T10YL - 2014 NFL Draft, Part 2
T10YL - 2014 NFL Draft, Part 2
Four more trades from the 2014 NFL Draft, all highly intriguing.
This is part two of our NFL Draft coverage. The expectation is that this is a three-part series but it might end up being four if the remaining trades are better than I expect.
There is only one draft selection to read between where we left off yesterday (the Saints selecting Brandin Cooks at #20 overall) and our next trade. Fortunately it’s a good one:
Green Bay Packers select Ha Ha Clinton-Dix #21 overall.
TRADE FOUR
The Traded Picks: Cleveland Browns receive: #22 overall. Philadelphia Eagles receive: #26 overall, #83 overall.
Pick Trade Value (Rich Hill): Browns receive: 253. Eagles receive: 223 + 52 = 275.
Surplus value accumulated by Philadelphia (22) equivalent to a mid 4th-round pick (#122).
Pick Trade Value (Fitzgerald-Spielberger): Browns receive: 1434. Eagles receive: 1349 + 761 = 2110.
Surplus value accumulated by Philadelphia (676) equivalent to a 3rd-round compensatory pick (#98).
The first-round pick that Cleveland traded to Philadelphia here originally belonged to Indianapolis. The Browns got the pick in a September 2013 trade in exchange for 2012’s #3 overall pick, Trent Richardson, which is the trade that inspired Trades Ten Years Later. In November (of 2023), I fell through a rabbit hole and ended up on the Reddit thread reacting to Richardson’s trade from Cleveland to Indianapolis. With the Browns giving up the #3 pick in Richardson just 18 months after he entered the league for what would likely be a late first-round pick from a successful Colts team, everyone laughed at how terrible this trade was and how brazenly the Browns were tanking the season. They were mostly mistaken — it turned out that, despite a strong rookie season, Trent Richardson was terrible at being an NFL running back and was released from the Colts following the 2014 season, never to return to an active roster.
The rapidly shifting narrative of this trade made me think about how funny it is to react to any sports trade after it happens. We have to react, because it’s the natural emotional thing to do in the circumstances and because we follow sports with more information than ever before. But we (almost) never know as much as the front offices involved, each of which agreed to this trade for some reason. We seemingly had enough information at the time of the Trent Richardson trade to know it was going to be terrible for Cleveland; the Browns had lost a franchise cornerstone (ranked #71 among all players in the league as a 23-year-old) and this pick wasn’t going to be good enough for them to select a new one. Then, before the 2013 season was even over, Richardson had lost his starting job and the trade seemed like a savvy move by the Browns to recoup substantial value from a terrible draft pick.
Looking at the reactions to the Trent Richardson trade ten years later is certainly the kind of thing that inspires the concept for a blog. But inspiration is only a fraction of the battle; life is a series of potential rabbit holes that only go deep enough to sprain an ankle. The real ongoing motivation, the “juice in the battery” that keeps me pumping out so many words on this particular topic, didn’t come until I realized that trade stories have a tendency to get better over time. We’ve told a good story so far: football team drafts a well-regarded player, football team sees the warning signs on the horizon before anyone else, football team trades that player in the face of public ridicule, football team is vindicated once the dust has settled. We wouldn’t have to wait much longer for the story to become great – what did the Browns choose to do with the first-round pick they snatched from the fringe of the abyss?
The Selected Players: Cleveland Browns select: Johnny Manziel. Philadelphia Eagles select: Marcus Smith, #83 overall subsequently traded.
For many readers, “Johnny Manziel” is a great punchline that I’m only going to ruin by discussing further. For the rest of you, Manziel was the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner and was drafted out of Texas A&M with substantial fanfare. He was a flashy quarterback with the nickname “Johnny Football” who had been rumored to go at #3 to the Jacksonville Jaguars on the eve of draft day. But the Jaguars selected Blake Bortles with that pick, which we DO NOT need to discuss, and then no quarterbacks were drafted for the next couple of hours as Manziel endured an uncomfortable draft night slide. Manziel had been discussed as a potential first overall pick and was certainly a viable draft candidate for the Browns at their original draft position of #4, to the point that Browns owner Jimmy Haslam was implored to draft Manziel on the streets of Cleveland. Getting him with their second first-round pick was remarkable.
