Cleveland Browns: First-guessing 5 2018 NFL Draft choices
By Peter Smith
Second-guessing draft picks is easy. Like in years past, I’m going to go ahead and first-guess five of the Cleveland Browns 2018 NFL Draft picks.
As always, I want to live in a world where the Cleveland Browns crush all of their draft picks and I love all of them. To me, every draft pick is an opportunity to make the team better. I’ve gone through and broken down all of the picks the Browns have made this year under John Dorsey and while most of them are good, here are five of them I’d have done differently.
I don’t have all the prudent information NFL teams do like medical information, but I go on the information I do have, which is their athleticism, production and film. I did the same thing in 2016 and 2017 under Sashi Brown, so here is the first of Dorsey’s drafts.
May we all live to see the Browns have the perfect draft.
1. The Cleveland Browns selected Austin Corbett, OT from Nevada 33rd overall.
Alternative: They could have selected Harold Landry, Edge from Boston College, who went 41st overall by the Tennessee Titans.
This is nitpicking as Corbett looks like he should be a great player, though there is a question as to where he will line up for the Browns. Instead, this is a look at what could have been with Landry, the most dominant edge rusher in the 2018 draft class.
The Browns have a very impressive set of defensive ends in Myles Garrett and Emmanuel Ogbah, but they could have used additional pass rush. Especially with how often Garrett played inside at the 3-tech, Landry could’ve been the guy to come in and attack from the right edge, giving them a dynamic speed rusher.
If Corbett becomes a great offensive lineman, no one is going to be unhappy, myself included. However, if Landry proves to be a dominant edge rusher for the Tennessee Titans, it just becomes an interesting ‘what if’ scenario.
This does not project to be a situation like with DeShone Kizer where it was pretty obvious that people would be looking at the paths not taken pretty quickly after the pick was made and that’s exactly what happened. Dorsey and company were able to exchange Kizer for Damarious Randall to try to salvage the situation, but clearly the Browns could’ve done far better with that pick. Here, Corbett looks good, but Landry could be a double digit sack type player for the Titans.