Draft Day (2014) to Draft Day (2026)

Every year, April is my favorite time to watch sports. My beloved baseball is back and the frustration with the Guardians lack of offseason spending has turned into optimism that these kids might actually have a team this year (That feels true this year). The NBA playoffs have started and the Cavs will #LetEmKnow this year for sure and make a deep playoff run (That feels true this year, too). And then, for us Cleveland fans without a hockey team, the Browns. My dad’s favorite team (I prefer the Guardians). Him and I have our own Super Bowl watching the draft, locking in with our draft magazines, some Wedgewood pizza, and Mel Kiper, Jr. We don’t watch as many games of any kind together anymore, but we always watch the NFL Draft from his basement, exactly where sports dorks should be.

Then in 2014, I added another wrinkle to the ritual: I took my dad to see Draft Day, the 2014 Kevin Costner movie directed by Ivan Reitman (who you might know better for directing a little film called Ghostbusters). It’s still to this day the last time my dad has seen a movie in theaters. We…liked it? It’s fine. It’s fun. Kevin Costner wants to be the boss and ends up being the boss. Nothing that fresh here, but it’s got some jokes, some bad fake football, and a few good memes came from it (Vontae Mack no matter what). The most egregious thing it does is make a crowd chant “SUPER BOWL”  at a draft party attended by *SPOILERS* the Browns TWO top 6 draft picks. 

All of this is a lot of personal anecdote to introduce an idea of What If (not the Marvel series). What if the real 2026 Browns tried to pull off moves similar to the fake 2014 Browns in Draft Day? General Manager Andrew Berry is pretty much the anti-Costner as a GM. He’s more jovial and personable compared to the grouchy Costner. Berry doesn’t put on an air of machismo like Costner has with his table-slamming and Jennifer Garner-sla-...uh, dating. Also, Berry is a real NFL GM and Costner plays the fake Sonny Weaver, Jr., son of deceased fake Browns coach Sonny Weaver, Sr. But what if, like myself on Draft Day Eve, Berry winds down the night by slapping on this very same movie? What if he’s inspired by the moves Costner makes? If the 2026 Browns want to mimic the Fake 2014 Browns, what would Berry have to do? 

2014 Movie Move: Browns go from No. 7 to No. 1 in trade with Seattle that also costs the Browns their 1st round picks in the next two drafts.

2026 Equivalent: Browns trade No. 6 overall and their next two first round picks to the Raiders for No. 1 overall, draft Fernando Mendoza. This is not happening, but that would be the equivalent. Instead, what if we had a…

2026 More Realistic Replacement: Browns trade a second round pick, No. 39 overall, and a fourth round pick, No. 107 overall, to the Seattle Seahawks for first round pick, No. 32 overall, and draft QB Ty Simpson out of Alabama. Cleveland still trades up, still with Seattle as a partner, but this time they actually take the quarterback, unlike in the movie. (Vontae Mack is a reach at 7, yet Costner takes him at 1?! That’s like trading up to take Barkevious Mingo at No. 1 in 2013 instead of at 6 overall. Man, sometimes the Browns draft history sucks.)

Simpson is a gamble with his limited starting experience and how far his performance fell from early season success to late season struggles in 2025. Nonetheless, he has arm talent and the SEC is tough competition, even if the conference overall is perennially overrated. Simpson isn’t the sizzle or steadiness of Mendoza, but there is a potential QB of the future in there. Is his potential greater than that of Shedeur Sanders? That’s for Berry to decide. Costner didn’t want to draft a QB, and I don’t expect Berry to either, at least this early. So if this isn’t the inspiring move, maybe it’s…

2014 Movie Move: Browns trade up from the second round (actual overall number of pick unclear, so somewhere around 39 overall) to No. 6 in the first round from Jacksonville, also sending their next two second rounders to complete the trade.

