Some shocking news hit the Cleveland Browns fanbase on Thursday as chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta abruptly left the team to become the head of baseball operations for MLB’s Colorado Rockies, leaving the Browns out of the blue.
He leaves behind big shoes to fill and plenty of questions about the future of Cleveland’s front office, though one insider recently proposed an interesting solution.
ESPN Cleveland’s Tony Grossi praised DePodesta for pairing general manager Andrew Berry with head coach Kevin Stefanski in 2020, which helped turn the page on the dreaded two-year stint when the team went 1-31 and provided some stability, and Grossi suggested Berry could be in line for a big promotion with DePodesta out of the picture.
“This move presents the opportunity for Jimmy Haslam to restructure his organization. One possibility, he could promote Andrew Berry to a higher-level position and then create the opportunity to hire a new general manager,” Grossi said.
Could Andrew Berry be promoted and the Browns hire a new GM? 🧐🧐🧐 https://t.co/nVAY1R8rPa
— ESPN Cleveland (@ESPNCleveland) November 6, 2025
Promoting Berry would certainly be interesting.
Perhaps DePodesta was being positioned as the fall guy, and Berry will be given more input without an official change in title.
It’s hard to speculate about what comes next for the Browns, as this is likely an offseason question, but given how bad the Browns have been over the last two years, nobody is going to be too upset about any front-office shakeups.
This team clearly needed something to change at the top, and we’ll see what happens next with Berry and this new job opening.
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