NO PATON? NO PROBLEM AT ALL

By STEVE KING

It’s a good thing for everyone involved – especially the Browns, because that’s all that their fans care about – that Minnesota Viking Assistant General Manager George Paton has removed himself from consideration for the team’s GM opening.

In that way, then, perhaps the Browns’ luck is finally changing for the better.

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For if Paton, who apparently dropped out because he was concerned about what his role would have been, had gotten hired, then it would have been disastrous for the Browns.

The people involved in this hierarchy triumvirate – new head coach Kevin Stefanski, Chief Strategy Officer DePodesta and the new GM, under the watchful eye of Browns owner Jimmy Haslam – have to all be on the same page. Actually, they have to all be on the same sentence on that page. They have to be fully committed, all in.

And if they’re not, then this thing isn’t going to work and the Browns will be back to square one, trying to figure out where it all went wrong and then having to blow it up.

Again.

Still.

Always.

Arghhh!

That can’t happen – it just can’t – but it would have with an indecisive Paton involved.

That is what this whole lengthy process – and it has indeed been lengthy, which is just fine, despite what you may have read or heard elsewhere – has been about, getting this alignment that Haslam keeps talking about. In any job, any company, there has to be that alignment, and if there’s not, then it – and all the people involved – will be doomed to fail.

So, then, the Browns will move forward in their search, presumably with Andrew Berry now receiving almost all of their focus, if it wasn’t pretty much that way all along.

As in the coaching search with Stefanski, who almost got the job a year ago before he didn’t at the last minute, and then appeared for all the world to be the front-runner this time because of that, it appears that Berry, whom they have also liked for some time, has been the guy throughout for the GM opening.

But we’ll see – probably very, very soon.