Written by Thomas Moore

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After three days and almost 20 hours of hearing analysts drone on about short arms, small hands, loose hips and tight ankles, the 2012 NFL Draft has come to a close.

The Cleveland Browns selected 11 players over the draft’s three days, filling obvious holes – running back, quarterback and right tackle – and adding depth at some unexpected places, primarily at defensive tackle.

We are now left to answer the only question that really matters – are the Browns better off today than they were before the draft started?

Let’s find out.

Roll Trent: Once Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III were off the board, it was highly unlikely the Vikings would take Alabama running back Trent Richardson at

No. 3, but that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t be interested. And since Tampa Bay eventually traded back into the first round to select Boise State running back Doug Martin, it’s not hard to see the Buccaneers as a potential trade partner with Minnesota.

The Browns had a decision to make: sit at No. 4 and hope Richardson was still there or be proactive and get a player they really wanted. So Cleveland threw some extra picks they had laying around the office, including the fourth-round pick they had from Atlanta thanks to last year’s Julio Jones trade (which is the gift that just keeps on giving, and not in a crappy, jelly-of-the-month club sort of way) to swap places with Minnesota and land the consensus No. 1 running back in the draft.

Think about that for a moment, the Browns gave up virtually nothing for a running back that ran for 1,679 yards and 21 touchdowns last year playing against NFL-caliber defenses in the SEC – college football’s equivalent of the AFC North.

When was the last time the Browns drafted a player that was, without question, the best at his position? Probably Joe Thomas in 2007. Before that you need to go back to who? Jim Brown in 1957? Even in the 1977 draft, no one thought Ozzie Newsome (a Hall of Famer) or Clay Matthews (should be a Hall of Famer) were unquestionably the best players at their positions.

According to WalterFootball.com, “Richardson could fit any NFL offense, but would be a perfect fit in a West Coast scheme because of his receiving ability. As a runner, Richardson could play in a power man blocking scheme or a zone-blocking system.”

Or how about this from NFL.com? “Richardson is explosive, powerful and balanced. He is a heady and instinctual player who is patient enough to wait for blocks and quick enough to cut backfield to daylight. Richardson has a strong core that he uses to break arm tackles and get physical leverage under blitzers in pass protection. He is a true three-down back who can be effective on screens.”

We get the arguments that today’s NFL doesn’t put a premium on taking a running back high in the draft because they tend to have shorter careers. We’ve also heard some argue that, when the Browns are good in five years, Richardson will be shot.

But the Browns play in the AFC North, the NFL’s big-boy division (this is going to be a theme today) and can count on having several games each year in weather that calls for a strong running game. Richardson gives the Browns someone the opposing team has to worry about, takes pressure off the passing game and can help the offense stay on the field longer.

And the only way the Browns are going to be good in five years is if they start drafting players now to help them get better.

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The Old Man: The Browns clearly did not draft Oklahoma State quarterback Brandon Weeden, who will be 29 this fall, to sit on the bench for a couple of years.

Weeden threw for more than 9,000 yards and 71 touchdowns in his two years as a starter, and last year helped Oklahoma State beat Texas A&M, Baylor and Stanford, who were all quarterbacked by guys you might have heard of.

According to NFL.com, Weeden’s “quick release is his strongest asset, as he consistently fires the ball with a compact throwing motion and strong delivery. The ball zips off his arm, and he has the ability to fit it in any tight space. He is an accurate passer on throws short and long ... He understands route progressions and throwing the ball to allow his receiver to make a play.”

And WalterFootball.com points out that “there is no doubt that Weeden has the arm strength and pure passing ability to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. He can stand in the pocket and pick a defense apart if he isn't pressured. Weeden has the capacity to play faster and better than most rookie quarterbacks.”

The knock on Weeden, other than his age, is that he needs to work on his field vision and his footwork, as he struggles to get out of the pocket and, when he does, his accuracy decreases. There’s also the fear that he didn’t face the toughest of defenses in the Big 12 (the opposite of why Richardson was a good pick). Of course, RG3 faced those same defenses, so ...

