reckoning, and Berry’s was a big one.

It was also, for Browns fans, a familiar one.

Nobody made more immediate waves than Dorsey, who, not long after accepting the job, declared the Browns needed more “real players,” then went out and rounded up some.

A year ago at this time, Dorsey traded the Browns’ first and third-round draft picks, plus safety Jabrill Peppers, to the Giants for Odell Beckham, and the hype machine went into overdrive – for the Browns, for Dorsey, and for Beckham.

That was one of a series of dramatic moves made by the audacious Dorsey, who for a time was hailed as a football David Copperfield, magically turning the NFL’s most rag-tag franchise into one with a wildly optimistic future.

But being a successful general manager means more than building a roster. It means picking a head coach. Dorsey whiffed on his one and only chance, and it cost him his job.

The 2019 Browns looked better on paper than on the field, leading to the Haslams’ decision that the Browns would look better without Dorsey than with him.

Enter Berry, whose hiring proves that what goes around comes around, and sometimes it doesn’t take very long. Berry worked in the Browns’ front office from 2016 -2018. In early 2019 he was hired by the Philadelphia Eagles to work under GM Howie Roseman.

Less than a year later, Berry returned to the Browns, after the Haslams’ latest purge, following the 2019 season, when Dorsey and his hand-picked coach, Freddie Kitchens, were excused.

All eyes will be on Berry this year as he tries to take the best of the Dorsey leftovers and combine that with some holdovers, and the new players the new general manager will acquire. The first three of those are Hooper, Conklin, and Keenum. It’s an encouraging start by the rookie general manager, but one that, by itself, will not automatically endear him to the long-suffering Browns fans, who have been down this road before.

Too many times in the past, the fan base has been burned by teams, coaches, and executives who have gotten off to promising starts, only to vanish under the well-worn “only the Browns” umbrella that is hauled out when the franchise again, and invariably, begins to go sideways.

The Browns have won the off-season before. Last year, for example. But that win turned into fool’s gold when the season quickly disintegrated, ending with the usual coaching change and front office tweaking.

The general manager that finally does get the franchise turned around will be an instant hero in Cleveland. Berry, the latest to try, is off to a good start. But it’s only a start. To have staying power in Cleveland – as the exit of his numerous predecessors proves – Berry will also have produce a good finish.