Cleveland Browns can balance ‘win now’ and ‘draft for the future’

Draft and Trade Scenarios:  Eli Manning was a Charger?

One of the reasons you read Dawg Pound Daily is to learn about draft scenarios that nobody else dares to think about. Recently, this author proposed a draft-and-trade scenario and was rather sternly lectured by fans that this could never happen.

Well okay.

But before you blast me again, please take a good long look at this picture from the 2004 NFL draft and realize that it shows Eli Manning holding up a San Diego Chargers jersey. He was in fact drafted by the Chargers after he and his famous father had warned all spring that he would not, would not, would not, would not play for the Chargers if they were to draft him first overall.

Anyway, the Chargers liked Philip Rivers better than Manning, so a solution seemed to have presented itself to the Chargers.

But what did the Chargers do? They drafted Eli Manning anyway. We aren’t making this up. Look again at the photo.

If you are shocked by this, so was the entire NFL during the 2004 draft, and the San Diego fan base was ready to throw general manager A.J. Smith into San Diego Harbor. What was San Diego doing? What idiots. Was a sportswriter from Dawg Pound Daily running their draft, or what? Why didn’t San Diego just draft Philip Rivers, the kid they really liked?

An hour later, the mystery was solved. The New York Giants, bless their little hearts, drafted Philip Rivers, and traded him to San Diego, and included a few juicy bonuses. Namely, the Giants included a 2004 third-round draft pick, a 2005 first-round draft pick, and a 2005 fifth-round pick. A.J. Smith went from pariah to folk hero in a matter of minutes in San Diego.

The reason why this did not happen before the draft is that New York thought that Manning might slide to fourth overall if they did nothing. When that didn’t happen, they were forced to pay for the privilege of drafting him. San Diego was willing to deal for Ben Roethlisberger if negotiations with the Giants were unsuccessful. Hence the Giants had to pay a fair price.

Now, it could have blown up in the Chargers’ faces. What if someone else had drafted Rivers and Roethlisberger second and third overall and liked them better than Manning? Then they might be stuck trading for defensive players for Coach Marty Schottenheimer, and would have had to turn the offensive over to their too-short quarterback, Drew Brees.

Who wants a short quarterback? Sophisticated San Diego fans would have hated that, but might have gotten over it eventually.

Anyway, let’s quit saying that there’s no such thing as draft-and-trade in the NFL, okay? It’s rare, but it definitely does happen, and it can pay off for the team that does it.

In fact, could it be that Green Bay was trying to do a variation of that technique with Jordan Love in last year’s draft? This writer is starting that rumor right here, based on zero evidence other than conjecture. If not, it was in fact the most inexplicable move of the 2020 NFL Draft and I am acting as an apologist for the Pack and should turn in my Browns Backers Worldwide membership card.  But hear me out.

Green Bay moved up by trading its Round 1 (30th) and Round 4 (136th) picks to move up to 26th for Love. That is 700 points versus 620 + 38 = 658. That trade clearly favored Green Bay.

Green Bay may have been thinking that they could offer the teams that did not get a quarterback in the early first round a second chance to obtain the services of a highly talented but unpolished quarterback perceived to be a year or two away.

Might they have been interested in an offer of, say, a second-round pick in 2020 and a first-round pick in 2021? The rationale would be that the teams in the front end of the had draft already drafted a quarterback.

The teams drafting at the back end of the draft, like the Packers, usually do not need a quarterback, so some team–i.e., a team drafting in the middle of the pack– might hold realistic hopes of nabbing a prospect like love in the middle of Round Two for that reason. But if Green Bay calls their bluff and drafts him anyway, that forces them to come to the negotiating table if they really want him.  Brilliant.

But perhaps Love was just over-valued. Love threw 17 INTs in his last year at Utah State in the Mountain West Conference which may have disappointed some talent evaluators. Those teams that passed on a quarterback in Round 1 might have said, “we are totally cool with a Round 1 and Round 2 for the right quarterback, but this is not our guy. Sorry, Green Bay.”

Thus the Green Bay draft-and-trade scenario, if that conjecture is correct,  may have blown up in their faces. The Packers may have intended to immediately trade Love, but they accidentally wound up getting stuck with him and had to save face.

They wouldn’t want to insult him by admitting they drafted him as trade bait, so they had to pretend they really wanted him. The nasty side effect is that they also created all the drama with superstar Aaron Rodgers.

This writer had proposed a very similar scenario for the Browns (or really any NFL team drafting in the mid-to-late first round this year), suggesting that some quarterback (Trey Lance in particular) might slide as far as 26th overall, the same spot as Jordan Love last year, despite the fact that many draft prognosticators believe he is a top-five talent.

Lance is suggested as a candidate for sliding because his lack of experience makes it highly unlikely he can be effective in 2021, so even the most delusional of general managers wouldn’t conflate the “win now” narrative and “draft rookie quarterback” narrative for a kid with one season of football at North Dakota State as a sophomore.

I may be totally wrong about that, as most mocks have him going in the top-10. However, nowadays teams want their kid to start in year one, and Trey Lance only started one year of college football at North Dakota at age 19. This doesn’t make sense.

Granted, NFL teams do some stupid things, but it is hard for this fan to believe he will start a game in 2021, and equally hard to believe a high first-round draft pick will be used on him for that same reason. But a quarterback-hungry team might be willing to trade future resources for a chance to develop him.

The intention would be to turn around and trade him for a 2022 first-round pick plus a 2021 second-round pick, or some combination of assets close to that.  Those teams that did not draft a quarterback in the first-round would be candidate trading partners.

There is zero intention of replacing Baker Mayfield or Case Keenum as first or second-string quarterback.

However there is a risk that other teams might not share the lofty evaluation of the rookie quarterback, and if that is the case the Browns might have three quarterbacks on the roster rather than only two. That isn’t a disaster, but a second number one draft pick in 2022 would be better.

Did Green Bay really attempt the draft-and-trade technique in 2020? It doesn’t seem likely, but on the other hand, it seems incredibly unlikely that they drafted a kid with the intention of replacing Aaron Rodgers. The so-called “reasonable explanation” sounds incredibly far-fetched also. The adjective “stupid” comes to mind.

Draft-and-trade might make sense in 2021.  A quarterback might have a legitimate reason for sliding if he has a very high ceiling but with such a low level of experience that starting in the NFL seems almost impossible in his first season. He could be a legit prospect but still slide out of the top-10 where his talent level would normally take him.

An enterprising team like the Browns might be able to nab him with a late first-round pick this year and exchange him for a second-round pick and a 2022 first-round pick. Keep in mind, however, that this technique did not work for the Packers, if that is what they were trying to do last year (or are we to believe that they are honestly, sincerely, trying to replace the great Aaron Rodgers with Jordan Love?).

One way or another, if the Browns seek to improve in the future, they need to establish a pattern of investing in the future. It’s very simple. Buy low, sell high.

NFL general managers have an established pattern of conflating the NFL draft with the need to “win now” and in certain circumstances are willing to grossly overpay. In this article, we have documented how the Houston Texans, New York Jets, and Miami Dolphins have had trouble managing draft capital. The Dolphins, at least, have some capital to mismanage.