Cleveland Browns: Hue Jackson’s handling of DeShone Kizer

Cleveland Browns head coach Hue Jackson wants DeShone Kizer to believe that he’s doing what’s best for him, while burying him.

Hue Jackson, the so-called quarterback whisperer and head coach of the Cleveland Browns, has spent much of this season taking a megaphone to press conferences telling everyone who is listening that DeShone Kizer is bad and it’s anyone’s fault but his. It didn’t start out this way as Jackson couldn’t say enough about how much he liked Kizer, even going as far as staking his reputation on him.

Jackson took Kizer, a player both the front office and his quarterback coach, David Lee, said he wasn’t ready, and after jettisoning every other potential option, named him the starting quarterback.

At that time, Jackson was extremely high on the former Notre Dame signal caller.

Even after naming Kizer his starting quarterback, Jackson didn’t tailor his playbook around what the rookie could do. Instead, he insisted the rookie grow up fast and adjust to his offense, pointing to his extremely high expectations of the quarterback position. This all sounds good except Kizer couldn’t do what he was being asked, which was clear both in the preseason and several weeks into the regular season. The offense is the offense, regardless of whether it’s Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown, Cody Kessler or Kevin Hogan.

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Kizer was benched on multiple occasions for turning the ball over, which is defensible on its face. The problem when it came to Jackson is he never took responsibility in his role for why those interceptions occurred. Due to the poor handling of the quarterback depth chart, like releasing Josh McCown and then Brock Osweiler, he also replaced Kizer with quarterbacks that were just as bad or worse than Kizer, forcing him into a pretty embarrassing yo-yoing of the quarterback position that made Jackson look just as bad as the quarterback.

It took until week seven for Jackson to make some adjustments to aid Kizer and put him in better position to succeed. His performance improved but not enough to get in the win column. Kizer had some promising moments against teams like the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings, but never a complete game and none that ended in victory.

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When Jackson deemed it clear that Kizer couldn’t do what he wanted, Jackson panicked and tried to trade the Cincinnati Bengals a pair of draft picks for his former quarterback, A.J. McCarron. When the trade didn’t go through, Jackson lied through his teeth, again, saying Kizer was the man for the job and he was a franchise quarterback.

More weeks passed and losses added up and then Jackson came out and said that he thought Kizer could be a great quarterback, but that the team would certainly be in the market for a quarterback next year highly in the draft.

Once he had succeeded in getting rid of Sashi Brown, the man who heroically botched the McCarron panic trade, the organization came out with new general manager John Dorsey and owner Jimmy Haslam for their press conference. In this press conference, Haslam said the number one job for Dorsey was to find a franchise quarterback. The owner of the team publicly laid the blame of the organization’s struggles on Sashi Brown and a 21-year old rookie quarterback because Jackson convinced him they were the problems. (In fairness, Haslam blamed himself as he always does in these situations, but then proclaimed he’d change nothing about how he operates the team.)

The self proclaimed quarterback guru played an unprepared rookie quarterback too early because his ego made him believe he could fix him, despite warnings from everyone around him. When the rookie was unable to perform what was expected, he benched him. When benching him didn’t work, he took to criticizing him in public.

After that didn’t yield the desired results, he attempted to replace him. Then, he tried to make nice for a minute before making it known to everyone that he intended to replace him the following year. At the end, the head coach blames all of the team’s struggles on the quarterback he handled so poorly.

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Following the team’s 14th loss in a row, Jackson, in his post game press conference responded to a question about Kizer by saying, “I think that’s a fair question if he’ll ever get it. I think he will, but he has to keep working.” 

And later in the same presser:

"“I want to see where he is because this is about his future as a quarterback in the National Football League. It’s not just about letting him play and seeing this or seeing that. I want to do what’s best for him, also, as we move forward. I think that is important.”"

So in one breath, Jackson is continuing a season long trend of burying Kizer’s young career. And as Kizers getting hit in the face by shovelfuls dirt, he has to listen to Jackson try to explain to him how this is the best thing for him.

Kizer hasn’t been good. At times, he’s been downright awful, but he wasn’t prepared to play this year in the first place, which isn’t his fault. The best thing for Kizer was not playing him as a rookie. The best for him would have been letting him ease his way into the NFL and catch up to the speed of the game. He was a project and everyone around him told him as much, which Kizer has admitted on multiple occasions.

Jackson has never done what’s best for Kizer. The suggestion he has is insulting to anyone’s intelligence that pays even the slightest attention to this team. It’s always been about what’s best for Jackson’s ego. He so desperately wants credit and to be able to say he developed the quarterback that turned the Browns around, even putting his own credibility on the line for it. Then when that fails, despite his own words on the subject, puts the blame on the quarterback and excuses himself.

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Hue Jackson should be held responsible for his extremely poor handling of DeShone Kizer this year, per his own words. Now imagine this all happens next year with the first pick of the draft and what is to be the Cleveland Browns franchise quarterback. Whether it’s Josh Rosen, Baker Mayfield or someone else, imagine that Jackson has been this destructive with what should be the franchise’s future and highest quarterback selected since Tim Couch in 1999.

For all of Kizer’s faults, he was mismanaged from the word go by Hue Jackson and it’s unthinkable that this could be allowed to happen again, potentially doing serious harm to another rookie quarterback. This time, with substantially higher stakes.