AP

Every team posts a depth chart every week, per NFL protocol, and those depth charts are disseminated through weekly press releases and team web sites — and eventually through writers and other media folks who make note of them.

Many of these depth charts are clearly marked as unofficial. They all really are that; coaches are free to start whichever 11 players they’d like to start when Sunday comes.

Perhaps the strongest admission that coaches spend very little time on these depth charts came Wednesday from Browns coach Mike Pettine when Pettine was asked about veteran wide receiver Dwayne Bowe, who was given a contract worth $9 million guaranteed last spring, being listed with the third team.

“Let me walk you through how we do our depth chart: (Browns vice president of communications) Pete (John-Baptiste) types it up and walks into my office,” Pettine said. “He says, ‘How’s it look?’ Sometimes I look at it, sometimes I don’t. It is usually a very cursory glance. I say, ‘It looks good.'”

Some teams even designate that the depth chart was compiled by the media relations staff and not the coaches.

In this case, Bowe was listed as a third-teamer through much of the preseason because he spent most of August as a spectator due to a sore hamstring. So, maybe the Browns just didn’t make a change on that section of their depth chart file. Or, maybe Bowe really is in the doghouse, as was suggested last week.

We’ll see.

“I don’t put a lot of stock in depth charts [and] neither should you,” Pettine said. “I know the league requires it. The NFL nowadays is very specialized. There are some groupings where guys might be listed as fourth string [start]. Guys that are going to start the game or could potentially start the game, they are listed third or fourth.

“I don’t put a lot into it. To me, it makes no sense…to go into detail and list who I truly think our starting 11 is going to be. It is an exercise we have to go through.”