Mike Pettine said Browns had no interest in drafting Blake Bortles at No. 4
The Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars, who originally owned the fourth and third overall picks in the draft in May, will meet on Sunday.
Both teams drafted quarterbacks — the Jaguars selected Blake Bortles at No. 3 and the Browns, with their second first-round pick, which ended up the 22nd pick, took Johnny Manziel.
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The Browns have yet to start Manziel, but they say they have no regrets on how the draft unfolded. In fact, head coach Mike Pettine said they would not have taken Bortles had the Jags passed on him at three. In fact, that move surprised the Browns a bit, per the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“I think it surprised a lot of people that he went there,” Pettine said. “I think a lot of the league was surprised when you just kind of looked at the mocks and what was going on and assessing who was going to take one. I thought they covered their tracks well. We knew that they liked him, thinking maybe he could’ve potentially gone to them later in the draft, but he was a kid that was high on our board.”
Not to say the Browns didn’t like Bortles — they say they had a high grade on him, just not quite that high.
“There wasn’t any quarterback in the discussion for us at four, but we certainly had a first-round grade on him,” Pettine said.
The Browns have maintained that Manziel was the QB who had the highest grade on their board, but there were other positions and players they wanted to grab prior to him. That’s why the team, once they moved from four to eight overall in a trade with the Buffalo Bills, took cornerback Justin Gilbert there.
“We weren’t going to stray from our board from a value standpoint,” Pettine said. “We weren’t going to take a player that was rated outside. You always want to be taking a player that you have ranked above the position where you’re taking them, so you’re hopeful that if you’re picking at four, that you’re taking a guy that’s ranked in your top three, or as I said when we traded out, you’re always looking for that value. You don’t want to reach for a guy from a positional need.
“The ranking is weighted by the importance of the position anyway, so you didn’t want to push it up even further just because there was a perceived need.”
So don’t take this as a knock on Bortles by Pettine — although you know that’s how people will perceive it. The Browns just had other plans in the draft. If there’s an interesting irony of the situation it’s the Bortles, whom the Jaguars preached all kinds of patience with for 2014, is starting while Manziel, who roundly was expected to start by the bye week, is taking a back seat for now to Brian Hoyer.
Funny how the NFL works out sometimes.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
