Executive Vice President, Football Operations and General Manager, Andrew Berry (4.24.26)
Opening statement:
“We’re excited about today, you know, not just with the players that we added, the three guys that we added, but also how we were able to add to our resource base in ‘27, and then how we’re positioned for tomorrow afternoon with several other day three picks. So obviously a lot of action, a lot of movement throughout the evening tonight, but we’re pleased with where we ended up, and so with that, I’ll open up with questions.”
Andrew, I’m sure you didn’t come in tonight thinking you’d make this many trades. But when do you get a sense that it could be just that kind of night for you?
“It’s usually just based on the action that you get or how the board falls. I’ll be honest, Dan (Labbe), like we’re pretty…like we try to stay pretty nimble and flexible just because you never know when the next opportunity is going to come up. I think that’s actually one of the benefits of having volume and quality with your picks because there are more opportunities to maneuver up and down the board.”
Were you surprised with some of the guys that fell in your lap, like Denzel Boston and (Emmanuel) McNeil-Warren to begin with they were first round projections.
“I was probably most surprised with Eman. You know, we figured that Denzel could go anywhere from late one to early two, just be truthful. But Eman, he wasn’t someone that we anticipated being being there as late as he was. So, when he got within striking distance, we felt the move was appropriate. You know, to be truthful, he was in play for us at 39.”
What you did with your wide receiver room, can you sort of talk about what you have globally from your pass catching corps right now and how this might impact Jerry Jeudy or anybody like that?
“Zero impact on Jerry, he’s our bell cow. We feel like we have a nice – I think with receiver rooms you can have, maybe a ball dominant player or you can essentially build a basketball team, you know, with different skill sets. You know, we prefer the second approach. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take Calvin Johnson if he’s out there. But we feel like we have a nice, you know, well rounded room with speed, RAC, contested catch ability, separation. So, we’re really pleased with the youth and talent in that group.”
On that trade for Emmanuel, do you get a sense that another team is going to take it on, when do you know when to pull the trigger on it?
“So, they’re probably two separate situations, Jeff (Schudel). One is when you do have maybe an inkling that, you know you’re going into a stretch where a player or a group of players you know will be a target for several teams and you’re trying to get ahead of it. Another may just be, and I would put like the Emanuel trade and then what we did for JOK (Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah) in 2021 in this bucket where you have a player that you just didn’t expect to be in a certain range of the draft and there’s a certain level of like, okay, you don’t necessarily have a team identified that’s going to take that player off the board, but you look at your resources and say, ‘hey, this is a price that I’m willing to pay for this skill set for this guy relative to what you think you’re getting.’”
You talked last week before the draft just about positionless defense. Where does, where does a player like Emmanuel McNeil-Warren sort of fit into that idea as you think about what you got in him as a player?
“Yeah, Emmanuel is incredibly versatile and we’re realistic that you’re not going to put everything on his plate his rookie year. But I think you really started seeing this with the safety position, certainly with what Baltimore did with Kyle Hamilton a couple years ago. You look across the league, and you see just the increase of three safety packages. You look at what Nick Emmanwori did for Seattle this past year, it just gives you a lot of flexibility where you have safeties that can play deep, they can play in the box, they can live in the linebacker world, they can live in the nickel world and they just give a lot of flexibility for a creative coordinator.”
Last year, after you guys’ drafted Carson (Schwesinger), you talked about the importance of taking an off the ball linebacker that high because you hadn’t made a major investment there since like four years prior. Was there any similar thinking with Emanuel? Like you hadn’t taken a safety that high since Grant (Delpit) like six years ago?
“No, it really wasn’t because Grant (Delpit) and Ronnie (Hickman), we obviously like those guys a lot. Grant, we took him in my first draft, we extended him. Rocket, he outperformed how we acquired him, signing him as an undrafted free agent. Emmanuel, we just viewed it as a fantastic opportunity and someone who could, not only just from a pure talent standpoint, improve the room, but could also complement our existing core there.”
