Cleveland’s annual equivalent of the Super Bowl—the NFL Crapshoot, uh, Draft—has been replaced this year by something unheard of in Northeast Ohio since the Browns reincarnation in 1999. It is the notion that appearing in Super Bowl 56 isn’t a pipedream.
This, of course, is something that, to borrow from Akron’s most famous son, LeBron James, is not given but earned. The Browns are one of four teams—Detroit, Houston, and Jacksonville, the others—that have never been able to accomplish this.
This could be their moment. Read the tea leaves:
- The New Browns reached the playoffs last season for only the second time
- They not only won a game but also did it in Pittsburgh, where they never win
- They are not in the quarterback market; they have a live one, Baker Mayfield
- Their new coach Kevin Stefanski produced an 11-5 record (1-1 in the playoffs)
- They did not have to fire said coach or make over the front office. Upset
- General Manager Andrew Berry added defense after rebuilding the offense
- They own a winner’s pick, at No. 26, not one at or near the top of the draft
- Berry embraces flexibility, a willingness to trade up, move down, or stay put
- The pandemic draft scheduled for Cleveland in 2020 is here now
Browns followers, to whom the draft has been the be-all end-all lo these many years, can either wait up with Berry to see what he will do or set their VCRs and go to bed if the draft drags on longer than the Oscar acceptance speeches. In his pre-draft preview Berry cleared up the fact that even he did not know what might happen: “Largely,” he said, “that will be dictated by how the board falls ahead of us, but I think we have a lot of flexibility.” A legitimate concern is that the NFL Combine and player in-person visits to the teams most interested in them were canceled because of ongoing coronavirus precautions. So an even a greater burden in player evaluation has fallen on scouting departments and those to whom they report.
“It really puts a toll on not only your scouting department, but [also] the entire organization,” Reggie McKenzie, former Raiders GM and now Miami senior personnel executive, told USA Today columnist Jarrett Bell. “It’s going to show you just how much you trust your scouting department.”
It seems as if the only guarantee of the three-day draft that will begin Thursday at 8 p.m. is the return of Commissioner Roger Goodell to duty as first to welcome at least some of the first-night, first-round draftees to their paying jobs in the NFL. Relegated to the isolation of his basement for last year’s draft, Goodell could get no closer to the players than a Zoom chat. Now fully vaccinated, the NFL song-and-dance routine—a chorus of boos for Goodell/cheek-to-cheek dances with 13 players—will return to center stage.
There are as many opinions about what the Browns should and/or will do with nine possible picks as legendary performers in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next door to NFL Draft Theater. Some opinions may even be on or close to the mark. They can be entertaining but I’ve never been convinced why I—or perhaps you—should care. More so now, given the tangential aspects of restrictions the NFL has placed on its teams.
Back in the day, when scouts were out and about to all manner of college football hotspots and team high mucky-mucks gathered at not only the NFL Combine in Indianapolis but also had multiple face-to-face meetings with and about players, an industrious NFL writer or columnist could ferret out a thing or three about the direction a team was leaning. If the media snoop had established credibility with the right people—other NFL teams’ executives, college coaches, trainers, and the like—inside information could be had, provided it would fall into hands with discretion. Word got out.
Now, I suspect, not so much.
The dean of Browns writers, The Land on Demand’s Tony Grossi, was among those interviewing Berry pre-draft via Zoom—a new world that keeps the media at more than arm’s length. The session concluded with an important question that no one had asked still on Grossi’s lips. It was, with setup: “There’s a saying that if you stay the same in the NFL, you’re falling behind. You have not added a single player to the offense so far this transaction season. How is that side of the ball going to improve?”
Though Berry overhauled the offense in his first transactional season, and it carried the team, Grossi pointed out this draft is receiver rich. So, shouldn’t Cleveland mine this golden vein, because though it thinks itself a running team, troubled waters lie ahead? It soon won’t be able to afford both Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry, receivers 1 and 1A, when the Browns give their quarterback the rich extension that he richly deserves.
Many times an interrogator already knows the right answer, as surely as the GM. Grossi certainly did. He wrote: “I expected [Berry] to answer: We’re not done yet.”
That question and answer would have served all concerned: Browns management, players, and—of course—Browns fans. And it wouldn’t have tipped the team’s hand, because there are enough good receivers in the draft to lessen rather than create desperation. In his Mock Draft on his Football Morning in America, a part of profootballtalk.nbcsports.com, Peter King posted “a minor screed about receivers.” The point he made and supported was that since 2016, receivers chosen in the second round of the draft have performed nearly as well as those taken in Round 1. His overarching conclusion was: “NFL teams over-draft wideouts.” I would not argue with that. They are such pretty baubles and can turn a game with one catch-and-run.
If I had Berry’s power—I’m glad I don’t—I would draft a sideline-to-sideline, rush-and-cover linebacker and then the best second-round wide receiver available. (Don’t like my linebacker? Take a cornerback.) I may sound like a King sycophant—he had little to do with me when we once worked the same NFL press boxes—but this would make a very good team better. Maybe good enough, with a few breaks, to reach The Land-Not-Promised-but-Right-There-at-the-End-of-the-Smart-Decision-Hard-Work Rainbow.
