When Cleveland acquired Deshaun Watson via trade with the Houston Texans, the Browns sacrificed six draft picks over a three-year span, including all three first-round picks from 2022 until this season.
This season’s draft class for the Browns was a six-person group with four defenders and two offensive players selected among its limited haul.
With such a small class, few analysts expect Cleveland to see much of a future return from the 2024 group.
Count analyst Ryan McCrystal among those pundits.
The Sharp Football Analysis writer made a bold statement about the 2024 class in a recent preview for the 2024 NFL regular season.
“This draft class makes almost no impact on Cleveland’s outlook for 2024, and it would be mildly surprising if it produced more than one long-term starter,” McCrystal wrote about the Browns’ rookie draft class.
McCrystal was high on second-round selection Mike Hall Jr., a defensive tackle out of Ohio State.
The analyst said the Browns “blended need, value, and upside perfectly” in selecting the 21-year-old Hall.
McCrystal said Hall has the opportunity to work into the rotation immediately and could become a long-term solution in Cleveland.
Zinter – who multiple analysts praise as a potential starting guard after this season – was a “reach” by the Browns, McCrystal concluded.
“Zinter appears to lack the power to contribute at a high level in the run game,” McCrystal said.
The analyst did praise the selection of sixth-round pick Nathaniel “Bookie” Watson, adding that the SEC Defensive Player of the Year had the second-lowest missed tackle rate in 2023 at 6.6 percent.
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