PHILADELPHIA – Cleveland Browns general manager Sashi Brown reminded the team’s long-suffering fans today that while most think the point of the NFL Draft is to acquire good players, the real draft winners are those who come out on the other side as more enriched people.
“It’s not about who we draft, but all the prospects we met along the way,” Brown said on ESPN Cleveland radio. “It’s very hard to find a player who can be a starter, let alone the kind of guy who can turn a franchise around. If you focus on that, it can be very daunting. But if you realize you got to travel and meet a lot of great people and have interesting conversations, well … we feel like we’ve already won the 2017 draft.”
Brown says he has encouraged everyone in the organization to look at their careers in the bigger picture.
“Everyone wants to focus on the game-to-game, wins and losses, whether players are good or bad,” said the GM. “But you’ve seen where that approach has gotten us. I’d rather we think about how playing football, even losing football, is great exercise and forges relationships we’ll have forever. That’s special. That’s something you can’t get in a draft, even with the No. 1 pick.”
Asked if he had been smoking marijuana to calm his nerves before the draft, Brown confirmed that he had.
“An altered state of mind is really helping me deal with running the Browns,” he said. “I got a few grams from an Ole Miss prospect I met along the way.”
