Flugel

Understandable. However, some teams are really good in the last 2-3 rounds. Back when Seattle won a Super Bowl, they were drafting starters and situational subs for their secondary in rounds 5-7. Hard hitting Safety Kam Chancellor was a 5th round pick; Richard Sherman was a 5th round pick; Byron Maxwell was drafted in the 6th round; Malcolm Smith was drafted in the 7th round; Brandon Browner wasn't even drafted. That was a lot of the essential ingredients of their Legion of Boom. On the other hand, they did draft Earl Thomas in round 1. At 1 point, Maxwell, Chancellor and Sherman were all only 25 years old playing on their rookie contracts (at 5th-7th round values) while Earl Thomas was the youngest guy at 24 years old. That made for a very healthy salary cap for a while. They even found a very productive LBer K.J. Wright in round 4. On offense, Seattle landed undrafted Free Agent WR Doug Baldwin out of Stanford. He was a very productive starter that had an 8 year career inclusive of 2 Pro Bowls for Seattle. They also added Russell Wilson in round 3, which doesn't sound late - but up against the supply and demand it was. These were the QBs drafted ahead of Wilson: Andrew Luck, RG3, Ryan Tannehill, Brandon Weeden (round 1) and Brock Osweiler (round 2). Now, these were the QBs drafted after Russell Wilson - Nick Foles and Kirk Cousins. I think all those finds by Seattle above (from the scouting dept and FO) led to a very healthy salary and a strong nucleus of players that made life for HC Pete Carroll a lot of fun. That said, drafting like that also required great coaching to develop a lot of those guys on time and ahead of schedule. It probably wasn't easy; but I'm guessing rising to the challenge made it a lot of fun.

Another good point. Knock it off! There's no doubt he's talented. The thing that makes me somewhat reluctant was the fact that he showed up to training camp very out of shape and overweight. Some will say "so what - did you see him?" Yeah, I was impressed; but did he get anywhere close to the finish line? Now that there's a knee injury or possibly 2 in his football background - he might want to show up in shape. When Conklin went down in week 1, it would have been nice to have had Jones give us more than just 9 starts over the next 16 games. The quality of remaining depth after your 1st 2 right tackles go down decreases.

Very good points! I not only thought he had a very promising rookie year in 2020; but I remember posting it as it happened and leading up to his 2nd year. We even had a healthy Jack Conklin that year playing 15 of the 16 regular season games. Unfortunately, Wills had a sophomore slump compounded by a mid-season ankle sprain he milked the rest of the 2021 season. I think a lot of us cut him slack for it thinking we'd get the same guy back the next year that we saw as a rookie. Like you said, we never saw the same player again. This is what Google informed me: An average play in the NFL lasts just four seconds. In 2022 and 2023, I frequently complained about seeing Wills make his initial hit then quit when we ran the ball. It only takes about 1 of those 4 seconds to collide and quit. That happened too much for comfort with him in the running game In the passing game, he's very inconsistent starting with his pre-snap stance. When he occasionally gets into a good stance it sets him up for good leverage from pad height and good base below (making sure his feet aren't too close together causing over extension) - he does a nice job. Here's the thing, how is getting into a helpful stance a problem for anyone that puts in the work all year long? It isn't. You get out of it what you put into it (ie; Joe Thomas). If that's not enough, the Browns had 2 awesome OL Coaches: Bill Callahan and Scott Peters. Film can also give a player a lot of the inconvenient truth he needs to work at.

Thanks! The best Tackle in that draft was Iowa's Tristan Wirfs, who was drafted 13th overall by TB via trade with SF. He is now playing Left Tackle instead of Right Tackle. He made the Pro Bowl in 2021 and 2022 as a Right Tackle and in 2023 as a Left Tackle.

It'll be interesting to see how good Berry and his scouting dept do with their 1st round draft picks since the only ones we've seen are Jed Wills (2020) and Greg Newsome II (2021). If we polled everyone in here about who is the weakest link on the Offensive Line - I have a feeling it would be Jed Wills by a significant margin. While Greg Newsome isn't a bad player per say - Emerson pretty much took his spot on the outside as a rookie (after showcasing he could press WRs on the LOS). When Newsome returned from injury that season - he was frustrated that Emerson stayed outside while he became responsible for covering Slot Receivers that line up off the ball/LOS. Newsome is a good tackler and a smart player so I like having him in our secondary. I'm just saying the jury is still out about how good the current FO is at drafting players in the 1st round. Let's just say I'm noticing why Berry seems to be in his comfort zone signing a lot of FA veterans and/or trading for other veteran players. They're proven players so he doesn't have to deal with growing pains and length of time needed for consistent reliability/productivity. Let's just say I get the sense he trusts what he's paying for. Because of rookie salary cap restrictions - teams that consistently draft well from top to bottom tend to have healthier salary caps. BTW, every time they showed the Ravens Draft War-room - it sure looked like Ozzie Newsome was still running it for them. He was in there at the head of the table still writing his notes and crossing off selections. Unbelievable. Consequently, it still looks like a lot of very good players always seem to fall to them IMO...