This is where the coaching staff comes in. How quickly Weeden can get up to NFL speed is on him, but coach Pat Shurmur and offensive coordinator Brad Childress play a role in his development as well. The Browns presumably have watched over and over every throw Weeden made during his college career and now what he can and can’t do.

“When you get your players, you plug them in,” Shurmur said of Weeden. “You try to do more of the things they do well and less of the things they don’t. I think we evaluated him with the idea that he can do what we do. We will see as we start to work with him, the things that he does well in conjunction with the players he is working with.”

Simply put, Shurmur and Childress need to figure out now what works for Weeden and build a offensive plan around what he does well. The window for Weeden to develop into a viable quarterback is shorter because of his age and the team needs to know what they are doing sooner rather than later. If Weeden doesn’t turn into the Browns starting quarterback for the next five to six years, then that falls on Shurmur and Childress as much as it does on Weeden.

Because while handing the ball to Richardson 25 times a game is a decent plan, in the long-term the offense needs to be more diverse than that.

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Winning ugly and stopping the run: After years of watching the Pu Pu platter at right tackle, the Browns finally decided to address the issue by drafting Cal right tackle Mitchell Schwartz.

According to Mike Mayock, Schwartz is “a guy that wins ugly – but he wins. His technique and the angles he takes are phenomenal. He’s a plug-and-play right tackle.”

We’re not exactly sure what “winning ugly” means, but we like the sound of winning when it is used in any context related to the Browns.

Adding Schwartz gives the Browns a starting offensive line where Joe Thomas is the oldest member at age 27. Looking at the offensive line, the Browns have the best left tackle in the league in Thomas, the toughest center in the AFC North in Alex Mack (he played a game with appendicitis; the Pittsburgh dandy Maurkice Pouncey missed a playoff game with a sore ankle), 24-year-old guards Jason Pinkston and Shawn Lauvao, and Schwartz.

Clearly the controversial pick of the weekend was defensive tackle John Hughes from Cincinnati. With Phil Taylor and Ahtyba Rubin starting at defensive tackle, many questioned why the Browns would take Hughes, especially since he may have been “available later” and was considered “a reach.”

The thing about draft evaluations is, guys like Mayock and Mel Kiper rank players based on how they perceive their talent, without regard to what system a particular team plays, which division they play in, etc.

Hughes is supposedly solid on defense against the run and, after spending the last decade watching opposing running backs rip the Browns apart on the ground, doing something to improve the run defense is a positive. And as good as Taylor and Rubin are, they simply can’t every down of every game – the Browns need rotational guys.

Hughes also helps the team get younger on the defensive line, as the Browns now have a six-man rotation of Hughes, Taylor, Rubin, Jabaal Sheard, Juqua Parker and Frostee Rucker where five of the players are under the age of 28.

While it is understandable that the Browns want to build depth along both sides of the line, something kind of important when you play in the AFC North, it’s not unreasonable to wonder: why Hughes? And why did the Browns trade down in the round rather than just select him with their original pick?

“We debated on whether staying there and taking him,” general manager Tom Heckert said. “He was the guy we were going to take if we stayed, but we thought, and we got lucky, that we could get him later on.”

It is that kind of non-answer that gets on many fan’s tits. And we’ll address that in just a moment.

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The Grab Bag: The Browns closed out the draft by finally picking a wide receiver, the speedy Travis Benjamin from Miami, linebackers James-Michael Johnson (Nevada) and Emmanuel Ocho (Texas), adding more potential line depth with guard Ryan Miller (Colorado) and defensive tackle Billy Winn (Boise State), cornerback Trevin Wade (Arizona) and tight end Brad Smelley (Alabama).

Benjamin is the  most intriguing because he brings speed to a team that desperately needs it on offense (think receivers Mohammed Massquoi and the departed Brian Robiskie, who can’t get separation from NFL defensive backs) and can help out in the return game. Because whether or not Browns fans want to think about it, Josh Cribbs best days as a return man are behind him.

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Time to put on your big-boy pants: Weeden’s arrival in Cleveland signals the end of the Colt McCoy era – at least as the full-time starting quarterback. But the nonsense about how the Browns “have to trade” McCoy for fear of a quarterback controversy is beyond absurd.

