Cleveland Browns have too many draft picks

The Cleveland Browns should move up in Rounds 1-4, trade out of 5-7

The Cleveland Browns have too many picks in the 2021 NFL Draft and should trade up in the early rounds of the NFL Draft and trade out of late rounds or else they may have to cut some good players in favor of lesser talents in late round picks.

Doubtless, the title of this article will generate some incredulous responses in the letter column from those who believe that it’s impossible to have too many draft picks. But let’s think this through for a moment.

There are only 53 roster spaces available, and the NFL does not have the luxury that baseball has of sending contracted players to the minor leagues. If the Browns wind up acquiring more than 53 players that they truly like, those extra players must be offered to the rest of the NFL including division rivals Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh.

So why would the Browns want to help build the roster of the Steelers? This year, the Steelers are thin because their cap dollars have been mismanaged and Big Ben ate up too much. Anyone who has lived on a hog farm can testify that if you feed that old boar hog too much, he just gets huge and fat, and the sows just don’t get enough to eat.

The whole barnyard just gets out of whack. If that hog farmer is too dumb to take that boar hog and finally convert him into bacon, that should be his problem, and our farm ought not be sending our healthy livestock over to help him out.

If you can understand that line of reasoning, it may be better to move up in the draft by bundling a few draft picks together and getting higher picks in Round 2 through Round 4. Get some players who are going to be difference makers over the long haul and avoid cluttering the roster with too many picks in Round 5 through Round 7 who are unlikely to be better than the players who will have to be cut for these late-round beauties.

We will get to the roster in a moment, but for now, let us consider only who is arriving and departing from the table below.

Browns Add                                                Browns Subtract
John Johnson                     S                       Karl Joseph                      S                     Upgrade
..                                                                      Andrew Sendejo            S
Troy Hill                              CB                    Terrance Mitchell            CB                   Upgrade
..                                                                     Kevin Johnson                 CB
..                                                                    Tavierre Thomas             CB
Jadeveon Clowney          DE                    Olivier Vernon                  DE                   Upgrade
Takkarist McKinley         DE                    Adrian Clayborn               DE                   Upgrade
Anthony Walker Jr          LB                     B.J. Goodson                     LB                   Upgrade
Malik Jackson                  DT                     Sheldon Richardson       DT                   Downgrade
..                                                                    Larry Ogunjobi                 DT
..                                                                    Kendall Lamm                  T                      Backup

Olivier Vernon and Sheldon Richardson are the major talents who will be missed. Joseph, Sendejo, Thomas, Ogunjobi might have had trouble making the 2021 team.

The Browns need to replace at most five players, and it might be argued that the numbers are already close to even.

Hence the Browns have nine draft picks to replace five players. But that is not all. They also have a pool of about 30 undrafted free agents (UDFA) and young veterans at near the NFL minimum salary come to camp.

This season, it would be wise to hang on to a few, some true talents will absolutely positively slip through the NFL draft this year, due to the large number of games that were canceled and thus were not scouted.

If the Browns have no roster spots to keep them, they will be on some other team’s roster. So they should not plug up the roster with piglets from the sixth and seventh round. There will be some mean ferrule pigs among the UDFAs, so catch them and put them on the roster.