Review of 2020 mocks shows respect for Cleveland Browns picks

The Cleveland Browns 2020 draft resulted in the acquisition of players who were highly ranked in multiple mock drafts.

So how did the Cleveland Browns do in the NFL draft, really? This article examines each player’s evaluation before the draft by several respected analysts in order to answer that question. Seven well-known mock drafts were examined, and, amazingly, all seven agreed that the Browns came away with more talent than expected. Only one player was thought to be a reach, the other six were at the right level or were ranked higher than they were actually taken.

Before digging deeper, are other fans put off by giving letter grades to front offices, or am I the only one? For example, if some team has a poor draft position because they traded away high draft picks, the front office might still get an “A” for doing a good job. Even worse is the habit of re-grading the players depending on who drafted them.

The Patriots are probably the best example.  Everybody thought that Jarrett Stidham was a crafty pick by Bellichick even though no one had him ranked very high prior to the draft. That is hokey.

So, what I really want to know, and I hope other fans are with me on this, is how much the team has improved via the draft. Are they going to score more points or will the defense play better this year? How much better? How impactful is the draft going to be to the caliber of play this year?

Pre-draft estimates of the value of each Browns draft pick are obtained from seven of the best mock drafts, at least in this writer’s view. I tend to like analysts who form their own opinions and occasionally buck the majority. The seven mock drafts chosen were Mike Renner of Pro Football Focus, Matt Miller at Bleacher Report, Walter Football (no relation to Johnny Football), Ryan Wilson of CBSSports, Vinnie Iyer of the Sporting News, DraftTek, and Draftsite.com.

The predicted draft position of each Cleveland Browns pick is listed for each mock draft, as well the actual position. The Dallas Cowboys’ point system (Schramm or Brandt system) is used to set a value for each draft pick.  This system is described on page 3 of this article for those who want to go into more detail.

Otherwise, just remember that the first overall pick is 3,000 points, number 16 is 1,000 points and seventh-round picks are worth five points or less.

Based on draft position, the Schramm value of the Browns’ suite of seven draft picks had an expectation value of 2130 points. However, when each player’s value from the mock drafts are calculated, averaged and totaled, the Browns draft picks were rated at 2,762 total points, or 632 points difference. To put that into perspective, 632 points is about the value of a late first-round draft pick (30th overall is 620 points).

Interestingly, there were four Browns draftees that were ranked as a first-round draft pick on at least one analyst’s draft board. One of the players was so controversial that he appeared as a first-round pick on one board and a seventh-round pick on another board. The details are contained on the next page, using the link below.