Cleveland Browns: Spending Big on Offensive Line Was the Smart Move
The Cleveland Browns offered up a ton of cash to strengthen their offensive line at the start of free agency. Given this year's draft class, this was definitely the smart play.
The Cleveland Browns raised a lot of eyebrows on the opening day of free agency—and not just because the team
The Browns handed guard Joel Bitonio a contract extension worth more than $51 million. They then signed former Green Bay Packers center J.C. Tretter and former Cincinnati Bengals guard Kevin Zeitler
According to ESPN's Adam Caplan, Tretter's deal is worth more than $16 million and includes $10 million guaranteed:
New #Browns C/G J.C. Tretter gets 3 years, $16.75m, $10m guaranteed, source said.
— Adam Caplan (@caplannfl) March 9, 2017
Zeitler's deal is worth $60 million over five years and includes $31.5 million in guarantees, per Spotrac. He now becomes the highest-paid guard in the NFL. This is a lot of cash for Cleveland to be throwing at its offensive line in one day, but there are two reasons why it really is a brilliant move.
The first is that the Browns' offensive line was a borderline disaster in 2016. Cleveland quarterbacks were sacked a combined 66 times last season and the team was rated just 19th in run blocking by Pro Football Focus. If the Browns can settle their right tackle position, the may now turn around and have one of the league's top offensive lines next season.
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Let's run down the other four positions and how Pro Football Focus compares the starters with the rest of the league. Stalwart left tackle Joe Thomas was rated fourth overall at his position last season. Tretter was rated 13th overall among all centers. Zeitler and Bitonio were rated sixth and 21st among guards, respectively.
On paper, the Browns have completely rebuilt one core piece of their team in a single day. If they chose, they could target another unit in the NFL draft and potentially transform it in a single weekend. Cleveland currently has four picks in the first two rounds this year. This means the team can conceivably add four new starters to, say, the defensive front seven or the secondary.
Now, you might wonder why the Brown didn't use their draft capital to address the line instead of spending to do so. The answer here is that offensive line isn't the strength of this draft class. Defense is.
NFL Media draft expert Mike Mayock spoke with Peter King of The MMQB last month and broke things down:
This is as good and as deep a class as I've seen in a draft in several years—with the exception of quarterback and offensive line. Running backs and tight ends, top end and depth are outstanding. Tight ends—I haven't seen a group like this in years. Wide receivers, very good. Defensively, it's unbelievable. The edge rushers … we haven't seen a group like this in a long, long time. You'll be able to get a starting edge rusher in the fourth round that last year or most drafts you'd compare to an edge rusher in the second round. Cornerbacks and safeties, it's the best I've seen in 10 years at least.
It certainly feels like the Browns are already planning on drafting to the class' strengths. The chance of getting four Pro Bowl-caliber defenders at the top appears to be a lot better than that of landing even one or two Pro Bowl linemen.
Believe it or not, the long-misguided Browns seem to have a very definitive plan in place on how to build the team. We've known it involved accumulating draft picks, but we can now plainly see that it also involves spending to address positions that might not be addressable through the draft.
The big question now, of course, is whether or not the team can figure out how to address the quarterback position. Sure, Cleveland just acquired Osweiler, but that deal was about adding a future second-round pick, not about adding the player.
Perhaps Cleveland knows what it is doing there too. Now armed with three second-round picks in next year's draft, Cleveland should have the ammunition to move up and grab a signal-caller if the talent pool is substantially better than this year's at the position.
