New Colorado Rockies president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta, who quite possibly walked away from Cleveland before they made him run, can’t run away from questions about the colossal failure that was the Deshaun Watson trade.
DePodesta was asked about it in a recent interview with the Denver Post. His long answer boiled down to four words. “We all own that.”
The topic came up again during his introductory press conference, with particularly pointed phrasing of the question: “How can you be assure [sic] that you won’t do something like that again here now in Colorado?”
“I was also calling plays for the Browns,” DePodesta quipped. (It was a joke that quite possibly included a very real message.)
“I’ve said this before,” he added, “I think whenever you have a significant player decision, whether it’s a trade, free-agent signing, number one draft pick, whatever it is, like, those are organizational decisions, right? Those are done collaboratively, like a lot of people on board. And if you’re a senior leader of that organization at that time, then you own that decision. I mean, you do. We all do. So that’s the way I feel about that, and it’s the way I feel about sort of almost all the decisions we made there in Cleveland. I absolutely, you know, own them all.
“And, look, I’ve said this now for probably 25-plus years, like, I lost my no-hitter a long time ago. Like a long, long time ago. I’m not perfect, I haven’t been perfect. I won’t be perfect going forward. Like, we’re definitely gonna miss again. But hopefully we learn from that, and we learn from both the successes and the failures. And ,you know, we get better the next time we need to make a significant decision. And I do feel like I’ve been able to do that through the course of my career. I feel confident that I’m a lot better today than I was five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago, and I hope five years from now, I’m a lot better than I am sitting here today.”
But there’s a difference between not being perfect and being responsible — as the “chief strategy officer” — for the single worst transaction in NFL history. From the significant draft-pick compensation invested (good, relatively cheap players whose rights could have been held by the Browns for five years or longer) to the five-year, $230 million, fully-guaranteed contract for a player who didn’t play at all the prior season and who was facing a 10-game suspension for more than 20 civil lawsuits alleging misconduct during massage-therapy sessions, the question isn’t whether DePodesta has a brief moment of imperfection, but whether he had plunged into full-blown insanity.
Despite his effort to spread the blame to others, he alone was the team’s “chief strategy officer.” And the strategy was to pursue Watson at a time when Baker Mayfield was still under contract. Once news emerged of the effort to acquire Watson, the Rubicon had been crossed with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 draf. Then, after Watson made the Browns the first team to be eliminated from a four-way chase for his services, they got desperate. They threw money at the problem. Too much money. So much money that the Browns, who have kicked the salary-cap can for as long as they could, will be dealing with the aftermath of DePodesta’s “strategy” for years to come.
Is it fair that he’ll never live it down? Yes, it is. It’s fair as it was for former Vikings G.M. Mike Lynn to never live down the horrendous Herschel Walker trade of 1989, who still gets criticized for the move more than 13 years after his life ended.