Written by Jason Askew

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*Jason Askew is following the draft after previewing it for TCF. He hit the Greg Little pick on the money if you check out his article previewing the wide receivers.

Thank God day 2 of the draft was much less stressful. You saw the Browns make picks that were right in line with both need and getting the next best player on their board. Tom Heckert said Jabaal Sheard was the top choice on their board for day 2 and he was still there when they were on the clock and so the trigger was pulled. For the next pick he said they had a wish list of 3 players and when Greg Little was there they pulled the trigger. I think if one of those guys were not there you would have seen the Browns turn that 59^th pick into more picks but one of the 3 players they wanted was available so they drafted him. Drafting a DE and WR is something most of us may have expected so in terms of need picks I think they filled two. One of the common themes you will see with the players the Browns have selected so far is physicality. All 3 of these players play their position and the game in general with a top notch physical style. So let’s talk about why the Browns feel like these two players are good players for them.

Jabaal Sheard (6-2 7/8 264lbs) DE Pitt

Sheard is an ideal DE in the 4-3 because he can play the run as well as the pass. He shows really good power moves and has the speed to turn the corner when rushing the passer and also has a very good anchor when playing the run. He is a player that can come in and compete right away at the NFL level because he has already refined an array of pass rush moves. He is not a player who relies on any one way to rush the passer so OL stay off balance when going up against him.

He was defensive player of the year in the Big East because he had 14.5 tackles for loss and 9.5 sacks to go along with an aggressive playing style and relentless motor. You can see Sheard on tape getting double teamed left and right and still finding a way to make plays. If you want to watch one game in which he just terrorized an offense put on the Miami Hurricane game in which they tried to block him heads up. He bounced back and forth playing both sides of the defense and abused both OTs. He is a hustle player also, if you watch him play he goes all out all the time, you rarely see him loafing. Sheard is the type of player who wants to pound his opponent into submission. He plays like a true alpha male.

Really his biggest knock to me would be his weight being only 265lbs because sometimes he has a hard time stopping once a lineman gets him moving and he also has trouble splitting the double team at times. Other than that the guy is a pretty solid DE and should be a really good pro.

I think Sheard will be a RDE for the Browns because he is a really good pass rusher with a variety of moves and once again in a press conference Heckert said “we really like Jayme Mitchell and it is a priority to get him back”. I think there is a strong possibility that Jayme Mitchell and Jabaal Sheard will be the 2 starting DEs for the Browns when the season starts.

Greg Little (6-2½ 321lbs) WR UNC

If you have been following the ‘Feeling A Draft’ series you already know that Greg Little is a player I really like and I picked him as the WR I thought the Browns would pick. I picked him for all of the same reasons the coach and GM stated in their press conference. He gives the Brown a WR who can get yards in chunks. He can do it by both catching deep balls because he out muscles DBs and because he is a superb run after the catch guy so that ability allows him to turn short passes into big gains. He is crazy strong for a WR putting up 27 reps at the combine and has a reputation as being a nasty blocking WR.

Little has only played one full year at WR because he was also a RB at UNC. The fact that he only has one year at the position means he needs more reps running routes. The last time he was on the football field you could see his routes were not as sharp as they need to be.

Two of the things I like the most about him as a player are the way he attacks the ball and the aggressive style he runs with after catching the ball. His hands are great and he catches the ball extremely well. He rarely lets balls get into his frame and attacks the ball with a me or nobody mentality. Because he is so aggressive to the ball he is one of those WRs who can be open even when covered. His size and wingspan allow him to fend off DBs trying to stop him.

I think he will be great for Colt McCoy because his size and physical play will allow him to work the middle of the field which will best utilize Colt McCoy’s superior accuracy. He also will catch balls other WRs would lose the battle for as well as bat down balls he can’t catch. The Browns were lacking a physical presence in the WR core before they drafted Little. They are not lacking in that area any longer.

Character

O.K let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Little is one of the players who got suspended at UNC for having illegal contact with a player agent. He has not even played football in a year. Yes, that concerns me but not so much that it overrides the excitement of getting a player that has so much potential.  The potential trumps the fact that he has only played the position for a year and hasn’t played at all in a year. He has to be an extremely talented player if the Browns were willing to spend a second round pick on a player who hasn’t played in a year and has a red flag for a character issue.

Look, as far as I am concerned you can waste as much energy as you want trying to figure out if this guy is a scumbag or not. I am going to take a simply two-fold stance on the issue. The first fold is that I am actually going to trust the fact that Heckert and his crew have done their due diligence on the kid to actually find out how he is wired. The second fold is that I am actually going to let him do what most kids do after college which is put on his big boy pants and become an adult. In time I will find out if he needs to be filed under the ‘idiot’ tab or not but I will let his time in Cleveland be the gauge I use.

As far as “character” concerns go all of the Browns selections so far have a black mark and I am not going to spend a lot of time stressing over it. I think the information needs to be put out so if something does happen it won’t be new news that a past existed but I will file it away and pull it out if needed.

If you are wondering what Sheard’s issue was since I didn’t write anything earlier in the article, he had an incident at a bar in which he threw somebody through a window. On a good guy note about Sheard, he also got a medal for saving an old woman from a burning down house. We will see what type of men these guys are soon enough but as far as football players go the Browns are a much better team now than they were on Thursday afternoon.

Day 3

If you have been napping and just woke up you may be just realizing that the Browns have a ton of picks on the last day of the draft. They have 6 in total with 2 being in the 4^th round, 1 in the 5^th, 2 in the 6^th, and a supplemental pick in the 7^th round. The Browns will either bring 6 more players into the fold or they will use these picks to target specific players. If they think the players they want will be there when they pick and they will just be patient, but if they are down to the last player in a group of players they want you may see them use one of their picks to trade up.

Out of the 6 picks they have left I would expect them to take the best players on their board while also filling in some needs. I still think they will come away with an OT, DB, WR/RB, DL, QB, and possibly a LB. The reason I put down a WR/RB is that I still think they will either get a speed merchant WR or a big play RB. Here is a list of players to keep your eye on when the Browns are on the clock.

Wr  Edmond Gates, Cecil Shorts, Aldrick Robinson

QB Tyrod Taylor, T.J. Yates, Pat Devlin

RB Taiwan Jones, Jacquizz Rodgers, Jordan Todman, Derrick Locke

OT James Brewer, Demarcus Love, Jarriel King, Jason Pinkston

DL Christian Ballard, Greg Romeus, Sam Acho, Ugo Chinasa, Ian Williams, Martin Parker

DB Brandon Burton, Chimdi Chekwa, Buster Skrine, Byron Maxwell, Quinton Carter, Jaron Johnson, Deunta Williams

LB K.J. Wright, Ross Homan, Mark Herzlich, Colin McCarthy, Mike Mohamed Greg Jones, J.T. Thomas