Cleveland Browns Trade Bait: Wills Voted as the No. 1 Candidate
We asked and you answered! Votes are in when we asked which Cleveland Browns player you would trade if you were forced to this off-season. In this very scientific Twitter poll that we ran there were nearly 2, 500 votes cast as you had Nick Chubb, Myles Garrett, John Johnson and Jedrick Wills to choose from. Overwhelmingly, the leading trade candidate ended up being Wills at 58% who was the 2021 1st round draft pick of Cleveland, who played at Alabama.
If you had to trade a Cleveland Brown who would it be? And tell us why? #Browns @dawgpounddaily @ShkBkMediaGrp @CLERodB https://t.co/d5W9juRFSM
— John Suchan (@JohnSuchan) January 17, 2023
Before we go a little deeper into the results and discuss these players, I did want to share how this poll came to be. I had written an earlier story about some of these players and trade possibilities in another article on Dawg Pound Daily
The feedback that I received in the last 72 hours has been very extreme on both sides of the coin. If you hadn’t actually read that previous article and instead just looked at the picture or the title, you may have been offended that Myles Garrett was on the cover, suggesting he could be a trade option for the Browns. I heard from many of you about that. There is a strong support base of fans out there for the six-year vet and former No. 1 NFL Draft pick in 2017. Garrett has had several good seasons, especially these last two seasons where he’s recorded 16 sacks in both years. Now, he’ll have an opportunity to work under a new defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, who the Browns just hired as their new defensive guru.
Schwartz has a history of having been a head coach with the Detroit Lions and has had various coordinating positions, especially on defense. He has produced some outstanding players in his time while coaching where many of his linemen have ended up in Pro Bowls. Garrett will certainly benefit from that coaching experience.
So back to this Twitter poll. Many of you chose Jedrick Wills as the Cleveland player most likely to be traded if forced to. Wills doesn’t become a free agent until 2025. However, he has not produced or gotten visibly better over the past three seasons with the team. Many fans have suggested that he has actually regressed and hasn’t given much effort when he’s on the field. Many plays you can see Wills initially engage in a play but just stops playing if his defender gets by him on the way to the quarterback. That type of effort isn’t winning over the hearts of many Cleveland fans these days.
There’s a question of what type of talent you would get back in draft picks if Wills was traded. My guess is that most teams are desperate for offensive line help and that the Browns could probably manage to get it a second or third round pick if they did pursue a trade.
The other candidate for being traded was John Johnson, the veteran safety. He signed with the Browns back in 2021 after the Browns had their outstanding 2020 season and there were a lot of high expectations for Johnson. Unfortunately, he has failed in most situations over the past two seasons. As I’ve said in other articles, Johnson hasn’t taken a lot of accountability for his actions and because of that has fallen out of favor with most fans of the team. If the Browns decide to trade him, they could save about $9 million in cap savings.
The other two choices in the poll included Garrett and Nick Chubb. It’s interesting the number of people in the social media world that are more “OK” with the running back Nick Chubb being dispensable because according to them, he’s just another running back in the NFL in a pass-happy league.
Factoring in to that the Browns have Deshaun Watson as quarterback some have wondered how important of a job Chubb has now. It’s unfortunate that those that don’t see Chubb’s value to the Browns, can’t truly appreciate what a special back he is historically. I can guarantee you that we won’t be talking about Nick Chubb as just being another running back 20 or 30 years from now. No, he’s not Jim Brown, but he’s a unique back that deserves far more credit than he’s given and Cleveland would be foolish to try to trade him even if it was worth getting back some extra higher draft picks.
Thanks again for taking our poll on Twitter and let’s see what happens next with the Browns off-season.
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