The 2018 NFL Draft is just two weeks away and, frankly, it can't get here soon enough. We've suffered through months of hot-takery -- ranging from Sam Darnold's tiny little baby hands to Lamar Jackson's need to become a wide receiver and everything in between -- and we need some picks to be made. First up are the Cleveland Browns, who may very well be honing in on a prospect to take No. 1 overall.
Spoiler alert: it's a quarterback! More specifically, it is sounding like that quarterback will be Josh Allen of Wyoming, he of the freakish ability to throw a football 9 bajillion yards.
The Allen buzz could all be a lie. After all, everything you hear during the month of April relating to the draft is usually false and purposely false to boot. But the smoke here feels legit, and the Browns have nothing to lie about, really. They're two weeks away. They're not trading the No. 1 pick and they're not worried about another quarterback falling to No. 4 (we don't think).
The buzz has essentially been building since the combine and owners meetings.
CBS Sports Senior NFL Writer Pete Prisco joined me on the Pick Six Podcast (subscribe here for a daily, 30-minute dose of NFL news and analysis) recently and broke down his big board and mock draft, with Pete pointing out he keeps hearing Allen will be the first overall pick to the Browns.
"I think he's going first overall," Prisco said. "I hear that too much from guys I respect in the business, who know a lot of people in the business. I'm talking about scouts and personnel people, who know guys and know Dorsey. I just keep hearing -- I've been saying it for a long time, and I just keep hearing it more and more that he will be the guy who goes No. 1 overall when it's all said and done."
Prisco has been beating the drum on Allen as the top quarterback and the likely No. 1 pick for a while now.
Daniel Jeremiah of NFL Media says he's hearing similar things from around the NFL, that the Browns are locking into Allen.
Just now on NFL Network, @MoveTheSticks said that "people that know people inside the Browns" fully expect Josh Allen to be the pick at No.1.
— Marcus Mosher (@Marcus_Mosher) April 9, 2018
Jeremiah clarified the remarks on a conference call recently, noting that it's not people inside the Browns who are telling him that (Jeremiah used to be a scout for the Browns), but rather people who have worked with Dorsey before and people who are familiar with how the whole thing goes down.
"Just in talking to people around the league for the last, I would say it really picked up in the last week, it's just a lot of people, not from inside the [Browns'] building -- I'll stress that -- but there's just a lot of people telling me, 'Hey, I think it's going to be Josh Allen,''' he said. "It's either guys that have worked with John Dorsey or guys that are familiar with that room and that process."
Albert Breer of TheMMQB.com points out that the Jets recently set up some visits with Sam Darnold, visits that were previously not on the books, which is odd for a team with the No. 3 overall pick. The Jets, if they were convinced the Browns were taking Darnold No. 1, might bypass having him in for a visit. But if they thought he was going to be there at No. 3, they would certainly want to talk with him.
None of this means Allen is a done deal. There's plenty of time until the draft. But the winds are certainly blowing in the direction of the strong-armed Wyoming prospect right now.