The first round of the 2012 SB Nation Writers' Mock Draft is finished. The way it works is that the lead blogger for each SB Nation-run blog in the NFL makes their team's pick(s). In Cleveland's case, I got to go twice, which is always a bonus. I kind of discussed this a few weeks ago in an edition of "The Sunday Five," but I'll recap my thoughts here: I wasn't exactly thrilled with how the first round turned out.
My ideal scenario was to get a receiver and a right tackle. When I was on the clock at No. 4, Justin Blackmon remained an easy pick for me. At No. 22, though, all of the top offensive linemen were off the board already. After contemplating the selection for nearly an hour, I decided to go with another receiver in Kendall Wright. This wasn't about looking back and saying, "well, I could've picked someone else at No. 4 overall." This was about who I felt would be the best player to accelerate the revival of the offense at that pick, and I felt that was Wright. It was enough to for my picks to be mentioned as one of the "highlights" (of note) at the top of the post on SBNation.com:
Browns pick Justin Blackmon at No. 4: They could've gone Ryan Tannehill here, too. What's really interesting about this pick is that the Browns picked another receiver, Kendall Wright, with their second first round pick.
Here's what I usually like to do when I represent the Browns in the network-wide mock draft: I take a look at our DBN Big Board, and take into consideration who the top player was. This year, our big board wasn't out yet when I made the picks, but I can now go back and check to see if there was anyone the community preferred on the board over Blackmon or Wright (see current big board here).
No. 4 Overall: Only Luck and Griffin were ranked ahead of Blackmon on the board, so my pick matches our board.
No. 22 Overall: Well, what do you know -- the first 12 players on our big board were gone, but No. 13 was available (that would be Wright). I know the big board might "adjust" given that a position was already picked (i.e. taking Blackmon might then lower peoples' rankings of Wright), but it still stands to reason that I got two players in our top 13.
Check out the rest of the first round and feel free to let your thoughts be known here!