The NFL bye week is supposed to be a time for reset and reflection. For a struggling team, it’s a crucial pause—a moment for leadership to step forward, calm the waters, analyze the failures, and chart a path forward. In Cleveland, however, the bye week has become the backdrop for a manhunt. The offense is broken, the quarterback situation is a raging tire fire, and the fan base is demanding answers. But the one man who should be providing them, the architect of the entire operation, is nowhere to be found.

General Manager Andrew Berry is, by all credible accounts, “missing in action.”

This isn’t hyperbole; it’s an indictment. Reports are surfacing, originating from Cleveland.com and amplified by a furious local media, that Berry is “ducking accountability.” He has not spoken to the press since “pre-Flacco left,” a reference to the baffling offseason trade of the team’s veteran presence. Now, eight weeks into a season teetering on the brink, Berry has reportedly “gone in hiding,” refusing to face questions until the offseason.

It is a stunning, almost surreal abdication of responsibility. While the team’s defense, a unit Berry successfully built, plays at a championship level, his offense is a non-functional disaster. It “can’t move the damn ball.” The Dylan Gabriel experiment, which the front office staked its reputation on, is failing in real-time. And the entire crisis is personified by the man sitting on the bench: rookie sensation Shedeur Sanders.

The silence from the GM’s office has forced another man into the line of fire: Head Coach Kevin Stefanski. By his own admission, Stefanski is the “wrong person to ask” about the roster decisions that are gutting his game plan. He is being left to answer the “big ones” alone. When asked about the inexplicable Joe Flacco trade to a division rival, Stefanski could only deflect: “I will let Andrew speak to that. I don’t want to speak for him.”

But Andrew Berry is not speaking. He is not speaking about the Flacco trade. He is not speaking about the failing 3rd-round pick. And he is certainly not speaking about the 5th-round phenom he was seen personally praising during the preseason. That now-infamous clip of Berry telling Sanders, “I’m real proud of you, man,” now plays like a dark comedy. The demand from the fans is simple and brutal: “Show us you’re proud of him and play him.”

The vacuum of leadership is staggering. In place of a clear strategy, the city is surviving on “street” rumors that owner Jimmy Haslam is furious and “ready to pull the plug” on the Gabriel experiment himself. If true, it paints a picture of a dysfunctional organization where the owner is forced to override a GM who is too afraid, or too stubborn, to admit his own catastrophic error.

This is the crux of the frustration. This isn’t just about losing; it’s about the arrogance of silence. Berry is the man who put this roster together. He is the one who, according to analysts, “clearly made this mess.” And yet, he is letting his head coach twist in the wind, facing a daily barrage from a media that smells blood. Stefanski, who has to answer for Berry’s personnel, is being fed to the wolves while the man with the answers is ghosting his own franchise.

Let’s be clear: a GM doesn’t just disappear by accident. This is a calculated decision. It’s a decision that suggests a man who is either terrified of the questions or already knows he has no defensible answers. Why is Shedeur Sanders, a player with undeniable poise and pedigree, not even the backup? Why was he allowed to fall to the 5th round, only to be praised and then buried? Why was a functional veteran quarterback traded away for peanuts, leaving the team with no safety net?

These are not “gotcha” questions. They are fundamental inquiries into the competence of the man running the team. By refusing to speak, Andrew Berry is providing the loudest answer of all: he can’t, or won’t, defend his own record.

The media, for its part, is no longer letting him “slide.” As one local reporter put it, they are ready to “turn over every rock in the building” to find answers. The “hide and seek” game is over. The narrative is no longer just about a struggling rookie quarterback in Dylan Gabriel; it’s about the executive who drafted him and then vanished when the experiment failed.

This silence has allowed the Shedeur Sanders situation to metastasize from a simple depth chart question into a full-blown conspiracy. The media is “ramping up more hype” and “shocking details” that Sanders could be starting “very, very soon.” But this isn’t coming from the team. It’s coming from a vacuum. The organization’s refusal to communicate has created a void now filled with speculation, anger, and accusations.

What is the endgame here? Does Berry believe he can simply wait out the storm until January? Does he think the fans will forget? This is Cleveland, a city that wears its football heart on its sleeve and remembers every slight. The “unacceptable” silence during the bye week will not be forgotten. It will be remembered as the moment the architect abandoned his own broken building.

This is a crisis of leadership. It’s a failure of accountability. A win-now defense is being wasted by a broken offense, and the man responsible for both isn’t brave enough to stand at a podium and explain why. While fans spot Berry at Top Golf, they are left to wonder what, exactly, is happening inside the facility.

The heat is on. The fans are mobilized, the media is on the hunt, and ownership is reportedly restless. Andrew Berry may be hiding, but he cannot hide from the consequences of his decisions. The mess is his, and the clock is ticking.