Travis Hunter represents both a window into the NFL draft’s great promise and a sinkhole into what happens when a team takes on more than it can handle. So it was with a great deal of restraint that the Cleveland Browns—having traded away the right to select him Thursday night—are effectively bowing out of the task. It would have been a scenario that, like some wing-and-a-prayer parlay, could have helped erase some of the debt incurred by the horrendous Deshaun Watson experiment if Hunter turns into a legitimate two-way superstar.
Or, for a team that has been known of late to keep swinging out of its shoes in an effort to erase a past that team management feels responsible for rectifying, simply burying them even deeper. It may sound defeatist, but that’s why I think the Browns got this one right.
Hunter, like it or not, is that kind of player. He’s the kind of prospect who is so unconventionally good that the failure to tap into those abilities at the next level, or to hide behind some equation claiming it’s too dangerous to play him on both sides of the ball, would be cause for a riot. Football fans, unlike baseball fans who have patiently ridden the waves with Shohei Ohtani and tend to have a more nuanced understanding of their sport, would have had a harder time accepting the idea of Cleveland spending the No. 2 pick on what amounts to a failed science experiment.
The Browns dealt the No. 2 pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars, along with fourth- and sixth-rounders. In exchange, they got Thursday night’s No. 5 pick, a second-rounder (No. 36), a fourth-rounder and a first-round pick next season.
I hate to defend the Browns—believe me—but even the most disappointed fan on Thursday night has to confront the possibility that Cleveland is much better off rebuilding its infrastructure instead of picking a player they did not have the ability to elevate and a player who may have worn down more quickly thanks to both the conditions the Browns routinely play in and an exhausting AFC North that features both the best receiving tandem in the NFL and one of the league’s biggest bullies (if the Browns, for example, tried to play Hunter on offense and defense versus the Baltimore Ravens, how many times would John Harbaugh have run Derrick Henry and Patrick Ricard straight at him, rendering Hunter less useful on offense?). Using the No. 5 pick on Michigan’s Mason Graham, an artful, penetrating defensive tackle who is a few more developed moves away from being a top pass-rushing menace himself, is a return to sensibility.
For me, the theme in Cleveland has been obvious. While it’s somewhat admirable in a quixotic sense, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has spent recent years not simply trying to chip away at the club’s laughable reputation, but shooting at it with some kind of Elmer Fudd–sized shotgun. He lured Paul DePodesta away from baseball. He oversaw the engineering of a project that the league did not quite deem tanking but came about as close as one could possibly go without getting wrist-slapped by the NFL. He jettisoned Baker Mayfield, now the proud owner of back-to-back division titles, Pro Bowl bids and 4,000-plus-yard seasons.
The latter move came, I would guess, as the Browns tired of the slow churn of progress. One inspiring playoff run wasn’t good enough, nor was building a roster that, even with God-awful quarterback play from Watson, was still lifted into the playoffs in 2023 on the shoulders of Joe Flacco.
So, consider me wary of the organization taking on a massive puzzle like Hunter, whose true success will depend on such top-to-bottom organizational fluidity, such collaboration, such understanding, such lack of ego, such finesse from the coaching staff and every corner of the operation. Just go back to Colorado and listen to how Deion Sanders’s outfit had to essentially practice Hunter as a cornerback and fill him in on the rest to get him ready for Saturdays (this, because Hunter was more polished offensively already).
No offense to Cleveland, but outside of having a multi-time Coach of the Year award winner in Kevin Stefanski, these are not characteristics one may snap-associate with the Browns. I know that management and the coaching staff are consistently meeting, consistently surveying those around them and consistently trying to implement new solutions to age-old problems. I know that this iteration of the Browns has made some good decisions that the team deserves more credit for than it will ever receive due to the grandiosity of one horrible decision.
But Myles Garrett, who was tasked with passing two or more defenders on 30% of his snaps in 2024, needs help. The 30% double-team rate was the highest of Garrett’s career. The offensive line, all of which is approaching or clearing the perilous age-30 season, needs help. The Browns’ coffer of draft equity, pilfered by the Houston Texans in the Watson deal, needs replenishing. And the Jaguars—a team so desperately in need of help in its own defensive interior that it makes me wonder about the motivations to trade up for Hunter with a first-time head coach, GM and defensive play-caller—offered a hell of a lot for the privilege of taking on Project Hunter.
The Browns now have total control over the top of the second round of this year’s draft and additional ammunition to move up for a better quarterback in 2026, assuming Hunter doesn’t immediately elevate Jacksonville into a deep playoff contender.
Cleveland’s appetite to finally prove smarter, bolder and more adequate in one fell swoop did not devour them yet again. At least in this moment, the team seems far less like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, hurling itself off a top rope already at its limit of cardiac strain. Yes, Hunter was and is a unicorn, but only in the hands of a skilled unicorn trainer. Cleveland is in a different business now … thankfully.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Browns Show Admirable Restraint Trading Out of the Travis Hunter Experiment.