If anyone is on the hot seat for the Cleveland Browns, it should be Andrew Berry

If anyone should be on the hot seat for the Cleveland Browns, it’s Andrew Berry.

You can’t squeeze blood from a stone and you can’t make bad players play well, even if Andrew Berry believes you can. This is something fans don’t seem to grasp. They think that great coaches can somehow make bad players good. That’s simply not true. Whether it’s because so many fans believed the hype or because fans actually believe that all prospects have the same ceiling, the fact is you can’t blame defensive coordinator Joe Woods or Special Teams coach Mike Priefer for the failings of their players. You can only make a player play so much before you have to move on from him.

Kevin Stefanski is a different beast entirely, as he has some talent and doesn’t optimize them properly. This isn’t the same for Woods and Priefer.

For Woods, who does he have? Myles Garrett who only ever tries to get a sack, and can’t stop the run to save his life. Jadeveon Clowney is an oft-injured, inconsistent journeyman. Denzel Ward, a penalty-causing, over-paid, detriment to the passing game. John Johnson III gives away more big plays and yards than he does stopping them. Grant Delpit, well, it’s Grant Delpit. What more needs to be said? Then you have just a garbage interior line. Just about every one of his defensive players came in via Berry or were given massive-cap-eating contracts that made making improvements harder to achieve.

As for Priefer, the complaints about his coaching is peculiar. People are blaming him for two missed kicks today. Priefer can’t make a kicker hit his shots, nor does he pick when the kicking game comes out.

You can tell your returners until your blue in the face to kneel in the endzone and not take it out, but if they don’t listen, you’re handcuffed. Not to mention, Priefer is getting the scrap players for his unit. As bad as the defensive players are, Priefer has the players who aren’t good enough to beat them out. Somehow that’s his fault?

You can’t make bad players good. You can only make good players better. This is a bad roster and it’s all due to Berry.

Andrew Berry is the reason the Cleveland Browns are in the hole they are

The Browns have no run defense. Why? Well, part of it is because Berry is very bad at finding talent.  You may not realize it, but losing Porter Gustin, M.J. Stewart, Elijah Lee, and Sheldon Day hurt this team’s run defense. Instead of replacing them with skilled veterans, Berry relied on three years’ worth of underperforming draft classes to fill those needs.

Of his picks, you can probably say Greg Newsome is a starter and Martin Emerson is a good nickel guy who has a chance to start. Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah is clearly not a Pro Bowler, but he’s a very necessary piece of the puzzle, and then what? You can sit here and prop up these mid-to-late round picks from 2022 but we’ve seen this song and dance before. If a rookie doesn’t show potential right away, they usually don’t have much potential to begin with.

You can’t have an entire defense of fringe starters, and that’s what a lot of Berry’s picks, both offense, and defense, have become. At best fringe starters. The difference on offense is that they have All-Stars that came in before Berry.

Wyatt Teller, Joel Bitonio, and Nick Chubb were all guys who came in before Berry. And while Garrett and Ward have huge holes, and are highly over-valued by the local media, they are the best players on defense, and neither of whom were brought in by Berry.

Honestly, after three years, who has Berry brought in that was a difference-maker on either side of the ball? Your best examples of this are Amari Cooper, who disappears as often as he makes plays and Deshaun Watson who completely tanked all the goodwill this team built since 2020.

This isn’t Carolina, Los Angeles (Chargers), or Arizona where you have a bad head coach and a bad scheme. Stefanski’s schemes work when they have the players to run them. This is a situation of not having the personnel needed for these schemes to work.

Everyone should have freaked out when Austin Hooper got cut after just two seasons because it was a sign that Berry was not the savior so many fans have proclaimed him to be and we’re seeing that unfold in real time. If you’re eating that much money to get rid of a “good player”, then you really screwed up.

*This was written before the Deion Jones trade, but the move doesn’t change the opinion stated.*