Dawgs By Nature
Three quietly underrated players on the Browns’ 2025 roster.
The Cleveland Browns come into the 2025 league year with all kinds of questions, few of which were answered in free agency or the draft. Caught between a win-now mentality and the inevitable negative drive of age and injury at several positions, the current franchise would obviously love to improve on last year’s 3-14 record, but to what end?
The quarterback position, now ostensibly split between Joe Flacco, Kenny Pickett, Dillon Gabriel, and Shedeur Sanders, has been bollixed for years by the shadow of Deshaun Watson, and it’ll still be a while before ownership can take an acceptable haircut on Watson’s contract that won’t bankrupt everything.
That’s one holding pattern. Perhaps the more interesting holding pattern comes in the 2026 league year, which could have Black Sabbath’s “Into the Void” as its theme song. An intractable number of key players enter the void years of their current contracts, led by tackle Jack Conklin, guards Joel Bitonio and Wyatt Teller, center Ethan Pocic, tight end David Njoku, defensive lineman Shelby Harris, pass-rushers Ogbonnia Okoronkwo and Joe Tryon-Shoyinka, and linebackers Devin Bush and Jordan Hicks.
Most of those guys are on the wrong end of the age curve, and were the 2026 league year to begin today, the Browns would already be more than $6 million over the salary cap. This is what happens when you have a cap hit of more than $80 million sewn up in a defective quarterback.
Fun times!
So, this could be a major rebuild without a ton of resources sooner than later. Whether GM Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski will be part of that process is a matter of conjecture at this point, but for the 2025 Browns to make a mark, it’s not just the stars who will have to step up. Here, we look at three “hidden gems” for the 2025 Browns: One underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent acquisition, and one underrated draft pick.
At the end of the 2023 season, it looked for all the world that Martin Emerson Jr. was developing into one of the NFL’s best young cornerbacks in a group of defenders that could rival any at that position. Between Emerson, Greg Newsome II, and Denzel Ward, Cleveland’s primary cornerbacks allowed six touchdowns to eight interceptions and 29 pass breakups. The 2023 Browns ranked second behind the Baltimore Ravens in Defensive DVOA, and their opponent passer rating of 75.1 was also the NFL’s second-best behind only Baltimore’s 74.8.
Injuries scuttled things for that group last season. Cleveland fell to 25th in Defensive DVOA in 2024, and their opponent passer rating of 99.0 was the NFL’s sixth-worst. That same group allowed 13 touchdowns to just three interceptions and 22 pass breakups. Emerson, who in 2023 allowed 36 catches on 73 targets for 498 yards, 161 yards after the catch, one touchdown, four interceptions, nine pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 53.3,...
