Why The Cleveland Browns Need To Claim Adrian Amos

Sometimes you see things on Twitter that you don’t consider real so you ignore them and that is exactly what happened to me when I saw Adrian Amos had been waived last night. He spent four years with the Bears after being drafted in the 5th round in 2015. Then he went north to the Packers in free agency and signed a $36m deal for four years. Then this past offseason he signed a deal worth $1.75m with the Jets after they lost Chuck Clark to a season-ending knee injury.

Adrian Amos

Amos is still a very productive player, the Jets moved him down the depth chart so they could focus on developing the young safeties on their roster which isn’t a surprise as their season is over after the Rodgers injury and would need to run the table to be back in contention. He then asked for his release so he could go somewhere that would allow him to play and hopefully compete for the postseason.

He has played 264 snaps so far on the season and is playing to a good level. He is PFF’s 21st best safety on the year and has a forced incompletion rate of 20% which is tied for 11th in the league. For comparison Rodney McLeod was at 10%, Grant Delpit was at 8%, and Juan Thornhill 0%.

Contract

If claimed Amos would come with a fully guaranteed $347,222 for the remainder of the season which is only slightly above the league average so he would easily be someone you can add to the team.

Browns Need

When they lost Rodney McLeod they effectively lost the ability to play three safeties as they didn’t have the confidence in Hickman or Bell to play that much. They have signed Harmon to the practice squad who is a great addition but he hasn’t made it to the active roster yet.

Conclusion

For me this move is a no-brainer, you might have to waive someone else on the roster or even Ronnie Hickman in a worst-case scenario with roster spots required for Flacco, Wills, and Mitchell soon and only Walker and Diabate as obvious candidates to depart. Giving defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz the option to use six defensive backs again when Ward returns would allow for them to keep their defense as flexible as possible rather than adding 0.5 linebackers per snap as we saw against the Broncos.

My guess would be someone else gets to him before us on waivers but that shouldn’t stop them from attempting to claim him, he was a player I was happy to go after in free agency if Thornhill was more expensive so getting him as an in-season backup is ideal after losing McLeod.