Michael Lombardi - New VP of Player Personnel

[cortes02]

Perhaps this is a clever cover up for Haslem. Make people think that Banner and Lombardi are intregal parts of making draft choices when in actuality, they are just figureheads and Haslem is the one who will make all of the draft picks ala Jerry Jones. Why take the heat like Jerry Jones has in the past for some of his draft picks when you can make all of the picks as owner and tell everyone else that it was a "group" decision. Just throwing that out there.

Peace!!
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Sig By Kempes

[CleBrowns07]

[Productiondawg]

[fsubrowns9510]

[StewieRules]

[UKClevelander]

I dislike Lombardi but I am hating on the "collective decision" idea even more. I am especially wary of draft day trades.

How can collective decisions occur when the draft is in action? For example: 3 minutes before the Browns have to hand in their first round pick. They have just lost their 1a and 1b picks, and they have 2 calls on the line with different deals on the table. What happens then?

Lombardi: Er I think we should deal with the Cowboys and get a 2nd round pick this year and an 1st round pick the following year

Banner: I think we should deal with the Saints and get their 1st round pick and a 2nd next year.

Chud: Just get me a decent player that I can use.

Haslam: I think we should draft the fastest Kicker in the draft. I thought long and hard and its the future; its the WildKick.

Lombardi pretends to look interested and prepares for his best polite "thanks but your not the expert" line he learnt at Oakland

Haslam: Seriously guys; we get the place holder to catch the ball; our Kicker runs into the flat; gets the ball thrown to him and its a walk in TD every time.

Lombardi: Good idea boss.

At that moment the time runs out; we miss our 1c pick; lose draft partners and end up trading our pick for Vick to convert into our new starting kicker.

I just hope I am wrong. I still am buzzing with the Norv hire and if we were to get Horton it would be a massive coup so I just hope we can get another successful draft under our belts. Next year is a huge opportunity for the Browns to aim for 8-8 or higher and I just hope we can kick on and not just have "promise".

[dawgdish]

[fsubrowns9510]

[green24]

That's rough.
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JMG and sandwhich on the sigs.

[Dropkick_pride]

[fsubrowns9510]

[buno67]

[Dropkick_pride]

[Entropy]

I just wanted to thank buno67 for all the intelligent counter points to the apparent mass hysteria.

And as for cronyism, why is that a bad thing in football, or any business?

In government it leads to an imbalance of power, which detracts from the democratic process of a republic. Businesses are not democracies or republics, they are authoritarian.

Every business wants employees that share the same goals (success) as the owner. There simply is no better means of knowing that beliefs are shared than to have personal knowledge (a history) of a co-worker or employee over a period of time.

Certainly a business owner should not be criticized for choosing someone he is familiar with to hire other people that may hire others that they are familiar with. It's pretty dumb to do otherwise unless you have to.

So let's just not start the whole "cronyism" discussion, it has no merit in this context.

Let's instead talk about what Lombardi has actually done, not what he might do.
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[buno67]