Browns fans better hope John Dorsey knows what he’s doing
John Dorsey is clearly in charge of the Browns’ Draft process.
Every Cleveland Browns fan on Earth knows how important the 2018 NFL Draft is to their team’s long-term health. Get it right, and the Browns could return to respectability in pretty short order. Swing and miss on this draft and it might sentence the Browns to another decade of irrelevance.
It’s safe to assume that Browns’ General Manager John Dorsey feels this pressure more acutely than anyone else. He is, after all, the man who will ultimately be praised or blamed for the players Cleveland selects.
Given that pressure, you might think Dorsey would spend every possible moment gathering as much data about prospects as possible. If ESPN reporter Chris Mortensen is to be believed, Dorsey has certainly elected to cut his information gathering process short by at least six weeks.
If that is indeed true, Browns fans have every right to be both excited and terrified. On one hand, you have to admire the conviction Dorsey is showing. The Browns enter this draft in desperate need of selecting their franchise quarterback of the future.
Finding such a signal caller is similar to finding a spouse. Once you see that special someone and get to know them a little bit, you just “know” they’re the right one. You have to believe Dorsey saw something really special in one of the draft-eligible quarterbacks. Perhaps he fell in love with Baker Mayfield’s confidence. Dorsey may have been entranced by Sam Darnold’s accuracy. Lastly, he could have been overcome with emotion watching Josh Allen throw the ball with amazing zip.
On the other hand, running an NFL franchise requires a cooler head than selecting a potential mate. Dorsey has an avalanche of data available at his fingertips. He literally has a team of scouts and front office personnel dedicated to the task of giving him as much information as possible about each prospect.
It stands to reason that new information has been accrued and analyzed over the past six weeks. If Dorsey truly made his mind up so long ago, then he has done the Browns and their entire organization a disservice. Dorsey owes it to the fans to put every ounce of his being into making sure he gets the first pick right. Cutting off his decision-making process six weeks early seems like a pretty poor way to go about things.
In the end, Dorsey’s reputation will largely be shaped by what sort of players he comes away with in the 2018 NFL Draft. It’s certainly possible that his choice from six weeks ago turns out to be the franchise quarterback of Cleveland’s dreams.
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If it turns out, instead, to be a colossal flop, then Dorsey will always have to ask himself what he might have done differently to avoid such a massive error. His first answer will always be that he shouldn’t have closed his mind off to other prospects so early in the process. It’s a giant gamble that will take a few years to fully evaluate.