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Butch league Indications point to Davis winning in the NFL
The voice on the other end of the phone Tuesday at noon had the same slight southern drawl I remember from his years under Jimmy Johnson in Dallas. And Butch Davis was one happy guy, which is what a five-year, $15-million deal with a deep-pocketed owner like Al Lerner will do to a man. "We can definitely win here," Davis, who jumped from the University of Miami to the Browns, told me. "Having spent six years in the league, and having seen and analyzed who wins and how they win, I know the resources are here for us to win." I agree. And this is how I know Butch Davis will win in Cleveland: Ten years ago, I went on a scouting trip with the Dallas Cowboys' coaching staff. At the time, Davis was the defensive-line coach of the Cowboys, a nice man who usually sat in the back of a room and let coach Johnson and defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt do most of the talking. We went to Tennessee, Notre Dame and North Carolina State to scout players for the upcoming college draft, and when Johnson told me about how vital an exercise this was, he told me the college coaches would tell him and his staff members -- many of whom had coached in college football their entire careers until moving to Dallas -- things they wouldn't tell the other pro coaches. "Butch," he told me, "is our private investigator. If there's something to find out about a guy, Butch will find it out." That year, N.C. State had a defensive end named Mike Jones, a first-round prospect. But when the Cowboys' coaches asked why he often wasn't in games in the fourth quarter, they got mostly benign or misleading comments from the Wolfpack coaches. One of the defensive coaches was mysteriously given the day off when the Cowboys visited, and Davis set out to find him. When he did, Davis arranged a meeting, and this assistant coach told Davis that Jones wasn't a gutty player and wasn't mentally tough. Davis returned to the traveling party on the tarmac of the Raleigh-Durham airport and breathlessly reported his findings. "Great!" Johnson told him. "Scratch him off the list." That's the advantage Johnson had over incumbent pro coaches. And now this is the same advantage Davis will have for a vital Browns' draft in April. Davis chuckled at the memory of the N.C. State story on Tuesday. "That's an advantage we will attempt to use," he told me. "I will go on the road, maybe not as much as we did in Dallas, but I will definitely see the top prospects we're interested in, and we will have them into our facility to learn as much as we can about them." Davis said he had a meeting with Lerner and club president Carmen Policy in Cleveland on Jan. 13, but told them afterward he felt sure he would remain at the University of Miami. "I was overwhelmingly impressed with Al Lerner," he told me. "If a guy was ever going to get into the pro game, what an impressive man, along with Carmen and Dwight [VP Dwight Clark], to get into it with. Mr. Lerner's a great man, a principled man, and I thought it would be great to work with him. But I really thought at the time we'd reach a contract agreement with Miami and I'd stay." There were several stumbling blocks to that, including -- I hear -- a monstrous buyout clause the university wanted to include in the contract. "That was just a portion of it," Davis said. "There were half a dozen major things to solve, and we got a couple of them done, but in the end we couldn't bridge what I thought were a couple of major problems. It was disappointing and frustrating. Having put my heart and soul into that program, and spent six years at the university, I felt it was almost inexcusable to not be able to get those few things done. It got to the point where my agent, Marvin Demoff, told me late last week: 'I can't advise you to sign this.' And when he called me Saturday to tell me the Browns were getting near the end, and if I wanted to get in, this was my last chance, I decided to get in." The deal was done about 2 a.m. Monday. Davis will get the last word in the draft room, which he thinks -- and he's right -- is vital to a coach's success. "The cupboard is not as bare as the day we walked into the Dallas Cowboys' offices," he said. "But to be honest, I haven't watched a bit of film. I like Tim Couch from what I've seen, the leadership and the ability, all the intangibles you need to win. I remember trying to recruit him when I got to Miami, but he was already going down the road with Kentucky. I like Courtney Brown. The important thing is I will ultimately be the one to design the type of player we get to play in Cleveland." First order of business: "Meet all the coaches [Tuesday] afternoon, and try to talk to as many players as I can. I don't know most of these guys, and we need to make some decisions quickly." Then the private investigator in him will come out. Cleveland's going to like the decisions he makes. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL and appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN's "NFL Preview."
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