Breaking down John Dorsey's 2013 draft classBy: Jeff Risdon | December 12, 2017 8:36 pm ET
New Cleveland Browns general manager John Dorsey comes to town with some experience on the job. For four years, Dorsey held the same position with the Kansas City Chiefs. From 2013-2016, he was in charge of the personnel and draft decisions.
We will break down each of Dorsey’s draft classes and how they have panned out for the Chiefs. First up is perhaps the most pertinent situation to Dorsey’s new gig, 2013.
Background
His Chiefs held the No. 1 overall pick in that draft, thanks to a 2-14 finish in 2012 with the combination of Brady Quinn and Matt Cassel at quarterback. They lost to the Browns 30-7 in December of that season. Jamaal Charles was a 1,500-yard rusher, but Dwayne Bowe was the only receiver to catch more than 50 passes.
The defense featured four Pro Bowlers all under 30, so the emphasis was on upgrading the brutal passing offense. Dorsey and the Chiefs acquired quarterback Alex Smith from San Francisco to rectify the most important spot before the draft. That turned out to be a great decision, based on both Smith’s performance with the team and how the top of the draft played out. It cost them their second-round pick in this draft.
First pick: Eric Fisher, OT, Central Michigan
There was no real consensus No. 1 pick in 2013. It was especially barren at QB, which helped motivate the Smith signing.
The Chiefs settled on Central Michigan offensive tackle Eric Fisher over Texas A&M OT Luke Joeckel, Oregon pass rusher Dion Jordan, Oklahoma tackle Lane Johnson and BYU pass rusher Ziggy Ansah, who went in order after Fisher.
The Chippewa alum was an instant starter at right tackle. He’s been a fixture at left tackle since his second season, though he’s never been regarded by analytical sites like Pro Football Focus or B/R 1000 as more than an average player. Fisher has never been to a Pro Bowl, and he won’t in 2017 either. He’s a capable starter on a good offense.
Considering Joeckel and Jordan, the only other players ever really mentioned with any Chiefs interest at the top, have both been colossal busts, Dorsey managed the lesser of three evils. Johnson has had a much better career with the Philadelphia Eagles, but he was more of a speculative prospect than Fisher, who wowed at the Senior Bowl and tested quite well.
Travis Kelce and the draft hits
Dorsey hit a home run with the first pick of the third round when the Chiefs chose tight end Travis Kelce. It took some time for this pick to pay off, however.
Kelce missed his rookie season after breaking his kneecap. Given he missed his sophomore season at Cincinnati with a different injury, it seemed fate wasn’t smiling here.
Then he got onto the field. Now Kelce is among the best pass-catching tight ends in the NFL, a first-team All-Pro in 2016. For the 63rd pick of the draft, that’s an amazing return on investment, even if Chiefs fans were frustrated initially.
Knile Davis was the Chiefs’ other third-round pick, and the Arkansas running back was a solid contributor and occasional starter in his first three seasons in Kansas City. Davis was also a top return man and still holds the NFL record for the longest kick return. He was traded to Green Bay and has bounced around since, slowed dramatically by injuries.
Offensive lineman Eric Kush is still in the league, albeit on injured reserve for the Chicago Bears. For a sixth-round pick from D-II California (PA) plucked from a decent Shrine Game week, that’s a decent choice. He’s a quality interior OL reserve when healthy.
The swings and misses
One of the draft misses from Dorsey’s initial class is quite literally a swing and a miss. Cornerback Sanders Commings, the first pick of the fifth round, quit football after playing just two games in three years with the Chiefs to pursue a career in baseball. He had myriad injuries on the football field, eventually leading to an injury settlement.
The first pick of the fourth round was Alabama LB Nico Johnson. He lasted all of two games. He bounced around practice squads through 2016, the last he appeared in any NFL news.
Mike Catapano notched two sacks in three NFL seasons, including one in his rookie year. The outside LB from Princeton has played sparingly in his career and is currently a street free agent. He had a better career as the first pick of the seventh round than the Chiefs pick just before him, Braden Wilson. The burly Kansas State H-back got cut in preseason and called it a career.
Expectations for Day 3 picks are understandably low, but Dorsey didn’t get lucky with any other than Kush. That’s not “bad” per se, but not exactly good either.
Breaking down new Browns GM John Dorsey's 2014 draft with Chiefs By: Jeff Risdon | December 14, 2017 5:01 am ET
It’s not Dorsey’s finest hour.
