Some thoughts, notes, funny story telling and disappointment on the Browns’ actions, and also lack thereof, in Round 1 on the NFL Draft on Thursday night:

*This from my good friend, Steve Doerschuk, who was the Browns beat writer for The Repository in Canton for over 20 years, as he and some family members were, simultaneous with the draft, attending the Akron RubberDucks’
Class AA Eastern League baseball game against the Richmond Flying Squirrels at Canal Park: “The Ducks kept their crowd informed on what the Browns were doing in the draft. When the PA man announced the pick at No. 5 (Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham, after the Browns moved down to that spot from No. 2 in a trade with the Jacksonville Jaguars), the crowd booed. Quick on his feet, the PA man said,    ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ “

*That whole situation brings up a great point. The Browns’ fan base is still huge. The fans want — badly — to see the club do well. But they’re also the best — and most knowledgeable — fans anywhere. They can’t be fooled or tricked. They were so excited at the prospects of getting Travis Hunter, the unicorn. But they ended up with a defensive tackle, from Ohio State’s arch rival, Michigan, no less. Indeed, Mason Graham is going to be a good player. But he’s not a unicorn. So it’s like wanting — and expecting — to find the coolest new electronic gadget under the tree on Christmas morning and instead getting socks and underwear. It rained on the fans’ parade.

*Other people outside of Browns Nation are looking at it that way as well. With Hunter, the Browns would have been a much more attractive team nationally. Now that’s the Jaguars, who picked him. As one NFL analyst said, “Nobody has wanted to watch Jaguars games, ever, in their history. Now I’m hoping the NFL TV people go back and look at the schedule and find some more Jaguars games to air nationally. I want to see Travis Hunter.”

*The way-back Browns teams were trendsetters, especially offensively. They played a more fast-paced and exciting brand of football than anybody. Now they’re content to sit back and gather as many draft assets as they can get. The young fans, especially, but the older ones as well, don’t care about three minutes from now, three hours from now, three days from now, three weeks from now, three months from now and three years from now. They want to win right now, this moment, this instant. They can’t, and don’t want to, visualize anything beyond the here and now. And that’s how it should be, particularly for the Browns, who don’t seem to feel
any sense of urgency, even though they ended up 3–14 last year and likely will be a bad team again this year. At some point if things don’t change, the guys running the team, such as General Manager Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski, are going to lose their jobs.

*What strikes me, too, about both of those men, moreso Berry, is that they have no idea how to put together the personality of a locker room. They look at this as being fantasy football, where analytics and numbers are the only things that matter. They were afraid of adding Hunter because they would’ve had to get out of their comfort zone and look at the that team chemistry. And that personality/chemistry is so important, but they don’t realize it.

*In a lot of circles, the Jaguars and New York Giants, who had the fifth pick and took Penn State linebacker Abdul Carter, were thought to have been the biggest winners in the first round and the Browns were viewed as one of the biggest losers for not doing anything to address “the worst quarterback room in the league.”

*And finally, what if Paul Brown, disgusted over the fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers, drafting at No. 5 overall, one stop ahead of the Browns, in 1957, had taken the quarterback he wanted in Alliance High school product Len Dawson, had traded out of his No. 6 slot and moved down so as to garner more draft capital? He would’ve missed out on getting Jim Brown, the best football player ever.

Steve King