In and Out of Cleveland, There Is Still Faith in Winless Browns

In all the computations and calculations that go into the Moneyball approach to sports, there is one simple multiplication rule that trumps everything when it comes to using the approach in the NFL.

Multiply zero wins by anything and it equals zero confidence in the process.

That’s the problem the 0-11 Cleveland Browns face as they come precariously close to becoming only the fourth team to go winless in the Super Bowl era. If the Browns, who have two home games and a bye over the next three weeks, don’t find a way to win a game this season, will that undermine what the team has tried to build this year?

“There’s no question that you worry about that,” a team source said. “But I don’t think that’s happened. I don’t think anybody has lost faith.”

Whether you call it faith or confidence, NFL coaches will tell you that once it’s gone, it’s nearly impossible to get back.

“If players don’t think a coach can help them win anymore, they tune you out,” Tampa Bay defensive coordinator and former Atlanta head coach Mike Smith said. “You’re not useful to them anymore.”

Cleveland’s performance this season is enough to cause problems. But it comes on top of the team’s adopting an outside-the-box approach to the sport that led to plenty of doubt, at least from a public perspective.

The Browns brought in head coach Hue Jackson, promoted Sashi Brown to executive vice president of football operations and hired Paul DePodesta to be the team’s chief strategy officer. Neither Brown nor DePodesta, who was a key figure in the development of the idea of Moneyball when he worked in baseball, had extensive experience in traditional football personnel evaluation. Rather, they were trained as a lawyer and economist, respectively.

While Moneyball concepts have been adopted throughout sports in recent years, there has been a great deal of criticism of the approach. The Oakland A’s, the team that introduced the concept to Major League Baseball, have never won anything of substance.

Now, in Cleveland, the short-term analysis of the situation is simple: It’s failing.

Then again, it’s not as if the more traditional approach to football has worked for the Browns either. In the past 14 years, counting …

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