It was inauspicious for the Browns to select Manziel at #22. Two years before, the Browns had selected 28-year-old Brandon Weeden at that draft slot, which had gone poorly enough for the Browns to be drafting a first-round quarterback two years later. Five years before that, the Browns had selected Brady Quinn at #22 after his own draft day slide (the first round was still during the day on Saturday in 2007, so it wasn’t a “draft night” slide yet). This is the kind of superstitious codswallop you should ignore if you’re making multimillion-dollar decisions for any organization, unless it burns you again, in which case you’re an idiot who should’ve known better.
It did burn them again; Manziel was so consistently involved in off-field controversies during his two seasons in Cleveland that it overshadowed his consistently poor on-field performance. The most fun one to reflect on is when he missed the Browns’ final game of his second season because he planned to take a quick three-hour trip to Las Vegas and ended up partying all night (who among us hasn’t missed work because we tried to squeeze in a quick three-hour Vegas trip?). As he was recognized in casinos and media started to report that he was in Las Vegas on the eve of an NFL game, he tried to deflect by posting a picture of his dog and house on Instagram (geotagging Avon, Ohio as his location) and also buying and wearing a blond mullet wig. About six weeks after that Vegas trip, the Browns were completely done with Manziel, but unable to cut him until the new league year began due to a lack of salary cap space. Just to ensure there was no ambiguity, the Browns put out a statement that included, in pertinent part, “his status with our team will be addressed when permitted by league rules.” He was released that March and never played in the NFL again (though he would go on to have similarly poor stints in the Canadian Football League, the Alliance of American Football, and Fan Controlled Football).
But you know what’s really crazy? You know what’s so crazy that we need another sentence just to build suspense? The Browns won this trade from the perspective of on-field value. Manziel was worth 0 AV in two starts in 2015, but a robust 4 AV in six starts in 2016. With the 26th pick, the Eagles selected Marcus Smith, who was worth 3 AV in his three seasons in Philadelphia. They traded the 83rd pick, but it was used to select Louis Nix, who was worth 0 AV in minimal NFL gametime. The 4 AV that the Browns were able to get by trading up for Manziel exceeds the 3 AV of the two players selected with the picks that the Browns traded to get there. Man, these Browns had the NFL Draft figured out. Watch out if they ever select a good player.
Highlighting just a few fun draft picks between two trades:
Kansas City Chiefs select Dee Ford #23 overall.
San Diego Chargers select Jason Verrett #25 overall.
Carolina Panthers select Kelvin Benjamin #28 overall.
TRADE FIVE
The Traded Picks: Minnesota Vikings receive: #32 overall. Seattle Seahawks receive: #40 overall, #108 overall.
Pick Trade Value (Rich Hill): Vikings receive: 184. Seahawks receive: 149 + 30 = 179.
Surplus value accumulated by Minnesota (5) equivalent to a late 6th-round pick (#187-194).
Pick Trade Value (Fitzgerald-Spielberger): Vikings receive: 1244. Seahawks receive: 1131 + 627 = 1758.
Surplus value accumulated by Seattle (514) equivalent to a late 4th/early 5th-round pick (#135).
The number #32 pick gets disproportionately discussed by draft nerds in conjunction with the phrase “fifth-year option.” We referred to the fifth-year option a few times in yesterday’s post with no explanation, so let’s provide some now. The fifth-year option gets cared about because rookie contracts are set to a fixed scale that keeps players cheap for the early parts of their career. If a player becomes a star shortly after arrival to the NFL, their performance on a fixed rookie contract can make them an unbeatable value compared to veterans who command salaries several multiples higher.
All drafted NFL rookies sign four-year contracts, but players selected in the first round have an additional team option for a fifth-year that teams must choose to exercise after the player’s third season in the league. If a team selects a superstar at #33 overall, they’ll need to pay him market value after four seasons. But if they take that same guy at #32 overall, they’ll have the option to extend his contract by a year at the rookie rate.
