The Cleveland Browns are making roster moves as cut down day approaches, including two trades with NFC squads across a three-day span that have padded the team’s draft coffers.
Cleveland most recently flipped defensive tackle Chris Williams to the Chicago Bears for a Day 3 pick swap in 2025.
“We’ve agreed to trade DT Chris Williams and a 2025 7th-round pick to the Bears in exchange for a 2025 6th-round pick,” Cleveland posted to its official X account on Saturday, August 24.
The deal followed a trade from two days earlier, in which the Browns sent kicker and 2022 fourth-round pick Cade York to the Washington Commanders in return for a conditional seventh-round selection in the 2025 NFL draft.
Browns Blew Up 3 Draft Classes With Deshaun Watson Trade
Cleveland has spent the last several offseasons operating at a draft-pick deficiency compared to many of their opponents due to a deal the team made with the Houston Texans in March 2022 to acquire quarterback Deshaun Watson.
The Browns sent the Texans three first-round picks (2022, 23, 24), a 2023 third-round pick and two fourth-round picks (2022, 24) before guaranteeing Watson’s entire $230 million contract over five years. Watson has played in just 12 games across the first two seasons of that deal and hasn’t performed particularly well in those moments that he has been on the field.
Both the trade package for Watson and the subsequent contract can be argued as the worst of their kind in modern NFL history based on the cost-to-outcome ratios, while combining the two moves unquestionably renders the deal among the most disastrous ever made.
By contrast, what general manager Andrew Berry and company are doing now is stacking back-end assets to help add talent and depth on cheap rookie contracts to a roster that is already one of the league’s priciest and will likely only get more expensive over the next couple of years.
Browns Loaded With Draft Assets in 2025 Compared to Recent Years
The impact of Cleveland’s strategy reversal may not be massive, considering they’ve added two Day 3 picks. Nevertheless, the assets still have value in that the Browns can either hit on a developmental player or two in late rounds, or by kick those extra picks into trades for bigger, more established names.
The Browns’ list of 2025 draft picks looks much different than the paltry compilations with which they’ve had to work over the past several seasons. As of Sunday, Cleveland’s 2025 selections are as follows:
- 1st Round — (1) Own
- 2nd Round — (1) Own
- 3rd Round — (1) Own
- 4th Round — (1) Own
- 6th Round — (4) Own, via Lions by way of Donovan Peoples-Jones trade, via Vikings by way of Za’Darius Smith trade, via Bears by way of Williams trade
- 7th Round — (1) Via Commanders by way of York trade, assuming York plays at least two games
Williams has played in just 13 games over his three-year career, all of which came with the Indianapolis Colts in 2021 and 2022. He spent last season on the Browns’ practice squad, but wasn’t on track to play a meaningful role — if at all — for Cleveland in 2024.
Despite his status as a fourth-rounder just two years ago, York lost his job with the Browns to Dustin Hopkins ahead of the 2023 campaign and fell short of unseating Hopkins this summer as well.
Considering neither Williams or York was likely to see the field for the Browns this season, Cleveland did well to upgrade from a seventh-rounder to a sixth-rounder via the Williams deal, then replace that seventh-round selection on a conditional basis via the York trade.
