The elephant in the Browns’ war room … Despite their protestations that they still haven’t made a final decision on which player to select with the #1 pick overall at next month’s draft, just about everybody around the NFL fully expects Tennessee to name Miami QB Cam Ward as their choice when the Titans get on the clock a few minutes after 8 PM ET on April 24th. In contrast, there is almost no sense of certainty anywhere in the league what Cleveland opts to do with the 2nd pick. The Browns could very well also take a QB and select Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, or they could just as easily pivot and take either of DE Abdul Carter or WR/CB Travis Hunter. The possible elephant in the room for the Browns is Atlanta QB Kirk Cousins. There have been rumors swirling for several weeks now that given their druthers the Browns would really like to add a quality veteran like Cousins and maybe add a young QB later in the draft. Those rumors got a bit of a boost late last week when Cousins was seen in Cleveland checking out several local restaurants. Of course, Cousins wasn’t talking with the Browns; that would be tampering as he is under contract with the Falcons, but there is a pretty good question as to why he was there. For the record, Cousins is close Browns’ head coach Kevin Stefanski from their days together in Minnesota. However, in order to get Cousins, the Browns will have to trade with the Falcons who kept Cousins around despite the fact they intend to start Michael Penix this fall for the express purpose of trying to trade him and they aren’t likely to just give him away. Indeed, there is some speculation that nothing will happen on this front until after the draft, but that would be almost too late for the Browns who of course would prefer to know before they had to draft or not Sanders with the 2nd pick.
