I absolutely love the Browns selection in round five of Memphis linebacker Genard Avery.
I watched more American Athletic Conference football than any conference this year other than the Big Ten (Maybe the Pac 12 was close) and Avery ranked behind Houston's Ed Oliver (No Kidding, right?) as the defensive player in the league that just seemed to be all over the place running down ballcarriers as the proverbial man among boys.
Avery is physical, likes to hit, can play inside or outside linebacker (although I think he is better suited to the inside), can rush the passer and isn't awful in coverage in addition to being a strong special teams player.
So why was he available in the fifth round?
Frankly, I don't know because I had him pegged as more of a 3rd-4th round player and sometimes players fall through the cracks.
Had you told me Friday that the Browns had taken Genard Avery in the 3rd round where they took Chad Thomas, I would have likely had a better reaction than I did for Thomas
I watched a lot of Boise State games and saw a lot of Dallas first rounder Leighton Vander Esch and from the more limited games that I saw Avery in (I see almost all Boise games, I watched maybe four or five Memphis games), I didn't see much difference in the two except Vander Esch is four inches taller and a handful of pounds heavier with Avery being a little faster.
I'm really happy with this pick and I might even go as far to say that Avery might be a starter as early as 2019.
In the sixth round, the Browns added another receiver in Texas A&M's Damion Ratley.
Ratley is big (6'2) and fast (Faster than his teammate Christian Kirk, who was taken off the board in round two), so he is very toolsy.
The problem is that as an Aggie, he was pretty much a one trick pony as in- "go deep and if we throw it to you- catch it", so route running will be something that Ratley will need to work on.
The rap on Ratley apparently was that Ratley doesn't block well, doesn't like physical corners and doesn't always hustle on special teams.
Considering that most backup wideouts have to help make special teams work part of their profession, Ratley will have to change that in a hurry to make the Browns final roster.
I had two players that I preferred to Ratley in the super-productive Cedric Wilson of Boise State (Picked by Dallas in the sixth round) and Steven Dunbar of Houston (Free agent-49ers), but I could have a bias because I watched so many of their games over their career.
Still, Ratley will have a rough time making this roster.
The Browns final pick is a player that I know very little about in Simeon Thomas, a cornerback from
Louisiana-Lafayette.
Thomas looks like what you would think a player from the smallest of the group of five conferences would be if you took a chance on him- he's big for a corner at 6'2 and 197 and he's athletic with strong leaping ability.
However, Thomas played just one full season in his four years at ULL, had academic issues and was involved in a theft with 13 other football players, so there are questions with Thomas.
I've never seen him play and there is next to nothing on Thomas as far as tape goes, so he's an unknown quantity.
I will say this though if the Browns were going to take a cornerback with off the field questions and with plenty of physical ability, I really liked the tape of Holton Hill of Texas, who signed with the Vikings as a free agent.
Hill's problems clearly scared teams off, but if the Browns weren't bothered by those issues of Thomas (or Antonio Callaway's for that matter), I'm not sure why they would be concerned by those of Hill.
I'll have a Browns draft recap sometime soon, but we still have today's Cavaliers game, a bloated inbox and road trip stories to write, so a Browns recap may wait a little bit...
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