The Cleveland Browns took the draft by storm last year by swapping the second-overall pick to the Philadelphia Eagles for a bushel of future selections.
Sitting pretty this year at No. 1, the Browns don't sound like a team ready to organize another blockbuster trade.
"That would surprise me. If we traded down this year," Cleveland's executive VP of football operations Sashi Brown said Wednesday during the team's pre-draft news conference.
"We have received calls. We haven't resigned ourselves one way or the other," Brown said. "We feel really good about picking at (No. 1) and I'll leave it at that."
Brown went on, though, to expand on the team's overall philosophy heading into a critical second draft under coach Hue Jackson and Cleveland's creative front office.
"In particular last year, we felt like we needed to add a lot of young talent to the roster and so that really drove a lot of the decisions last year," Brown said. "We do think we're positioned obviously very different coming out of 2015. So the need to continue acquiring high-value picks is probably less intense this year -- it is less intense this year. We feel really good about having effectively two draft classes through the first two rounds ... there will be a lot of good Cleveland Brown players coming off the board on Thursday and Friday night."
Will one of those players be presumptive top pick Myles Garrett, the havoc-wreaking pass rusher out of Texas A&M?
"We've narrowed it down," Brown said, without letting on. "We feel good about where we are."
Here's what else we learned from Cleveland's top lieutenant ahead of next week's draft in Philadelphia:
- Pressed further about Garrett, Brown praised the monstrous defensive prospect after meeting with the college star.
"Bright young man. Competitive. We spent a lot of time with him, number one, so learned a lot about what makes him tick, what motivates him, how he spends his down time, how he spends his time with his teammates. You can learn a lot," Brown said. "He's an enjoyable young man, very bright. I think whatever team gets him, particularly for us, we'd be proud to have him."
- There have been whispers, though, that Cleveland has debated internally over taking a quarterback with the top spot -- namely North Carolina's Mitchell Trubisky.
Brown was asked if the team is concerned about Trubisky's truncated history as a college starter after Cardinals coach Bruce Arians said this week: "The question is why wasn't all that talent starting for the last three years? That's always bugging me."
Said Brown: "Not gonna comment on Mitch's history. We appreciate Bruce's expertise first, let me say that. Certainly, I think, you'd like to be able to look back on as many games as you can. It's no mystery that Mitch hasn't played in a lot of them."
- Back to those whispers. Brown was asked more than once about whether or not Jackson and the front office are at odds over how to use the No. 1 pick and, subsequently, Cleveland's No. 12 selection.
Asked specifically if there is a "divisive thing going on" inside the building, Sashi calmly responded: "That would be false."
"Even if we all agree on a particular player or decision, we constantly are pushing each other to think about what we're not thinking about," Brown said. "Our job really isn't to agree; our job is to get decisions right. And so, when we go through our processes, we actually force ourselves not to get to a point where we're just agreeing on everything. ... We try to actually facilitate that type of environment."
Said Brown: "We don't comment on all the rumors. We're in the No. 1 slot and there's a ton of interest and popularity ... and we just know that's what comes with the territory. ... It's just part of the territory. We don't get flustered by it."
