The Cleveland Browns walked away from their own proposal on Monday. The franchise had submitted a rule change at the 2026 NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix that would have allowed teams to trade draft picks up to five years into the future, an expansion from the current three-year limit.
The proposal, put forward by Browns general manager Andrew Berry, had advanced to the owner vote stage. Then it was pulled. NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported on Monday that the Browns withdrew the rules change proposal before it went to a vote.
The decision came hours after Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay publicly dismissed the proposal as having no chance of passing.
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Feb 24, 2026; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry speaks at the NFL Scouting Combine at the Indiana Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
McVay Said the Proposal Was Dead Before the Vote Ever Happened
McVay, who sits on the NFL’s Competition Committee, did not hold back. Speaking on Up and Adams with Kay Adams on Monday, McVay made his view of the Browns’ proposal plain.
“There’s zero percent chance that’ll get through,” McVay said. “I respect the courage for Andrew [Berry] to have a very sound reasoning of what’s behind it. But there’s no chance that thing is getting through.”
McVay noted his Competition Committee had voted 11-0 against the measure. When a sitting committee member says a proposal has zero chance on the morning of its potential vote, the writing is on the wall.
Rams president Kevin Demoff had previously been one of the few voices publicly supportive of the change. But support from one franchise president was not going to be enough.
Sources: The Browns withdrew their rules change proposal that would have allowed teams to trade draft picks up to five years in advance rather than the current three.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 30, 2026
According to ESPN’s reporting on the original proposal, any rule change at the annual meeting requires 24 of 32 teams to vote in favor. Cleveland’s proposal never looked close to clearing that threshold.
Cleveland’s Reasoning Made Logical Sense, Even If the Timing Was Off
The underlying argument Berry made was not without merit. Other major North American sports leagues already allow more flexibility. The NBA permits teams to trade picks up to seven years out, though it carries the Stepien Rule as a safeguard against reckless pick-packaging.
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Feb 24, 2026; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry speaks at the NFL Scouting Combine at the Indiana Convention Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
The Browns argued that modern franchise-building tools, specifically advanced modeling and long-range roster projections, make a two-year extension of the trade window reasonable. Berry framed it as giving teams greater flexibility in structuring trades.
There is a real-world context behind why Cleveland cares about this. The franchise has been navigating the fallout of the Deshaun Watson trade for years, forfeiting first-round picks in 2022, 2023, and 2024. The ability to pledge further-out assets may have been relevant to how Berry is thinking about future roster reconstruction.
That said, the NFL has historically been cautious about changes that could create structural disadvantages for less sophisticated front offices. Allowing picks five years out opens the door to the kind of asset depletion that took the Cleveland Cavaliers years to recover from in the NBA.
The Browns can resubmit the proposal in a future cycle. Given McVay’s public response and the Competition Committee’s unanimous opposition, nothing about the math changes anytime soon unless the league’s broader appetite for this kind of flexibility shifts.