Blast from the Past: Seventh Round Part 2

photo from Steelers.com

In Saturday’s post I covered the seventh round picks from 2010 and 2011. Here’s 2012 and 2013.

Bill Barnwell’s recent offseason grades for the AFC North discussed the Browns’ 2016 draft. Numerous trades throughout the draft combined with the first-round trade resulted in the Browns an obscene number of picks in this draft. (They will also have quite a few extra picks in the next two years.) Barnwell commented:

I’ve written about Cleveland’s strategy at length, both in regards to the Carson Wentz trade and its series of trades during the draft. The Browns rightly believe that teams are overconfident when it comes to scouting and identifying talent and thus quantity of draft picks is more important than quality. They also see future draft picks as an undervalued asset class.

The cumulative return they got for their moves, then, was pretty staggering. Even after making the Wentz deal before the draft, they traded down four times during the draft weekend, taking advantage of teams that felt like they were smarter than the rest of the league. Five times! They ended up making 14 selections, including eight picks across the fourth and fifth rounds, and have a staggering amount of capital set up in the years to come.