The Browns, for the first time since 2008, do not have a first round pick.
That makes the whole prediction game a little more difficult for us. But as senior writer Andrew Gribble and producer Jason Gibbs have proven with Best Podcast Available, we will soldier on for the love of the draft.
Finding the future requires deeper digging than usual and includes a much wider swath of prospects who could find themselves with second-round grades, or a handful who had first-round grades and somehow made it to Day 2.
NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah is a leader in such digging and resulting knowledge of the latest crop's deep cuts. ClevelandBrowns.com caught up with Jeremiah at Ohio State's Pro Day on Wednesday in Columbus.
His first point? When he was in Berea, they had even less draft capital to work with.
"Well first of all, they have it easy, because my one draft in Cleveland (2008) we didn't pick until the fourth round," Jeremiah said. "So they can't complain about not picking until the second round.
"But I think it allows you to -- every year, usually you're going to go a little bit deeper on the first round in terms of the level of study. This allows you to go to that depth in the second, third and on. I think that benefits you. Hey you can eliminate, there's really 15 to 20 players you can kind of not worry about. We're not gonna see him. So I think that can really allow you to hone in and focus on that next group."
There's a hidden advantage, then, with the additional time gained by excluding yourself from the first round. But what if Browns general manager John Dorsey wants back into the first round?
"They still have ammo if they wanted to do that," Jeremiah said. "I don't know, you'd have to be in love with somebody to do that, I think. They've kind of been aggressive enough at this point in time. I think now I'd want to use as many of those selections as I could to find solid guys I could plug in some cracks."
As for the second-round selection (No. 49), the Browns could go in a number of directions. Michigan State cornerback Justin Layne tweeted at the Browns on Wednesday with a request related to what they might do with that pick:
But as we've made clear before, this draft is deep along the defensive line. That position group is also where the Browns just added two Pro Bowl-caliber veterans in the first week of the new league year. To Jeremiah, though, you can never have enough good guys up front.
"I still think you can always add a defensive lineman," Jeremiah said. "And there's so much depth here that you might feel like where you're picking, you might get a player that in another year you'd have to get a lot higher, so you get some value there with that spot."
Where will they go? Yes, we're closing it like this again: We'll have to wait until April to find out.
