Paul DePodesta doesn’t have the same career outlook for Carson Wentz as the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Browns ultimately traded down with the Eagles, sending the second overall pick and a conditional pick to Cleveland for a first-rounder, third-rounder, and fourth-rounder in 2016, as well as a first-rounder in 2017, and a second-rounder in 2018. Cleveland was in desperate need of a quarterback and could have had Wentz, but the Browns’ front office didn’t believe he was worth the cost.
DePodesta, the former Los Angeles Dodgers general manager and current chief strategy officer of the Browns, told Tony Grossi of ESPN.com that Cleveland traded the pick because he didn’t feel it was the right judgment call:
“We have to make judgments on the individual players and we’re not always going to be right,” told Grossi “But in this particular case, we just didn’t feel it was necessarily the right bet to make for us at this time. Again, it comes down to individual evaluation of a player. We will not always be right on those type of things.
DePodesta also revealed there wasn’t anybody good enough to be a top 20 quarterback in the league in the organization’s opinion:
“I think the hardest part, and where we have to stay the most disciplined, as much as you want a player, you can’t invent him if he doesn’t exist. In a given year, there may be two or three NFL-ready quarterbacks at the college level. In another year, there literally may be zero. There just may be not be anybody in that year who’s good enough to be a top 20 quarterback in the NFL.
That’s the challenge of running an NFL team. You can view a prospective quarterback much differently than rest of the league. It’s a risk to divert from public opinion, but if DePodesta and the Browns didn’t view Wentz as a starter, there’s no need to pay an exorbitant cost. Wentz, meanwhile, will start for the Eagles in Week 1 against Cleveland. He’ll certainly want to prove DePodesta wrong.
