Browns NFL draft class ranks low athletically but Michael Hall Jr. stands out positively

In the end, everything leading up to the NFL draft is meaningless. Some players look great in shorts and t-shirts and fail to produce on the field. Others don’t test very well but are great players when you put the pads on.

In general, NFL teams have learned to bet on youth and athletic upside when making draft decisions. Those don’t always pan out but betting on younger, hyper-gifted players gives the best chance to hit on a player.

We have used Relative Athletic Scores (RAS) in our draft profiles for the Cleveland Browns for a few years as a way to understand just how physically gifted a player is. In trying to put those testing numbers into perspective, things like RAS and MockDraftable’s spiderwebs help us understand the big picture.

Looking back at the Browns draft class, we see that this year’s group is one of the least athletic, on average, draft classes in the NFL:

It is important that averages are used as Cleveland had just six picks and four of them came on Day 3 of the 2024 NFL draft. RAS makes it easy for us to see that Michael Hall Jr. is by far the most athletic of the group while Myles Harden’s selection in the seventh round helps push that number up.

Zak Zinter was unable to complete testing due to his leg injury but wasn’t noted as a particularly hyperathletic player.

The Dallas Cowboys, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans are the only teams with lower averages but each of those teams (except the Titans whose class was very low athletically as a whole) were drawn down by players with very low scores while the Browns class as a whole lacked high scores.

Are you surprised by how high Hall scored and how low the Browns overall draft class was this year athletically?