Poll: What do the Browns do now?
March 10, 2012Sam Amico: Cavs looking to make playoffs, trade into lottery
March 10, 2012
*sigh*
I can’t believe it’s over. All those words typed, all those hours spent debating… wasted.
Since when do draft trades happen more than a month before the actual draft? To me, that’s the most surprising aspect of this whole debacle.
Not that the Browns lost out on Robert Griffin III (I knew it the moment Bill Simmons jinxed us) or that Dan Snyder and the Washington Redskins would go ‘all in’ and pay whatever price they needed in order to move up. That makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is that the Number 2 overall pick in the NFL Draft was traded six weeks before the NFL Draft. While it’s hard to argue with the haul St. Louis received (first round picks in 2012, 2013 & 2014 and a 2012 second rounder), the best deal they were going to get was on March 9th, late on a Friday night? With over a full month before the draft, the Rams (who allegedly had a ‘three firsts and a second’ offer from the Browns as well) couldn’t have milked this a little more?
What’s so frustrating is that, after months of speculation, the Browns fell tantalizingly short. From what I can tell, their offer is quite similar to Washington’s. It’s a hard pill to swallow. I’m not sure how Holmgren can spin it. “Sure, we were willing to pay the ridiculous price of three first round picks, plus a second rounder, but we had to draw the line at the slightly more ridiculous asking price of three first round picks, plus TWO second round picks AND a third. That’d just be stupid.”
At some point, trading up to get RG3 came down to: we’re going to mortgage our future for this kid, the only question is ‘how much of the future are we mortgaging?’. If you’re sold on RG3, you’re sold on RG3. If he works out, no one is going to care what you paid (“sure, he took us to the playoffs and won all those big games, but the Browns didn’t have a first round pick for his first three years, so I dunno if it was worth it”) and if RG3 bombs, it doesn’t matter how much you overpaid, you’re screwed anyways.
Terry Pluto didn’t like the idea of the Browns giving up three firsts and I can’t say that I blame him. SI’s Peter King says it’s the first time in NFL history a team traded three firsts to move up. So it’s a historically hefty price to pay. I had talked myself into trading up for RG3 (if for no other reason than Colt McCoy stinks and I enjoyed the excitement of “hey! the Browns are doing stuff!”) but I have a hard time killing the Browns for not parting with one of the largest hauls in NFL history. But if RG3 is the stud everyone seems to think he is, he’s worth whatever price you end up paying. ESPN’s Dan Graziano:
The price is toe-curlingly high, and a month or so ago I thought three first-rounders would have been too much. But I think the Redskins had to do it. Look around the league. Teams that get quarterback right are set for a decade. They are playoff teams, almost guaranteed, every single year. They have far fewer worries at draft time, and their offseasons are far less stressful and scrutinized. Teams that miss on quarterback are miserable, lost and confused, perpetually reaching for ill-fitting solutions and facing the same insurmountable problems year in and year out.
So what now? Where do the Browns go from here? Mary Kay Cabot:
1. Stick with Colt McCoy and supply him with some weapons.
2. Draft one of the other quarterbacks the Browns like, such as Texas A&M’s Ryan Tannehill or Oklahoma State’s Brandon Weeden.
3. Sign a free agent such as Green Bay’s Matt Flynn or Arizona’s Kevin Kolb if the Cardinals release him next week. The Cardinals also are pursuing Manning, and would release Kolb if they sign the former Colts quarterback. Kolb is due a $7 million bonus on March 17.
I like the idea of Flynn; at least all he’ll only cost Randy Lerner’s money. No picks, just cash. I also like the idea of the Browns using Free Agency to address the offense and the draft to address the defense. Go sign players who know how to play in a West Coast system and then stack your defense with young talent. (The idea being, instead of pairing a good defense with an average offense, pair a killer defense with a below average offense).
There’s a few problems with this idea. First, the Browns, like every Cleveland franchise, don’t exactly have a good track record with free agents. Second, Matt Flynn? The guy with two games? We’re betting the franchise on him? Doesn’t sound risky at all. And I don’t like the idea of Peyton Manning (thankfully, neither do the Browns) and as for Kevin Kolb…. yuck.
And if you want to stack the D, the only defensive player worth taking with the 4th pick is LSU CB Morris Claiborne. Do you build a defense around two corners picked in the Top 10? Do you trade down for more picks? Or do simply take Justin Blackmon and call it a day? I dunno.
