Cleveland Traded Down And Still Got Spencer Fano — The Outland Winner Chasing Joe Thomas

The Cleveland Browns made the first trade of the 2026 NFL Draft and used it to solve their oldest problem. Holding the No. 6 pick, Cleveland traded down three spots to No. 9 with the Kansas City Chiefs — picking up pick No. 74 in the third round and No. 148 in the fifth — and still landed the player they wanted: Utah offensive tackle Spencer Fano, the first offensive lineman off the board. Kansas City used the No. 6 selection on LSU cornerback Mansoor Delane. Cleveland walked away with extra capital and the tackle it had coveted, which is the trade-down outcome every front office chases and rarely catches.

The reason Cleveland could move down without losing Fano is that the rest of the top eight had other priorities, and the reason they wanted him is the trophy case. Fano won the 2025 Outland Trophy as the nation's best interior lineman or tackle, was a unanimous First-Team All-American, took the Polynesian College Football Player of the Year award, and was named the Big 12 Offensive Lineman of the Year. At 6-foot-5 and 311 pounds he started 35 of 37 career games — 11 at left tackle as a freshman, then 24 at right tackle — and in 2025 allowed zero sacks across 357 pass-blocking snaps per Pro Football Focus. He ran a 4.91 forty at the combine, second among tackles, pairing the production with the testing.

The cap and capital math is the quiet half of the story. By moving from 6 to 9, Cleveland reduced the size of the rookie contract it would owe at the top of the round — reporting pegged the savings at roughly $9.85 million over the deal versus picking at six — while adding a third- and a fifth-round pick. Fano still signed a four-year rookie contract reported at $32.2 million fully guaranteed with a $19.9 million signing bonus and a fifth-year option. For a team rebuilding a line that had been gutted, getting a top-ten talent at a slight discount and stockpiling Day 2 and Day 3 picks is exactly the kind of resource arbitrage general manager Andrew Berry has built a reputation on.

The line Fano joins needed the overhaul. Cleveland entered 2026 having lost right tackle Jack Conklin, right guard Wyatt Teller, and center Ethan Pocic, with veteran Dawand Jones shifted to a swing-tackle role and longtime guard Joel Bitonio reaching free agency after 2025. Into that churn, the Browns are projecting Fano as their starting left tackle immediately — not a versatile fill-in, but the left tackle of the future. "The board probably fell better than it did in our simulations," Berry said. "We're really excited that we were able to pick up the extra draft resources while taking a player that we really coveted at nine."

The position carries a specific weight in Cleveland because of who used to play it. Joe Thomas was the Browns' left tackle from 2007, when he went No. 3 overall, through 2017 — eleven seasons, ten consecutive Pro Bowls, and 10,363 consecutive snaps, an NFL record that ended only when a triceps tear finally took him off the field. He entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a first-ballot selection in 2023. Any rookie left tackle in Cleveland is measured against that standard, and Fano knows it. "I am pretty starstruck, hoping I'll be able to meet him," he said of Thomas after the pick. "Whenever anyone asks me who the greatest tackle of all time is, I say 'Joe Thomas.'"

The broader draft confirmed the line-first approach. Cleveland earned the No. 6 slot with a 5-12 record in 2025 and held a second first-rounder at No. 24 — a pick acquired from Jacksonville in a pre-2025-draft trade that landed late because the Jaguars went 13-4 — which the Browns spent on a wide receiver. The rest of a ten-pick haul filled out a roster under new head coach Todd Monken, hired in January after the team parted with Kevin Stefanski following six seasons. A rebuilding team with two first-round picks chose to spend its highest one on the trenches, which is the unglamorous, correct order of operations for a franchise that has spent years failing to protect its quarterbacks.

The bet is that Fano is the anchor and not just a starter. The knocks were real — a leaner build, shorter arms, questions about anchoring against NFL power that gave him a fringe-first-round grade in some rooms — and they are the reason a player with an Outland Trophy was available at nine at all. He profiles as a right tackle in college being asked to flip to the blind side in the pros, which is a projection, not a certainty. But the combination of elite college production, clean pass-protection numbers, extra picks banked on the way down, and a discounted rookie deal is the most efficient way a rebuilding team can attack its most expensive long-term need. Cleveland has been searching for the next Joe Thomas since the last one retired. Whether they found him is a 2026 question. That they finally spent premium capital trying is the answer this draft already gave.