5 players Cleveland Browns should trade for before the 2022 NFL Draft
By John Suchan
Cleveland Browns trade target No. 5: Eric Kendricks, Minnesota Vikings, LB
The Browns are looking for linebackers and need to continue to add depth at this position. Cleveland recently traded linebackers with the New England Patriots, when Mack Wilson was sent to the Patriots for Chase Winovich. That looks to be a good move by both teams and gives each player a fresh start with new teams.
Cleveland will have Anthony Walker back at linebacker as he just re-signed with the team but they’ll need to add a couple more linebackers and one possible trade Cleveland may pursue would be for Eric Kendricks. He’s been in the NFL since 2015, all with the Vikings.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski was on the Vikings staff for years before coming to Cleveland in 2020. Minnesota also recently added former Cleveland front office man Kwesi Adofo-Mensah who is their new GM. So the possibility that these two teams were to make another trade wouldn’t be all that shocking.
Kendricks has been a tackling machine for the Vikings. In seven seasons he’s collected 782 tackles. He had 143 of those last season, intercepted two passes, and recovered a fumble. Putting him on the field with the Browns rookie linebacker star in Jeremiah Owusu-Koromoah might be too good to be true.
According to spotrac.com, he’d cost the Vikings $5.9 in dead cap money while saving the team $7.5 million in cap space. It’s the type of contract yet again that the Browns front office might be willing to redo if they were to go after Kendrick in a trade. The fact that both teams have a strong bond with former coaches and front office personnel would make this type of trade more doable than other trade deals.
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The Browns seem to be in a trading mood these days and any of these trades could happen so tuned to your Twitter feeds and other social media platforms. The offseason is just getting started.