If there’s a silver lining to this situation, it’s that the Browns know for sure before free agency starts that they won’t get RG3 on draft day. There’s no ‘maybe’ anymore. If they like a FA QB, they can pursue them with strength. If they like other rookie QB’s like Ryan Tannehill or (28 year old) Brandon Weeden, they can go that route and not have to mess around in free agency.
With the weird timing of this deal, the Browns have enough time to refocus and reset their offseason plans and priorities.
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Couple other thoughts: 1) Everything Daniel Snyder touches (with regards to the Redskins) turns to crap. I feel a bit weird complaining that the Browns didn’t make the move that Daniel freaking Snyder made. With Synder’s track record, that’s usually a good thing. 2) I wasn’t entirely enamored with the idea of taking an ‘outside-the-box’ talent like Robert Griffin III and pairing him with Pat Shurmur and his ‘by-the-book-no-matter-what’ West Coast Offense.
[Poll: What do the Browns do now?]
69 Comments
I agree with you Jack. I’m so tired of hearing about the draft being the lifeline of a team. Nobody’s traded down more or traded for more picks in the last 6 or 7 years than us. Nobody has been worse in the last 6 or 7 years than us. Adding two good players every year isn’t cutting it. Especially when these guys talk about our needs being what we trade away for third round picks. How do we get better by letting Hillis walk and drafting Richardson? Any RB will suck as long as we have a weak QB. Why do you think it looks like 9 defenders are stuffed in the box on every play. Or why does it seem that every time we pass we’re getting blitzed? The good news is we can all get excited for these next three drafts because we have our first rounder still, and it will be high. Unless our “lifeline” produces 3 pro bowlers and a quarterback pops out of its butt.
I am always a bit surprised at how eager people are to dismiss McCoy. Last season was only his second in the NFL, and the first in which he was the starter. He had an all new coaching staff, plus an entirely new system. The lockout meant he had very little time to learn that system. Our wide receivers are known to be below average, and are offensive line even with Joe Thomas had holes. Its hard to be a good quarterback on while on your back. Finally, the weak running game often caused by Peyton Hillis’s missed games meant a lot more pressure on the quarterback.
Yet, McCoy’s stat line is just a little below average. Not bad for a 3rd draft pick still under a rookie contract. My gut tells me that improving the team around McCoy alongside more experience with the offense will result in an above average quarterback. The next Peyton Manning he is not. He is also not the worst liability on the field for the Browns. Someone might throw out the truism that you need a great quarterback to win the Superbowl, but there is a lot more involved.
a 4.38 isn’t irrelevant – ever.
this has become a PASSING league, so i think a second CB is necessity – not a luxury anymore. Plus, he is better at his position (and special teams) than any other player is at his respective position, IMO. at least of the guys who will be available to draft.
CLAIBORNE.
I knew this would happen the moment Snyder got involved.
I don’t forsee RG3 proving himself worthy of 3 #1 draft picks with the Skins… that is a ridiculous price to pay. RG3 and the Redskins coaching staff are now INSTANTLY on the hot seat for the next 3 years. I’m glad the Browns don’t have to deal with that.
That said, the Browns are screwed next year. This will be the first 5 year stretch of losing seasons in the team’s once illustrious history. As much as I dislike McCoy, they might as well go ahead and start him… it’s going to be yet another miserable re-building season anyways. This way they can use the pick that they’re about to blow on Weeden or Tannehill and draft someone who may actually still be on the team in 5 years.
Fortunately, the Browns should probably play badly enough to have them drafting in the top 5 of next year’s draft, so maybe they can get Barkley or whoever…
I don’t know, hopefully Kolb is available. If not, Matt Moore should be available. I’d rather see him come to Cleveland than Matt Flynn anyways. It sucks to even be writing this…
I hope they keep McCoy around just so they don’t blow a pick on Tannehill or Weeden, two players that won’t be here in 5 years.
I’m in favor of bringing in Flynn, but if we end up with McCoy this season, I can live with that. I actually would be very interested to see what he can do with more talent and a full offseason. I don’t THINK he’s the franchise QB we’re looking for…but I don’t think he’s the main reason we were 4-12 last season either.
And if we got to see how each players career would play out before we drafted him nobody would complain about anything.
If we spend the next 2-3 years playing “See I told you so!” each time Griffin has a good/bad game, I’m turning in my Browns fanship.
“Nobody’s traded down more or traded for more picks in the last 6 or 7 years than us. ”
We’ve also had 3 different front offices in 7 years. One of those front offices traded away the first 3 rounds of the draft for Brady Quinn and Shaun Rogers. In fact from 2005-2008 we drafted exactly 3 players who are still on the team(Thomas, Jackson, Rubin). The next regime did trade down, unfortunately those picks became Veikune, Robis… well you know how that played out. Even this regime pretty much blew chunks all over the late round picks including cutting 5th rounder Larry Assante before the start of the season.
