Yesterday, the Browns announced more than a handful of new hires and promotions in their operations, player personnel, and analytics departments. Operations had one new hire and one promotion, player personnel had four new hires and four promotions, and analytics had three new hires and two promotions.
The biggest ticket items were in the player personnel department, so we’ll start there. With Dan Saganey‘s departure and subsequent hiring in Tennessee, Adam Al-Khayyal steps into Saganey’s old role as director of player personnel. Al-Khayyal has been in Cleveland for the past 10 years, starting as an intern in 2015 before getting promotions to assistant director of pro personnel and director of pro scouting.
Matt Donahoe was elevated from southeast area scout to national scout. Having joined the Browns six years ago after time with the Chiefs, Donahoe enters his 12th season of NFL work. Filling in as a new area scout will be John Nussman, though he will cover the midwest region. This is the second straight year of promotions for Nussman, who was named NFS scout for the team last year after four seasons as a scouting assistant. Stepping into the newly vacant NFS scout role will be Tyler Habursky, who was hired last year as a scouting assistant.
The big new hire in the player personnel department is Shaun Herock, who comes in as the team’s new senior college personnel advisor. Herock started in the NFL as a scouting intern for the Falcons in in the ’90s. In 1994, Green Bay hired him after a short internship with them, and he eventually rose through the ranks to become assistant director of college scouting, serving in the role for 11 seasons. He left to serve as director of college scouting for the Raiders, serving as interim general manager in his last season with the team following the dismissal of Reggie McKenzie. When he, too, was let go at the end of the 2018 season, he joined the Browns as a scout and, eventually, was promoted to national scout. He returned to the Raiders as a personnel advisor in 2022, but he departs from the Raiders for Cleveland once more after three years away.
The other three new hires in the player personnel department are all new scouting assistants. Josh Meyer, Andrew Nimo-Sefah, and Ryan Smith were all hired to serve in that role. Meyer joins the team after working as a player personnel & recruiting analyst at his alma mater, Michigan, a role he earned after working as a recruiting intern as a student. Nimo-Sefah interned for the Cardinals in various roles as a student before working for the NFL GSISS support team and as a stats analyst for ESPN after that. Smith has experience with the team as an external film analyst in the team’s past two drafts, but he’ll now be paid directly by the team in his new position.
In operations, the new hire is the big-ticket item as James Cook joins the team as senior director of player development. Cook began his career in the NFL’s London office, working in several international projects like the International Player Pathway Program, flag football, the NFL Academy, and NFL Africa. Most recently, Cook served as head of player development for the league’s newest Academy based in Asia-Pacific. The promotion in operations looks a bit more like a lateral move. Hajriz Aliu, who has served the team as a scouting assistant for the past three seasons, is changing departments and will serve now as a football operations assistant in 2025.
In analytics, the two promotions see Abby Protin named senior software developer of football information systems and Jacqueline Roberts named coordinator of coaching logistics. Protin joined the team in 2022 as a software developer after time as a data analyst for the University of Maryland baseball team. Roberts joined the Browns last year as an intern within team logistics. She came in with experience in coaching operations from her work at the Senior Bowl.
Protin’s group adds two new junior software developers in Evan Stanislaw and John Michael Tran. Stanislaw has some work experience in sports from his time working for the NHL’s Dallas Stars, while Tran comes to Cleveland after internships at NASA and Amazon. Lastly, Ethan Weissman has been hired to the group as a football research analyst. This comes after the Harvard graduate served the past two years as a research & strategy intern for the team.