The next time the 2nd overall selection was taken by someone other than the team it belonged to might be familiar to Browns fans. The Browns struggled mightily in 2015, under the quarterbacking of Josh McCown, Johnny Manziel, and Austin Davis. Despite the gaping hole at the position, the Browns under a new regime decided they would forego a QB, and start accumulating picks.
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The pick ended up being sent to Philadelphia, as the Eagles had eyes for an FCS QB from North Dakota State University, Carson Wentz. The trade ended up looking like this:
Browns Receive | Eagles Receive |
|---|---|
2016 8th Pick | 2016 2nd Pick |
2016 77th Pick | 2017 4th Round Pick (ended up being 139th) |
2016 100th Pick | |
2017 1st Round Pick (ended up being 12th) | |
2018 2nd Round Pick (ended up being 64th) |
The Browns, similar to the Rams before them, embarked on an odyssey of flipping picks for more and more selections, culminating in an enormous trade tree.
While they ended up tossing in other picks in trades a variety of trades, when the smoke cleared on all of the selections, Cleveland ended up with: WR Corey Coleman, OL Shon Coleman, QB Cody Kessler, WR Ricardo Louis, S Derrick Kindred, WR Jordan Payton, OL Spencer Drango, S Jabrill Peppers, QB DeShone Kizer, CB Denzel Ward, EDGE Chad Thomas, and WR Antonio Callaway.
That's a lot of players, and unfortunately as we found out in gut-wrenching fashion, most were busts. The saving grace was Denzel Ward, who continues to star for the Browns years down the road, and looks to be part of this next reconstruction the Browns are undergoing.
With this trade we can see how if the Browns had made better selections, they would have very likely come out big winners in this deal. Wentz's career was a bit of a roller coaster, and there's no telling it would've been any different in Cleveland, but the return, while substantial, reaped very little rewards.