Browns: 4 positions of need team must address before trade deadline
By Chad Porto
Wide Receiver
This one has been on the radar even before the season-ending injury to Odell Beckham Jr. Beckham’s legacy will forever be set as a guy who didn’t get teams to the playoff and was perpetually dealing with injuries. It’s hard to see how Beckham returns to form after yet another leg injury. The Browns need to move on from him regardless because the odds of him being as good as he was this year, let alone him finally returning to his 2016 form isn’t likely.
Beyond replacing Beckham, which Rashard Higgins did pretty well, injuries have been the soup du jour for this season and there isn’t anyone really behind Higgins besides Donovan Peoples-Jones. If Higgins or Peoples-Jones gets hurt then what? That doesn’t even factor Jarvis Landry into the conversation, who’s showing signs that his hip isn’t healing as it should have, or at the very least is showing signs that the hip injury is still affecting him.
Either way, this team is quickly running out of able wideouts.
As far as the type of player the team should consider, a full-time replacement for Beckham is the right move. Even when he was healthy, Beckham had more meltdowns and if Baker Mayfield’s return to form is any indication, the need to force the ball to Beckham continued to be a factor. We’ll see if that theory holds water throughout the rest of the season, however.