I guess the front office is blind to the reat of the North

[muskiesfan]

While it has been popular to talk about what the Browns are doing every year, this year is definitely a little different. They got close to a break even season last year. Through the draft they seem to have hit on the necessary pieces and are now making moves to try and take that next step. Mike Brown never attempts to take the next step. We let the right players go and re-sign the wrong players. We're always saving to extend players instead of bringing in additional upgrades to try and take the next step. We were close on a couple of occasions, but still followed the process that only Mike Brown believes will work.

People want to ask what have the Patriots or Steelers or whoever done? The first problem with that logic is those are teams that win and have won championships. Even those teams have made moves before. The Patriots brought in Randy Moss, Darrelle Revis. The Steelers who always seem to have much less cap space find ways to keep the key pieces they want to keep. Brown cries poor or lowballs and watches the players leave and the fans are left wondering why they have double the cap space of other teams, but constantly do less with it.

As some will want to point out, the Bengals have went over the cap or spent more than other teams. That's easy to do when you constantly rollover millions of dollars (increasing the amount you can spend) and frontloading contracts. Yes it's nice being able to potentially cut an under-performing player with little to no cap hit, it takes away from what can be done immediately when you pay a lot of it upfront. Signing someone to a 3 year/15 million dollar deal and paying them $10m in the first year means that's $5m less you have to spend this year. Effectively meaning you can spend your cap money and reach the floor while not really being as committed to winning and success as your counterparts.

At the end of the day, Mike Brown's way does not work. There's almost 3 decades worth of proof that it doesn't work. You can't simply rely on the draft, re-signing your own, and supplemental draft picks. Free agency is not a bad thing. It's okay to let your garbage go and it's okay to sign players who are better than what's on the roster. True, you may have to spend a little bit more and not be able to rollover $10m and save $5m for injuries or whatever, but maybe it could help push the team to a better place or help to turn the team around much quicker.