Cleveland Browns: Revisiting The Senior Bowl With Athletic Data

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Jan 25, 2017; Mobile, AL, USA; South squad head coach Hue Jackson of the Cleveland Browns talks with players during Senior Bowl practice at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Glenn Andrews-USA TODAY Sports /

With athletic data available for almost every 2017 NFL Draft prospect, let’s revisit the Reese’s Senior Bowl to see which players fit what the Cleveland Browns want.

The Senior Bowl occurred a little over two months ago. The reason to revisit it now is that with all of the athletic data rolling in, it’s now possible to go back and apply it to the players that the Cleveland Browns coached that week to project who fits the type of player they prefer. In addition, some revelations have come out in regards to how the Browns approached the opportunity to coach the Senior Bowl which could impact the potential players they select in the 2017 NFL Draft.

At the Senior Bowl, the Browns were criticized for how they ran their practices. The complaints seemed largely based around the fact that the Browns weren’t running them for the benefit of the other 31 teams trying to evaluate players. If anything, the Browns acted selfishly and used the opportunity to benefit themselves as much as possible. This critique rings true.

As the week rolled on, one of the issues that people noticed with the South team was how many dropped out due to injury. In all, 13 players ultimately cited injury and dropped out of the competition, compared to just three for the North Team coached by the Chicago Bears.

According to Browns defensive coordinator Gregg Williams at the Glazier Clinic in Aurora last month, this was deliberate. In the same clinic where Williams declared the Browns would be selecting Myles Garrett from Texas A&M with the top pick of the draft unless he was in prison, he also said that the Browns wanted to challenge players to see which would stick it out and who would quit. Williams declared that any player that quit on them in the Senior Bowl would quit on their team in the NFL and were removed from the team’s draft board.

It’s important to point out that some players defer to the advice of their agent and if the agent says to drop out, they basically trust them. That may not matter to the Browns who appear to want to get players more focused on competing and taking control of their own destiny. Some may take this with a grain of salt, or may only apply it to the defensive side of the ball, but Williams doesn’t have enough of a filter to lie. He’s honest to a fault.

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So the question is, naturally, who left the Senior Bowl early from the South team?

Some of those players include Forrest Lamp, Tre’Davious White, Josh Carraway, Nico Siragusa, Gerald Everett, Ryan Anderson, Rudy Ford, Justin Evans, and Isaac Asiata. Corn Elder and Ryan Switzer participated in every practice but did not play in the game. Some of these players don’t fit the Browns anyway, but several of them do, so this is something that’s worth watching.

Along with that, applying the traits the Browns favored in the past year, it’s now possible to project which players the Browns may target in the draft at the end of this month. In all, 19 players that the Browns personally got their hands on in Mobile appear to fit the model they’ve established, which focuses on explosiveness, production and character.

Teams that coach in the Senior Bowl tend to pick players they coached in the event anyway, since coaches have a good feel for them and how they will respond to them and how they will respond to coaching over a week as opposed to a single workout or taking someone else’s word for it.

This will be especially important for the Browns as both Hue Jackson and Gregg Williams have input on personnel in their contract, so if they want a guy, there’s a good chance they’ll get them. So having had their hands on these 19 prospects, the Cleveland Browns might grab a couple of these 19 prospects.

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