2014 NFL Draft

[Tegis]

More corners, I like it. Talib gets hurt and Harris coming off a torn knee. Bradley Roby looks to be the consensus 4-5th best corner in the draft. Now for a middle linebacker to replace Woodyard please

[BerniesElbow]

And, as a sidenote, the pick from Buffalo for their #1 next year, is from a team with the longest playoff drought in the NFL.

 

Rounds 2 and 3 start at 7pm EST.

Browns have the third pick in round 2.

I would like to see them get a receiver.

[StefanAVFC]

I'm glad we traded down. Our record in the later rounds is far better. The last first round pick that has actually been worth it was Earl Thomas.

[bully]

Some video of fan reaction from last night:

 

Browns draft party at the Hard Rock Casino in Northfield (about 20 mins south of downtown Cleveland).

http://espncleveland.com/common/more.php?m=49&post_id=32431

 

Cleveland Convention Center Draft Party

http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2014/05/09/video-watch-clevelanders-go-crazy-when-the-browns-draft-johnny-manziel/

 

 

Says it all really

[Milfner]

Like the look of Kelvin Benjamin. The long, tall receiver we needed and it gives us something to aim for in the redzone other than Olsen. Big act to follow too considering how good our last first rounders have proved to be (Cam, Luke and Star). 

Interesting to see where we go second round though, I reckon we could actually double up on WR like we did with DTs last year. Hoping for a tackle though, still a big hole in the O-line. 

[Tubby]

I appreciate your knowledge Bernie and of course you are closer to the action. I just don't see the character needed to be 'the guy' especially when compared to Hoyer who genuinely seems grateful for the chance. Manziel can say what he wants to look good in interviews but some of his previous actions and the friends he keeps close suggests he'll need to be nurtured.

Like you I agree a year holding a clipboard is what's needed.

Yes definite bonus that buffalo pick next year and agreed a WR should be next off the board.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Tubby

[bully]

Browns will surely go for Lee????

[StefanAVFC]

Could see Seahawks trading down again to be honest.

[Tubby]

Best assessment I've seen on the Manziel pick, Terry Pluto > Grossi as far as Browns coverage goes.

http://www.cleveland.com/pluto/index.ssf/2014/05/cleveland_browns_scribbles_sti.html#incart_maj-story-1

[packoman]

I reckon the Eagles might try and trade up.

[packoman]

Redskins trade with Cowboys...

[packoman]

Eagles traded up for Jordan Mathews, great pick imo.

[BerniesElbow]

 I dont know what they are going to do anymore.

 

ESPN is reporting that Browns receiver failed a drug test and is facing a one year suspension, and then there are other reports saying its not true??

[bully]

If true we surely would have picked a WR?

[StefanAVFC]

Could see Seahawks trading down again to be honest.

 

Told yaaaaaa

[leviramsey]

The Patriots are not high on Manziel

JL 10/15 - Suspended first half of TXRI game for autograph scandal. Couple of TXTC sources say can't yell/scream at him or he shuts down; has walked away from Kingsbury in the past. Has an avg. work ethic, came to 4 of 32 summer '13 workouts, and quit going to in-season workouts late in '12. Doesn't study the game, said to know about 60% of the offense in '12, never watches film; one source said only time he watched film during '12 was before ALUN. Comes from 'outlaw bloodlines', mom moved the family to Kerrville to get away from father's wild family. Father's family is said to be very shady people, always into something, they are the root of Johnny's personality. 'What you see on TV and how he is portrayed, that's him; but when you talk to him, you'll like him'. Coaches love his tuffs/competes, they want to go to war with him, but 'Johnny will be Johnny' during the week. Knows how to scheme the system, arrogant and full of himself, but he's not smug to coaches. Has been like this since Day 1, has never gone to class, goes to beat of own drum, but has ultimate confidence. Loves the spotlight, football is his release, big games don't scare him. Has size 15 feet and freakishly big hands. Will drink, but no one I spoke with think he's a smoker. Teammates don't dislike him, but there's some resentment, more so in the offseason when he isn't coming to workouts and they are busting their butt. Loner, doesn't hang out with the guys, but very close with WR Mike Evans. Already has money, is used to spotlight, has already been exposed to NFL-level fame. Will never take football seriously enough for our coaching staff, he'll hate meetings, will have to drag him to work out, etc. The definition of the word maintenance. CONCERNS: Maturity, passion for preparation, high-maintenance, work ethic.

[leviramsey]

[Milfner]

Can't believe we've got a defensive end in the second. Even if Alexander did fail a drugs test so maybe we're cutting him (but he's only out for four games). Will be interesting to see what happens to Johnson or Hardy now. Think Johnson may get traded if he doesn't take a pay cut but I prefer him over Hardy. 

Happy with the guard we picked up in the third but really, really need a corner now.