In reality, the benefit of picking at #32 vs #33 is overblown — when people discuss the fifth-year option, they tend to ignore that there’s a pretty big difference in rookie scale salaries over the first four years between pick #32 ($12.1 million guaranteed contract in the 2024 Draft) and pick #33 ($9.9 million guaranteed contract in the 2024 Draft). So if the fifth-year option is not picked up, as was the case for 14 of 32 first-round picks in 2021, it’s cheaper to pick at #33 than #32. In the event that a player is a legitimate superstar that makes one or more Pro Bowls, there are built-in mechanisms to increase a player’s salary on their fifth-year option.
But the fifth-year option remains coveted because it’s quite beneficial in the event that a draft pick is a massive success, which is what anybody assumes will be the case with a first-round pick. It’s worse in the event that your first-round pick doesn’t hit, but why would that be the case? It only happens like 44% of the time.
In particular, teams like trading up to pick #32 to select a quarterback. We’ve seen that recently with Lamar Jackson in 2018, as well as…
The Selected Players: Minnesota Vikings select: Teddy Bridgewater. Seattle Seahawks select: Cassius Marsh, #40 overall subsequently traded.
Only one quarterback endured a greater draft night slide than Johnny Manziel. Teddy Bridgewater had been talked about as a projected #1 overall pick leading into his final season of college, then still retained enough prospect shine that, as his projected draft position started to slip in the months leading up to the draft, blogs reacted with incredulity. The folks at Big Cat Country referred to Mel Kiper’s January 2014 mock draft as “one of those [mock drafts we can laugh at in a few months], mainly because it has the Jacksonville Jaguars passing on Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater.” That mock draft had Bridgewater going to the Minnesota Vikings at the #8 pick, which Vikings fans responded to with “as awesome as this would be, Bridgewater isn’t dropping to the 8th pick.”
Well, Bridgewater had made it to the 8th pick, then the Vikings traded that pick to the QB-needy Cleveland Browns and moved down a spot, then they didn’t take him there either. Through the first round, only the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns had selected a quarterback. It was a little absurd that Bridgewater was available at pick #32 and it would’ve been hubris to expect him to be available at pick #40. Trading up to select a top quarterback prospect for the price of a 2nd-round and 4th-round pick is great business.
The Vikings made a savvy draft pick and then everyone got extremely unlucky. Bridgewater was the QB for the NFL’s All-Rookie team in 2014, then made his first Pro Bowl appearance in 2015. The Vikings made the playoffs that season, but were narrowly eliminated in a 10-9 loss where Blair Walsh missed a 27-yard field goal on the Vikings’ final play. On the eve of the 2016 season, Bridgewater suffered a horrific knee injury at practice when he simultaneously dislocated his knee and tore his ACL. Initial reports from Ian Rapaport suggested that Vikings players were vomiting on the field at the sight of the injury, though he clarified that “regrettably, it was not meant literally” (is this a weird metaphor I’ve never heard elsewhere?).
The timing of the fifth-year option and the requirement that the contract be fully guaranteed if exercised left the Vikings in a conundrum. They needed to make the decision in May of 2017, months before Bridgewater would be cleared to resume football activities. Ultimately, they declined the option under the belief that they couldn’t guarantee his recovery from injury. After working through a grueling rehab process for 15 months, Bridgewater made it back to the Vikings for a week 15 matchup against the Bengals, where he got into three series in the 4th quarter with the Vikings up 34-7. The first series ended when Bridgewater’s first pass attempt since 2015 was intercepted by Shawn Williams. The second series featured two handoffs and an incomplete pass. The third series was three kneeldowns, thereby ending the Teddy Bridgewater era in Minnesota.
