Cleveland Browns: Marvin Wilson a highway robbery undrafted pickup

Watch out, Kansas City. The Cleveland Browns are coming for the AFC crown. As crazy as it is to even type that sentence with a straight face, it’s even crazier to say this — the Cleveland Browns have one of the most impressive rosters in the NFL.

The Browns have built a legitimate contender in the AFC with tremendous talent and depth on both sides of the ball. They have one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, tremendous skill-position talent, arguably the best defensive player in the league in Myles Garrett, and a loaded secondary led by former first-round pick Denzel Ward and the team’s latest first-round pick Greg Newsome II.

The 2021 NFL Draft was very good to the Cleveland Browns, who managed to get not only Greg Newsome in the late portion of the first round, but then also Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah in the second round.

Cleveland, which finished the 2020 season 11-5 with a playoff win over their division rival Pittsburgh Steelers, managed to get two players who were considered first-round prospects despite having one of the latest picks in each round.

That’s how you win the NFL Draft.

The Cleveland Browns also managed to get a player after the draft was over who was pretty consistently picked in the first round of mock drafts a year ago at this time. That player is former Florida State defensive tackle Marvin Wilson.

Wilson is a former five-star high school recruit who was the top-ranked defensive tackle in the country and the top-ranked recruit in the state of Texas (not an easy feat), and he looked like he was ready-made for the NFL from a young age.

In his sophomore season at Florida State (2018), Wilson showed why he was a top-ranked recruit with 42 total tackles, 4.5 tackles for loss, and 3.5 sacks in 12 games.

As a junior in 2019, he broke out in a big way with 44 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss, 5.0 sacks, and four passes batted in nine games before suffering a season-ending injury. That injury likely cost Wilson a shot at the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft when he was doing stuff like this:

Wilson came back in 2020 to play in six games and didn’t look like himself, even though he was still making some big plays with a couple of blocked field goals, a blocked punt, and a couple of tackles for loss and a sack.

Another injury limited Wilson to just six games, and he really showed more flashes at Florida State than consistency.

Still, those flashes were really impressive, and the Cleveland Browns should be ecstatic to get him as an undrafted free agent. There are plenty of players on the interior line who could make the Cleveland Browns’ roster, but Wilson stands a pretty decent chance himself.

With his combination of NFL-ready size, quickness, strength, and a clear consistent ability to get his hands on the ball even when he doesn’t get home as a rusher, Wilson could prove to be one of the biggest bargains of the 2021 NFL Draft circuit.