Newsletter: Depth Hopes to be the Difference for Browns Offensive Line in 2025

While the unit has lost that top end status, they attacked the primary concern to regain some respect.

Ethan Pocic (Photo Courtesy of the Cleveland Browns)

While there hasn’t been much to count on as a steady presence in the Browns organization in recent history, the offensive line can make a serious claim for the throne. Throughout the past 15 years or so the various offensive line units have been marked with some Hall of Fame talent and plenty of consistent performers, but it didn’t start that way upon their return to the NFL.

It’s no secret the NFL’s crooked expansion draft of 1999 left the organization swimming upstream in a way it didn’t anticipate. They used many of the expansion draft’s 37 selections on offensive lineman, but not many found their footing inside the organization for meaningful time. The biggest self-inflicted wound was a lack of investment in young talent. The team didn’t select an offensive lineman before the sixth round in their first three drafts back in the league. Outside of the failed selection of center Jeff Faine in the first round of 2003, the Browns didn’t select a non-center inside the first three rounds until Joe Thomas in 2007.

Around that same timeframe they decided to stop investing in other roster spots and try to turn around their philosophy on the offensive line. They signed a marquee center in LeCharles Bentley in 2006 but we all know how that fell apart. Then they invested in Eric Steinbach at guard, Thomas at tackle, and things started to turn around. By 2010 they added center Alex Mack, then John Greco and Mitchell Schwartz in the ensuing years and they had something real. That kicked off the trend. Those stellar groups, led by Thomas, had more higher performing stretches than the contrary as they kept adding talent like Joel Bitonio and others over the next decade.

While there have been weaknesses in the group during stretches, the overall sentiment was this was always a strength of the Browns offense. That carried into the 2020s as the group added veterans like Jack Conklin and JC Tretter. Traded for Wyatt Teller and invested serious draft assets in the group.

Dawand Jones (Photo Courtesy of the Cleveland Browns)