Savage satisfactory

Two months into the off-season, and it appears Browns GM Phil Savage is lending -- dare I say -- stability to the team's situation.
Most of us think the Browns are still at least a couple of years away from being worth anything on the field, but this was actually a very important off-season.
Most Browns off-seasons have been rife with upheaval -- coaching changes, purging of contracts, paradigm shifts on the roster. That is almost always a recipe for losing.
But so far, Savage seems to be going out of his way to calm things down. Maybe the need for stability was driven home to him when he was almost muscled out of his job by ex-president John Collins.
The obvious players the Browns needed to keep are the ones Savage already has under lock and key. Orpheus Roye has been re-signed before he had a chance to go on the open market. Reuben Droughns has been inked to a three-year extension. Savage also made haste to sign up-and-coming corner Leigh Bodden and leading tackler Andra Davis to extensions before the season ended. Solid left tackle L.J. Shelton appears to be next on the list.
Meanwhile, the players that might not be worthy of long-term commitments are the ones Savage will probably cut ties with this spring. Butterfingers receiver Antonio Bryant is likely gone, as are linebacker Ben Taylor, nose tackle Jason Fisk and punter Kyle Richardson.
It's a combination of initiative and common sense that we haven't seen in a Cleveland football executive in quite some time.
Much like the Cavs last summer, the Browns have a lot of salary cap space (about $20 million), and might not even have to worry about a salary cap if the NFL Players Association and league officials can't hammer out a figure in the early parts of this week. That means Savage has a lot of tools at his fingertips to make the Browns better in a short period of time.
Savage could lure four or five impact free agents to Cleveland this spring. He is reportedly eyeing receiver Joe Jurevicius and punter Dave Zastudil, both Cleveland-area natives.
An impact free-agent class, a productive draft, and the return to health of receivers Kellen Winslow Jr. and Braylon Edwards, and the Browns could be (gasp!) a playoff contender in 2006.
Granted, those are a lot of "ifs," but the Browns are already coming off a 6-10 season in which they could easily have been 9-7. Maybe they aren't as far away from respectability as we think they are.
Savage might be the only one who realizes that at the moment.