0-12 Browns Fire VP, GM Sashi Brown

CLEVELAND, OH — The Cleveland Browns have fired General Manager and Executive Vice President Sashi Brown. The team is currently 0-12.

"The 2018 draft and offseason is pivotal to our franchise, we need to ensure that we maximize our opportunity for success; with our picks, free agency and building our roster," team owner Jimmy Haslam said in a statement.

The Browns have a veritable arsenal at their disposal this offseason, including two first round picks, three second round picks, two fourth round picks and two fifth round picks. The team could also have more than $59 million in cap space to sign free agents.

Haslam thanked Brown for his time with the team but said he wanted someone with more experience — and success — with drafting and building winning football teams.

Brown had been the team's personnel decision maker for the past two years. During that span, the team had won only one game.

The Browns have been quietly checking out possible replacement candidates for Brown for about a month, NFL Networks' Ian Rappaport said on Twitter. The team has been particularly interested in former Kansas City Chiefs General Manager John Dorsey.

Dorsey helped turnaround a hapless Chiefs team that went 2-14 in 2012. Kansas City hired Dorsey in 2013 and after a series of moves, finished the 2013 season with an 11-5 record. The Chiefs fired Dorsey prior to the 2017 season starting.

In the same statement that saw Haslam dismiss Brown, he reaffirmed Hue Jackson as head coach of the team, saying he would be back for the 2018 season.

Since the team's return to Cleveland, the Browns have also had nine different head coaches. Should something change in the next few months, and Jackson gets fired, the team would need to find its 10th head coach.

Brown's firing means the team will be searching for its ninth GM since 1999, the year the franchise returned to Cleveland. Instability in the front office has become one of the hallmarks of the Cleveland Browns, along with the inability to find wins on the field.

Fans reacted to Brown's firing on Twitter, joking that the team is in the "18th year of a 25 year rebuilding process."

AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File