You'd think that if any team in the NFL would be extra cautious about approaching a player in any way connected to sexual assault, it would be the Cleveland Browns. These are the same Browns that have been embroiled in the Deshaun Watson nightmare for years now, and the same Browns that still haven't signed their second-round pick from this year's draft, running back Quinshon Judkins, as he awaits the resolution of a domestic violence investigation.
And yet, when word broke that Isaiah Bond's sexault assault allegations had been no billed — essentially, a grand jury telling a prosecutor that there isn't sufficient evidence to bring charges — it was the Browns who couldn't wait to try and snatch the former Texas WR up. According to Mary Kay Cabot, Cleveland is expected to sign Bond "soon" now that he's been legally cleared.
Post on the #NFL telling clevelanddotcom it's reviewing WR Isaiah Bond's sexual assault case even though he won't be indicted; the #Browns plan to sign him soon:https://t.co/Wax0kWadoP
— Mary Kay Cabot (@MaryKayCabot) August 15, 2025
Cabot adds that the Browns have done their "due diligence," but considering their track record here — and the fact that reports linking Bond to Cleveland began to emerge almost the second the news of the no-bill broke — you'll forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical.
In strictly football terms, the connection makes all the sense in the world. Bond was being talked about as a potential Day 2 pick after putting up 540 yards on 34 catches for Texas last season and then running a sub-4.40 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine. For a Browns team with a worryingly thing WR room right now, that injection of explosive talent would be a godsend.
But there's an obvious reason why Bond is available to be scooped up in the middle of August. And at this point, Cleveland should know that throwing caution to the wind like this will only wind up hurting your team in the long run.
Isaiah Bond is the last gamble the Browns need to be taking right now
There's very little reason to believe that the Browns have actually done the leg work to be confident about Bond's track record of behavior, or his make-up, or how he might affect the team's locker room. Even if they hadn't been just waiting for him to be legally cleared, the fact that they've botched this exact same test time after time shows that the entire foundation here is rotten.
It may not have been the reason why things fell apart last season in Cleveland, but this team's culture has been a mess for years now under Kevin Stefanski. Far be it from me to pass judgment on Bond's character from afar, but it's not a great sign when a team continues to make the same sort of decision that's come back to haunt it in recent memory. We still don't know much about the exact nature of the allegations, but a no bill by no means clears him of wrongdoing — there are all sorts of reasons why prosecutable evidence might not exist in sexual assault cases, and it's worth noting that the NFL still plans to look into the incident and potentially levy its own discipline.
Maybe this will all look silly in hindsight. Maybe Bond proves himself to be a model citizen off the field and a difference-maker on it, and the Browns managed to pick up a second-round talent for pennies on the dollar. But the decision-making here is ugly, to say the least, and at this point we have every reason to think that it'll lead to ugly outcomes. These are the Browns we're talking about, after all.