We never fell into the pro-McCoy or anti-McCoy camp – all we ever asked was that the team give him enough games so that they could fairly and accurately evaluate him. We’ve seen too many quarterbacks put in and pulled out of the lineup on a too-frequent basis, leaving the team never truly knowing if they had someone who could play the position or not.

That’s not the case with McCoy. The Browns have more than enough evidence to know that McCoy simply doesn’t have it to make the team into a big-time winner. And the fans know it, too, at least the ones who actually watched the past two seasons play out.

But that doesn’t mean the Browns should dump him. McCoy is only 25 and the Browns need a backup in case Weeden gets injured. Plus, if the rumors are true and Green Bay wanted McCoy as a backup, shouldn’t that tell the Browns something?

If the team wants to dump anyone, it should be Seneca Wallace and his me-first attitude. He didn’t want to mentor McCoy last season, there’s no reason to believe he would want to mentor Weeden this year. We have full faith that McCoy can come in if needed and throw a killer interception every bit as effectively as Wallace.

If McCoy believes he has what it takes to be a starting quarterback, then put on your big-boy pants and go out there and prove. Make it as hard as possible for the Browns to hand the starting position to Weeden.

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Talk to us, baby: Going back to the Hughes pick, we had a somewhat spirited discussion with @jimkanicki about what the Browns were trying to do with that particular selection. While we disagreed on the value of selecting Hughes at that spot, we were both frustrated at the lack of explanation on the Browns part for just what it is that they saw in Hughes.

This is a league-wide problem with coaches and front offices not being willing to talk to the fans as equals and explain why something happened or the thought process that went into a decision.

It didn’t have to be during the draft, but just think if sometime this week Heckert and defensive coordinator Dick Jauron sat down with the media and talked in detail about why Hughes or Johnson fit into the team. We all know you “liked” a particular player, no one drafts someone they don’t like, but gives us something more than that.

If Jauron would say, “in our defense we want our defensive linemen to do X, Y and Z and in college Hughes played in a similar system, or we saw him do (fill in the blank),” that would go a long way toward calming the nerves of the fans.

The game is changing and coaches want to make things ever more complicated, but a large portion of the fan base is changing as well. We want to support the team, and the more we understand how the pieces fit together the better off everyone is.

Unfortunately, as least for now, the NFL isn’t wired that way.

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So what does it all mean? This brings us back to our opening question: are the Browns better off today than they were before the draft started? And the answer is clearly yes.

There was no way the Browns could realistically have gone into the season with the depth chart at running back reading Montario Hardesty, Chris Ogbonnaya and Brandon Jackson. Trent Richardson is unquestionably an upgrade.

Same with Brandon Weeden at quarterback. Even without taking a snap at the NFL level, we’re willing to say he is better than McCoy and Wallace. And if it turns out that Weeden is good, the receivers are going to be better because it’s the quarterback that makes everyone around him better, not the other way around.

Three drafts into his tenure, Heckert has turned a bloated, aging defense into a unit with several young starters. And he’s slowly revamped the offense to the point where there is at least the hope that the Browns can score some points. (While we buy into building a team through the draft, we wouldn’t mind seeing the Browns accelerate the process a bit through free agency.)

But better is still a relative term. The Browns followed up consecutive 5-11 seasons by going 4-12 last year. They are going to be starting a rookie at quarterback this fall, are slow at linebacker and still have more questions than answers.

Oh, and in case we forgot to mention it, they still play in the AFC North, which sent three teams to the playoffs last year (hey, we warned you this would be a theme).

“I said this after the season and anyone that cares to listen in the building, I have talked to them and Pat and I have talked to this many times, we would all like to see a big jump this year,” team president Mike Holmgren said following the draft. “Our team, foundationally, is getting better. ... Are we ready to jump into elite status? I don’t know what that means necessarily, but I am anticipating a good jump in our level of play.”

So while they are better, the Browns still may be a ways away from being a team that can consistently take on Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Just how far is still to be determined.