Cleveland Browns: Quarterback struggles an organizational failure

In the second season of the Hue Jackson and Sashi Brown tenure, the Cleveland Browns have an awful group of quarterbacks and it’s an organizational failure.

When Hue Jackson was hired as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns, he was vocal about it being his job to find this team a franchise quarterback. The front office led by Sashi Brown as the general manager have been adamant about how they are going to look at every option to improve their quarterback room. There are a lot of positives to point to with this team, but with about two weeks left until the season starts, the Browns look to be truly abysmal at the quarterback position.

Any criticism is not going to be directed at DeShone Kizer, the team’s fifth draft pick and the 52nd player overall in the 2017 NFL Draft. Kizer was raw coming out of Notre Dame and really should be getting ready to play his redshirt junior season in college. The Browns knew it, viewed him as a two-to-three year project, and picked him anyway. He’s exactly on schedule, which is nowhere near ready and they know it. That’s on the Browns as an organization.

Meanwhile, the Browns have Cody Kessler, a third-round pick from 2016, Brock Osweiler, acquired in a trade this past offseason, and Kevin Hogan, an undrafted free agent as the other potential options at quarterback. Through two preseason games, none of them look remotely promising.

Kessler physically improved himself over the offseason, but appears not to have developed as a quarterback whatsoever. He’s accurate, but when he holds onto the ball too long, things go very wrong and this year that has been in the form of a ton of sacks in training camp.

Osweiler was brought in as a salary dump by the Houston Texans that netted the Browns an extra second-round pick in 2018. It might come as a surprise, but Osweiler looks exactly like he did for the Texans. Despite talks of how getting away from Bill O’Brien would help him because O’Brien is super mean to quarterbacks, Osweiler is no better under the tutelage of Jackson.

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Kevin Hogan was basically a runner last year. Throwing was a development that was going to be big addition to his repertoire this year. It doesn’t appear to have happened.

It’s incredible to think, but the Browns are worse at quarterback than they were last year. Last year the Browns had Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown as well as Kessler and Hogan as rookies. Griffin would go on to get injured almost immediately in the regular season, but he had some bright spots in the preseason and led the Browns to some touchdowns. Osweiler has yet to lead the offense to such a point.

McCown, possibly made out of balsa wood, was a reasonably effective quarterback but had a knack for putting himself in harm’s way and getting injured. He also had a knack to put up a ton of yards and some points, but often at the cost of multiple interceptions.

Kessler played appeared in games as a rookie, often being incredibly efficient while the Browns went three-and-out. He completed 65.6 percent of his passes and had a 92.3 QB rating, but the ball never moved and the team didn’t score any points with him in there.

CLEVELAND, OH – AUGUST 21: Brock Osweiler (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /

So the Browns, who have a head coach that was hired in large part to address the quarterback position and a front office that is geared towards attacking the quarterback position every way it can, are set to trot out a quarterback group as bad as any in the league. This is despite using a third-round pick, a second-round pick, signing a free agent and even trading for quarterbacks (again, Kizer is not at fault for being where he is. The team is).

Under Jackson’s guidance, Griffin didn’t get better, McCown didn’t get better, Kessler hasn’t gotten better and Osweiler hasn’t gotten better. So what is the impact of Hue Jackson, the “quarterback whisperer” some were touting him as when he was hired?

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None of this is to suggest the team should be looking to fire Jackson, blow up the front office or anything else. The team is improving in other areas, but it’s incredibly frustrating that a team led by a group so focused on the quarterback position, is so dreadful at it.

Adding to the frustration is the fact that there’s a better option sitting there in free agency for anyone to sign in Colin Kaepernick. Whatever the NFL (yes, this is coming from the NFL) is doing to make sure no one signs Kaepernick to punish him for taking control away from the league with his protest last year, the Browns can’t say they’ve done everything they can to improve the position. A much better option is available and they aren’t doing anything about it.

It would be one thing if the Browns were stuck with this group of quarterbacks and there were no other options. There might be talks of trades that weren’t likely to happen, but they aren’t. There couldn’t be a more analytics play than signing a quarterback that started 11 games, averaged 186.8 yards per game passing and 39 yards per game rushing, had 16 passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns against just four interceptions, and a 90.9 QB rating last year.

Further weakening the Browns stance on this front is the fact about a dozen players kneeled during the national anthem before they took on the New York Giants. The team knelt for a team prayer for everyone in the country during the anthem (a moment that made myself as someone covering the team and a fan extremely proud). The very issue for which the NFL is currently blackballing Kaepernick, players on the team did in a powerful display. And Kaepernick isn’t planning on kneeling during the anthem this year.

Assuming the Browns don’t make a move for Kaepernick, short of a miraculous transformation, the current group of quarterbacks is going to be terrible in 2017. The best case scenario is that either Kizer develops or the quarterback they add in the 2018 draft does, but that’s going to be the third year of Hue Jackson and Sashi Brown.

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If it’s not substantially better then, the front office can try to hide behind the overall improvement of the roster as a whole while Hue Jackson…what is his case to continue being the head coach? As a result, the Browns will go all-in on a quarterback in 2018 because they have no choice if they want to stay employed, letting that quarterback and Kizer compete for the starting job. The pressure is mounting and only going to get worse with every week the quarterbacks go out there and struggle. Quarterback is why Jimmy Haslam hired this regime and to this point, that spot has been an utter disaster.

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Cleveland Browns: These quarterbacks suck

By Peter Smith | Aug 23, 2017

In the second season of the Hue Jackson and Sashi Brown tenure, the Cleveland Browns have an awful group of quarterbacks and it’s an organizational failure.

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