The Seahawks traded the 2nd-round pick in a couple more trades, so we can only discuss the 4th-round pick in Cassius Marsh. Marsh was a rotational defensive end who had three workmanlike seasons in Seattle. In his third season, tragedy struck when his car window was smashed in Seattle and thieves stole two backpacks, one of which contained a team iPad and the other of which contained $20-25,000 in Magic: The Gathering cards. After that year, Marsh was traded to New England for a 5th-round pick – pretty good ROI. Speaking of good ROI, Marsh was the first person to invest in the celebrity video request app Cameo. As of June 2022, Marsh reportedly owned 1% of the company, which was valued at $1.3 billion at the time (making his stake worth $13 million).
Houston Texans select Xavier Su’a-Filo #33 overall.
TRADE SIX
The Traded Picks: Dallas Cowboys receive: #34 overall. Washington Football Team receives: #47 overall, #78 overall.
Pick Trade Value (Rich Hill): Cowboys receive: 175. Washington receives: 124 + 59 = 183.
Surplus value accumulated by Washington (8) equivalent to a late 5th/early 6th-round pick (#174-181).
Pick Trade Value (Fitzgerald-Spielberger): Cowboys receive: 1213. Washington receives: 1049 + 792 = 1841.
Surplus value accumulated by Washington (628) roughly equivalent to an early 4th-round pick (#108 = 627).
Comparing the returns from pick #32 and pick #34 helps illustrate the point about the “lumpiness” of draft picks as currency. Because Minnesota could offer Seattle a pick that only required them to move back eight spots, they were able to move up by giving away a 4th-round pick. But because their second-round pick is further back and they’re trying to move up thirteen spots, Dallas has to give up a 3rd-rounder.
If you’ve ever followed the draft at a completely unseasonable time of year (like, for instance, if you’re a fan of a Jacksonville-based franchise that feels like a lock to pick in the top-10 every season for two decades), you’ve probably come across WalterFootball. WalterFootball posted an updated 2025 mock draft 20 hours ago at time of writing (the 2025 NFL Draft is not for another 350 days). When you desperately need NFL Draft coverage and aren’t particularly concerned with whether that NFL Draft coverage is “good,” there are few better websites than WalterFootball.
We’ve strayed away from dredging up “draft grades,” but Walter’s 2014 NFL Draft trade grades lead off with an excoriation of this deal, assigning the Cowboys an F and Washington an A+. “I honestly think Jerry Jones has lost his mind,” the blurb begins. The blurb concludes with “Washington’s grade is easy. It completely destroyed a divisional opponent, so it’s an easy A+.” I’m not sure if this hostility is dictated by an out-of-date draft chart or what, but while both models see this deal as favorable to Washington, it doesn’t look quite as egregious compared to the other trades throughout the draft.
And we haven’t even pointed out that this grade is definitively wrong yet!
The Selected Players: Dallas Cowboys select: DeMarcus Lawrence. Washington Football Team selects: Trent Murphy, Spencer Long.
Both of the players that Washington selected are pictured in Bills jerseys on their Pro Football Reference pages and have been retired for years. DeMarcus Lawrence is not only still pictured in a Cowboys jersey, he’s made the Pro Bowl as a representative of the team each of the last two seasons.
The Cowboys had just cut DeMarcus Ware, their franchise leader in career sacks and a future Hall of Famer. They had a void at the edge rusher position and at the “first name DeMarcus” position (even as DeMarco Murray was in his prime), so saw fit to trade up for DeMarcus Lawrence. Lawrence started off slow as a result of a fractured foot in rookie training camp, then had back surgery after a strong second season. His third season could also be described as “injury-riddled,” but it was smooth sailing from then on. In the 2017 season, Lawrence finished 4th in Defensive Player of the Year voting and made his first Pro Bowl team. He’s continued to anchor the defensive end position for Dallas for the past ten years and is tracking to be out there next year, too. Lawrence’s revenge on Washington since he was drafted with a pick they originally controlled includes 9.5 sacks, 2 interceptions (1 touchdown), and 22 quarterback hits, among other wreckage.
Trent Murphy spent his first two seasons in Washington as an outside linebacker. In his third year, the team planned to transition Murphy to defensive end and he gained 30 pounds ahead of the 2017 season in preparation for the new role. While we can’t necessarily causally connect the need to suddenly gain 30 pounds with what happened next, we can point out that Murphy was suspended for four games the next offseason for violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing drugs policy, which didn’t ultimately matter because he tore his ACL in preseason and missed the entire final year in Washington. He signed a three-year contract with Buffalo and played out his career there.