2026 Equivalent: This is the silliest trade in the whole movie to me, but in actuality, the Fitzgerald-Spielberger draft value chart has the Browns sending out 3,279 points worth of draft value and the Jaguars only sending back 2,092 points to the Browns, as broken down in this movie trade grading done by Fox Sports. So the Jags win the trade even if it seems silly to trade a top 10 pick and not get any firsts back. Now, there is no credited writer on that piece, so how can you trust a grade without a name giving it? The best equivalent I can muster is the Browns trading up from 39, packaging a 2028 second rounder with it (no trading 2027 picks here. That’s too crazy, even for the movies.) to the Dallas Cowboys for 20 overall in the first, jumping ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who wanted Ty Simpson. With that pick, the Browns take a talented offensive player with off the field issues, much like Arian Foster’s movie character. Makai Lemon, come on down! The USC wide receiver had a weird Combine, but has ball skills and after-catch power that are uncommon in players his size. Hate him at 6, love him at 20. Maybe they mimic the movie even more and hold the Steelers’ feet to fire, dangling 20 in front of them with the threat of taking Simpson and getting something small from Pukesburgh to go from 21 to 20. None of that is happening, but what if…

2026 More Realistic Replacement: Browns trade 39 overall and a third rounder in 2027 to the Houston Texans for No. 28 overall in the first round, drafting Oregon tight end Kenyon Sediq. They still get an unique offensive weapon, and the Texans owe us one (more on that later), but it costs the Browns a small chunk of precious 2027 draft capital. Gotta spend value to get value. Three first round picks in one draft would be fun, and if the Browns do that, they have to get a tight end with one of the picks, harkening back to 2017 when David Njoku came in the same first round as Jabrill Peppers and some Myles guy. I’d call this the most realistic fake trade I could come up with, so let’s go back to silly season…

2014 Movie Move: Browns trade down from No. 6 overall to No. 7 with Seattle with the included return of their two future firsts sent out in their first trade with Seattle, but also adding punt returner David Putney from the Seahawks (because Kevin Costner feels like it, you pancake-eating mother fucker).

2026 Equivalent: Browns trade Deshaun Watson to the Houston Texans for 3 first round picks. Oh, what a place for dreams of revenge the movies are. 

2026 More Realistic Replacement: Browns trade No. 6 overall to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, moving down to number 15 overall in the first, adding a third round pick, 77 overall, and wide receiver Emeka Egbuka. I think the real key to this trade in the movie is adding a useful player to the roster in addition to the draft picks. Draft capital is nice, but players win games. Here, the Browns let the Bucs come up to get their pick of receiver replacements for Mike Evans by getting them to give up their first rounder from last year in Egbuka. Something stopped working between him and quarterback Baker Mayfield (who has always had GREAT relationships with star receivers) last year after a fast start, so Cleveland takes advantage of those creeping doubts to land in a spot at 15 to still take a starting tackle and get their starting wideout all in one move. “Add in the third rounder just because I feel like,” says Berry. That would make a bigger splash than Geauga Lake’s wave pool (RIP). This is a little too dreamy, but hey, that’s cinema. 

The real draft surely won’t go any of these ways. The movie draft isn’t even that good. A defensive-end-turned-middle-linebacker at number 1 overall? A running back at 7 (Jeremiah Love will go higher this year, but whatever)? Arian Foster was good, but not that good . Still, that’s a much better first round than what the real 2014 Browns had. You might remember a little quarterback named John F. Football, AKA Johnny Manziel was drafted number 22 that year. Not to be outdone, Ray Farmer traded up from 9 to 8 after trading down from 4 to draft Justin Gilbert, somehow an even worse draft bust than the Party Boy quarterback. But to bring it back to the now and show the draft is truly its own brand of chaotic outcomes, the Browns second round pick in 2014 was maybe-Hall-of-Famer Joel Bitonio, who might have just wrapped up his Browns career in 2025 as the free agent appears to most likely be playing elsewhere next year if he doesn’t retire. You win some (big), you lose some (bigger), even in the same draft class. 

So Happy Draft Day! May your picks all be Hall of Famers, or at least love playing football and actually study the playbook. I hope Andrew Berry does more of what he did in last year’s draft instead of any of this Kevin Costner movie garbage. No little notes telling yourself what to do, Berry. Just another Rookie of the Year, please. Either way, I will be watching and I will be entertained by Draft Day and Draft Day (2014). 

See you tonight, dad and Mel.