[Tubby]

The Patriots are not high on Manziel

JL 10/15 - Suspended first half of TXRI game for autograph scandal. Couple of TXTC sources say can't yell/scream at him or he shuts down; has walked away from Kingsbury in the past. Has an avg. work ethic, came to 4 of 32 summer '13 workouts, and quit going to in-season workouts late in '12. Doesn't study the game, said to know about 60% of the offense in '12, never watches film; one source said only time he watched film during '12 was before ALUN. Comes from 'outlaw bloodlines', mom moved the family to Kerrville to get away from father's wild family. Father's family is said to be very shady people, always into something, they are the root of Johnny's personality. 'What you see on TV and how he is portrayed, that's him; but when you talk to him, you'll like him'. Coaches love his tuffs/competes, they want to go to war with him, but 'Johnny will be Johnny' during the week. Knows how to scheme the system, arrogant and full of himself, but he's not smug to coaches. Has been like this since Day 1, has never gone to class, goes to beat of own drum, but has ultimate confidence. Loves the spotlight, football is his release, big games don't scare him. Has size 15 feet and freakishly big hands. Will drink, but no one I spoke with think he's a smoker. Teammates don't dislike him, but there's some resentment, more so in the offseason when he isn't coming to workouts and they are busting their butt. Loner, doesn't hang out with the guys, but very close with WR Mike Evans. Already has money, is used to spotlight, has already been exposed to NFL-level fame. Will never take football seriously enough for our coaching staff, he'll hate meetings, will have to drag him to work out, etc. The definition of the word maintenance. CONCERNS: Maturity, passion for preparation, high-maintenance, work ethic.

This is exactly how I perceive him. Bad move in my opinion especially with Bridgewater still on the board.

[abdomlahor]

Happy with the Giats' business so far. WR Odell Beckham, C Weston Richburg and DT Jay Bromley. Bromley has an incredible story too...

 

Syracuse DT Jayson Bromley overcomes dark past for bright future in NFL
Born a crack baby and left on a doorstep in Queens, the 21-year-old Bromley used football to conquer adversity and anger issues.

By Ralph Vacchiano

 

Regardless of where he goes in the draft, Jayson Bromley considers himself among the top defensive tackles in his class.
He avoided the gangs and drugs on the streets of Jamaica, Queens, and the pimps and prostitutes that were frequent visitors to his apartment building. He sidestepped the roaches in his kitchen and the rats in the living room, too.

The only thing he couldn’t avoid was the anger. So a young Jayson Bromley, long before he became a football prospect, became a fighter. He fought anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason — mostly for no good reason at all.

“You couldn’t look at him,” says Frances Nimmons, the woman he calls Mom. “If somebody looked at him wrong, he’d fight him. He just was a kid with problems.”

“I had anger problems,” Bromley says. “All I wanted to do was fight people. I’d get mad and I’d black out and you couldn’t control me.”
He never figured out why that happened, despite years of counseling and endless talks with his mother. Maybe it came from the knowledge that his biological mother abandoned him when he was 3 months old, or that six months later his biological father was arrested for murder. Maybe it was all the crime around him, or the rodents that had become like pets.

Wherever the anger began, there was no question of where it ended.

“It didn’t stop until I started playing football,” Bromley says. “Football really calmed me down.”

Sitting in a lounge just outside the spacious weight room inside the football building at Syracuse University, Bromley, now 21 and long past his days at Flushing High School, admits he’s amazed at what he’s become — a 6-3, 306-pound defensive tackle coming off a 10-sack season, standing on the edge of the NFL. Football was never his dream. He was just a “chubby kid” who liked to hit people. For years the only football he played was unorganized tackle on the street.

Yet here he is, just a few days from graduating from Syracuse — the only Division I school that offered him a scholarship, reluctantly — on the same weekend he’ll likely hear his name called by the NFL. He has been projected as high as a third-rounder, though most peg him somewhere between Rounds 4 and 6.

 

Bromley, though, believes he should go much higher.

“I’ve watched the best D-tackles in the country and I look at them and say ‘Ain’t nothing that they do that I don’t do — that I can’t do,’ ” he says. “Aaron Donald (a defensive tackle from Pittsburgh) was the best defensive player in the country this year. But I told him ‘If me and you are on the same team, I’m starting.’ ”

“That’s who he’s always been,” says Syracuse defensive line coach Tim Daoust. “He wants to know, Where is the bar set? Who are the great ones?”
“He is so determined,” Nimmons adds. “It’s scary.”

There have been scarier things in Bromley’s past, like the summer day in 1992 when Nimmons got a call about a baby that had been left on the doorstep of a stranger. The stranger called Child Services, but someone suspected the baby belonged to Nimmons’ brother, James Jones, and his girlfriend, Tyreine Bromley. Nimmons raced to Queens to pick up the 3-month-old Jayson.