Spencer Long played sparingly in his rookie year, then was Washington’s starting left guard in 2015. He transitioned to center for the 2016 season and was a starter the next two seasons, though knee injuries ended up limiting his availability. In 2018, Long signed a four-year contract with the New York Jets, then got released after one season. In 2019, Long signed a three-year contract with the Buffalo Bills, then got released after one season. In 2020, Long signed with the San Francisco 49ers and reversed his pattern of contractual victimization from NFL teams by announcing his retirement three days later.
Cleveland Browns select Joel Bitonio #35 overall.
Oakland Raiders select Derek Carr #36 overall.
Atlanta Falcons select Ra’Shede Hageman #37 overall.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers select Austin Seferian-Jenkins #38 overall.
Jacksonville Jaguars select Marqise Lee #39 overall.
TRADE SEVEN
The Traded Picks: Detroit Lions receive: #40 overall, #146 overall. Seattle Seahawks receive: #45 overall, #111 overall, #227 overall.
Pick Trade Value (Rich Hill): Lions receive: 149 + 13 = 162. Seahawks receive: 131 + 28 + 3 = 162.
Even trade.
Pick Trade Value (Fitzgerald-Spielberger): Lions receive: 1131 + 474 = 1605. Seahawks receive: 1071 + 613 + 251 = 1935.
Surplus value accumulated by Seattle (330) equivalent to a mid 6th-round pick (#194).
We have (by the Rich Hill model) our first perfectly even trade! This one looks to have required effort to get there, too – the 7th-round pick that Detroit threw in helps the numbers balance nicely. The Fitzgerald-Spielberger chart values 7th-rounders pretty highly, enough so that the draft capital points accumulated by Seattle wouldn’t even add up to the value of a pick if not for the inclusion of that 7th-rounder.
The Selected Players: Detroit Lions select: Kyle Van Noy, #146 overall subsequently traded. Seattle Seahawks select: Paul Richardson, Kiero Small, #111 overall subsequently traded.
Fortunately, the two middle picks were subsequently traded, so we don’t need to rip through five players at once.
The Lions traded up for Kyle Van Noy, which shockingly was not a good pick. My present conceptualization of Kyle Van Noy is the respected NFL veteran who just posted a career-high with 9.0 sacks for the Baltimore Ravens last year. But after he was drafted out of BYU, a core muscle injury required surgery and kept Van Noy from debuting until Week 9 of the NFL season. He didn’t pick up his first sack until the next season and that was the only sack he recorded as a Lion. He was traded to the New England Patriots at the trade deadline as part of a swap of 6th and 7th-round picks that basically allowed the Lions to move up 24 spots at the back end of the 2017 draft. He won his first Super Bowl that year as a suddenly core member of the Patriots defense, and the rest is still-ongoing history.
The Seahawks used their lower 2nd-round pick to select Paul Richardson, who basically had one good season in Seattle. His rookie season was fairly quiet and ended with a torn ACL in Seattle’s playoff game, causing him to miss the first half of the 2015 season as he recovered. Richardson returned for Week 9 against the Cardinals and played five snaps where he was uninvolved. On the sixth snap, he caught a 40-yard pass, injured his hamstring, and missed the remainder of that season. His 2016 was basically a repeat of the rookie year and then he had a pretty solid 2017, where he increased his career receiving touchdown total from 2 to 8. He signed with Washington off the good platform year.
The 7th-round pick that ended up bringing this trade into perfect harmony was used to select Kiero Small, a running back out of Arkansas. Small didn’t make Seattle’s roster and played three NFL games in his career, all with the Cleveland Browns in 2014. So much for the value of a 7th-round pick.
Stay tuned for Part 3 of our series tomorrow and (if necessary) Part 4 after that. There are still twenty trades left but at time of press, I am still harboring the delusion that we might not need Part 4.