2017 NFL Draft: Browns are unbelievably huge favorites to land the No. 1 pick
There's a greater than 60 percent chance the Browns get the top pick
By
Will Brinson
•
2 min read
There is a very clear-cut group of teams who are the worst in the NFL. And yet, the Browns stand above everyone else when it comes to being terrible.
Worth noting: The Browns are trying really hard and keeping games closer than they should. But they're not a good football team. And according to data from Stephen Oh of SportsLine, they are an overwhelming favorite to land the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft.
How overwhelming? Cleveland currently holds a 65.5 percent chance of locking down the top overall pick, and we're not even to the midway point of the season.
| Team | % Chance of top pick | Projected Wins |
| Cleveland Browns | 65.5 | 2.7 |
| Chicago Bears | 10.0 | 4.4 |
| San Francisco 49ers | 8.6 | 4.7 |
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 5.1 | 5.5 |
| Miami Dolphins | 2.1 | 5.8 |
| New York Jets | 1.9 | 6.0 |
| Jacksonville Jaguars | 1.9 | 6.1 |
| Carolina Panthers | 1.7 | 6.2 |
| Indianapolis Colts | 0.7 | 6.8 |
| Tennessee Titans | 0.7 | 6.8 |
The Browns were the first team to hit the magical 9,999-to-1 number for Super Bowl odds, which is the Las Vegas way of informing a team when it's time to pack it up and head on home for the winter. You are effectively off the board and you have no chance of emerging victorious come February.
But it's not like Cleveland is the lone terrible team in the NFL. The league is chock full of them and is extremely bottom heavy. San Francisco just upgraded its roster with Colin Kaepernick, but not by that much. The 49ers are a bad football team.
Chicago's loss to the Packers on Thursday night wasn't just about Aaron Rodgers carving up the Bears defense. It was also about Brian Hoyer going down with a broken arm. He's probably going to miss the season, Jay Cutler isn't healthy and Matt Barkley is about to be in charge of a John Fox offense. It's the football equivalent of riding shotgun around a NASCAR track in your grandmother's Cadillac.
It's pretty stunning to see the Carolina Panthers sitting there, but maybe it shouldn't be. They're not good and are posted up at 1-5 through six weeks of the season.
So how would this play out if the SportsLine numbers are accurate? Well, we would see a lot of quarterbacks going early in the draft.
Assuming the top-ranked players declare for the draft, it has the potential to be a strong class.
In his latest 2017 NFL Mock Draft, NFL Draft Scout's Dane Brugler has three quarterbacks going in the top five picks.
Brugler pegs the Browns to take Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer No. 1 overall, then has the 49ers taking Deshaun Watson of Clemson at No. 2 overall. The Bears are the surprising team, snagging North Carolina quarterback Mitch Trubisky with the No. 5 overall pick in the mock. (It's surprising to see Trubisky that high and the Bears that low, not that they would take a quarterback.)
Trubisky is on the rise right now despite a limited number of snaps in his career. Don't ding him for his performance against Virginia Tech -- it was literally in hurricane level weather. Same with Kizer, who faced impossible conditions against NC State when the Irish were forced to play while Hurricane Matthew pummeled the state of North Carolina.
Are the Jets big winners here? The investment in Christian Hackenberg (second round last year) might scare them off drafting another quarterback, which means landing Myles Garrett out of Texas A&M. That's not the worst news in the world. Maybe they can sign Cutler.
Of course, it's extremely likely the Bears, Jets and 49ers won't control their own draft destiny. The Browns are just that bad and just that likely to end up with the No. 1 overall pick this year.
