The Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints completed a quiet, almost symmetrical receiver exchange this week that says as much about roster math as it does about belief.
After Cleveland waived Cedric Tillman last week, the Saints quickly added the former third-round pick to their practice squad. In the other direction, the Browns signed Bub Means, a 2024 fifth-round selection New Orleans had just let go.
Tillman’s release was not a total shock once the new coaching staff and draft board came into focus. The Browns used first- and second-round picks in April on KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston and already had Jerry Jeudy, Tylan Wallace, Malachi Corley and Isaiah Bond in the mix.
That left little room for a 26-year-old entering the final year of his rookie deal. Over three seasons and 38 games, Tillman posted 71 catches for 833 yards and five touchdowns.
There were flashes, including a three-game stretch in 2024 that produced 255 yards and three scores, but consistency and availability never fully aligned. An undisclosed injury kept him out of preseason games this summer. The team created roughly $3.6 million in cap space with a modest dead-money hit and moved on.
Means arrives in Berea as a different kind of dart throw. The 25-year-old, whose given name is Jerrod, stands 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds and ran in the mid-4.4s coming out of Pittsburgh after earlier stops at Tennessee and Louisiana Tech. New Orleans drafted him 170th overall in 2024.
He appeared in seven games as a rookie, catching nine passes for 118 yards and a touchdown before a high-ankle sprain ended that season. Another injury landed him on injured reserve in August 2025 and wiped out his entire second year.
The Saints kept only four receivers on the 53-man roster and decided they no longer needed him. Cleveland, having opened a practice-squad spot by cutting Tillman, decided it did.
From a Browns perspective the move is low-risk insurance and developmental depth. The active receiving group is young and crowded; the practice squad is where the staff can keep working with athletic size while the two high-drafted rookies and Jeudy handle the bulk of the snaps.
Means has shown he can win a contested catch and find the end zone when healthy. Whether that version of him still exists after two lost seasons is the question Cleveland will answer in meetings and walkthroughs rather than in games, at least at first.
There is an easy narrative in the swap: one team’s discarded receiver becomes the other’s next experiment. For the Browns it is simply another late-August transaction in a rebuilt wide-receiver room.
Tillman gets a fresh start in New Orleans. Means gets another chance in Cleveland. Both organizations are betting they read the other side of the trade correctly.