You’re absolutley right that adding two good players a year won’t fix the team. This regime has got to start finding some diamonds in the rough in those late rounds, its the only way to really get successfull. If you can show me a team that wasn’t built primarily through the draft I’d love to hear about it, but untill then I’m going to keep using the “lifeline” cliche’.
Projecting a player is not an exact science, and ANYTIME a QB is drafted or signed he may turn into a franchise quarterback. Did you know Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round? Conversely, even Andrew Luck may turn into a bust for reasons the experts did not see coming. Among other things, NFL defenses are VASTLY better than college defenses, and few players can successfully make that transition, regardless of how well they performed in college.
There are still a lot of question marks surrounding Griffin. His athleticism is definitely there, but how good is he at throwing the ball? Not terrible, but can he hit a square foot window 20 yards down the field? More importantly, how good is his decision making in throwing the ball? He’s shown evidence of being able to do this at Baylor, but AFC North has the best defenses in the NFL and Griffin’s talents might not be able to make that transition. He can probably out run pass rushers for the time being, but that level of athleticism does not last as players get older. So, instead of a mythical franchise quarterback, we get a great athlete who becomes a liability be their fifth year in the league.
I’m not saying Griffin will fail, but he is a roll of the dice. And every draft pick sacrificed to get him is one less die an organization can roll to improve the team.
15 of the starters on the eagles NFC championship team in 09 were drafted or picked up as unsigned draft day FAs. I call that a lifeline. A guy who specialized in college talent assessment, as he has done his entire career, will use his core competency to build his team. He needs to keep as many picks as possible. If he sways from this I will be worried.
A qbs job is to manage the offense and pass the ball.give me wrs and running vacks with good forty times. They play in pads my friend.
Cleaveland on fire today
I just wanted to bring something up in regards to this “its only 1 years first round picks we’re missing”, we need a franchise changer, etc. I said this below but I think it bears fleshing out. Between 2005-2008 we drafted exactly 3 players that are still on our roster (Jackson Thomas Rubin) Out of 21 possible players who would be entering their prime right now, we have 3. Even at 40-50% success rate we’d have at least 8-10 impact starters had the drafting been done right. Does anyone think that we wouldn’t be a markedly different football team had those years drafts – you can throw the debacle of 2009 in as well – been managed better? The Browns cannot put one unit on the field that is NFL competent across the board. O-line? D-line? RBs WRs, DBs etc. You could upgrade our starters by taking the best BACKUP at any position off of any of our division rivals My point is that if you really want a successful football team this has got to stop, everybody has to suck it up, stop whining about the 10 crappy years and how we “deserve” a winner now. It takes time and draft picks to build a winner. If you disagree please by all means show me list of teams that have had continued (at least a 5 years of at or above .500 football) success, by trading picks away, and using free agency, instead of the draft. And this isn’t some H&H have all the answers post because their first draft was a turd sandwich after Haden and Ward.
I know the whole “you need an elite QB” and to some extent I agree. Except of the elite QBs in the league only Peyton Manning went to a team that was as bereft of talent as our squad is now, and how did they build that team several years of stellar drafting.
So are you just ignoring the press conference where Heckhert said they won’t be big players in free agency?
its over. lets move on….
I like the idea of taking Blackmon and Tannehill with 4 and 22. Maybe even moving down from 22 and taking Tannehill in the 2nd round. This draft is deep, and we can potentially get 4+ starters if we draft right. I love Blackmon, I think he’s a no-brainer stud. I really like Tannehill and we may be able to get him in 2. With those other picks we can get a RT and a CB. Grab a DE in FA and suddenly we can start thinkin about post season
Has any team built a championship caliber team off of two high draft picks CBs?? Im all in favor of setting a new NFL trend. Take Claiborne, then draft a DE, then LB, and create the meanest young defense in the league.
We’re Browns fans… if we cant be good as a team, then let’s be nasty at defense. At least we’d have something to brag about.
What does “being late to the party” mean in a situation like this? From what I can tell, the Browns, at the 11th hour, offered a similar/better package than the Redskins.
If the offer was better, then it was better regardless of when it was made. If someone offers me $10 and someone else offers me $11, I’m taking the $11 regardless of when the person offered to give it to me, as long as the deal isn’t closed.
To me, this says that the Redskins were going to get this done b/c of the Fisher-Shanahan relationship regardless of what the Browns did.
you mean that 3rd rounder who people didn’t think had NFL talent?