Tyreine Bromley had a drug problem, Nimmons says. Jayson was born with a crack addiction, and Jones wasn’t exactly the fatherly type. According to a Daily News story from 1994, testimony at his murder trial revealed Jones was a pimp and he was sentenced to 8½ to 25 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment after he tied up one of his prostitutes — also the mother of his daughter — to a radiator in his basement. He had beat her. The woman, Shirley Ross, later died. That was just nine months after Jayson Bromley was born.

So Frances and Roy Nimmons, Jayson’s aunt and uncle, raised him as their own. With the help of her mother Kay, Jayson’s grandmother, they endured the early years when Nimmons says Jay’s drug affliction made his cries so severe often no one would babysit him. A testicular hernia that wasn’t removed until he was six months old made him cry even more.

From problem child to team leader, Jayson Bromley is looked up to his Syracuse teammates.

As he grew up, the Nimmonses, Bromely’s mom and dad as far as he’s concerned — he knows his biological parents, but considers them “more like family friends” — did their best to keep him off the troubled streets of Queens. Nimmons’ one rule was simple: “When that street light comes on, you better be in the house,’” she says. They put him in summer school to keep him occupied. They put him to work, too, painting and fixing up the apartment building, which was just fine with him.

“I always liked to make my own money,” Bromley says. “So I always worked, whether it was shoveling snow in the winter time, cleaning people’s backyards, cleaning people’s houses. My brother used to buy houses and renovate them so I used to do the demolition on the houses, carrying 50-pound bags up and down the steps. I was probably like 12, 13.”
Still, it was around then that the child with problems began to turn into a problem child, looking for fights wherever he could find them. His counselors suggested medication. Nimmons refused. She worried he’d eventually just quit school.

“It wasn’t easy growing up in my house,” Bromley says. “I had three older sisters and none of them graduated high school. I’m the youngest kid and I’m not looking up to anything positive as far as going to school and doing the right thing. How do you come from that? How do you build yourself up to say ‘I want to go to school?’ ”
He pauses. “Football,” he says. “Football made me go to school. Because if I didn’t go to school, I couldn’t play.”

Bromley couldn’t play much when Jim DeSantis, Flushing’s head coach, got his first look at him. That was a few months after Bromley nearly quit before he even started. His grandmother died before his freshman year and he was too heartbroken to continue. “She was his whole world,” Nimmons says. “So I just told him ‘Grandma said ‘Do what would make you happy.’ ’

Football, it turned out, made Bromley happy. He was short, fat and raw at first, but DeSantis saw a work ethic and determination that few matched. By his senior year, Bromley had grown into his frame and DeSantis and his defensive line coach Rudy Alvarellos — a “father figure” to Bromley, who died in February — knew they had a late-blooming monster, even if nobody else did.

Late in his senior year, Bromley had no Division I offers and DeSantis “had to beg” the other PSAL coaches to put Bromley on the all-city team. That got him into the 2010 Empire Classic all-star game where he showed everyone what they were missing. He dominated with two sacks, seven tackles (three for a loss) and two passes batted at the line. He was named the MVP, and within days he had a scholarship offer from Syracuse.

Jayson Bromley's family still lives in his childhoold neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens.

“Syracuse really got lucky,” Bromley says. “They found a diamond in the rough.”

He went on to be a three-year starter for the Orange and broke out with a big senior season. More importantly, the once angry teenager had turned into a big teddy bear of a man — a leader off the field, a captain on it, and a man who friends and coaches say is rarely caught without a big, wide smile.

“I’ve been with him for three years and I don’t know that angry side of him,” Daoust says. “He is a humble, hungry young man who goes to work every day. I love him. He’s a leader. He’s somebody I don’t worry about socially or with the decisions he’s going to make.”

“He’s just a totally different kid now,” Nimmons says. “He became a real good man.”

Through that big smile Bromley admits “it’s crazy how my demeanor changed.” He’s grateful for the influence of his mom, grandmother and Alvarellos, but he also recalls that “every other man that came into my house was always coming out of jail or something. It was always something negative. So I don’t really understand how I developed a mentality of actually wanting to be positive when there was so much negative around me.

“I feel like the past molded me into the man I am today, taught me what I don’t want in my life. A lot of people have people in their lives that are positive examples of what to do. Everything in my life taught me what not to do.”

That’s why, even as he prepares for the NFL draft, Bromley makes frequent trips back to Flushing to talk to the kids surrounded by that familiar negativity.
“We get a lot of kids who decide not to get into sports and stray and do stupid things,” DeSantis says. “Jay is a great, positive example of what sports can do.”
The thought of that brings yet another smile to Bromley.

“Growing up, I never saw that dude from my neighborhood that went to school and was doing something positive,” Bromley says. “I want to be that guy.”