Background
The 2013 Chiefs, parlayed by Dorsey’s acquisition of QB Alex Smith and a first-team All-Pro season from RB Jamaal Charles (1,287 rushing yards, 70 receptions, 19 total TDs), sprinted out to a 9-0 record before fading late. They still made the playoffs a year after picking No. 1 overall, not an easy accomplishment, losing to the Colts in the famous Andrew Luck comeback game.
Six Chiefs defenders made the Pro Bowl. That includes pass rushers Tamba Hali and Justin Houston, both of whom hit double-digits in sacks. Nose tackle Dontari Poe, safety Eric Berry, corner Brandon Flowers and linebacker Derrick Johnson all made it. Dexter McCluster also made the Pro Bowl as a return man. All were on the Chiefs before Dorsey arrived.
First round: Dee Ford, DE, Auburn
Ford was a divisive choice even at the time. Remember, the Chiefs already had two pass rushers with 10-plus sacks in Hali and Houston.
The primary needs at the time were wide receiver, safety, and depth on both lines and at cornerback. With players like Jason Verrett, Deone Bucannon, Kelvin Benjamin and Joel Bitonio all on the board, Dorsey and the Chiefs instead tabbed the Auburn pass rusher.
Ford looked great during Senior Bowl drills (see Eric Fisher the prior year too) but had a laundry list of injury history. He did not work out at the NFL Scouting Combine due to complications from back surgery two years earlier, and missed later games at Auburn with knee and abdominal injuries.
He played sparingly as a rookie, as expected. Ford notched 1.5 sacks as a rookie, then upticked to four in his second season. Year three finally validated Dorsey’s faith. Ford became a full-time starter and bagged 10 sacks among his 38 total tackles. Unfortunately, he’s struggled in 2017 with both injuries and ineffectiveness at avoiding blocks. He had two sacks and 10 tackles in six games before being placed on injured reserve last week.
Better late than never
Dorsey’s best pick in the ’14 draft was Kansas City’s final pick, offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. Plucked from McGill in the Canadian college system with the 200th overall pick, Duvernay-Tardif has been the starting right guard for the last three seasons. He missed some time this year with a knee injury but remains a quality starter and a real asset in the run game. “LDT” was a star at the 2014 Shrine Game week, where Dorsey was one of few GMs I saw in attendance beyond the first couple days of practices.
Zach Fulton is another successful late-round pick. The offensive lineman from Tennessee has been a fixture on the offensive line with Duvernay-Tardif, starting 44 games at guard in his four seasons. Fulton was a Shrine Game week standout, too. He has his limitations but has proven a capable starter with some positional versatility.
Plucking two long-term starters from the sixth round of the same draft is a real feather in Dorsey’s scouting cap.
Wasted opportunities
The Chiefs didn’t have a second-round pick thanks to the Alex Smith trade from the previous offseason.
Third-round pick Phillip Gaines remains a utility cornerback and erstwhile starter. He has 14 career PDs and one INT in his four seasons while dealing with several injuries. His lack of playmaking ability and struggles with stronger wideouts have been issues. Like LDT and Fulton, Gaines appeared in the 2014 Shrine Game.
He wasn’t a poor choice given the team needs, but several useful and superior NFL players were drafted immediately after Gaines.
The rest of the class has been a major disappointment.
Fourth-round pick DeAnthony Thomas had his best year as a rookie. A hybrid receiver/running back and return man, he’s never really found a lasting role in the Chiefs offense. He made the All-Rookie team as a returner but has not been able to replicate the early success. Thomas, an undersized scatback from Oregon, has 59 career catches and 120 rushing yards in four seasons.
Quarterback Aaron Murray from Georgia was taken in the fifth round, one slot ahead of A.J. McCarron. Murray was never active for a regular-season game and is currently out of football. To be fair to Dorsey, I missed on my favorable evaluation of Murray too.
Breaking down John Dorsey's 2015 draft with Chiefs By: Jeff Risdon | December 15, 2017 7:31 pm ET
Now it’s time for 2015, the risk-and-reward draft for Dorsey’s Chiefs.
Background
The 2014 Chiefs sputtered to a 9-7 finish after starting 7-3. A weak passing attack featuring Alex Smith, Dwayne Bowe and Travis Kelce struggled to produce both yards and points. The Chiefs own pass defense was great, ranking in the top 5 in yards, TDs allowed and sacks, but the defense as a whole struggled to force turnovers.
