The Cleveland Browns found a new way to embarrass themselves on Tuesday when they failed to complete a trade for A.J. McCarron before the deadline expired, though the reports we have been hearing make you wonder how much was a mistake and how much was sabotage.
Sources told Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com that Browns executive vice president of football operations Sashi Brown and director of football administration Chris Cooper agreed to the terms of the McCarron traded around 10 or 20 minutes before the 4 p.m. trade deadline. The Browns supposedly emailed their paperwork to the Cincinnati Bengals but did not send anything to the NFL, perhaps assuming the Bengals would take care of that. The league got the proper documentation from the Bengals, but not the Browns.
Only, some “high-level” NFL personnel people are not buying what the Browns are selling.
“It would be crazy for the Browns to expect the Bengals to send the Browns’ paperwork to the NFL,” Cabot was told by one executive. “They know they have to notify the league themselves.”
Another exec expressed the same opinion.
“The Browns know how to execute a trade,” he said. “If they had really wanted to make this deal, they would have.”
In other words, the belief is that the Browns may have dragged their heels on purpose. When we say the Browns, we mean their front office people. Here’s another interesting snippet from Cabot:
Several sources have told cleveland.com that the personnel department — which values its draft picks very highly — didn’t want to make the trade in the first place, and that’s why it wasn’t agreed upon until 10 to 20 minutes before the deadline.
The two sides had been talking throughout the day, but didn’t agree on the compensation until somewhere between 3:40 p.m. and 3:50 p.m.
This is becoming a pattern in Cleveland. Head coach Hue Jackson clearly isn’t sold on rookie DeShone Kizer as the team’s quarterback, and the coaching staff has been trying to get the people in charge to find another arm. For more evidence of that, look no further than the report we heard about the Browns’ lack of involvement in the Jimmy Garoppolo trade.
There’s typically smoke where there’s fire, and this isn’t the first time we have heard that there is a disconnect between the coaching staff and personnel department in Cleveland.