You spoke back in January about dedicating a lot of resources to remaking this offense. With one day still left in the draft, how do you feel about the process you’ve done in terms of that remodeling?
“I think we’re excited about the players that we’ve added. We’re certainly excited to see them on the grass because we haven’t seen them as a collective unit. But we still have work to do on both sides of the ball and tomorrow will be a big day for that, but so will really the cut down period because there are still some important roles that we’d like to add competition to.”
You said you don’t want to put too much on Emmanuel’s plate too soon. Do you see him initially as kind of a ball hawk free safety?
“I think that remains to be seen, Tony (Grossi). And honestly, like that determination will be by Monk, Rudy (Mike Rutenberg), Ephraim (Banda). Yeah, it’s probably hard for me to answer that until he’s in our building. Until we get him up and running. But you know, we’ll crawl, walk, run.”
I know you have to stay flexible during the draft, but did you anticipate a scenario where you might take two receivers either back to back or whatever early on in this draft and does it feel like a departure because you really hadn’t done that in your previous drafts that have taken the receiver high?
“Scott, we did have scenarios where because of the strength of the receiver class and the depth of it, that we thought we could take two receivers relatively high. Definitely doesn’t feel like a departure. It’s maybe a little bit what I mentioned to Fred (Greetham) earlier where I think, if you look at the past couple years, we had Jarvis (Landry) and Odell (Beckham Jr.), we traded for Amari (Cooper), who was a Pro Bowl receiver for us, and then had him on a big money extension. We then traded for Jerry (Jeudy), who was a Pro bowl receiver for us. And then I was actually even thinking, and this one didn’t maybe work out quite as cleanly, but even the years where we were short first round picks, one of those trades was trading down from two, for Elijah Moore and then taking Ced (Cedric Tillman) at three. So, there’s no philosophical thing there. It’s obviously easier to maybe dictate the room a little bit more when you have your full slate of resources.”
I was just asking Todd (Monken) about how the quarterbacks looked on the last two days of minicamp because we didn’t get to see any of that. So just wondering how comfortable are you with the quarterback room right now? And are you still thinking that it’s wholly realistic to possibly add somebody to the room on the third day of the draft?
“Yeah, we’ll always add talent at the most important position. That’s I guess full stop. Doesn’t matter who’s in the room. If there’s a quarterback that we’ll like that’s available to us at the right cost, we’ll add that player. That being said, the three guys have done a really nice job so far this spring. We’re lucky that we got three days on the grass. They all are learning the offense quickly, working through their mistakes, throwing the ball well. But that wouldn’t, prevent us from adding a player that we like tomorrow.”
Gaming all this stuff out, is there a scenario where you had your first four picks all as Cleveland Browns, I mean, just, it seems like four players that a lot of people have first round grades on. And I know a couple years ago with JOK you felt like you got one there, but it feels like you got two of them here.
“Yeah, I think, as we work through scenarios, as we work through simulations, we did have simulations where the receivers kind of lined up the way that they did just because of the strength of this class. I’ll be honest, I did not anticipate a world where Emmanuel went as late as he did.”
What about the kind of stutter step out of the third round then back in. Did you overlook Austin (Barber)?
“No. So I actually call those ‘yo-yo’ trades. So like sometimes you get a situation – actually, probably the first time I started calling is when we moved back in – it was actually Sashi (Brown), I think we moved back in ‘17, picked up a future one, and I think we moved back up for David (Njoku) at the end of one. Oftentimes those trades become like, if you look at the aggregate set of moves, they become pretty efficient because you pick up either a high level or future asset, but you’re able to still get a targeted player without giving all those realized gains back. Very rare situations will we do that, but we felt like this was one where it made the most sense.”
Do you have a special affinity for the fifth round?
“The fifth round is the new seventh, Mary Kay (Cabot).”
