Browns: Team should pass on Deandre Baker after charges dropped

Despite the charges being dropped against Deandre Baker, the Cleveland Browns should avoid going after the 23-year-old free agent.

The Browns need help at corner, but that help shouldn’t come in the form of Deandre Baker, the former 2019 first-round pick of the New York football Giants. Baker was playing well in his rookie year but was released to start the 2020 season due to an arrest for armed robbery and aggravated assault. The charges against him have since been dropped, mostly due to the lawyer of the supposed victims of Baker having been arrested for extortion.

Baker is innocent then, right?

No, not necessarily. See, the arrest caused enough doubt and damaged the case against Baker pretty significantly. That doesn’t mean Baker was innocent, just that there would be a much harder case now to make.

It’s also a point worth making that people who aren’t doing things they shouldn’t be doing, rarely find themselves in these situations. If you’re running afoul of a ring of extortionists, what are you doing in your day to day that would draw these people to you?

This isn’t the first time Baker’s made headlines for the wrong reasons. When he was at Georgia, he announced he’d play in the Sugar Bowl, which would have been his final game as a Bulldog, but abruptly changed his mind and sat out the game. Going as far as to stay home.

During his time in New York before he was cut, he was accused of being lazy, giving up on plays, and just outright not working hard enough to get better. All while being a problem in the locker room.

Clearly, Baker finds himself in one bad, self-made situation after another and the only people he has to blame is himself. The Browns are trying to avoid more players like Odell Beckham Jr., the me-first type of players that would rather make a spectacle than be a member of the unit. A guy like Baker, whether he’s guilty or innocent of the crimes he was accused of, will always find himself in situations that will hurt him, but most of all, the team.

Staying away from him and players like him have to be part of the Browns future ethos. Someone tells Andrew Berry that anything John Dorsey would do, don’t do that.