The Browns have talked about trading down from the No. 1 overall pick, and about trading for a veteran quarterback. But what about trading up from their second first-round pick, No. 12 overall, to draft a quarterback?
According to Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, that’s a possibility, and the quarterback they’d be trading up for is North Carolina’s Mitchell Trubisky.
“We are open to it,’' Browns G.M. Sashi Brown said, although he didn’t say whether Trubisky is the player they’d move up to draft.
So if the Browns’ dream scenario is to come out of the first round with both Myles Garrett and Trubisky, they could take Garrett first overall and then package some of their other picks with the No. 12 pick to move back into the Top 10 and get Trubisky. Doing that, however, would run counter to the Browns’ general strategy of accumulating more picks by trading down.
“Generally, we value picks,” Brown said. “We think no matter how prepared you are there is always a lot of uncertainty in the draft. Every team misses. We’re not going to be different in that regard. We like young talent. We’ve said the draft is going to be the pipeline. We don’t want to get into a habit of turning two picks into one, so to speak. We just don’t think that is a good way to do business over time.”
So if the Browns do trade up for Trubisky, that would be a departure from their strategy of accumulating picks. If they think Trubisky is a franchise quarterback, however, a departure from their strategy could be wise.