Carnell Tate and Jordyn Tyson receive notable praise from Andrew Berry, as the Cleveland Browns WR need takes precedent ahead of the NFL Draft.
The Cleveland Browns need wide receivers. Fortunately for general manager Andrew Berry, this year's draft class of WRs just so happens to have a wealth of good ones to choose from.
At the top of the class, Carnell Tate is the next great prospect to come from the wide receiver factory that is Ohio State. He's expected to be a day one starter as an x or a z for some team. And he's one of the players who's been most mocked to the Browns at No. 6 overall, where they're currently slated to make their first pick.
That could change, though. Under a week out from the NFL Draft, rumors are swirling that Berry is looking to trade back and that a deal with the Dallas Cowboys to slide back to 12 overall is a real possibility.
If such a move happens, other wide receiver options come into focus, like Arizona State's Jordyn Tyson. The brother of Cleveland Cavaliers' guard Jaylon Tyson, Jordyn would probably project as a top 10 pick himself if it weren't for a lengthy injury history.
As Berry weighs his options ahead the draft, he gushed over both Tate and Tyson during his pre-draft press conference this week.
"They're both excellent players," said Berry. "They both have size, they both can separate, good hands. Obviously, Carnell, if he's not an NFL receiver, he probably could be a trapeze artist with how acrobatic he is. And Jordyn's an excellent creator with the ball in his hands. So they're two excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent prospects."
The use of four consecutive "excellents" speaks to just how fond of the duo Berry is. But while Tate and Tyson may lead the conversation, they're hardly the only options for him and his staff to consider, particularly in the first round.
Other names like USC's Makai Lemon, Indiana's Omar Cooper Jr., Washington's Denzel Boston and even Texas A&M's KC Concpcion have all consistently been mocked in the first round, and with two first-round picks at his disposal, Berry doesn't necessarily have to force the issue at six if he doesn't need to.
Given the state of Cleveland's wide receiver room at the moment, though, it's safe to assume Berry and company will be looking heavily at taking a WR early on in this draft.
Should they pull the trigger on one in the first round, it would be just the third time since the franchise was reinstated in 1999 that it used a first-round pick on a WR. Under Berry in particular, there's never been a wideout taken higher than the third round.
As the Browns' top executive explained, that's been more circumstantial than anything.
"I think it's not a philosophical thing," he said. "I think if you look back over the last several years, first couple years, we already had Odell [Beckham Jr.] and Jarvis [Landry] on the team and we were paying both of them. When we transitioned away from both, we spent a fifth-round pick on Amari [Cooper], and we had him at a sizable number. And then when we traded Amari, we traded for Jerry [Jeudy]."
Berry's ability to land reliable wide receivers via the trade market has certainly been one of his greatest strengths in his six years as Browns GM. It's also important to remember that in the aftermath of the Deshaun Watson trade, he didn't have any first-round picks at his disposal for three consecutive years.
Now, with multiple firsts, Berry has a chance to make up for lost time.
"It's not necessarily just this in a vacuum: "hey, do you spend a first-round pick at a position?" It's like, okay, what's the actual resource expenditure?," he explained. Because if it's a fifth-round pick and a major extension, that's a pretty significant resource," he explained. "We would have no problem taking a receiver high, would have no problem taking receiver at any point in the draft, but it's got to line up strategically what you're doing."
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