Report: Browns could hire George Paton as GM this week

Though their season has only been over for nine days, the Minnesota Vikings have already seen a shake-up, as both of their coordinators are going, as well as at least one other coach. Now, it appears that it could be extending to the front office.

(Apparently that’s the only picture that anyone has of George Paton, not just us.)

Mary Kay Cabot, a beat writer for the Cleveland Browns, is reporting that the Browns could hire Vikings’ VP of Player Personnel/Assistant General Manager George Paton to be their new General Manager as early as this week.

Paton sat down with an interview with the Browns on Saturday, which is significant news in and of itself. Over the past few years, numerous teams have made overtures of wanting to hire Paton to run their front office, but he turned down those interviews. So, it’s a pretty major development that he agreed to meet with the Browns at all.

If this were to happen, Paton would reunite with Kevin Stefanski, who the Browns hired as their new head coach last week. It would also leave a pretty significant hole in the front office as far as talent evaluation is concerned. The prevailing wisdom is that Paton would eventually replace Rick Spielman in the Vikings’ GM chair, but that now appears to be pretty unlikely.

If Paton were to leave, I’m not totally sure who the Vikings would tab to replace him, or whether it would be someone currently in the front office or an outside hire.

This is something that we’ll be keeping tabs on over the next few days. If there are any developments, we’ll bring them to you yere.