The Cleveland Browns that are going into this weekend are significantly different than the one that opened up the week. With the Deshaun Watson trade in place, the team will likely look to trade Baker Mayfield which could shake up their 2022 draft selections.
Surprisingly, the Watson trade only ended up costing the team one pick in the upcoming draft, #13, while retaining the remaining selections. The team will be without their first and third-round picks in 2023 but will receive an extra third-rounder as compensation for losing Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
In a simple way, Watson was the team’s first-round pick this year.
It will be interesting if the team’s draft strategy changes slightly with Watson on board. Andrew Berry’s group has had some strict age restrictions on players, believing in their growth and upside, but being all in could change that.
With no first-round picks in the next three drafts, we could also see Berry trading down to add more picks in 2023 and 2024 to balance that out. Any trade for Mayfield could also focus on picks beyond this year’s draft.
With all that in mind, we took a stab at a post-Watson Browns mock draft. For this draft, no trades were completed and we used Pro Football Network’s Mock Draft Simulator.