Each week during the 2021 season, we’ll examine our NFL draft steal of the week — a younger player whose NFL success has surpassed where he was drafted. We’ll try to look back at the why and how of where they were selected and what we thought of that prospect prior to the draft.
Cleveland Browns
5-foot-11, 214 pounds
2018 NFL draft: Round 5, No. 166 overall (drafted by Buffalo Bills)
As the Buffalo Bills were approaching cutdown day in the late summer of 2019, they found themselves with a glut of interior offensive linemen. A few hundred miles to the southwest, the Cleveland Browns had a vacancy at their right guard spot.
It led to a trade that barely made ripples outside those two NFL cities: The Bills shipped Teller and a 2021 seventh-round pick to the Browns for 2020 fifth- and sixth-round picks. Little did we know it at the time, but former Browns GM John Dorsey had just pulled off perhaps his best trade during his time in Cleveland.
Teller had started the seven games of the 2018 season at left guard for the Bills as a rookie, but the following offseason saw the team bring in a slew of veteran blockers to compete for multiple OL spots, including left guard. When Bills coaches deemed others as having played better there, the Teller trade went down.
Cleveland Browns right guard Wyatt Teller went from a fifth-round pick who was traded after his rookie season to one of the best interior blockers in the NFL. (Photo by Ian Johnson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Through the first seven games of the 2019 season, Teller played a grand total of 11 offensive snaps. Then in Week 9 against the Denver Broncos, he started at right guard for Cleveland. Only COVID-19 and injury would keep him out of the lineup from that moment on.
On Tuesday, the Browns made Teller the second-richest offensive guard in the NFL. His new four year,…
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