Why Jimmy Haslam Will Never Win Squat
- Fred
- Mar 22
- 4 min read
For demonstrative purposes, we are only going back to the year 1999, the year the Cleveland Browns were "re-born."
Let's review the worst trades in sports and the people who made them.
MLB: According to the Bleacher Report, the Florida Marlins sending Miguel Cabrera to Detroit in 2007 was the worst trade in baseball since the year 1999. The trade was spearheaded by Larry Beinfest, who was promoted from GM to President of Operations just a few months earlier. In Beinfest's defense, he had the directive from the owner to cut payroll. The Marlins' owner, Jeffrey Loria, was considered one of the worst owners in MLB History. The Marlins terminated Beinfest's contract in 2013 when he was 49 years old. Beinfest never got another job in Major League Baseball.
NHL: According to the Bleacher Report, the Pittsburg Penguins sending Jaromir Jagr to the Washington Capitals in 2001 was the worst trade in hockey since the year 1999. Ironically, according to Sports Illustrated, Penguins GM Craig Patrick, who made the Jagr trade, made the worst trade in NHL history in 1996 when he sent "future NHL scoring ace Markus Näslund to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for Alek Stojanov, a role player with just two career NHL goals. Again, in Patrick's defense, he had a directive from ownership to dump salaries. When Patrick was fired from the Penguins, he was out of hockey for a short while, but later returned as a consultant and a scout. He never held another front office position.
NBA: According to the Bleacher Report, the Dallas Mavericks trading away Luka Doncic to the Lakers in 2025 wasn't only the worst trade since 1999, it was the Worst Trade in NBA History. The trade was so bad, we even weighed in here at Beacon of Speech. Our take was there was no way Nico Harrison was so historically stupid to make that trade on his own, he had to be the fall guy for an owner who didn't want to give Luka a quarter of a billion dollar contract extension. Owner Patrick Dumont claimed Harrison made the trade of his own volition (which I still don't believe) and fired Harrison less than a year after the transition. Harrison is currently unemployed, but according to AI: "Some commentators believe the Dončić trade—which sent the star to the Lakers for Anthony Davis—was a "sports felony" that may prevent him from working in an NBA front office again."
NFL: According to CBS Sports, the Cleveland Browns acquiring DeShaun Watson from the Houston Texans in 2022 was the worst trade since 1999. Who made that trade?
And that's where our article starts.....
No matter where you work, you have a boss. At my day job, I have an immediate boss, who cannot fire me, but can recommend me being fired. And a Director of Operations, who can fire me tomorrow if he doesn't like my performance. I am very careful about my verbiage around the Director of Operations.
The point is, everyone has a boss that controls their fate. In most sports, General Managers (or their equivalents) only answer to the the owner. It doesn't matter how much fans bitch and moan, the only person a GM has to make happy is the owner. In most cases, an owner is simply happy if you win, but, surprisingly, that is not a universal truth.
Which circles us back to General Manager Andrew Berry and the Cleveland Browns.
During this past off season, the Cleveland Brown fired Coach Kevin Stefanski. Almost as soon as Stefanski got out of town, he grabbed a microphone and said it wasn't his idea to bring in DeShaun Watson.
Why is that important? That means the architects of the worst trade in the Modern NFL were Berry and Browns Owner Jimmy Haslam. Because Andrew Berry was signing Watson to the Highest Guaranteed Contract in NFL History, he had to, at minimum, tie Haslam into the process.
Yet what if Berry wasn't the point man, but was simply following orders? If you have an owner making personnel decisions, and he leads the charge to make the worst trade in the last 25 years, that's a problem. I don't recall a professional sports owner ever firing himself. And, if Jimmy Haslam was the one that pulled the trigger, of course you don't fire Andrew Berry, you don't fire puppets.
Andrew Berry better watch out, though, no-brained puppets are rarely hired by owners that are looking for the smartest guy in the room.
You say Berry is a good GM? Good GM's don't cripple franchises with a quarter of a billion dollars of dead weight.
When the Browns went 1-31 in the 2016 and 2017, they loaded up on front-end draft picks. When Andrew Berry was hired in 2020, his job was to identify the cornerstones of the franchise.
He went with DeShaun Watson at QB.
Nick Chubb at RB.
Joe Bitonio as a core offensive lineman.
Miles Garrett as a core defensive lineman.
Those were the guys who were supposed to lead you deep into the playoffs.
Even before Watson was injured, he was already crapping the bed. Berry's fate SHOULD have been tied to Watson. With the exception of Garrett, the window has closed on all the other guys.
In the NFL, a rebuild doesn't take 3-5 years, a good GM can turn around a franchise in a year or two.
Ultimately, who was more to blame for Watson, Berry or Haslam?
It's a moot point though, Haslam will never win anything with all his football-side bungling, and when he does finally decide to fire Berry, his reputation as one of the worst GMs in Football will negate his availability to get that next job.
But who knows? Maybe Haslam wants to be the next Jerry Jones and Berry can do Waylon Smithers Level-Sniveling for another decade.
That's a nice paycheck.
Addendum:
10 minutes after I hit the publish button, I saw this meme.
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