Browns’ Sashi Brown refutes report that he sabotaged trade

One of the hot pieces of gossip going around is that the Cleveland Browns’ front office bungled the A.J. McCarron trade last week because they didn’t want to make the deal. Team VP Sashi Brown says that is not the case.

Brown spoke to the media on Monday and refuted reports suggesting that he sabotaged the McCarron trade.

“That’s wholly untrue,” Brown said of the sabotage accusations, via Cleveland.com. “We were all in there together – Hue (Jackson), myself and a couple other staff members that work on these things at the time we were trying to get the trade done so I’m not worried about that internally. Externally, I can just put it to bed that is just not the case. To sabotage a trade just wouldn’t make any sense.”

Brown then said that everyone was “disappointed” the deal didn’t get done. He also said the trade failing to go through really did simply come down to the two sides not getting the trade paperwork in to the league properly by the deadline.

The Browns reportedly were going to send a second and third-round pick to Cincinnati for McCarron, which was more than the Niners gave up to New England for Jimmy Garoppolo. Most of the gossip about the Browns’ front office not wanting to make the deal was the product of speculation from others around the league.