Browns Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown and Vice President of Player Personnel Andrew Berry will meet with the media on Wednesday at noon when the club holds its annual pre-NFL Draft press conference at team headquarters in Berea.
If you get the chance to watch it on line or via other means, listen not so much to what Brown and Berry say, but more importantly, watch how they say it in terms of their voice inflection and body language. Read between the lines. That will tell a whole lot about what they really mean, and what they really feel.
In fact, it works every time it’s tried. You can read these guys like a book, and as a beat writer covering the Browns or any other team in any sport at any level, that’s one of your most crucial jobs.
For instance, every time former Browns head coach Eric Mangini, who also served as the general manager for the first of his two seasons, would say an elongated, “Uuuummmm,” every time he was getting ready to lie with his response to a question. He did so to give himself a chance to figure out how to parse his words.
These pre-draft pressers are interesting events. Because the draft is so important to their livelihood, teams pull out all the stops to guard their draft intentions as if they were nuclear secrets. But while teams are holding onto those plans tightly, media members are at the same time trying everything they can to pry their fingers off them.
The media’s actions are useless, really. It’s like asking a robber, “Tell us where you hid the money.” He or she never says, “Oh, OK, here’s where it is.” Instead, they lie, or at least they stretch the truth as far as it will go.
These pre-draft pressers started in Cleveland during Bill Belichick’s time as head coach. If you think he’s not forthcoming now, then you should have seen him 25 years ago.
Then there was Browns General Manager Mike Lombardi at the pre-draft get-together in 2013. He was so condescending, disrespectful and downright rude as he talked to the media that his partner, rascally Browns President Joe Banner, actually went way out of character and tried to smooth things over. It was the only positive thing Banner did in his year-long reign of terror here.
Brown and Berry won’t act like knuckleheads today. As per their character, they’ll be courteous and professional, but at the same time, don’t expect them to divulge anything of substance – at least not verbally.
But non-verbally? Ah, that’s another story.