Jamaal Charles just nudged past 1,000 rushing yards and was the only offensive Pro Bowl rep. Justin Houston bagged an astonishing 22 sacks to earn first-team All-Pro honors, while Dontari Poe and Tamba Hali also made the Pro Bowl from the defense.
Bowe was one of several free agents who left the offense. Starting center Rodney Hudson, right tackle Ryan Harris, and tight end Anthony Fasano all departed. The Chiefs held the No. 18 pick in the first round.
First round: Marcus Peters, CB, Washington
Peters was a divisive prospect and not an easy or unanimously popular selection. A very talented cover man at Washington, he was also kicked off the Huskies for fighting with teammates and battling with coaches.
His enigmatic talent was well-chronicled in Peters’ NFL.com draft profile:
"Talented cover cornerback with size, ball skills and the confidence NFL teams are looking for, but lacks the necessary discipline and maturity on the field and in practice. Peters has raw talent, but is far from a polished cornerback, and that is without taking the character concerns into consideration."
The risk paid off right away. Peters led the NFL in interceptions as a rookie with eight, including two returns for touchdowns. He made the Pro Bowl in both 2015 and ’16, and his lockdown cover skills earned Peters an All-Pro nod in his second season.
His play has declined in his third year, and his truculent behavior has been an increasing problem. Even so, Peters has been a home run of a draft pick and handily the best cornerback in his draft class. Dorsey drafted him one spot before the Browns selected Cam Erving.
Reaching for athleticism
The second and third picks were players who were surprised for how highly they were drafted. Dorsey chased high-end athletic potential at positions of need with center Mitch Morse and wide receiver Chris Conley.
Morse played tackle at Missouri but was always destined for kicking inside due to short arms. His stock rocketed upward after an impressive NFL Scouting Combine, where he was among the top interior linemen in the bench press, short shuttle and broad jump. Those drills show both strength and short-range explosive skills.
Conley, a wideout from Georgia, was an even more impressive athlete. He ran a 4.35 40-yard dash and rocked a 45-inch vertical while also broad jumping almost 12 feet. As an actual football player…he caught 117 passes in four years for the Bulldogs and was plagued with inconsistent hands and route running. Before the combine, he wasn’t considered much of a draftable commodity.
Morse paid off for the Chiefs. He started right away at center and proved a real asset in the run game. Morse did not play so well in 2017, ranking near the bottom of regular centers in Pro Football Focus grading before going on IR this week. He is a quality starting center, roughly equivalent with current Browns pivot J.C. Tretter.
Conley has 72 catches in three years, over half of which (44) came in 2016. He tore his Achilles in Week 5 this year and finished with 11 receptions. Despite his blazing speed, his NFL production has not reflected the combine astonishing. He averages just 12.4 yards per catch and has one TD in three seasons.
The Browns took Duke Johnson one pick later than Conley. David Johnson and Ty Montgomery both went later in the same round and have also (like Johnson) been wildly more productive than the underwhelming Conley, both in college and the NFL.
A decent Day 3
The rest of the draft has been punctuated by role players with varying degrees of success.
Steven Nelson is technically a Day 2 player, taken with a third-round compensatory pick. A cornerback from Oregon State, Nelson thrived in his second season after playing sparingly as a rookie. Playing opposite Peters and getting picked on as a result, Nelson tallied 16 PDs in 2016. He missed the first half of 2017 on injured reserve but has played reasonably well since returning to the starting lineup.
Linebackers Ramik Wilson and D.J. Alexander came next, in the fourth and fifth rounds. Wilson, Conley’s teammate at Georgia, has been an occasional starter. His best year was 2016, despite the team waiving him at the end of the preseason that year. He has been a gameday inactive several times in 2017 and has just seven tackles. Wilson was taken less than 10 picks after the Browns selected Ibraheim Campbell, now on the Texans practice squad.
Alexander almost never plays on defense but has carved out a niche as a special teams standout. He made the Pro Bowl last season for his work on coverage units. Also notable is that his first NFL tackle, and only defenisve stop from his rookie year, went for a safety.
Dorsey scored a real find in Rakeem Nunez-Roches, a beefy defensive tackle from Southern Miss. The sixth-rounder has developed into a quality space-eating run defender and useful part of the DL rotation. That’s a good value for the 217th overall pick.
