Evaluating Nick’s Second Year

I've seen a lot of talk about firing Caserio lately, and I don't really think it is fair. I did this write up as a response on another thread but under a downvoted comment on a downvoted post, and I feel like it warrants a discussion. Nick's first year was in my opinion a hit based on the context of what he had to work with and what he accomplished. Even though it was a teardown year where he had minimal resources to work with and an absolute dumpster fire of a situation from the previous "GM", he never stopped working to improve the team and there was optimism heading into this season. He also seems to get the blame for BoB's (very well deserved) firing even though it happened before he was hired.

Nick's second year has been, well, hit and miss-

1. Miss on the coaching search, but it is fair to give him a pass if you are aware of the context behind the Culley to Lovie transition. As bad they were at their jobs, we'd have been better off with Culley and Kelley remaining on the team. 2023 was always the year to be serious about the rebuild with it being the first year we'd have full (extra post DW4 trade) draft capital and reasonable cap space to work with. I think Nick had a conversation with Flores and saw a chance to try and jumpstart things by bringing him aboard after what he'd done for Miami, but Flores went off script and made himself unemployable by suing the league. There is a chance that Lovie was promoted in an effort to ward off claims of racism in the aftermath of the lawsuit while we already had the media circus of DW4 hanging over our heads. Our other 2 finalists were white guys (although I'm still certain that McCown was never actually in the running) and Lovie kind of popped up as a name out of nowhere and ended up with the job despite a dismal record as a head coach in college and the NFL both.
2. Hit on Firing Lovie Smith. Technically this could be a third year hit, but the NFL is still in the same season even if it is over for us. It was clear to any fan at the time of his promotion that Lovie was a temporary solution and one which potentially was going to hurt the progress of the rebuild especially considering how bad Pep turned out to be since I think most of us expected Lovie to get at least 2 years. Letting him go after the season was a PR nightmare, but an absolute hit in terms of keeping the rebuild on track. Firing Lovie gives us the space to hire the HC of the future now, and go all in on grabbing a QB without having to worry about our rookie potential franchise QB having to learn a system this year and then another one next year.
3. Miss on Pep Hamilton. Just ugh here. I was one of those who was encouraged by his promotion, thinking not matter what, he HAS to be an improvement on Tim Kelley, even though we were warned at the time. I and others saw what he seemed to have done for Mills and Herbert as a QB coach (or so we thought), but Mills regressed with his mechanics, the playbook was awful, and did nothing to scheme people open. The play calling was even worse relying on our (washed up) receiving back to run between the tackles, trying to convert nearly every 3rd and long on a screen play, constantly going away from anything that was working, and stubborningly insiting that we keep doing things that aren't working anymore… I suppose that if the line was better, the playbook might have been OK, but with the level of pressure we allowed on the interior, plays didn't really have time to develop downfield, and Pep was incapable of adjusting the playbook to accomodate his talent (much like BoB before him). The scary thing is, Pep might still be here next year. If we hire Steichen there's a chance that he likes Pep as his OC since Pep his QB coach when he was OC of the Chargers.
4. Potentially (probably) a miss on trading Brandin Cooks, but the door isn't shut on that yet- we could get a good trade in the offseason, or we could potentially smooth things out and restructure him. I know that Cooks has a bunch of haters in the city now, but he's still good at the football when he tries and if he puts in the kind of work with Young that he put in with Mills last year, he could be a hell of an asset.
5. Miss on our first round picks. We could have had Icky (he would have been a guard for us) and Jordan Davis as the fans predicted and still nabbed Pitre and Pierce (and I still have high hopes for Metchie). Drafting a man corner into a Tampa 2 defense was a total head scratcher, and there were other corners available with later picks who would have been a better fit for the system. That said, one of the reasons given for letting Lovie go was that he wouldn't adapt. It is possible that Nick (like many here on the sub) thought that Lovie would actually adapt his outdated defense to play up to Sting's strengths. Both were bat scheme fits, but Stingley over Sauce was another head scratcher. Stingley had injury concerns (which have followed him into this season), and was generally graded worse than Sauce in college. Our other first round pick ALSO had an injury at the time of the draft which caused him to miss most of the offseason. Kenyon Green has been worse than bad in pass protection this year, and got embarrassed by backups. Now, some of that is that our center play was abysmal and some is because he missed most of camp, so, like Stingley, he might shift back to a hit this year, but as it stands right now, he is a liability on the line.
6. Hit on draft picks outside the first round (small asterisk by Metchie). Pitre and Pierce have been absolute studs playing above their draft position. Metchie was an absolute value at 44. Being our third injured player in 4 picks was kind of frustrating. I built a fantasy team on injured guys once and it didn't work nearly as well as I'd hoped, and it feels like Nick was going for a similar strategy- get long term value with short term losses. It might work better when you are building a team for years instead of one season~. Metchie also hasn't played a single snap, but 100% impossible to have foreseen cancer so that's not on Nick. I consider the value that we got on Metchie to be enough (first round talent in the mid second) to be a win. Christian Harris got injured in camp (there is a definite trend with our rookie here), and came out pretty slow, but was looking promising by the end of the season. our round 5 and 6 picks are what they are. I don't think Deculus played a single snap, Booker didn't do much but was playing behind the vets, and he was drafted I think more for his smarts than his skills. Quitotiano was a late round TE. First year TEs are seldom good, so let's revisit him 2 years from now (although Brevin Jordan looked promising last year, wtf happened there?)
7. Hit on DW4 trade- just as much of a win as we could have hoped for due to his patience and sticking to his guns where he could and wielding every bit of leverage he had in the situation.
8. Hit and maybe miss on free agency. I feel like he didn't do enough in FA this year, but some of what he did was encouraging for this year, he improved the roster and found some true diamonds in the rough the way the Pats always seemed to do, and while I'm kind of on board with the lets not be Patriots south bandwagon, that is one aspect of that team that I am 100% OK with emulating. I also feel like letting Reid go was a half miss, but meh.

So, given all of the above, I understand the frustration that a lot of fans feel, but I think that it is still too early to pass final judgement, especially given that a few of the things that look like misses now could still turn out to be hits. I do believe that what happens in the upcoming year will be critical to what happens to his job security though. Like he said at the press conference, we don't need to be an overnight success, but we need the ship to be sailing in the right direction with a hope for a really solid 2024 when we use up the last of Cleveland's picks.