CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com)- Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
The biggest possible items of Browns news are sort of at an impasse this morning. Things aren’t going exactly as the organization wanted.
First off, there’s the matter of Myles Garrett’s contract, which the team is very defensive about, claiming that they will not trade the player. This is clearly the message they want relayed by the media in their “adamant” statements to “insiders” like Mike Garafolo, Ian Rapoport, Adam Schefter, and local reporters like Mary Kay Cabot. This plotline, I guess, wasn’t even supposed to exist, per the team, but was created because of contract analysts like Over the Cap and the OBR’s Jack Duffin, who have focused on the lack of any alternative rationale for making the contract changes. The team has their perspective, analysts have theirs, and both sides are defending their positions. What is missing is any explanation from the team that paints the contract change in a way that helps the team, other than increasing their flexibility in trading Garrett. Mysterious and mysteriouser.
Both sides could be right. The cap analysts are likely dead-on about their interpretation of the changes, and the Browns could still be speaking the truth. It’s just that their flexibility is greater now in the unlikely event that some team comes up with a more compelling offer than the default position of keeping a certain Hall-of-Fame caliber player. They might have done this as a favor for Garrett’s agent, who can now try to churn up trade proposals for the Browns to reject. It’s all kind of weird, frankly.
Another thing that doesn’t appear to be going all that well is the new stadium project, whose costs are already increasing. It now looks like a $2.6 billion project, up from $2.4 billion, and the Haslam Sports Group, still swimming in the money from Pilot Flying J beef jerky sales, is picking up the tab. Meanwhile, there are folks fighting the allocation of $600 million in “unused” public funds to complete the project, so that’s not necessarily guaranteed either. The public/private partnership that Haslam wanted isn’t happening the way they might have hoped. Haslam is laser-focused on getting this done, but the ball isn’t exactly bouncing the way he might have hoped.
Even powerful media force ESPN isn’t getting things the way they want, as Awful Announcing calls them out about this predictably controversial draft coverage of Alabama QB Ty Simpson, whose value is projected anywhere from being the draft’s top QB to a “project” who shouldn’t even be drafted in the first round. I’ve written about Simpson’s odd rise in the media before, and am kind of tired of the subject, but big media seems help-bent on making sure we have one QB value debate each draft.
Personally, I don’t have time to babysit these gigantic operations and keep them honest. That’s partially because they won’t listen to me anyway, partially because no one cares about my stupid takes, and partially because I’m deeply invested in a behind-the-scenes project here at the OBR. That project is related to how to cover huge amounts of mostly useless noise about the subject of the Cleveland Browns in a new media era that is quickly approaching. Simply pointing out that fans are badly served by the media in its current state is not enough.
Back to work.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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THE LIFT
Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…
The country’s oldest mall has been turned into apartments. Rent is just $550 a month
I haven’t been in the Cleveland Arcade in a while, so I have no idea how things are going there. There were a lot empty shops last time I was there. Hopefully things are doing better. But this wouldn’t be a wholly awful way for things to end up.
WRAPPING UP
When not busy throwing code around, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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