Earlier this week, Browns coach Mike Pettine revealed that the Browns didn’t conduct a formal interview with Texas A&M quarterback and likely early first-round pick Johnny Manziel during the combine in Indianapolis last month.
As it turns out, that wasn’t an anomaly. Vic Carucci, senior editor of the team’s website, said on WKNR that the team didn’t have formal interviews in Indy hotel rooms with any of the other top quarterback prospects either.
That doesn’t mean that they won’t be speaking with Manziel, Teddy Bridgewater, Blake Bortles or Derek Carr, however. Or that they didn’t have informal conversations with them at a train station, another option available to teams.
They can bring them to the team’s facility or hold workouts on campus in meetings that can be more in-depth than the 15 minutes alloted for interviews at the combine. Pettine indicated that’s exactly what the team is planning.
“We’ll make sure that whatever access we need to get to that player and whatever interaction [we need] with him, we’ll get that done,” Pettine said, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
With no one interviewing, the lack of an interview with any one prospect tells us nothing about Cleveland’s feelings. And we wouldn’t expect them to share anything telling about those feelings until it is time to hand in their pick in the first round.