James O’Shaughnessy and Da’Ron Brown were projects that didn’t work out. O’Shaugnessy had a little success as a tight end from Illinois State but was waived and now plays off the bench for the Jaguars. Brown, a big wideout from Northern Illinois, is currently out of football after not making the team as a rookie.
John Dorsey's 2016 draft with Chiefs not his finest hourBy: Jeff Risdon | December 16, 2017 8:21 pm ET
How about the 2016 draft for the Chiefs?
Background
The 2015 Chiefs had a fantastic season, rolling to an 11-5 finish and a Wild Card win over Houston. They finished in the top 10 in both scoring offense (9th) and defense (3rd).
Adding Jeremy Maclin at wide receiver in free agency worked well. He and TE Travis Kelce formed an effective 1-2 punch for Alex Smith, combining for over 150 catches, almost 2,000 yards and scoring 13 receiving TDs.
Five defensive regulars made the Pro Bowl, including three linebackers: Derrick Johnson, Tamba Hali and Justin Houston. Eric Berry and Marcus Peters also took nods, with Peters picking off eight passes.
Depth on the outside of the formation on both sides of the ball was the primary offseason need. Dorsey added WR Jeremy Maclin and RT Mitchell Schwartz in free agency to bolster the offense.
We have a trade
Dorsey wound up trading the Chiefs’ first-round pick to San Francisco. With the No. 28 overall pick, the 49ers took Stanford guard Josh Garnett, who has started 11 games in two injury-plagued seasons.
Kansas City wound up with San Francisco’s second, fourth and sixth-round picks in exchange for No. 28 and their seventh rounder.
Dorsey turned that pick into DT Chris Jones, OG Parker Ehinger and CB D.J. White.
Jones quickly emerged as a solid all-around 5T defensive end, earning a spot on the All-Rookie team despite bagging just two sacks. He has 4.5 sacks and three forced fumbles in 2017 and looks like an integral building block along the defensive line.
Ehinger has battled injuries but didn’t play poorly when starting at left guard as a rookie. He has missed all of 2017 with a knee injury but projects as a quality No. 6 offensive lineman for the Chiefs.
D.J. White played as the Chiefs dime back as a rookie and wasn’t bad. However, he failed to make a dent in 2017 and was waived in November, He now sits as a weekly inactive on the Indianapolis Colts. He was jettisoned after Dorsey was fired following the draft.
Kevin Hogan
Perhaps the most notable pick for Browns fans from the 2016 Kansas City class is Kevin Hogan. The quarterback didn’t survive his first summer with the Chiefs and worked his way to Cleveland after being a fifth-round pick from Stanford.
As a fill-in starter and erstwhile backup for the Browns, Hogan has shown glimpses of being a competent NFL reserve. He’s also shown why the Chiefs quickly gave up on him, unfortunately. About the best thing that can be said og Hogan is that he’s been demonstrably better than Cody Kessler, who was the Browns’ third-round pick in the same draft.
Tyreek Hill and the projects
Of the rest of Dorsey’s penultimate draft with the Chiefs, wide receiver and return man Tyreek Hill stands out.
Hill had some serious off-field issues, enough to scare away teams from his obvious on-field talent at Oklahoma State. Dorsey pinched his nose and bit at the end of the fifth round, and so far his risk has been amply rewarded for the Chiefs. Hill made the Pro Bowl as a rookie for his dynamic return skills as well as his big-play capacity as an offensive weapon.
The wide receiver/return man has scored 21 total touchdowns and gained nearly 2,000 yards from scrimmage in just under two full seasons.
As for the rest of the class…
Third-rounder KeviRae Russell looks like a wasted pick. The cornerback from Notre Dame has struggled to stick on the roster, registering just eight tackles in very limited play in his two seasons. He was a draft faller thanks to injuries and poorer-than-expected play in his final season in South Bend…sound familiar, Browns fans?
Defensive back Eric Murray has played as a reserve in the secondary but has proven eminently replaceable. The fourth-round pick has been emphatically outshined by his college teammate at Minnesota, the outstanding Browns nickel CB Briean Boddy-Calhoun.
Fourth-round wideout Demarcus Robinson has been the Kansas City equivalent of Cleveland’s Rashard Higgins, blessed with impressive size but little else which portends NFL success. He has 17 receptions and three drops (all in 2017) in two seasons.
Sixth-round pick Dadi Nicolas, a pass-rush specialist from Virginia Tech, has yet to record his first NFL statistic. He’s spent all of 2017 on the injury list and doesn’t appear to be part of the Chiefs’ future.
