The Miami Dolphins trade Jarvis Landry to the Cleveland Browns for draft picks

The Jarvis Landry era in Miami is over.

The Miami Dolphins traded Landry, their talented, mercurial wide receiver to the Cleveland Browns on Friday for two draft picks. The trade will be made official at the start of the new league year Wednesday.

In exchange for Landry, the Dolphins received Cleveland’s fourth-round pick in this year’s draft (123rd overall) and the Browns’ seventh-round pick in 2019.

Landry signed his one-year, $16 million franchise tag on Thursday — which cleared the way for the trade.

“I’ve had great people in my corner,” Landry said Friday night at his charity function at Hard Rock Stadium, which raised more than $100,000 for cystic fibrosis research. “My entire family, a couple mentors of mine. Just walking through the whole process, trying to enjoy it.

“As stressful as it may seem, I try to enjoy it. I’m happy. I’m happy. I can live what what’s happened, because I know I gave my all all the time.

A league source says Landry and the Browns don’t have a long-term deal and haven’t seriously talked numbers yet. But both sides are interested in doing that. The source also said that Landry likes the Cleveland situation, and he is excited about working with offensive coordinator Todd Haley.

Cleveland traded for Buffalo Bills quarterback Tyrod Taylor on Friday, as well.

The source said that Baltimore also showed considerable interest in Landry this week, but the Dolphins didn’t want to wait longer. For salary-cap reasons, the Dolphins felt a great urgency to purge Landry before the start of free agency.

Did Landry enjoy the past couple weeks of uncertainty?

“Yeah, I did,” Landry said. “I mean, you think about it in a sense, once I played my four years, a lot of things were out of my control. The four years I had the opportunity to play for the Miami Dolphins, I left it all there. I don’t have any regrets about that.”

Landry has caught more passes in his first four seasons than any player in NFL history (400). However, the Dolphins balked at giving him the big, multiyear contract he desired and granted his agent permission to work out a trade.

Did Landry have any input on where he would end up?

“Nah, it was just going through the whole process, going back and forth with my agent, and just kind of worked out this way,” he said.

The Ravens and Browns were among the teams interested. On Friday, he green-lit a move to Cleveland, which has won just one game in the past two seasons.

“I’m excited, man,” Landry said about going to the Browns. “I’m excited about the next chapter of my life. Most of all, I’m excited about tonight, creating this moment and these memories. This is a hell of last memory right here.”

The move brings to a close Landry’s productive, yet tumultuous time in Miami. The Dolphins took him in the second round of the 2014 draft and he immediately became an emotional, if not mature, leader. College teammates and close friends with Odell Beckham Jr., they became two of the most exciting young receivers in the game.

As recently as November, the Dolphins were poised to lock Landry down long term. But something soured in the past few months, possibly beginning with an on-field shouting match with coach Adam Gase.

Things went from bad to worse in Week 17, when Landry was kicked out of the Bills game for instigating an ugly brawl; Gase later called Landry’s behavior “embarrassing.”

The Dolphins placed the non-exclusive franchise tag on Landry the first day they could, but did so with the intention of trading him. They insisted they would not rescind the tag, believing a team would offer them sufficient compensation for a trade to work.

On Friday, the Browns became that team.

This story was originally published March 9, 2018 at 4:36 PM with the headline "The Miami Dolphins trade Jarvis Landry to the Cleveland Browns for draft picks."