Josh Rosen’s extremely reasonable comments about his future will likely make a major impact on the Cleveland Browns.
UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen made some news that could affect the Cleveland Browns with some of his thoughtful comments ahead of his team’s bowl game. “I’d rather be a lower pick at the right team than a higher one at the wrong team.” (per Cleveland.com).
An extremely reasonable thought from an intelligent young man about his future, which will likely impact the thought process of the Browns in the 2018 NFL Draft and be a major part of the discussion for the next four months.
Josh Rosen’s Perspective
First, if nothing else, Rosen confirmed he’s declaring for the draft. He may have prefaced it by saying if he comes out, but why say it at all if he was really thinking about staying at UCLA for another year.
Second, it’s not often a 21-year old kid gets the opportunity to tell billionaires how they want to start their own career, so when the opportunity presents itself, it’s a difficult one to pass up. It’s unlikely Rosen will get a second chance. The NFL has so much power in terms of controlling player movement and decision making with collectively bargained rookie contracts, the franchise and transition tags, that any time a player gets a chance to decide what they want to do and choose to exercise it, more power to them.
Some people will hold it against Rosen, taking it as a rejection of them rather than rejecting a team that has won one game in the previous two seasons and is owned by Jimmy Haslam, who even the most ardent supporters would concede has done a terrible job to this point. Any anger aimed at Rosen should be directed at Haslam.
Football at the professional level is akin to playing in traffic, so if Rosen is going to go out there and put his health in jeopardy, he should probably exercise as much control as he can to try to ensure his career is a successful one.
The Browns Perspective
There’s no getting away from the fact that Rosen’s comments, if they are indeed a polite way of telling the Browns he doesn’t want to play in Cleveland, leave an indelible mark. Billionaires like Haslam don’t generally take it well when a snot-nosed kid rejects them rather publicly. Cleveland fans need look no further than how Dan Gilbert handled LeBron James’ decision to go play for the Miami Heat.
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Jimmy Haslam has poured a lot of time and money into making the Browns organization into one a quarterback the caliber of Rosen would rather avoid. And that’s something Haslam and the Browns as an organization have to own. It should hurt. It’s not a death sentence, but it’s a real problem and a reputation that must be changed if the team is going to be successful on any level.
This also doesn’t reflect well on embattled head coach Hue Jackson. Jackson, the captain of the currently 1-30 ship is rumored to prefer Rosen out of the projected 2018 quarterback class, so Rosen’s rejection of Haslam also comes off as a rejection of Jackson. It’s not a good look for him, but can anyone blame Rosen? Look at how well things have gone with the previous two rookie quarterbacks Jackson has coached.
The Options
- They can draft Rosen and basically dare him to sit out for a year or make the best of things. If Rosen sticks to his guns, Rosen can go back into the draft the following year.
- They can draft Rosen and then trade him to another team. The Giants, currently slated to pick 2nd stand out as well as the Denver Broncos and the New York Jets stand out in this scenario as they both have quarterback needs and are going to pick int he top ten, unless they were to sign Kirk Cousins.
- They can avoid Rosen altogether and simply pick someone else with the top pick.
Everything about this depends on their evaluation of Rosen. If they believe he’s the best prospect, they have a real issue. They can try to sell him on the organization, potentially try to replace the head coach for someone Rosen might prefer and see if this is a position that is negotiable or if he’s set on going somewhere else.
In the event that the Browns view another quarterback equal or higher, be it Sam Darnold if he comes out, Baker Mayfield or someone else, they have an interesting opportunity. They can potentially flip Rosen under the cover of him not wanting to play for the Browns, get additional assets (preferably 2019 assets rather than more 2018 assets) and get a quarterback they might actually prefer, which would be a substantial haul for the team.
The ideal scenario in that situation would be to get the Giants to move up from 2nd pick (assuming they lose to the Washington Redskins or the Indianapolis Colts beat the Houston Texans). Because of the presence of the Denver Broncos, currently at sixth pick and the New York Jets, currently sitting seventh, even if one of them were to sign Cousins, they could use the other to leverage the Giants to give up something to ensure they get Rosen to be the heir to Eli Manning.
Eli Manning obviously did this to get himself to the Giants in 2004 in a trade with the San Diego Chargers that netted the Chargers Philip Rivers, the Giants a third round pick in 2004 as well as a first and fifth round pick in 2005. Last year, the Chicago Bears gave the San Francisco 49ers a third and fourth round pick in 2017 as well as a 2018 third round pick so they could select Mitchell Trubisky. New general manager John Dorsey could follow a similar framework in negotiating a deal.
Should Dorsey be able to get what amounts to a processing fee for Rosen, he then has the freedom to take his top quarterback with more assets to build the team. If the Giants end up taking Rosen, there’s some cover for Dorsey to take whichever QB he wants at two.
A swap with the Broncos or Jets comes with a substantially higher risk and would require huge stones on the behalf of Dorsey. The haul of assets would be bigger and would be incredibly tense for both the Browns brass and fans as they sit there hoping their targets are still there while waiting for the teams in front of them to pick, but the payoff is obviously bigger. In this scenario, the Browns could try to use some of those assets to trade back up, likely from the pick received from the Houston Texans to get their quarterback or simply sit tight and trust no one else is going to grab their guy.
There’s a possibility that Rosen may have given the Browns an out for a scenario that didn’t interest them in the first place. The Browns might ultimately not want Rosen, so this could enable them to take advantage of this to gain additional assets and the player they wanted in the first place. It would have been slightly more difficult, at least from a PR standpoint, to trade out or pass on Rosen if he did in fact want to play for the Browns.
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None of that changes the fact that no team, no organization wants to be associated with any player insinuating or saying outright that their team isn’t a place where they want to be. There is a genuine opportunity for the Cleveland Browns to make the most of this situation in terms of adding players through the draft, but they have to make real changes at an organizational level if those players are going to succeed. Otherwise, Rosen will be proven right and he won’t be the last one to avoid the Browns.