Paul DePodesta is synonymous with analytics, but the Browns didn't hire the former Major League Baseball executive of Moneyball fame to crunch numbers on a computer all day.
As chief strategy officer, DePodesta is charged with helping the tortured franchise establish a vision, developing methods to execute it and ensuring the plan is followed.
He'll certainly use analytics while seeking answers. His focus, though, is on the big picture.
"I'm not really here to be an analytics guy," DePodesta said during his introductory news conference. "I think my role is really about the organization as a whole. When you look at great organizations, whether they're sports franchises or anything else, they do something that separates them from the competition. Usually that 'something' is a process or a set of systems that differentiates them.
"For Apple, that might be their design function. For Amazon, it might be how easy they make shopping. For UCLA under John Wooden, it was the process that started on the first practice of every day when he told them how to put on their socks and lace up their shoes, right? It's a little different everywhere.
"My job is really to help us create and implement those processes that we think are going to give us a sustainable advantage over time. Has my approach changed, or will it change from sport to sport? In that sense, no, because what I've always done is try to create those systems or those processes that create a sustainable advantage. Are there nuances to this game and this sport that I'm going to have to learn? Absolutely."
Trusting the new guy
The NFL will present a learning curve for DePodesta, who spent 20 years in baseball and the past five as the New York Mets' vice president of player development and amateur scouting. The Browns made his hiring official Jan. 5 and gave him tremendous power -- he reports directly to owner Jimmy Haslam. He also participated in the recent coaching search that led to the hiring of Hue Jackson, and he's involved in the quest for a vice president of player personnel.
Being a relatively new NFL owner who has struggled thus far, Haslam sought knowledge from MLB and NBA executives last year because his football counterparts haven't been exactly willing to hand him how-to-win guides. When Haslam and other members of the team's brain trust met with DePodesta shortly after the World Series, they came away impressed.
"Paul, for us, really isn't really about analytics," said Sashi Brown, the team's executive vice president of football operations. "We have a talented analytics group already in place. Paul's strength, to us, was the ability to think about, build, execute on putting together championship-caliber organizations.
"He understands people. He understands processes. He understands standards and accountability. His talents aren't limited to analytics That's really what Paul's role is here -- to help us set a vision, set strategies, execute on those, keep us on strategy and aligned."
A history of boldness
When asked if anyone in the baseball fraternity has told him he's crazy for making the transition to the NFL, DePodesta quipped, "Most of them."
"But it's funny," he said. "A lot of the people who know me well reached out and said they really weren't surprised at the end of the day, just knowing my passion for football and maybe even passion for a challenge."
DePodesta, 43, played football and baseball at Harvard University, where he earned a degree in economics. He wanted a job in football but couldn't find one in the NFL out of college, so he took an unpaid internship in the Canadian Football League.
From there, he landed a gig with the Indians. He parlayed it into becoming the assistant general manager to Billy Beane with the Oakland Athletics, and they overcame budget constraints to build a winner with the use of sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball data. In the film Moneyball, named after the book, Brad Pitt plays Beane and Jonah Hill plays a character (Peter Brand) based on DePodesta.
Now he's a baseball stats guy trying to make a mark in the NFL.
"I understand the skepticism," DePodesta said. "I'm hugely passionate about football. I played football in college. I really wanted to work in football. My first job was actually in the CFL. All of those things qualify me in absolutely no way whatsoever to work for an NFL team."
Still, DePodesta hopes to prove he can add value by determining whether the Browns are doing things the right way.
"It's about being persistent, about asking the question, 'If we weren't already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?' " he said. "All organizations, not just in sports, in general, there are a lot of things that are just because that is the way they have always been. We need to take an approach where we're thinking critically about what it is that we're doing, whether or not it is useful or not."
The approach isn't limited to sports.
DePodesta is trying to help the Scripps Translational Science Institute find new ways to analyze medical data as an assistant professor of bioinformatics. The institute is in San Diego's La Jolla neighborhood, where DePodesta and his family live. He plans to commute from there to Cleveland similarly to the way he went coast to coast when he worked for the Mets.
Preaching process
He's neither a doctor nor a football lifer -- like most NFL execs -- but DePodesta believes analytics can help solve problems in any field.
"It's not really about numbers or algorithms," DePodesta said. "For me it's really just about a mindset, and the mindset is about trying to use information to make better decisions. ... We're certainly going to be seeking out, not only information, but better information to help us make better decisions in all phases, whether it's with personnel, whether its player development, the draft, et cetera.
"Even with the best process in place, the best ideas, and the best intentions, we're still going to be wrong. We're still going to have some picks that don't work out. We're still going to try some things that don't work out. But hopefully we have processes in place, and not just with numbers, but processes in general, that if we do them time and time again, we will start being right more often than we are wrong or maybe just right more often when it matters."
And even when the best processes are employed, obstacles can interfere. It's DePodesta's responsibility to help keep everyone on track and on the same page.
"People can come up with how you ought to do things, but the real trick is can you get it done? Can you implement it? That will be our challenge going forward," he said. "I think we feel very good about what we've created on a relationship level ... with Hue and other people here already in the building.
"As I was meeting with these guys and figuring out if this was a leap I should make, I said, 'Jeez, all the teams that struggle around the NFL, you read about some sort of conflict between the head coach and the GM or personnel and coaching. Boy, it's the same movie over and over again, and we all know how it ends. It's not a good ending.' We're certainly aware of that, but it's our job now to try to make sure that doesn't happen."
If DePodesta can aid a miraculous revival of the Browns, it'll be a different movie, perhaps even football's version of Moneyball.
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