3 Cleveland Browns who could be cut ahead of 2021 season

1. Mack Wilson, Linebacker

In 2020, there was no position that was more of a liability to the Cleveland Browns success than linebacker. Before the season began, Mack Wilson had a strong reaction to those who felt the linebackers in Cleveland lacked the necessary talent and said we would all learn how good they really were.

Wilson was unfortunately lost shortly after that to a knee injury and seemed to be dealing with that even when he returned. Of course, his struggles were not the only issues with the linebackers.

The unit, as a whole, was just not great. They had some decent performances out of players such as Malcolm Smith and B.J. Goodson, but overall, there was a lot to be desired. Looking forward to 2021, that should be different.

Cleveland hopes to be much better thanks to the addition of Anthony Walker in free agency as well as Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and Tony Fields II in the draft. There’s also hope that Jacob Phillips could be healthy again after missing a lot of time during his rookie campaign.

That means players such as Wilson and Sione Takitaki (their third-round pick from 2019) could be in danger of not making the cut — especially considering the fact that defensive coordinator Joe Woods wants to run a 4-2-5 defense for their base.

While Wilson is the bigger name, he’s also been one of the more inconsistent players — and has struggled mightily with missed tackles. According to Pro Football Reference, he whiffed on 20.4 percent of his tackles in 2020. Sure, there was the aforementioned knee injury but even as a rookie, he missed 13.7 percent of his tackles.

Compare that to Takitaki, who missed 4.5 percent in a small sample size as a rookie and just 5.6 last season when he was a primary starter, and it doesn’t look great for Wilson.

Perhaps the Browns go deeper at linebacker than expected but a huge turnover from their 2020 roster wouldn’t be surprising.