1. Don’t sleep on how much John Dorsey can turn things around
When the Kansas City Chiefs dumped John Dorsey this offseason, it was a shock. Dorsey — a master evaluator of talent — helped put pieces in place for the Chiefs that turned them into a perennial Super Bowl contender. His eye for Patrick Mahomes set the team up with a future potential franchise star and is the latest in a long line of fantastic draft picks by Dorsey.
Cleveland, in case you haven’t noticed, has been plagued by bad pick after bad pick for basically the last two decades. The best pick they’ve made was Joe Thomas — one pick in almost twenty years.
Dorsey built a real franchise in Kansas City and did so without really relying on first-round picks hitting. Here’s a small sampling of the players Dorsey drafted with the Chiefs:
Tyreek Hill
Travis Kelce
Patrick Mahomes
Kareem Hunt
Mitch Morse
Chris Jones
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
Of those players, only Marcus Peters was a first-round pick. All of those guys are considered to be near the top of their position pool. He signed Micthell Schwartz in free agency — a former Browns offensive lineman — and added him to a stout line in front of Alex Smith.
That’s what the Browns are getting in Dorsey. It won’t be a quick fix and Cleveland won’t be next year’s Rams. But if Jimmy Haslam allows Dorsey to run the franchise the way he sees fit, Cleveland is going to bounce back sooner rather than later.