Trade Market Increasingly Prohibitive for the Browns to Make a Big Move

As the Cleveland Browns are linked to players such as Trent Williams in a possible trade, the rest of the NFL keeps making the possibility of a big trade more expensive almost by the day. With more trades made just in the past 24 hours, players are being moved for higher prices, continuing a theme that has been present all season.

Jalen Ramsey being traded for pair of firsts and a fourth round pick, Gareon Conley going for a third round pick and Mohamed Sanu for a second round pick. Those are just three of the trades in the past week. The trade market this year is prohibitively expensive, so while John Dorsey and the Cleveland Browns could still be active in the trade market, it should be at the second and third tiers of talent as opposed to trying to add a premier player before the trade deadline on October 29th.

Trent Williams has been the major focus, but Daniel Snyder and the Washington Redskins have been unwilling to even talk about price. If they get to a point where they'd even listen to an offer, it will be sky high as that's what the market currently dictates. Laremy Tunsil went for a mint and Williams has been a better player, even with the fact he's older and there's more uncertainty in terms of being ready to go out and play immediately.

The Browns should be working on the level of deals along the lines of Marcus Peters where there's a talent someone is trying to get rid of and could be acquired for a mid round pick and maybe a player. Dorsey has made three good trades so far this year, moving Duke Johnson for what will be a third round pick as long as he's active for three more games, adding Wyatt Teller for a fifth and seventh round pick and most recently moving Austin Corbett for a 2021 fifth round pick. The value for Teller may not yet be apparent, but he has the talent to be a starter, which hopefully occurs sooner than later.

Premium talent is almost always going to go for a premium price. The fact the Browns were able to get Odell Beckham and Olivier Vernon for what they did isn't commonplace. Here, the Browns wouldn't be operating from a position of strength and other teams know it, so they are more inclined to hold out for more, especially when they have freely available comparisons out there. There's an element of ego and not wanting to be seen taking less than what other teams did.

As much as the Browns want to be able to get better right now, the deal has to be right or the team is admitting their plan coming into the season was a failure and they're giving up more to try to fix it on the fly. There are situations they undoubtedly wish they'd done better, but the answer isn't overpaying when the team is still building and developing. The market just isn't there to make the big move so many want because the team isn't as good as they hoped six games into the season.