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The Cleveland Browns are spending their bye week licking their wounds after a disastrous first half of their season, but it does put them in a better position to land top-end talent like Missouri’s Luther Burden III in mock drafts.
The Browns focused on regrouping for the future, trading defensive end Za’Darius Smith and a 2026 seventh-round pick to Detroit for the Lions’ 2025 fifth-round pick and a 2026 sixth-round pick. Smith was a very good player for the Browns. He was Garrett’s partner-in-crime, and hopefully, he mentored the rest of the defensive ends.
The Browns have a group of talented and unproven players. They were drafted in the middle rounds and had to wait behind some of the best players in the league. The Browns will rely on their draft picks for the rest of the season as the team builds towards 2025.
There are many different ways to renovate a franchise. There are teardowns, as shown by what the Browns went through from 2015 to 2018. There are rebuilds, that’s what the Browns did every three years before Andrew Berry and Kevin Stefanski. There are also retools, which help a team pivot and expand. It’s how the Ravens and Steelers remain highly competitive for multiple decades with only a couple of down years.
Berry and Stefanski will attempt to retool the Browns, even if the local media believes a rebuild or a teardown is the way to build upwards. The Browns must keep the franchise’s foundation intact and inject high-end talent into the team. The Browns have eight picks in the 2025 NFL draft, four of which will be in the top 100. In this mock, I explore how the Browns can get some of the top talent in the class.