What’s the thinking going into tomorrow with four 5th round picks?
“Honestly, in day three of the draft because teams boards, they just spread out. There’s very little overlap. Truth be told, you could largely go into the third day of the draft with maybe call like eight to 10 names, and you’re probably going to get most of them. So it’ll literally be, hey, how can we be as opportunistic as possible? Because you’re just not going to be able to predict, you know, predict the order of the players that go off. I was joking with Todd upstairs. I was like, man, I gotta apologize, I misread the market because we thought we were going to be able to maybe add one of the class’s strongest, you know, blocking tight ends, with one of those fifth-round picks, and pretty much all of them went off the board by the end of the third round. So I was like, I screwed that one up. I messed that up, so we’ll just take the best opportunity that we can with the players that are available. I don’t know who mentioned it earlier. If there comes a situation where there’s a veteran trade that makes sense, we would explore that, as we always do. But our big thing is, how do we best maximize the assets?”
Todd said you see him first as a tackle. So is that just about, I mean, obviously you traded for Tytus and then draft Spencer. So is it just that position is so important that you want to get as much depth outside as you can?
“Yeah, I mean, I also think like, we talked about turning over that position group with both youth and talent, and Tytus is great. He can play tackle, he can play guard. But also being realistic, he is a little bit more advanced in his career, you know, relative to some of the other players. But you can never have enough of the of the tackles. You can never have enough of the line of scrimmage players, just because they’re so hard to find and they’re so hard to acquire once you get past this point that we want to roll deep in those position groups when we can.”
Looking at the players that have gone first hundred – only three running backs – do you attribute it to the class? Wjat would you attribute it to?
“I think it’s two things. I think it’s class and I also think it’s just the fact that if you go back to last year’s class, how deep it was, I think a lot of teams took their young running backs. I mean, look, we took two. So I think that plays into it as well.”
Do you have a theory why Emmanuel (McNeil-Warren) fell like he did?
“I don’t. Just sometimes that happens, just happens.”
With fatigue and all this – obviously, you know, analyzing all these players, matching them up against each other, and knowing how long the draft is, how important is it to keep the energy up?
“You know, it’s way past my bedtime, so that is one of the hardest parts of this weekend. You just get, or I’ll speak for myself, I get so drained. One, because I’m an early morning person. And then two, just from everything that you’re doing, you know, in terms of trying to manage and direct, you know, the evening, the day, the quick turnaround. And honestly just all the ancillary obligations that come as part of it. They are long days.”
So what did you think about the move to eight minutes in the first round.
“Love it. Like, yes, this may be unpopular, but I would make it seven minutes if we can (laughter). So, yes.”
Andrew, can you just talk about the patience you thought you guys showed by not moving up, staying there, and then Denzel makes it to you guys, and then obviously you made a couple other moves where you went up. So what would you say is a determining factor to when they say we’re going to stay and wait, hope versus let’s go, get him drafted?
“I mean, you’re really trying to just play the odds. And when I say that, it’s not just like, this black box – okay, this guy has whatever percentage chance of getting there. It’s pulling the information that you can source. It’s looking at your board and identifying the group of players that you’re comfortable with sitting and picking or, you know, if you have to move. And then at that point, it’s making an educated guess. Like, look, we did consider, okay, if we’re at 39, is there a move that would make sense to go up and get Denzel or go up and get Emmanuel. And after going through all the information, having discussion, you’re kind of trying to read the board. As the picks came off, we felt like the right decision, the right bet was to remain patient. And you don’t get all those right, so you know just make the best decisions you can in the moment.”
How much fun has it been just having Todd up there? This is his first time as a coach, I saw a video of the fist bump. How are the vibes?
“It’s great because, like, Todd is super funny. And unfortunately, all of it can’t make it on camera with how funny he is, but he keeps the room energetic. He keeps it light. He’s super passionate. He’s a lot of fun to work with.”