Cleveland Browns: Adding another corner in the Supplemental Draft?

The star of the NFL’s supplemental draft is Western Michigan corner Sam Beal and there’s plenty of buzz about the Cleveland Browns potential interest.

Despite signing three free agent corners and drafting two more in April, there is talk that the Cleveland Browns might look to add their sixth new corner in the upcoming supplemental draft.

Sam Beal, the long, athletic MAC corner has been discussed as possibly going for as much as a second round pick with the Browns as one of the potential bidders.

Before discussing the practicality of adding another corner, the first thing to address is what does Beal bring to the table. Beal is tall and he can run, which is shown on tape, but confirmed at pro day.

Beal’s got good straight line speed and explosion, but great ankles for the position and loose enough hips to be a solid cover corner. The issue that stands out is his weight at just 178 pounds, though the Browns just went down that road with Denzel Ward with the fourth overall pick of the 2018 NFL Draft.

From a production standpoint, Beal did a good job in the past two seasons making plays on the ball. The problem is tackling. In his sophomore campaign, Beal had a good market share in that area. As a junior, that production dropped by 54 percent and had four games where he didn’t register a single solo tackle.

The tape confirms a lot of what the production would suggest. Beal’s length and speed allow him to be pretty tight coverage, end up in a receiver’s hip pocket and able to make plays on the ball. He does a great job of playing inside leverage on receivers trying go deep on him and making it difficult to make a play.

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Beal also demonstrates pretty good ball skills and timing. He plays long and especially against some of his MAC competition, was able to erase receivers from the play. Beal has more trouble dealing with receivers going inside on him, but his recovery speed is good and he’s able to make up ground and break on plays. His hips are pretty good and he’s able to make turns and run with opponents.

Beal’s experience in both tight man and off man are valuable to teams. He’s done a little bit of everything, even if it was all man coverage. He’s played in space, had to see plays develop and pick up receivers on the run and he’s been effective in that area.

Beal’s technique is incredibly raw. He often plays high, will win a lot of matchups on pure athletic superiority rather than playing correctly and there’s a lot that will require fixing. That could be a reasonably difficult adjustment to the NFL, but that’s not his biggest problem.

At least in terms of his 2017 tape, Beal played soft. There are examples where Beal makes some nice tackles, but overall, he is dreadful. All too willing to let himself be blocked out of a play with little resistance, his interest in playing the run is almost non-existent. He misses a ton of tackles, ends up taking bad angles, diving at plays and just lacks the physicality necessary to take down opposing ball carriers.

Any team that’s evaluating Beal has to ask themselves and perhaps bring it up to him that if he’s unable or unwilling to take on MAC running backs, how is that situation going to improve against someone like Le’Veon Bell or Todd Gurley.

Beal appears to have the frame to add weight, but the fact he is so thin is a concern when combined with his lack of physicality. For all the knocks on Denzel Ward and his weight, which is a legitimate question, Ward would go up and do everything he could to make a tackle against ball carriers. Beal doesn’t.

This would also fly in the face of the type of corners the Browns have been adding this season. Whether it was Ward, T.J. Carrie, Terrance Mitchell or E.J. Gaines, they all tackle, are willing to tackle and be aggressive. The Browns traded away Jamar Taylor to the Arizona Cardinals for a late round pick and he didn’t tackle. That might not be the only reason they made the move, but it’s an obvious contrast to the players they added, which makes adding Beal dubious.

It’s possible a team views him as a boundary corner that is a package player for obvious passing situations, but given the price tag, that seems pretty hefty for a player that would be limited to a package player. It can and has been done, but the team that takes Beal has to at least hope he can develop into a starter.

So while it seems unlikely on its face, the logistics of the Browns adding Beal aren’t easy, but they aren’t disqualifying either. As it currently stands, the Browns have Ward, Carrie, Gaines, Mitchell, Briean Boddy-Calhoun, Mike Jordan and Simeon Thomas. That’s seven corners, not including undrafted free agents. It seems likely that Thomas could be a player that ends up on the practice squad, but that still leaves six corners and that seems like the number the Browns will keep on the final roster.

Unless there’s a significant injury, someone isn’t going to make the team and it very well could be one of the players the Browns just signed in free agency. The more likely scenario would be to trade one of them and the player that stands out in that situation is E.J. Gaines. He’s only on a one-year deal, the money another team would take on is minimal and as discussed previously, there’s a sense that he’s less than thrilled about his situation after being led to believe he was brought in to be a starter.

A trade could nip that situation in the bud, make the situation right in terms of putting him on a team to start as well as creating the roster space to carry Beal. And given that he will be so far behind all the other rookies coming in this late stage in the process as well as the upgrade in talent, Beal would likely be taking a redshirt year for the Browns while being on the active roster.

Last year, a player like Beal might have been on the field pretty quickly for the Browns, but with the investment at the position, the Browns appear to be substantially improved, making it more difficult for a player like Beal to crack the lineup.

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Based on what he’s put on tape, production and athletic testing, Beal could potentially go in the second round of a normal draft. The fact he could doesn’t mean he should as he’s far closer to a third or fourth round prospect, but desperation and the lack of options might make what is normally a pretty conservative process have teams be more aggressive with Beal. There are a few teams that could take Beal and need him to take a role on the field immediately.

None of these things fit the Cleveland Browns. They aren’t desperate (for a change) and his style of play is counter to what they have been doing. Add in the fact the coaching staff is anything but certain beyond 2018 and using a 2019 draft asset on a player for 2018, which may then not fit a new coaching staff doesn’t seem prudent. The Browns have done their due diligence and looked the part of a team interested, but they really shouldn’t be. If they bid a lower pick and were to get lucky, so be it. They should go with what they have and figure out if they need to make another big splash at corner in 2019 that fits what they want in the secondary.