Hello 216 nation - I had one of my favorite evenings of the year last night. I grabbed a friend, we had dinner at El Campesino in Stow, then made our way to the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library to attend the "Meet the Author" series. Our guest? For the thirteenth consecutive year. Mr. Terry Pluto of cleveland.com. And yes, they had to bring in extra chairs - it was wall to wall people. I am sure Terry's schedule of appointments is on his website terrypluto.com.
I can highly recommend taking in on of his talks if you never have. And after attending for four or five years - it doesn't get old. If you have followed Terry's career, you know that he is also a faith writer. He, his wife and a close friend offer a ministry service to the inmates at the Summit County Jail. Terry always starts his talks out with a short bit about faith - very inspirational.
I very much respect Terry's opinions on the sports scene in Cleveland. He admitted that the Tribe is his first love, followed by the Cavs, and then the Browns. But Terry was very sobering when he talked about this being a Browns town. "I know the numbers of what people are reading online. If an Indians story comes out. it will get about 1,000 hits. About the same for the Cavs, but "If you throw the LeBron angle in - that is usually good for another 500 to 1,000 hits." But the BROWNS - a run of the mill, nothing story has been known to get 110,000 hits.
So when the floor was opened up for Q & A, one of the first questions posed was "Terry, how does it feel now that all of your stories don't have to begin with ":What QB are the Browns looking at to draft?" Instant ice breaker - the whole room cracked up.
I don't know how we got on the subject, but we opened with Terry talking at length about the journey that Patriots WR Julian Edelman endured - taking him from California to Northeast Ohio and Kent State.
Here is the link to the story:
Terry then went on to drop a stunning nugget of 411 on all of us.
This guy - we all know him - has been a scout, a pro personnel guy, college talent evaluator, or an NFL General Manager for the past 26 seasons. In those 26 seasons - his teams made the playoffs an astonishing 19 times or a whopping 73% of the time. Three out of every four seasons Dorsey's teams are in the playoffs. Let that sink in........
Then Terry dropped another one.........
DORSEY LOVES ANALYTICS.
He cited the example that if Myles Garrett plays more than either 81 snaps or 81% of the snaps his production falls off dramatically. And the stats from last year back that up. But Gregg Williams was forced to play him that much due to a lack of bodies.
Dorsey did not care for the defensive overall stats last year, and he told Terry ":We must improve in that area." In response to a later question, Dorsey prefers an smaller, athletic, penetrating DT to a thick bodied run stuffer. So my conclusion was defensive tackle will probably be the pick at 17.
He also said Dorsey was livid with the number of missed tackles the Browns gave up, especially from the linebacker group. Terry all but guaranteed that Jamie Collins
has played his last snap as a Brown - and the linebacker room may be fully turned over.
We concluded with the WR room - it can always be upgraded, but JD is ok with it for now.