It's been said: "It's a bird. It's a plane. It's.... just Esia's son."

That was an interesting article. It mentions the consideration/idea of using Jamal Adams exclusively as a LBer since that was the situational role he did best moving into the box as an extra LBer. However, it also talked about his inability to stay healthy. It makes sense because asking a 6-1 player only weighing 213 pounds to make a living playing LBer in the box is going to challenge the durability of a guy that has trouble staying healthy. All that said, he's really good against the run and it doesn't sound like he'll be expensive to sign. My guess is Schwartz would like this idea.

I don't care if they have to do cartwheels wearing fanny floss as long as they get him sliding or trying to avoid contact.

I thought about a fine too; but the only guy in the entire organization that makes more money than Watson is Jimmy Haslam. If you want to change/correct a bad habit on the field - I think we're better off empowering the coaching staff with its wealth of experience to handle it. The Browns hired Bill Musgrave as a Sr Offensive Assistant last year - he/Watson's position coach can provide safer alternatives when watching film with Watson and the offense. They don't necessarily have to start with benching Watson if he does it something like once in the 1st 2 games or so. If Watson starts blowing off the coaching points and initiates contact again - then you bench him for a series or a quarter or a half - all dependent on where they are with the situation. My guess is a competitive guy/QB would rather get fined than benched in a nationally televised game. Lucky for us, we're just fans so this isn't our responsibility.

Thanks MJP! A lot of Stefanski earning the NFL Coach of the Year honor stemmed from what he did without Watson (using 4 other QBs). For example, the Joe Flacco no other teams wanted in 2023 suddenly had other teams interested once he played for Stefanski. Having said that, in the last game we watched Watson play - he looked much more like the player we thought we traded for. The Rats didn't have a solution for him when he heated up and led us to a comeback win. Hopefully that was what we will be seeing on a more regular basis. I think we have a very talented team on both sides of the ball like 11 wins reminded us. It can probably go even better if we can keep at least 1 of our 2 very talented Right Tackles healthy. I hope this isn't just wishful thinking; but I think we'll have even better depth this year.

What has haunted this team is the absolute inability to: 1) draft the right QB in the NFL Draft; and 2) put the right people around the QB they do draft. The last QB the Browns were successful drafting came out of the 1985 Supplemental Draft. Think back to how old you were when this happened. I was 21. The very next off-season, the Browns hired OC - Lindy Infante. They went from 8-8 behind Mack and Byner rushing for over 1000 yards apiece in 1985 to 12-4 with RBs combining for 117 receptions (Mack 28, Dickey 10, Byner 37, Fontenot 47) in 1986. Knowing defenses were chomping at the bits to stop Mack and Byner and blitz the cement shoed Kosar in year 2 - Infante chose to dictate the weekly chess matches. You want to zone blitz us? Ok, here's a little Herman Fontenot and Brian Brennan combining for 102 receptions almost exclusively on 3rd downs. Meanwhile, Byner and Mack could just as easily catch swing passes to the flats (which was fun to watch when that area of the defense was vacated by the designated zone blitzer). Talk about making life EASIER for a 2nd year QB - this was the best I've seen this team do in my lifetime. When Jim Harbaugh went to play QB for the Colts, he credited Infante for being the best offensive coach he had tapping what he does best. I read an article where Harbaugh said he brought a lot of what Infante taught him to use with QBs he coached. He combined that with what he learned from other coaches but emphasized Infante's main principles for QBs eased and expedited the progressions. All that to say, coaching has a profound impact on how well a QB develops as well as who you have protecting them. Watson is only going to turn 28 this year. QBs like Kurt Warner, Steve Young and Doug Williams didn't play their best football until after they were 28 years old. Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, Fran Tarkenton and Jim Plunkett are other QBs that found more success in their later 20s/early 30s. I think I already shared in a previous thread the dreadful Terry Bradshaw's stats over his first 5-6 years he played; and got benched for guys like Terry Hanratty and Joe Gilliam. Sometimes it's needing more surrounding talent - other times it's the luck of having the right offensive mind assessing how to tweak his offense around the QB. The opposite of that is the square peg/round hole you alluded. FWIW, losing a 1st and 2nd string RT + whatever we continue to settle for at LT can lead to watching 5 different guys start at QB in 1 season. Any QB that confuses what he's here to do with thinking he's Larry Csonka initiating contact with LBers and DL - needs to be BENCHED by coaches or inevitable injury will do it for them. Coaching matters so it's a little disturbing to see them waiting until after Watson completed his 1st year here to start planning for the right system and adding coaches. Clemson and Houston were ready for Watson - can we honestly say the Browns were too?

If we want a place kicker 31 other teams wouldn't even consider signing from our practice squad - York is perfect. Let's just hope we never have to use him. We can probably sign Anthony Schwartz too if we want to stick with this mentality/philosophy.

Can we let Dee Haslam pick the QB next time?

Do you think Houston would trade CJ Stroud for Cheesecakes Mayfield? 😁 Neither do I...

I've only seen this post from him about 8 times.